IER News & blogs

IER’s Chris Warhurst and Wil Hunt have a new report on digitalisation and the future of work.

Going beyond the usual ‘death of jobs’ debate, the paper examines the work and employment implications of Industrie 4.0 and Uberisation plus the political positions being adopted on these two major developments and the likely policy responses within the European Union.

It is published by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

IER's PhD student Joanna Octavia attended the HKU-WES International Symposium on Worlds of Work: Implications of Urbanisation, Technology and Sustainability, held at the University of Hong Kong and hosted by the institution’s Faculty of Social Sciences from September 9th-11st, 2019. The symposium brought together UK, Asia, and Australia-based social science scholars to discuss and reflect on the rapidly changing dynamics and impacts of urbanisation, climate change, technological change and mass migration in the context of work.

In her presentation Joanna talked about “Online Social Networks and Collective Action: Platform-based Motorcycle Taxi Drivers in Indonesia” and explored how platform-based informal workers are using internet communication tools for collective action. She presented evidence of debates on online social networks and how they are taking place within the informal sector of the developing world. She also discussed policy developments in Indonesia and whether these networks have been effective in impacting platform business decisions and regulatory change.

Initial findings suggested that following the rise of the platform business models, nascent forms of online social networks have emerged among some groups of informal workers in developing countries. Recent trends in platform-based informal work show that online social networks, such as social media platforms and instant messaging applications, enable workers to share worker-generated content via messages, images and videos, and that other workers are able to relate to those. There is also evidence that the networks are starting to be perceived as a legitimate form of worker representation by some stakeholders.

Joanna’s participation in the symposium was generously supported by the Early Career Researcher funding from the British Sociological Association and the Work, Employment and Society Journal.

In August, the Director of IER, Chris Warhurst, was invited to present at a Scottish Enterprise Masterclass in Aberdeen, organised by Workplace Innovation Europe.

The topic of the presentation was ‘Engaging Employees in Innovation’ and it was based on IER’s recently completed QuInnE Horizon 2020 project examining job quality, innovation and employment outcomes.

IER staff, led by Peter Elias, are currently engaged in a project funded by the Office for National Statistics, to add more detail into the next revision of the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC).

Having just completed work on the revision of SOC2010 to SOC2020, the new project will provide for a six-digit structure to the classification. The work involves a series of face-to-face meetings with interested parties, such as the NHS, Royal Society, Careers Wales, Skills Development Scotland and a wide range of government departments and agencies.

As part of this work, ONS and IER have teamed up to create an online survey available to anyone with an interest in this work. Details can be found here.

A new report written by Erika Kispeter about the current and future demand for digital skills at the work has just been published by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

The report argues that digital skills should not be looked at in isolation from other skills, pointing to a need for ‘21st century skills’, especially interpersonal skills, cognitive competencies and learning strategies with creative use of digital skills becoming increasingly important.