The IER and QinetiQ, were commissioned by Army Families Federation to analyse the factors shaping the employment of military spouses/partners and to formulate recommendations for effective support services.

The report, launched by AFF at the Royal Horseguards Hotel in London on Tuesday 19th June, with speakers including the Right Honourable Esther McVey, contains a series of key recommendations for supporting military spouses/partners into employment.

The research involved five separate phases of data collection, undertaken between October 2017 and April 2018. Data was collected from an online survey with almost 1500 spouses/partners from all three Services, 32 telephone interviews, an online survey with 38 employers and 14 stakeholder interviews.

Lyonette, C., Barnes, S-A, Kispeter, E., Fisher, N. and Newell, K. (2018) 'Military spousal/partner employment: Identifying the barriers and support required' - report to Army Families Federation.

Sally Wright and Professor Chris Warhurst have a new ESRC-funded Impact Accelerator Award to support their work for the working group tasked with responding to the job quality recommendations made in the UK Governments’ Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices. The working group is co-chaired by Martyn Evans, Chief Executive of the Carnegie UK Trust, and Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for Arts.

In July 2018, Dr Giulio Pedrini and Dr Luca Cattani from the University of Bologna will visit the IER for a month, working with Dr Daria Luchinskaya (IER) and Dr Charoula Tzanakou (PAIS) to develop a collaborative programme of research on graduate employment between the University of Warwick and the University of Bologna.

During their visit, funded by the Institute of Advanced Studies International Fellowships award, the researchers will investigate graduates’ transitions into the labour market in Italy and the UK, comparing the two labour market regimes and the roles of training and internships in enabling career progression. As part of the visit, a number of workshops and events will be organised, including an IER lunchtime workshop.

Drs Pedrini and Cattani have both visited the IER previously. Dr Cattani visited in 2012-13, where he developed a classification of graduate jobs for Italy for a part of his PhD, “Overeducation of Italian graduates.” Dr Pedrini visited the IER in 2015, working on his project “Non-standard employment as a determinant of off-the job and on-the-job training” with Prof. Kate Purcell, and contributing to the IER project “Precarious pathways to employment for young people” (“Paths2Work”). This visit will further the collaboration on graduate employment research between the IER and the University of Bologna. Both IER and the University of Bologna have longitudinal surveys of graduates’ higher education experience and employment, Futuretrack and AlmaLaurea respectively. The visit is timely, as Prof. Chris Warhurst and Dr Luchinskaya are leading the fifth stage of the Futuretrack project, and Dr Tzanakou is publishing on graduate transitions in the UK labour market with Prof. Purcell from the “Paths2Work” project.

In May, a delegation of senior staff from IER visited the Interface Demography and Tempus Omnia Revelat (TOR) research groups at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Brussels. This visit was part of Warwick’s new strategic collaboration with the VUB. A Memorandum of Agreement has been signed by the two universities on 6 June.

IER will be developing joint research and PhD studentships with the two groups, both of which have research specialisms in job quality, labour market transitions and careers guidance.

Following the success of the visit, Catherine Vassallo, IER’s departmental administrator said:

‘IER and its counterparts at VUB (Interface Demography and TOR) were able to identify clear areas of shared interest, which have real potential to achieve innovative outcomes and build on our shared commitment to Europe-wide research.'

In April the CIPD launched the first report from its new UK Working Lives Survey . It found that whilst half of respondents would work even if they didn’t need the money, over half of respondents also said that their jobs fail to provide decent career development. A team from IER helped develop the survey tool and analyse its results, with Dr Sudipa Sarkar seconded to the CIPD as part of this work.