Our mission
The IES mission is to help bring about sustainable improvements in employment policy and human resource management. We achieve this by increasing the understanding and improving the practice of key decision makers in policy and professional bodies and employing organisations.
Our aim is to improve outcomes for people at every stage of their working lives – from preparing for and transitioning into work, to improving experiences in work, and extending working lives and transitions into retirement. We do this by generating insights to better understand emerging challenges, helping shape the design and testing of interventions to help solve intractable problems, and advising on the design of policy and strategy.
What unites our work is our focus on what the evidence tells us about what works and our ability to apply it in practice, and our focus on making work better for all.
We work with policymakers at a national, regional and local level, representative bodies and agencies, and with large and small employers across industries, sectors and occupations.
Our team is comprised of economists, psychologists, sociologists, organisational and HR researchers and consultants, bringing multidisciplinary expertise, capabilities and perspectives to bear on any challenge. We recognise that solving challenges around work and employment is complex and requires drawing on multiple sources and perspectives.
Our values
Our values infuse our work. We strive for excellence, to be collaborative, and to bring curiosity to what we do. We work with integrity and treat people respectfully and with compassion.
Respecting others: We value every person as an individual.
Acting with integrity: We put research quality first.
Collaboration: Effective collaboration is woven into the daily fabric of our work.
Curiosity: We love to explore tricky issues and generate new knowledge that can be applied.
Excellence: We deliver outstanding research and consultancy that informs policy and practice.
Compassion: We treat each person as an individual and approach relationships with care.
An overview
IES was established in the financial year 1968-69 to be an independent, national centre of expertise on productivity, manpower planning and labour market change. Since that time, it has expanded and diversified to become a leading UK independent centre for research and evidence-based consultancy in employment, labour market and human resource policy and practice. It is not-for-profit, its activities being funded through research and consultancy commissions, and from its corporate membership programme.
IES has around 60 multidisciplinary staff plus an extensive network of international associates, and its expertise is available to all organisations through research, consultancy, publications and its website.
In 2023, IES formally merged with the Involvement and Participation Association (IPA). IPA is over 100 years old with a long-standing reputation for delivering high quality services, including consultancy, diagnostic reviews, research and training, to private, public and voluntary sector employers and local and national governments. IPA’s services are rooted in a firm belief in the value of proactive workplace involvement and participation, and the link to improved productivity in the workplace and the wider economy.
The Institute’s Board of Trustees act in a governance role and provide strategic oversight to the work of the Institute.