Webinar 2 Reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic: Perspectives on productivity, well-being and the futures of work
Webinar 2 - Wednesday 3rd June, 2020 2pm BST
'A new definition of essential work: from hedge funds to logistics'
Professor Nigel Driffield
Essential work is easy to understand as a concept, but how do we define what this means? How do we see it? Does business have a role to play?
Professor Nigel Driffield's presentation will focus on how we have come to perceive essential work, and the services we really need to survive in a covid-19 era.
I am a Professor of International Business at Warwick Business School, and I am also Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor for Regional Engagement. As well as pursuing academic research, I also work with a number of stakeholders, both locally and nationally on issues relating to inward investment and economic development. An example of my impact work can be found here:
I am on the editorial review board of the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of World Business and Global Strategy Journal and was a member of the Management and Business Panel for REF2014. More generally, I have held 5 ESRC awards, and have carried out research and consultancy projects for UNCTAD, OECD, World Bank, European Commission, and in the UK several Government Departments including UKTI and BIS, and several local Regional Development bodies in the UK and elsewhere.
'The shape of the workforce to come?'
Professor Christopher Warhurst
What could the government do about job losses caused by covid-19?
In the context of massive job losses caused by covid-19, an opportunity arises to reshape the workforce of the future through rebooting industrial strategy.
As Director of IER, Chris Warhurst is motivated by wanting to see better scientific and policymaker understanding of work and employment. He is an Associate Research Fellow of SKOPE at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and a Trustee of the Tavistock Institute in London. He was previously Professor of Work and Organisational Studies at the Sydney University Business School and Founding Director of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research at Strathclyde University Business School. He is currently Chair of the Management Committee for the journal Human Relations, co-editor of Palgrave's Critical Perspectives on Work and Employment book series and an Editorial Advisory Board Member for Research in the Sociology of Work. Previously, he was co-editor of the journal Work, Employment and Society. His research expertise centres on job quality, skills and aesthetic labour. He uses mixed methods in his research, which ranges over small-scale qualitative case studies to national surveys. He has secured more than 70 research awards from national research councils, government, employers, trade unions and charities etc.. He has published 16 books including The Skills That Matter (Palgrave), Are bad jobs inevitable? (Palgrave), Job Quality in Australia (Federation Press) and the Oxford Handbook of Skills and Training (Oxford University Press). He has published over 50 academic journal articles, over 60 book chapters and over 50 reports for government and practitioners. He has been an expert advisor to the UK, Australian and Scottish Governments as well as the OECD, Oxfam Scotland and the Scottish Living Wage Campaign. He sat on the Measuring Job Quality Working Group co-chaired by the Carnegie Trust UK and the Royal Society of the Arts that was tasked with responding to the UK Government’s Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices recommendation to develop a measure of job quality for the UK.
Event Output
Missed the webinar on Wednesday 3rd June?
Don't worry! You can watch recordings of our presentations here.