Publications

Three approaches to managing attendance are discussed in this paper: management policy, preventative measures and rewarding attendance.

Flexible working is one of the most important vehicles for improving employees' ability to balance the demands of work and life. This paper summarises the main elements of a business case for flexible working. In doing so it draws upon labour market forecasts, research on employee demand for flexible working and recent studies of the bottom-line impact of adopting such practices.

The study aimed to assess the experiences of beneficiaries who had taken part in Objective 3 projects to explore their labour market difficulties, identify their activities on the projects, and ultimately to look at their outcomes from the projects. In essence, the research sought to learn whether ESF Objective 3 had made any difference to the labour market chances of those taking part.

This report contains initial findings from a three-year study, following a sample of young people (aged 18-30) receiving business start-up support from The Prince's Trust. The study aimed to identify the wider benefits of such support, in comparison with other labour market interventions and, in particular, to look at the impact of such programmes on longer-term employability.

This study was commissioned by the Physics Programme of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The study was intended to examine the views of those who employ postgraduate physicists as to both the quantity and quality of the current provision. In line with previous studies covering postgraduates of other disciplines, special emphasis was put on examining employers' requirements in terms of soft skills.

Another report from the acclaimed EMERGENCE Project, this pioneering survey tracks, for the first time, the use of eWork across the EU and in the three largest Central and Eastern Europe candidate states. Not only does it show employers' use of ICT to support homeworking and multilocational working, and to relocate work to remote back offices and call centres, it also documents the use of electronically supported outsourcing, the locations involved, and the reasons for their choice.

This report provides a review of the literature on initiatives to stimulate demand for post-16 learning. Examples of policy and practice initiatives from the UK, America, Europe and Australia are categorised into three broad types: stimulating mass demand, through widespread publicity, provision of advice and guidance or funding and making the provision of learning more flexible; stimulating demand for learning among targeted groups of individuals and communities; and stimulating demand among employees and for work-related learning.

This report focuses on the research tools used to quantify factors causing stress in the workplace. The report identifies existing approaches and looks for evidence of their reliability (do they produce consistent measures) and the validity of their results (do they measure what they are supposed to).

IES continued its work for the Association of Graduate Recruiters with this edition of the twice-yearly survey for AGR Members. The report is free to AGR members and can be ordered directly from the AGR.

This research brief concentrates on one of the key determinants of progression within organisations: the performance management process. It explores the literature on the relationship between ethnicity and performance in order to understand the issues that may contribute to the frequently observed under-performance of minority ethnic employees.