Publications

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  Investigating the Sectoral and Regional Effects of the 2003 and 2004 National Minimum Wage Upratings

  Blake N, Burrell A, Goodwin A (Experian), Jagger N (IES) | Jan 2007 | Low Pay Commission

  This report looks behind the aggregate responses to the National Minimum Wage (NMW) to establish if there are specific regional and sector impacts. The hypothesis is that the nature of the NMW (a minimum rate that prevails in any part of the country) could have different effects on regions and sectors with very different wage distributions.

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  Mental Health and Work

  Sinclair A, O'Regan S | Jan 2007 | Institute for Employment Studies

  This report reviews the literature on mental health issues at work and the interventions available to tackle them, in order to provide some guidance to help employers deal with the issues within their own companies. This report outlines the benefits of taking a more positive approach to tackling mental health issues, going beyond complying with legislation, towards promoting mental well-being at work.

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  Creating a Well Workforce

  A case study

  Alice Sinclair | Jan 2007 | Institute for Employment Studies

  To what extent is it employers' responsibility to look after their employees? What is the best approach to take and what benefits are they likely to see? This report seeks to answer these questions by presenting a case study of one organisation currently involved in health promotion activities. British Gas Business, part of Centrica, has been running a series of activities to promote health and well-being amongst its workforce for a number of years.

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  Assessing the Net Added Value of Advice and Guidance

  Pollard E, Tyers C, Tuohy S, Cowling M | Jan 2007 | Department for Education and Skills

  This research explores the impact of information, advice and guidance (IAG) on adults in work or education, and specifically investigates the relative impact of more in-depth careers support (advice and guidance) over that of information provision. The research design was a longitudinal survey of recipients of careers support (or recipients of IAG). The first survey took place in 2004 and involved more than 4,000 individuals. The second survey, in 2006, followed-up these original participants, achieving almost 1,300 interviews.

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  An Evaluation of the UfI/learndirect Telephone Guidance Trial

  Page R, Newton B, Hawthorn R, Hunt W, Hillage J | Jan 2007 | Department for Education and Skills

  In 2005 the government established a review of information, advice and guidance services for adults in order to help achieve the long-term objective of a universally available, high quality and well-used service offering linked information, advice and guidance for adults. One element of the review was to conduct and evaluate a trial extension of the UfI/learndirect telephone guidance service to handle a substantially larger volume of calls and to test a three-stage call-back and action planning model. This evaluation of the learndirect guidance trial draws on the findings from a number of research strands including a scored quality analysis of 100 calls to the service, a survey of 1,000 service users, interviews with learndirect advisors, and an analysis of management and financial information.

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  Danger: UK at Work!

  Cowling M, Sinclair A | Jan 2007 | Institute for Employment Studies

  With the Lords ruling allowing employees to sue their bosses for negligence if they are subject to violence or harassment at work, IES questioned whether UK employers were facing a potential glut of litigation in the courts from distressed employees. Our evidence showed that the UK had a very poor record in comparison to most core EU countries on violence and intimidation in the workplace, although it had cleaned up its act to a degree since the very violent 1990s.

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  The Desire for Income Equality Amongst the UK Adult Population

  Cowling M, Harding R | Jan 2007 | Institute for Employment Studies

  Whilst there is a volume of literature mapping out the evolution, causes and implications of income inequality across countries, there is little in-depth evidence concerning the desire of populations for income equality. This paper tackled this gap by presenting UK evidence from a large-scale adult population survey for 2003. The headline result was that 75 per cent of the UK adult population preferred a fairer income distribution.

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  A Note on Productive Learning

  Cowling M | Jan 2007 | Institute for Employment Studies

  We use a standard production function to identify the impact of learning-by-doing on the productivity of labour, human capital and physical capital. Using data from a representative sample of 1,000 UK businesses, we observe that learning effects on labour and human capital productivity are highest when firms are very young. By contrast, learning has the greatest effect on the productivity of physical capital the older a firm becomes.

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  Performance Related Pay Coverage in the UK

  Cowling M | Jan 2007 | Institute for Employment Studies

  A simple model of firms' decisions to pay workers performance related pay (PRP) is tested using company level data for 1,001 UK private sector businesses. From the basic sample statistics we observe that, on average, 26.5 per cent of workers are covered by PRP systems. Yet this hides the fact that only 50.5 per cent of businesses have any workers at all covered by PRP.

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  The Present and the Future

  Gender Differences in the Nature and Scale of Entrepreneurial Activity and Potential Activity in the UK

  Cowling M, Harding R | Jan 2007 | Institute for Employment Studies

  In this paper we provide detailed evidence from a UK adult population survey on various measures of entrepreneurial activity or potential activity. In doing so we not only put hard figures on the nature of women's involvement, but show precisely what types of women are physically active as entrepreneurs, or are likely to become engaged in future entrepreneurial activity. For comparative purposes we present identical information for men.