Since April 2011 HSE has classified occupations using SOC 2010 rather than the older SOC 2000. Earlier data, which was originally coded using SOC2000, has been automatically recoded into SOC 2010 so that it is all available on the same basis.
In April 2011 HSE began to use the SOC 2010 industry classification scheme. This page explains:
The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) is a common classification of occupations for the United Kingdom. It classifies jobs in terms of their skill level and content. SOC 2010 is the second update since the introduction of the occupational classification scheme in 1990 and the general approach has not changed. HSE uses it, for example, to identify the occupations of workers injured in RIDDOR incidents.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) revised the SOC 2000 classification where changes in the organisation of work, or in the type of work performed were most apparent. This includes jobs related to information and communication technologies, health, social care, education, culture, media, sports and leisure.
Managerial occupations received particular attention, because the United Kingdom was significantly different from other European Union countries. The revision also reflects developments in the production of the 2008 version of the International Classification of Occupations (ISCO08) by the International Labour Office. Its revised structure identified a number of supervisory occupations as unit groups and ONS wanted to ensure a degree of harmonisation.
The most important change introduced in SOC 2010 was regarding managerial occupations. The title 'manager', qualified in some way, is frequently used in the UK to denote what would be regarded as supervisory or administrative positions in many other countries. The definition now focuses on the control of resources ('planning, directing and coordinating') at the enterprise or organisational level and makes more explicit the strategic elements of the job rather than the day-to-day tasks.
New occupations have also been created including:
A fuller explanation of the implementation of SOC 2010 and occupation coding can be found on the ONS website.
The LFS results have been coded by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) using SOC 2010 since January 2011. Earlier SOC 2000 occupation codes have been mapped to SOC 2010, as described above so the breakdown by occupation for 2010/11 onwards may not be entirely consistent with those of previous years. The resulting changes on the time series are not considered to be significant.
The changes have a relatively minor impact on HSE's work, as the changes to occupations where most injuries occur are generally minor. Many even have the same four-digit code under both classifications.
HSE has mapped the old SOC 2000 coding for RIDDOR to the new SOC 2010 codes using a probabilistic model developed by ONS. This model is based on numbers of employees in the old and new occupations. The distribution by risk may be different and this may result in some of the risk appearing to move between occupations, for example from process and trade jobs to managerial ones.
When people report RIDDOR incidents under the new RIDDOR reporting system, they are asked for the job description of the injured person. These job descriptions are then coded into the standard occupations. As the job description is a free text field, the reliability of this coding is heavily dependent on the information provided.
Some job descriptions provided are too vague to code directly, for example, there are about eight possible codes for teachers. If the job description just says teacher it is impossible to choose between them without more information. Other examples of vague job descriptions include production/process/factory worker, driver, general assistant/team member and engineer.
Other job descriptions that are difficult to code include those which are:
These challenges limit the reliability of the coding of occupations and tend to inflate the numbers of people coded to the more general occupations, eg Agricultural and fishing trades not elsewhere classified.
You can find out more about the changes and SOC 2010 at the Office for National Statistics website.
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