Fair Work Commission

The AWRS used a combination of surveys of employers and their employees to collect information about a range of workplace relations and employment matters. It has also collected valuable contextual information about enterprise structures and performance and employee circumstances.

The design and development of the AWRS was overseen by a steering committee made up of employee and employer representative bodies and other stakeholders, including Commonwealth agencies, with expertise in quantitative survey research. A list of the membership is available on the Australian Workplace Relations Study page on this website.

The Commission has also consulted the research community through peak associations about the development of the research design and survey instrument development and data preparation.

ORC International undertook AWRS data collection and related services on behalf of the Commission.

Data was collected for the AWRS using a multi-mode approach that included computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and self-administered online and paper-based surveys between February 2014 and July 2014. The AWRS fieldwork components flow chart depicts the various components of the AWRS and the key information collected via each questionnaire component.

Participation in the AWRS and each questionnaire component of the AWRS was entirely voluntary.

At the conclusion of data collection on 31 July 2014:

• 3057 enterprises had completed at least the first questionnaire component that was administered, the Employee Relations questionnaire component
• 1509 enterprises had completed all employer components of the AWRS, and
• 7883 employees had completed the employee questionnaire, including
  • 5038 employees where there are complete employer records to link these data to.

Further information about response rates and other fieldwork outcomes are available in the (Provisional) AWRS Fieldwork Report.

The AWRS design and the survey instruments were approved by the ABS’ Statistical Clearing House prior to the commencement of data collection.