Migrants’ hard work ethic wears off after two years

‘The study shows that the view that UK workers are lazy compared to migrant workers is misconceived’

MIGRANTS stop working harder than British people after they have been in the country for two years, research has shown.

A study by the University of Bath found central and eastern Europe employees’ tendency to take fewer days off than the homegrown workforce may be a temporary phenomenon.

When their attendance rate was measured over two to four years, they were more than three times less likely to be absent than native workers. But later their absence increased to similar levels.

The figures suggest British job applicants may be unfairly overlooked because employers have a preconception that migrants are harder workers.

Employment experts suggested migrants were making a special effort to avoid sick days in the initial stages of their UK employment to prove that they were worth hiring over their British counterparts and to make up for their lack of language skills.

Dr Chris Dawson, senior lecturer in business economics at Bath, said: “Our work backs up managers’ perceptions that Polish and other central and eastern European migrants are harderworking than UK employees, but importantly only for around two years from their arrival. The study shows that the common view that UK workers are lazy compared to migrant workers is misconceived. In fact, migrants are temporarily working extra hard to offset the challenges they face when they first enter the UK job market.

“We clearly see in the research that migrants new to the UK put in a couple of years of hard work, before a better understanding of our culture and job market means they adopt the same work ethic as native workers.”

Dr Benjamin Hopkins, a lecturer in work and employment at the University of Leicester, said: “When the central and eastern European nations became part of the EU in 2004, the number of migrants registering to work in the UK was far beyond any projected figures. There was very little planning around information for employers about qualifications in these countries and how they relate to the

UK system.

“This lack of understanding exacerbated the need for migrants to demonstrate their values in a very practical way – by recording lower levels of absence than their UK colleagues.”

The research focused on 113,804 workers, of whom 1,396 were from central and eastern Europe.

More than 600,000 workers from these blocs registered for work in the UK from 2004 to 2007.