Publications

In many organisations, development is based on identifying where people could do better, their 'gaps' and areas of poor performance, and trying to fix these. Much less time is spent on what people already do well and what energises them, and using these as a basis for developing high performance. This opinion paper explains how switching the focus to what works and what people's strengths are, leads to much higher energy levels and ultimately to better performance.

This report gathers together top quality international evidence on the effectiveness of workplace interventions to prevent and manage common health problems. With a focus on the three main health problems affecting the working age population in the UK, it highlights what has been proved effective whilst also identifying areas requiring more research.

Our first research report, The Drivers of Employee Engagement, led to a definition of engagement, an engagement measure to be used within attitude surveys, and a diagnostic tool to identify the drivers of engagement. This deeper investigation tests our engagement measure and drivers tool in different settings and sectors.

The Acas national telephone helpline service provides advice on employment relations issues to employers, employees and their representatives, dealing with approximately 850,000 calls each year across 12 regional offices. This research presents the findings of the 2007 Acas Helpline Survey.

Workplace Health Connect (WHC) was a free service providing small and medium-sized enterprises with advice on workplace health and safety. This is the third IES progress report. The main message in this third report is that the service continues to receive a positive response from employers. This publication is no longer available.

This report provided information on UK business attitudes, intentions and performance relating to health and safety in the workplace in 2007. In addition, it provided robust empirical evidence concerning linkages and impacts of health and safety strategy and expenditure on an array of hard and soft performance measures of intermediate and final business performance.

The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement (NHS Institute) commissioned IES to review and summarise existing research findings regarding the role of HR/OD in workforce development and to put forward suggestions for the further development of roles and activities of HR and OD practitioners in the NHS. This report is the outcome of that work.

IES Annual Review 2007

The IES Labour Market Overview provides information on the UK labour market in 2007. Bringing together key facts, figures and perspectives for employers and HR professionals, it also provides insights into labour market age, pay, qualifications, sectors, and occupations. User-friendly graphs give you at-a-glance information throughout; no need to trawl through tables and appendices.

The Edge Foundation worked with the National Education Business Partnership Network and Business in the Community to examine ways of making it easier for more employers to get more involved in education, more often. This essay prepares an overview of some of the issues, poses some questions to provoke further debate, and identifies some actions that would encourage employers to become engaged in education and training.