IER has developed a significant stream of research on job quality since 2015. The development of ‘good work’ is a key feature of the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy. IER has worked with various stakeholders in defining what constitutes ‘good work’, resulting in a secondment to the Chartered Institute for Personnel & Development (CIPD) in London in 2017.

The secondment involved working with CIPD staff to develop a survey tool for a new UK-wide survey by the CIPD (the UK Working Lives Survey) and to compute job quality indices to analyse the data. The UK Working Lives Survey used the job quality model developed by QuInnE project led by IER, Warwick. This survey informs the CIPD’s new work strand on job quality and the new survey has replaced its previous employee engagement survey. The new survey is expected to be administered annually so will continue to feature as part of high-profile work undertaken by the CIPD.

The CIPD report was launched in Westminster in late Spring 2018 and attended by UK government officials, employers, trade unions and civil society organisations e.g. TUC, CBI and Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. In addition, work for the CIPD has fed into the UK Government’s post-Taylor Review deliberations and recommendations. This Review calls for new measurements of good work in the UK and UK Government’s response to the Review explicitly cites the research.