The 10^th of October is World Mental Health Day and this year’s theme stresses that good mental health should be a human right for all. Currently, this is sadly far from reality.

Mental health conditions may be a barrier to work. And it is increasingly clear that mental health inequalities are also present amongst those in work. The quality of jobs and employment have implications for workers’ mental health and wellbeing.

At the end of September, Professor Chris Warhurst was invited to speak at an Acas practitioner event on 'The Changing Face of Employment Relations'. His talk focused on ‘Good Work and its benefits for business’. Drawing on research undertaken with colleagues in IER, he outlined findings on the links between Good Work, innovation, productivity and employee wellbeing.

Gianni Anelli LopezLink opens in a new window, PhD student at IER, gave a talk at the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) Annual Conference in Harrogate in early September on 'Extracting skills in online job advertisements: using Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools on labour skills assessment'.

Philip Taylor joined IER this September. A psychologist and social gerontologist by background Philip uses mixed methods to understand issues of workforce ageing.

Philip’s research focuses on developments in public policies targeting longer working lives, older workers' orientations to work and retirement and employer attitudes and practices towards older workers, in an international context.

Dr Jamelia Harris has published a new article in the journal Field Methods. The article discusses how to estimate the size of the target population in data limited settings when conducting survey research.