Led by Professor Chris Warhurst, an IER team including Dr Sally Wright, is at the forefront of research to understand, measure and promote job quality in the UK and is influencing the development of government policy.

The 2017 UK Government’s Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices explicitly drew on this research and its report recommended that the Government adopt a measure of job quality developed from IER research.

In its 2018 response to the Taylor Review, the UK Government accepted this recommendation. Working with employers, trade unions, civil society organisations and the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), the IER team then worked with the Measuring Job Quality Working Group set up by the Carnegie Trust UK and the Royal Society of the Arts to take forward this measure, and which was then piloted in 2019 by the ONS. Research continues.

Professor Peter Elias is currently examining how to develop a dataset of Good Work for the UK. Supported by the UK’s Productivity Institute, the IER team is examining how Good Work data can be linked to productivity data.

Peter Dickinson is also mapping the Good Work measures onto the raft of employment charters that have been introduced in England recently by the Mayoral Combined Authorities. This work will have profound importance for millions of people’s working lives and the performance of organisations.