IER News & blogs

A new report, ‘Self-employment and the Armed Forces Community’, has revealed the barriers ex-Service personnel face in becoming self-employed after leaving the Armed Forces and calls for broader support from the MOD to help Service personnel transitioning out of the Forces and into self-employment. Research conducted by the IER, supported by defence technology company QinetiQ and X-Forces Enterprise (XFE) and funded by Forces in Mind Trust, was carried out to understand what more could be done to support ex-Service personnel to successfully move into self-employment. The report was launched on 10th October at the X-Forces Enterprise 5th Anniversary event at the London Stock Exchange.

More info can be found here and a copy of the report, co-authored by IER's Professor Clare Lyonette, Dr Sally-Anne Barnes and Dr David Owen , Natalie Fisher and Karen Newell (both QinetiQ), Ren Kapur MBE and Martin Wing (both X-Forces Enterprise) can be viewed here.

Jenny Bimrose was invited to give the keynote presentation at the Career Development Association of New Zealand (CDANZ) annual symposium, in Wellington, New Zealand on 23rd October, 2018. The conference, entitled: 'Social Justice', was held in partnership with Victoria University of Wellington and the Tertiary Education Commission.

Jenny’s presentation focused on: ‘Socially just practice: Making sense and moving forward.’ Social justice values have underpinned the profession of career development since it was established at the turn of the last century out of concern for economic and political reforms that would help disadvantaged people, including young people and immigrants, find jobs in industrialised societies. In contemporary society, the shape of many career development services has transformed recently because of the neo-liberal agendas that are framing the provision of education, social, and labour market policies.

This presentation examined some of the key challenges for career development arising from changed and changing social contexts.

• What do we mean when we talk about social justice from a career development perspective?
• What, realistically, can be achieved?
• What might be some of the implications for career and employment practice?
• And how do these shifts and changes impact on the professional identity of career development practitioners?

Jenny Bimrose and Alan Brown were invited to make presentations to the Tertiary Education Commission of New Zealand (TEC) at their offices in Wellington on 25th October, 2018. This organisation describes itself as a nexus linking learning and work. They were interested in hearing about:

• How TEC can best serve our labour market needs through good investment in training and education
• The alignment of good information and good career decision making
• Ways of informing and educating learners and their families over a lifetime
• Balancing the employment and socio-economic investment strategies in a way that will address skills mismatches and workforce needs.

Jenny Bimrose and Alan Brown made a formal presentation to about sixty senior TEC employees, followed by two more informal workshops. The three topics on which they spoke were:

• The National Careers Strategy: integrating labour market information (LMI)
• Integrating labour market information more effectively in career practice
• The development of career adaptability in vocational education and training (VET).

Director of IER, Chris Warhurst, was invited to talk about European perspectives on measuring and promoting good work at the Fulfilling Work in Ireland roundtable hosted by TASC and the Carnegie UK Trust in Dublin in November.

Gail Irvine of the Carnegie UK Trust and Paul Novak of the TUC debate good jobs at the Warwick IER fringe event at the annual Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham.