When the Work Foundation became established as the Industrial Welfare Association at the end of the First World War in 1919, it set out its core purpose and mission.

Its goals were to:

• study the most pressing employment challenges of the day
• design schemes to support better employee welfare and working conditions for all, and
• build opportunities to exchange views and share experiences through meetings, conferences and communication activities.

One hundred years on, the Work Foundation’s core mission remains the same - to support everyone in the UK to access rewarding and high-quality work and enable businesses to realise the potential of their teams. Of course, the world of work has changed dramatically since then, and as we endure the public health and economic crisis caused by Covid-19, it is once again being transformed before our eyes.

To help us reflect on the longer term changes we have seen, in 2019 we commissioned 4 papers exploring topics aligned to our strategic programme focussed on advancing ‘Good Work’. Although written before the current crisis, each provide a range of invaluable perspectives on the challenges facing workers, businesses and policymakers in the UK at the end of the second decade of the 21st Century, and will also help to shape priorities for the Work Foundation’s future work programme in the years to come.

You can access each of these papers as they are published below, together with additional blogs exploring their relevance as policymakers and practitioners grapple with the Covid-19 crisis.

This new paper is the first in a series forming the Work Foundation’s Centenary Provocation Papers developed during 2019. Although produced before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, each paper provides a range of invaluable perspectives on the challenges facing workers, businesses and policymakers in the UK at the end of the second decade of the 21st Century.

Written by Dr Peter Totterdill, and edited by Lesley Giles and Heather Carey, this paper explores how working and management practices can be transformed in order to tackle the productivity gap that has characterised the UK economy for more than a decade.

Drawing on evidence from Scotland and elsewhere in Europe, the paper argues that workplace innovation offers the kind of integrated approach that can not only drive radical and incremental technological and workplace improvements, but is also capable of engaging employees, and supporting better skills development across the workforce.

The paper also calls on policymakers and practitioners to embed the driving up of management and working practices as a priority across Government. This will involve providing the tools needed to better navigate a fragmented landscape business support landscape, working with existing recognised and valued products, and partners such as trade, professional and expert bodies, pooling resources and expertise to strengthen the narrative for change, and incentivise collaboration and industry co-ordinated action to drive a social movement. In turn, the paper argues that workplace innovation offers an important contribution to advancing business improvement, as part of this broad approach.

Please select the links below to download the full report and read the blog.

This new paper is the second in a series forming the Work Foundation’s Centenary Provocation Papers developed during 2019. Although produced before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, each paper provides a range of invaluable perspectives on the challenges facing workers, businesses and policymakers in the UK at the end of the second decade of the 21st Century.

Written by Professor Anne Green, and edited by Lesley Giles and Heather Carey, this paper explores the spatial inequalities facing people in their ability to access rewarding and high quality work. After a hundred years that have seen huge advances in technology and ways of working, and where national debates emphasise the huge benefits and opportunities the future of work will bring to all, the paper explores the extent to which this is truly the case.

In particular, Professor Green explores spatial disparities in the experience of work, highlighting where and for whom these disparities matter most. Finally, the paper examines the changing youth labour market, reflecting on how geographical factors impinge on the opportunities and outcomes for young people as they enter the labour market, and what this means for their future careers. The paper concludes with a discussion on policy implications, with a particular emphasis on how to make place-based policy more effective in future.

Please select the links below to download the full report and read the blog.

This new paper is the third in a series forming the Work Foundation’s Centenary Provocation Papers developed during 2019. Although produced before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, each paper provides a range of invaluable perspectives on the challenges facing workers, businesses and policymakers in the UK at the end of the second decade of the 21st Century.

Written by Dr Paul Sissons, and edited by Lesley Giles and Heather Carey, this paper explores the challenges and opportunities to advancing wage and career progression.

Career progression and wage growth, are central to our contemporary understanding of employment, and with that, ambitions to raise people’s quality of work and employment prospects and to enhance social mobility. And yet one of the defining features of the UK economy before the COVID-19 crisis was the prevalence of low paid and insecure employment, together with the associated rise of in-work poverty. A significant proportion of workers were essentially ‘stuck’ in low pay for an extended period of time, facing significant barriers to achieving progression at work.

In his paper, Dr Sissons examines the nature of wage and career progression and considers how changes in external and internal labour markets, together with developments in firms’ organisational practices, have altered the opportunities for, and experiences of, wage and career progression. The paper concludes with a discussion on policy implications, including recommendations for action that can be taken within sectors, across sectors, and driven across the economy by central Government.

Please select the links below to download the full report and read the blog.

This new paper is the fourth in a series forming the Work Foundation’s Centenary Provocation Papers developed during 2019. Although produced before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, each paper provides a range of invaluable perspectives on the challenges facing workers, businesses and policymakers in the UK at the end of the second decade of the 21st Century.

Written by David Coats, a visiting professor at the University of Leicester, and edited by Lesley Giles and Heather Carey, this paper explores the importance of increasing worker voice to achieve ‘Good Work’ for all.

If implemented well, worker voice is vital not only to improving people’s experience of work, but to enhancing the performance of the wider organisation. In this paper, Coats’ aims to assess the nature of the worker voice today and the extent to which people still have a means to communicate their views and influence issues that affect them at work. He begins by exploring the ways in which opportunities for employees to have a voice are more restricted than was the case a century ago. This is in a large part due to the changes in the labour market: not least the transition from manufacturing to a service based economy; a reduction in union membership and collective bargaining coverage; increasing diversity of the workforce; and changes in management practices.

That said, with Good Work becoming increasingly recognized as a key part of the national, public policy agenda and discourse, there is an opportunity to shift these trends. As the pace of social and economic change continues to increase, Coats’ paper outlines a series of proposals for public policy, employer practice and trade union strategy in an attempt to offer some concrete steps to ensure workers actually do have a voice in the future.

Please select the links below to download the full report and read the blog.