As part of the Levering Workplace Innovation project funded by the Faculty of Social Sciences’ Impact Accelerator Account, Sally Wright organised a seminar for policymakers at the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It examined ways to improve the innovative capacity of firms. She was joined as a presenter at the seminar by Chris Warhurst and Bengt-Åke Lundvall of Aalborg University in Denmark. The seminar focused on encouraging a change in current thinking about what best levers innovation, highlighting that firms that combine two approaches – the current one based on science, technology and R&D, the other based on progressive ways to manage and organise employees at the workplace-level – have five times greater product innovation.

Despite all of the talk about inter-generational betrayal by the old of the young, the largest ratio to vote leave was amongst low-skilled workers (70%). Their frustration and desire for something to change is understandable. They are in bad jobs, are too often stuck in these jobs and jostle more in these jobs with migrant workers. Their situation is a symptom of three developments that have occurred in the UK labour market since the economic crisis. First, job polarisation has consolidated. Second, non-standard employment has increased in the worst jobs. Third, UK-born workers have benefitted less from employment restructuring.

IER's Professor Anne Green and Dr Paul Sissons from Coventry University spoke at the Employability and Skills Wales Convention in Cardiff on 'Linking growth sectors and sustainable labour market outcomes: designing policy for progression'. Their presentation included data analysis from an ESRC-funded project with colleague Neil Lee (LSE) on 'Harnessing Growth Sectors for Poverty Reduction' and findings from an international literature review focusing on initiatives to foster progression in selected sectors, with a particular emphasis on promising approaches from the US.

Sissons, P., Green, A. and Lee, N. (2016). Supporting progression in growth sectors: A review of the international evidence. Cardiff: Public Policy Institute for Wales.

An interim report on decent work has been published by Oxfam and the University of Scotland in collaboration with Warwick Institute for Employment Research. The report, co-authored by Sally Wright of IER, examines what low paid, low skilled workers in Scotland want from jobs. The report, What Makes For Decent Work?, can be freely downloaded.