Projects

IES is evaluating the Construction Industry Training Board’s On-Site Training Hubs programme. There are around 20 training hubs in England, located on home-building and infrastructure sites. The hubs are training new entrants to the construction industry, ideally more quickly than other training routes, in order to help tackle skills shortages. Our evaluation has a detailed scoping phase, during which we’ll visit each of the hubs to find out about their approach. We’ll then design an evaluation framework, which will likely include case-study research, an online survey of trainees and analysis of management information data. It’s a two-year project and is one of the National Retraining Schemes included in the government’s Industrial Strategy.

IES is providing consultancy support on career planning and coaching aspects, to assist in the development of, and tailoring of the content delivered by, a Virtual Life Coach. The ‘virtual coach’ is in testing phase for a UK Government Department and aims to provide short and long-term personal, employment and career support throughout a user’s whole employment, maximising motivation, satisfaction and wellbeing, and minimising stress and absence through a blend of automated and human support

IES evaluated Mind’s latest Blue Light initiative which involved mental health and wellbeing training for new recruits in the emergency services. The work involved training observations, qualitative interviewing, focus groups and a census-type survey. We explored issues specific to new recruits in order that Mind could tailor its training to this cohort.

IES is partnering with the CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development, to investigate the state of strategic human resource management in UK organisations. Thirty years after the concept of strategic HRM arrived in the UK from across the Atlantic, the project will analyse the key issues on organisations’ HR agendas. It will consider how and how well people management activities are integrated with business strategy, and HR’s contribution to innovation and change. Importantly, the project will compare and contrast both the recent academic research and real-life practice in this area, and how research and practice could and should evolve in the future. Do organisations still have HR strategies in these fast-moving times? What do they call them? Most importantly, how do they land and deliver them and ensure that HR policies really are having an impact on employee engagement and wellbeing and organisation performance? The project will comprise a review of the academic literature on strategic HRM, alongside a quantitative survey of HR directors and detailed case-study research in a range of employers. Assessing the realities of strategic HRM, this project will identify the extent to which HR is contributing to business strategy and performance, and how this fits with calls for HR’s future role to be as the guardian of culture and values and the ‘moral compass’ of an organisation. What do HR directors think about increasing government intervention through employment legislation and how are they balancing the demands of their different stakeholders: leadership, employees and wider society? Business strategies and workplaces are very different to the norm 30 years ago and so we need to document how the concept and practice of strategic HRM has evolved and needs to change now. Intelligent HR software and changing workforce expectations could be the gateway to the birth of a new-look, evidence-based and values-driven HR function. HR policies could contribute to addressing the corporate and national skills crisis, achieving genuinely agile and diverse organisations, increasing employee engagement and involvement and social inclusion, and responding to the present and future challenges of job automation. But just how and can HR functions build that positive future? For more details of the project and to take part as a case study, please contact Duncan Brown. IES head of HR consultancy: [email protected]

Teach First has rolled out its Careers Employability Leadership Programme to a wider cohort of schools as part of the Careers and Enterprise Company Careers Leaders focus, following two small-scale pilots. The programme aims to support schools to effectively integrate careers and employability learning into young people’s education. IES has been commissioned to evaluate the implementation and outcomes of the programme. Drawing on previous experience of employer engagement in schools and colleges, for clients such as the Careers & Enterprise Company, our study will use a mixed-methods design, including online surveys of teachers who received training and support; and senior leaders and pupils in these schools. We will also conduct qualitative case study research in 10 schools and undertake an evaluation of a pilot of a programme of support for alumni schools in the year following their participation in the programme.

Working with the Careers Research & Advisory Centre (CRAC) and Vitae, IES supported the development of a career tracker tool to track the pathways, experiences and successes of recipients of the Royal Society’s early career fellowship schemes: the University Research Fellowships and the Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowships. The projects aimed to help in the evaluation of the impact of these fellowships and create an alumni network, which will inform investment in the next generation of researchers and promote the value of research. The work involves implementing the first of a series of planned surveys of fellowship recipients.

We conducted four case studies with NHS Trusts in North-East England, selected from volunteer trusts by NHS Employers. The focus of the case studies was on the relationship between human resource management interventions, staff satisfaction and patient satisfaction. The method will be mainly interviews with senior people, particularly HR directors, although evidence will also be sought from other sources such as staff and patient surveys and key performance indicators.

IES is conducting: a review of mental health training to determine the best topics to train line managers in, the best method(s) of delivering the training and the best means of measuring beneficial impacts; and an evaluation of two types of training selected on the basis of review recommendations, using a control group for comparison. The training will be based on existing training packages and samples of participants will be drawn from various areas of the rail industry.

This project, on behalf of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, is focused on identifying labour market interventions aimed at combating labour market segmentation (including those addressing differences in employment protection) in a selection of European countries (France, Germany, Spain and the UK). IES has been contracted by the Public Policy Management Institute to provide expert input on the situation in the UK. Key findings will feed into a comparative overview report providing evidence and policy pointers on labour market interventions that are effective in overcoming labour market segmentation.

In partnership with BMG Research, IES will deliver the next Maternity and Paternity Rights Survey (2018). The survey will be crucial in enabling the government to monitor the take-up of maternity and paternity benefits, and how this has changed, as well as key legislative changes in parental rights, including the introduction of Shared Parental Leave and Pay. IES will provide expert advice to the questionnaire development and analysis and reporting.