GET INVOLVED

To discuss how you and your organisation can get more involved with The Work Foundation, please contact our partnership team.

Call 020 7976 3512 or email partnership@theworkfoundation.com

CONTACT

Tom Phillips
External Affairs Officer
T 020 7976 3554
Email

For those who can work, secure and lasting employment is surely one of the best routes out of homelessness and poverty. Even if they are given somewhere to live, homeless families and individuals who fail to find work will remain vulnerable - at risk of losing their home again and, at best, reliant on benefits.

Read More

Dr Paul Sissons

A NEET solution?

Posted By Dr Paul Sissons

22 February 2012

Yesterday Nick Clegg announced further details of the NEET prevention strand of the Youth Contract. The £126 million scheme, which will be in England only, will focus on those 16 and 17 year olds with poor qualifications (without a GCSE at grade C or above) who are outside education, employment and training.

Read More

Ian Brinkley

How many people are really available for work?

Posted By Ian Brinkley

16 February 2012

Yesterday’s unemployment figures made grim reading with 2.7 million unemployed on the international standardised measure used by the International Labour Office (ILO). This includes all those who said they had looked for work in the past 4 weeks and were able to start a job in 2 weeks time.

Read More

Dr Neil Lee

Labour market not delivering for young people

Posted By Dr Neil Lee

15 February 2012

Today’s labour market statistics are grim reading for young people: 1.04 million young people aged 16 to 24 are now unemployed, an increase of 22,000 from September 2011. The unemployment rate amongst young people is 22.2%, compared to 8.4% overall.

Read More

Yesterday the government announced a £4.5 million City Skills Fund to help England’s largest cities and colleges work together to boost the provision of skills needed by employers.

Read More

Yesterday (10 February), Prime Minister David Cameron was in Stockholm for the second day of the Northern Future Forum Summit. The summit, which brings together Nordic-Baltic and UK governments, aims to join up leaders with experts, entrepreneurs and academics to common social and economic issues. High on this year’s agenda is the question of how to get more women into top positions and encourage more female entrepreneurs.

Read More

Tuesday’s (07 February) roundtable discussion on school to work transitions, held at The Work Foundation, marked the start of our new research consortium for ‘The Missing Million’, a two year solution focused project aimed at increasing the employment prospects for young people.

Read More

Andrew  Sissons

The curious case of complex manufacturing

Posted By Andrew Sissons

07 February 2012

British manufacturing is in a very delicate place at the moment. The last three months of 2011 saw a contraction in the sector, dashing hopes that manufacturing would lead the UK out of recession. Part of this gloom is a direct product of the Eurozone crisis, because manufacturing depends on exports, and Europe is our biggest trading partner.

Read More

Andrew  Sissons

Will Facebook’s flotation leave it in the stratosphere?

Posted By Andrew Sissons

02 February 2012

Facebook’s stock market flotation is a big deal. The social network is one of the world’s most iconic companies, and it plays a prominent role in many of our lives, but up until now we’ve known precious little about how successful Facebook is as a business. Last night’s announcement changed all that.

Read More

Spencer Thompson

Does vocational education need a haircut?

Posted By Spencer Thompson

31 January 2012

Today’s downgrading of many vocational qualifications, removing them from school league tables, should not mask the fact many of them provide real value to students, employers and the wider economy.

Read More

Charles  Levy

9.9% fall in undergraduate applications - time to panic?

Posted By Charles Levy

30 January 2012

Today’s figures from UCAS show that 42,038 fewer English applicants applied for UK undergraduate courses starting this year compared to last, a fall of 9.9%. At any time this would be cause for concern – we have consistently demonstrated that as our economy recovers and grows it will create an expanded demand for graduates. But, this year there is an extra worry since 2012 will be the first year that dramatically increased fees will apply for higher education.

Read More

Dr Benjamin Reid

I want a Catapult Centre I can print out at home

Posted By Benjamin Reid

26 January 2012

In a world where you can download and print out a range of operational weapons at home, it is appropriate that today the Coalition government announced that one of the new ‘Catapult Centres’ (the entities formally known as Technology Innovation Centres) will be focused on technology transfer for the ‘Connected Digital Economy’.

Read More

Joanna Massie

Has streaming killed the dvd star?

Posted By Joanna Massie

26 January 2012

In a bid to compete in the gleaming age of the modern-day internet, Blockbusters has released a series of ‘exclusives’ – new movies which, for two weeks only, will be for Blockbusters’ users’ eyes only – but only if you live close enough to a Blockbusters to rent the disc, since they conspicuously haven’t adopted a streaming service.

Read More

Andrew  Sissons

Don’t believe the GDP hype

Posted By Andrew Sissons

24 January 2012

You can safely expect to hear a lot about the economy tomorrow, as we get a first estimate of whether the economy grew or shrunk during the last three months of 2011.

Read More

Wilson Wong

The language of leaders, wherefore leadership?

Posted By Dr Wilson Wong

24 January 2012

On Thursday evening (19 January 2012) I had the pleasure of welcoming Kevin Murray, Chairman of the Bell Pottinger Group, to a conversation about his new book.

Read More

Page: