This event, which will mark the official launch of the book “Re-Thinking Europe’s Skill Needs: Reflections Following the European Year of Skills”, will bring together experts and professionals to explore how we can tackle the skill needs in today’s ever-changing world.

Our recent renewal of the Athena Swan Bronze Award shows that IER has progressed on all gender equality indicators since its last award. This progress is just one of the positive results from the renewal. Progress is especially seen in the area of staff work-life balance, which was a key issue in the previous application. Nearly all staff now respond favourably to their work-life balance situation now compared with only one in three in 2018.

Pivoting away from economists’ traditional concerns with pay, an international group of economic historians now want to explore the wider aspects of job quality. In August the group organised a conference in Oslo at the Norwegian Academy of Science & Letters focused on ‘Job Quality from the Past to the Future’. IER's Director Chris Warhurst was invited to give the keynote talk, titled ‘Improving Job Quality: Practical, Policy and Research Challenges’.

Digital labour platforms, including their management practices and extensive reliance on the self-employed, have attracted much attention, though usually from a worker rather than an employer perspective. This book chapter contributes to the platform literature by exploring how platforms utilise algorithmic and traditional management practices, and for which purposes. It features in the new Research Handbook on Self-Employment and Public Policy 

This book chapter examines self-employment among people aged 50 and over in the liberal market economies of Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA against the backdrop of the economic shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and in the context of long-standing efforts aimed at increasing levels of older workers’ labour force participation. It features in the new Research Handbook on Self-Employment and Public Policy