Publications

The study provides an invaluable resource to inform policy in this area covering business start-up, support for unemployed people to become self-employed, enterprise education, and business growth. This small scale, explorative research study looks at the hitherto relatively under-researched question of the role of skills and training in the development of self-employment. It draws on a literature review, data analysis from the Labour Force Survey, and a series of expert interviews.

In 2008 the Institute for Employment Studies and Ipsos MORI were commissioned to conduct a two-year evaluation of National Skills Academies (NSAs) by the former Learning and Skills Council (LSC), now the Skills Funding Agency. NSAs were first established from 2006 and were rolled out incrementally over five rounds of development, under a competitive bidding process. This report synthesises evidence gathered over both years of the evaluation.

This interim report sets out the findings from a survey undertaken of all care homes and domiciliary care organisations that had introduced changes to information and communications technology funded through the first round of the Get Connected grant scheme (funded through the Department of Health and managed by the Social Care Institute for Excellence, SCIE). It gives examples of the ways in which technology is being used to improve quality of life for residents in care and nursing homes and for individuals receiving domiciliary care services.

Exploring Employer Behaviour in Relation to Investors in People (IIP) attempts to develop a deeper understanding of the IIP product and service offering from the perspective of employers. The research comprised a series of in-depth, qualitative interviews with employers who had enjoyed continued success with the Standard, as well as those employers who havd either committed or accredited to the Standard, but who had subsequently withdrawn from the IIP customer journey.

This reports details the second year of a two year project funded by the then Learning and Skills Council (now the Skills Funding Agency) looking at factors affecting the health and safety of young work-based learners. It explores the impact of the 'Safe Learner' training model on learner behaviour in the workplace, while taking into account the role of supervisory attitudes, organisational safety climate, role overload and individual differences as moderating variables mediating the exhibition of safe or unsafe behaviours. The project explored learners’ attitudes and beliefs towards health and safety, examined the organisational and individual difference factors that impact on learner health and safety at work and explored whether attitudes to safety change over time as a result of greater maturity, workplace safety culture, or further training.

This paper presents the key learning points from an IES HR Network project on the evaluation of management and leadership development. This project was undertaken in response to interest from the Network members, who find the evaluation of management learning interventions an important area, but one in which good practice is not so easy to find.

The 2006 Leitch Review of Skills recommended the creation of a new integrated employment and skills service (HM Treasury, December 2006). Since then the welfare system has undergone reform to help meet this objective and the Integrated Employment and Skills (IES) trials, introduced in 2008 and ending in August 2010, were a key element. The main components of the IES trials were the co-location of careers services and Jobcentre Plus; skills screening and referral by Jobcentre Plus advisers; Skills Health Check interviews and Skills Action Plans delivered by nextstep2; and work-focused skills provision.

Board effectiveness is a hot topic and particularly scalding in two sectors. Firstly in financial services following the failure of bank boards to change the culture of large bonus payments; and secondly in the NHS where widespread criticism has been levelled at trust boards in the wake of several 'scandals' due to failure of clinical care quality. This report presents the findings of the IES programme evaluation study and in doing so sheds light on issues of wider interest to CEOs, chairs and board development specialists in all sectors about the engagement, governance and leadership of their boards.

This report sets out the findings from the second round evaluation of the impact of introducing Assistant Practitioners into Diagnostic Radiography services in NHS Scotland. The training programme for the Assistant Practitioners had been introduced as a result of a scoping exercise undertaken by NHS Education for Scotland (NES) in 2004 which had found a lack of appropriate educational opportunities and pathways for support workers.

This report presents findings from research carried out as part of the evaluation of the London City Strategy Pathfinder English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Pilot. The research was commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The two-year ESOL Pilot was designed to demonstrate how work-focused ESOL training provision can support access to sustainable employment for people who speak English as an additional language. The main target group was parents with ESOL needs who were in receipt of benefits or tax credits.