IER News & blogs

The notion that involving parents in careers education and guidance (CEG) is highly desirable is neither new nor innovative. Although parents undoubtedly have the potential to influence the career development of young people in their care, both positively and negatively, robust evidence of what, when and how parental behaviours constructively support their children’s learning about career progression remains inconclusive and elusive.

Sally-Anne Barnes, with Jenny Bimrose, Alan Brown and John Gough, have been undertaking research to understand how parents and carers can be better supported by schools and colleges to feel more informed and confident about the careers support and advice they give. This has been undertaken with the support of the Gatsby Foundation and the JP Morgan Chase Foundation. This study has produced a wealth of experiential evidence on the engagement of parents , as well as an overview of what is happening in practice. A recent event held in London to share findings and interesting practice was attended by participants from across the UK. An evidence report will be published shortly along with a practice report. Sign up to find out more or join an upcoming webinar here.

The latest ‘Labour market and skills projections: 2017 to 2027', undertaken by IER’s Professor Rob Wilson and his team, including IER’s Sally-Anne Barnes, Derek Bosworth and David Owen and researchers at Cambridge Econometrics, have just been published by the Department for Education.

Working Futures 2017-2027 is the latest in a series of quantitative assessments of the employment prospects in the UK labour market over a 10-year horizon. It presents historical trends and future prospects by sector for the UK and its constituent nations and the English regions.

The study shows that overall the number of jobs in the UK is projected to rise by around 1 million over the next decade with more of these jobs expected to be taken by female workers than male. The unemployment rate is expected to rise slightly and the expansion of the UK's labour supply is forecast to slow over the next decade, curbed by slower population growth (than during 2007-2017) and an ageing population.

The reports are now available to download here. Follow the IER twitter account for updates on other published outputs from the study.

Over the past six months a team from IER led by Chris Warhurst and Derek Bosworth have been constructing and analysing data on the relationship between good work and productivity in the UK. Some of this work was published in a new report by the Carnegie UK Trust and launched at the RSA in London in January.

To download the report, click here.

Eurofound has published a new report on Upward Convergence in Working Conditions in Europe. The project was led by IER (Prof. Chris Warhurst and Dr Sally Wright) and included colleagues from the University of Salamanca led by Prof. Rafa Munoz de Bustillo Llorente.

The research found upward convergence has occurred for the EU as a whole for six of the seven dimensions of working conditions: physical environment, work intensity, working time, social environment, skills and discretion, prospects and earnings. However country differences exist within the EU.

The need for countries to provide appropriate support to all individuals making labour market transitions into, and through, volatile and complex labour markets is uncontroversial.

What is controversial is, despite this, that the professional identity of career counselling and employment practitioners across Europe remains somewhat fragile, partly because of the need to balance tensions around funding targets and reducing unemployment, with the individual needs of clients.

Maintaining professionalism can similarly prove challenging because time poor practitioners find it difficult to update their learning needs, continually, in the face of operational pressures, placing at risk their ability to familiarise themselves with new theories, research and ways of working.

This article by IER’s Jenny Bimrose and Alan Brown examined how career guidance counselling and employment practitioners can be supported at a distance using technology, to facilitate their professional identify transformation. Drawing on empirical results of European research (2014 – 2018), the article presents findings from an international online learning course designed to support practitioners’ professional identity across Europe and discusses the implications for practice.

Fifty free downloads are available here.