IER News & blogs

IER would like to welcome Dr Zaiton Hassan from the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak who will be visiting IER from February.  Zaiton is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Cognitive Sciences and Human Development at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. Whilst at IER, Dr Hassan will be completing her book on Work-Life Balance in Malaysia and working with IER staff with similar interests.

IER is hosting an EPSRC funded Balance Network seminar on'Prolonging working life through ICT: the role of crowdsourcing'. The one day seminar will explore how crowdsourcing has changed the boundary between work and home, enabling older people to remain part of the labour force and perhaps achieve a new work-life balance. The interactive seminar will be held on 3 March at the University of Warwick. Click here to register your interest.

This morning, marks the launch of the new EU Skills Panorama - brought to you by the European Commission and powered by Cedefop. IER is pleased to be a part of a Consortium supporting Cedefop by providing data analysis and intelligence on skills and labour markets for the new Skills Panorama. This consortium is composed of Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, Cambridge Econometrics, RAND Europe and the University of Warwick’s Institute for Employment Research.

In the Skills Panorama launch video, James Calleja, Director of Cedefop, highlights that the Skills Panorama "combines labour market data and expert knowledge with powerful technology that enables you to surf Europe's skills landscape for information and data to find intelligence and evidence to enable informed decisions and choices about skills in Europe." The Skills Panorama "places the best available information on skills and the labour market in Europe at your fingertips".

The new website will provide a more comprehensive and user-friendly central access point for information and intelligence on skill needs in occupations and sectors across Europe. Data can be explored by skills themes, sectors, occupations and countries. It is intended primarily for policy-makers and experts, providing them with a tool for developing evidence-based education and training and planning policy, including measures to tackle labour market mismatches.

See the launch video and the new Skills Panorama at: http://skillspanorama.cedefop.europa.eu/launchevent/.

For further details of IER's involvement contact: Terence Hogarth or Lynn Gambin

On 26 November, Business in the Community published its report Destiny should not be determined by demography which considers the impact of school-business partnerships on young people’s employability, as well as the effects of such partnerships on schools and businesses. The report is based on research carried out by Terence Hogarth and Lynn Gambin at the Institute for Employment Research which aimed to assess the impact of employer-engagement activities, the uplift of employability skills and added-value impact on pupils of the Business Class programme. This research was carried out over the past two years in conjunction with Education and Employers Research.

The full evaluation report can be downloaded from http://www.bitc.org.uk/programmes/business-class/business-class-evaluation.

IER recently underwent a certificate renewal visit for Quality Management System Standard ISO9001, and was recommended for approval to re-certification to ISO9001 for a further 3 years. IER has developed a quality management system underpinning all aspects of management and research activities. This is certified by the Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance (LRQA) - the international quality management standard for organisations who want to evidence commitment to services that meet the needs of clients and other relevant stakeholders. A two-day independent ISO9001 review and assessment took place on 4 and 5 November 2015 investigating all aspects of IER's quality management system. IER is the first department of the University of Warwick to gain ISO9001 and for this to be re-certified in 2015 is recognition of our continuing high quality work. IER researchers are fully committed to the University of Warwick’s policy of advancing and safeguarding the highest academic and ethical standards in all its research activities.

For further information on IER's Quality Management System, contact our Administrator, Catherine Vassallo.