IER is part of the Warwick partner of the newly announced ESRC-funded Productivity Institute.

The Institute’s goal is to make long-term policy recommendations to improve the UK’s productivity. One key task is to help solve the UK’s longstanding ‘productivity puzzle’. Another is to improve productivity and living standards as the economy recovers from COVID-19.

Warwick’s involvement is led by Professor Nigel Driffield of Warwick Business School (WBS). Warwick is one of eight partner institutions involved in the research project. Its Managing Director is Professor Bart van Ark of the University of Manchester.

In launching the Institute, UK Government Minister for Science Amanda Solloway said: ‘Improving productivity is central to driving forward our long-term economic recovery and ensuring that we level up wages and living standards across every part of the UK,’ continuing that the new funding ‘will bring together the very best of our researchers, boosting our understanding of the different drivers of productivity’.

The other partner institutions are the University of Cambridge, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, University of Glasgow, University of Sheffield, King's College London, Queen's University Belfast and Cardiff University.

First details of the Productivity Institute can be found here.

In June, Chris Warhurst contributed to Warwick’s new Global Research Priorities (GRP) group’s debate on Productivity and the Futures of Work with a webinar on ‘The shape of employment to come’. It includes a 7-point plan for employment in a new UK industrial strategy.

GRPs are interdisciplinary research groupings intended to respond to complex multi-faceted global problems through collaborative research excellence.

The recorded presentation can be found here and a blog post on this topic here.

Over the past six months a team from IER led by Chris Warhurst and Derek Bosworth have been constructing and analysing data on the relationship between good work and productivity in the UK. Some of this work was published in a new report by the Carnegie UK Trust and launched at the RSA in London in January.

To download the report, click here.