The Nordic countries are known for their comprehensive welfare states with universal high-quality services and an industrial relations model that fosters competitiveness, high wages and good working conditions. This explains why Nordic solutions are often highlighted as examples for European Union countries, especially in terms of social and labour market policy.

Trine Pernille LarsenLink opens in a new window joined the IER in October. Trine’s background is in Industrial Relations, Public Administration and European Social Policy, where she uses mixed methods to understand the processes of regulatory changes as well as outcomes in the areas of comparative employment, industrial relations and European work-life balance policies.

This book chapter by Chris Warhurst, Richard Hall and Diane Van Den Broek, published in the Emerald Handbook of Appearance in the Workplace edited by Adelina Broadridge, examines the operation of the anti-lookism component of the equalities law in the Australian state of Victoria.

Gianni Anelli’s research article 'But which skills? : Natural Language Processing tools and the identification of high-demand skills in online job advertisements' discusses the relevance of data from online job portals. Using two skills dictionaries, the ESCO dictionary and a national labour market dictionary, this study extracted required skills from Chilean online job advertisements.

The quality of paid work has become an essential component of individuals’ well-being in modern-day capitalism, and there has been a surge in policy discourse surrounding the objective of ‘more and better jobs’ (as articulated by the OECD) or ‘decent work’ (as outlined in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals) over the past two decades.