Report on the impact of Covid on working class women
Clare Lyonette from IER has been collaborating with Professor Tracey Warren from Nottingham University Business School on a 12-month ESRC-funded project on the impact of Covid-19 on working class women. The final report was published to coincide with a webinar on June 18th.
The authors also presented their main findings to the Women and Equalities Committee on June 30th, as part of an ESRC Impact Acceleration Account grant, which focuses on disseminating current Covid-related employment research undertaken by IER to relevant UK parliamentarians, with the hope that it will then feed into their deliberations about economic recovery post-Covid.
More information can be found:
Warren, T., Lyonette, C. and the Women's Budget Group (2021) Carrying the work burden of the Covid-19 pandemic: working class women in the UK.
Journal special issue on decent work, inclusion and sustainability
Along with former IER researcher Dr Deidre Hughes OBE and Professor Maria Eduarda Duarte of the University of Lisbon, IER’s Chris Warhurst has guest edited a special issue of the British Journal of Guidance & Counselling on decent work, inclusion and sustainability.
Just published, the special issue examines the implications for career guidance and working life transitions in the context of rising inequalities and inclusion deficits in labour markets internationally. Together with Deirdre Hughes, Emma Benger and Mandy Ifans, Chris Warhurst also co-authored an article in this special issue titled 'Building better futures: decent work, inclusion and careers support services in the UK'.
Hughes, D., Warhurst, C. & Duarte, M.E. (2021). Decent work, inclusion and sustainability: a new era lies ahead, British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 49 (2), pp 145-152, DOI: 10.1080/03069885.2021.1898540.
Hughes, D., Warhurst, C., Benger, E. & Ifans. M. (2021). Building better futures: decent work, inclusion and careers support services in the UK, British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 49 (2), pp. 213-227, DOI:10.1080/03069885.2021.1900537.
Building back better? Creative freelancers and learning from the Covid-19 experience
Throughout the pandemic, IER and Coventry University undertook research into the contribution of creative freelancers to the economic and place-based impacts of the creative industries.
The aim of the research was to develop new understandings of the role, contribution and challenges of creative freelance work – examining the experiences and different business models of creative freelancers. With the onset of the pandemic, the research also focused on the impact of COVID-19 on the work and lives of creative freelancers. The findings from the research have been presented in a discussion paper published by Nesta's Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC). The discussion paper identifies how creative freelancers generate value in their immediate place and places, and presents different types of creative business models, encapsulating the diverse experiences of freelancers and their contribution to economy and society. It also identifies the policy implications of the analysis.
Photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash.
Sally Wright at workshop on algorithmic management
Dr Sally Wright was invited to participate in a technical workshop on ‘Practices towards algorithmic management and their impact on workers’. The technical workshop, held on 15 and 16 June, was jointly hosted by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and organised as part of an EU-funded project on the Future of Work.
The workshop was aimed at developing new evidence around several specific but understudied themes. The workshop considered how algorithmic management and other practices that are often associated with platform work are being increasingly used beyond digital labour platforms, by traditional companies, thus leading to ‘platformisation’ of work. The experts considered the extent and how the introduction of a new digital outsourcing model, new tools and modalities for work planning, monitoring and surveillance are likely to impact on business models, work organisation, working conditions, employment and industrial relations.
Second Beyond 4.0 Summer School
IER staff and PhD students participated virtually in Beyond 4.0’s second summer school, held again in San Sebastian in Spain. Beyond 4.0 is a Horizon 2020 funded project that examines the future of work and welfare in the digital age.
The summer school offered a mixture of themes: careers guidance for PhD students, plus research on the digital transformation of workplaces; regional responses to digitalisation; historical analysis of industrial transformations; and social policy contexts.
Among the 22 speakers, Professor Chris Warhurst and Dr Sally-Anne Barnes presented sessions during the Summer School. Two of IER’s PhD students, Wafaa Elmezraoui and Gianni Anelli Lopez, were among the 21 PhD students who participated in the event. Congratulations to Wafaa – after having ‘pitched’ her PhD topic in a poster session during the event she was awarded first prize.
Watch a short explanation of the summer school in this video.
Joanna Octavia awarded prize at Doctoral Conference
IER Doctoral Researcher Joanna Octavia has been awarded third place in the 2021 CERIC Doctoral Conference at the Leeds University Business School.
Joanna presented the preliminary findings from her doctoral research, which focuses on the internet organising and mobilising efforts of platform-based motorcycle taxi drivers in Jakarta, Indonesia. Held at the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change (CERIC), the theme for this year's doctoral conference was 'The Future of Work in a Post-Covid World'. The papers presented at the conference covered a broad spectrum of disciplines related to: the impact of digitalisation on work and employment; inequalities in race, gender, class, (dis)ability in a post-Covid world; and the role of human resources management in a changing environment.
Joanna also gave a presentation at the 'Research Resilience' session of a Digital Summer School organised by the LSE Southeast Asia Centre (LSE SEAC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Studies (ASEAS UK) for early-career researchers. The session explored how researchers approached their work in a resilient way, and how they controlled their emotions when working in the field.
