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Our research has impacted on policy and practice in the area of welfare to work, employment and skills, especially at regional and national levels. The most important impact has been through Professor Campbell's move to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills as Director of Research and Policy and subsequent applied research work by the PRI for the UK Commission on Employment and Skills (UKCES), which has contributed to the development of their policies on skills and employment. These policies in turn have informed government policy on skills, training and workforce development, and the work of the Sector Skills Councils to influence employers' practices, for example in the area of career development of staff. At the regional level, the main impact has been on skills policy through work for the Regional Development Agency.
Bell and Blanchflower's research on youth unemployment has been highly influential in affecting policy directions in both the UK and Europe during the Great Recession. It has also generated substantial public concern for a `lost generation' of unemployed young people through their sustained engagement in media and public debate.
Core labour rights have a crucial role in achieving economic prosperity and political stability on a national and global scale. The emergence of complex global trade networks has raised important questions as to how such rights could be implemented and enforced across multiple supply chains and geographical borders. Research at the Centre for Labour Market Studies, School of Management, Leicester has helped the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the EU understand the advantages and risks associated with International Framework Agreements (IFAs), particularly regarding their implementation in supply chains. IFAs have emerged as a specific instrument to secure core labour rights and shift the onus away from nation states. Between 2000 and 2013 the number of IFAs in operation around the world increased from five to more than 100, directly benefiting more than 10 million workers and indirectly benefiting tens of millions more. Leicester research has played a part in understanding the dynamics of IFAs and developing more effective ones.
There is an inherent tension between progress in the European Union's marketization agenda on the one hand, and the agenda for the development of European social citizenship on the other. Although markets internalise and manage many aspects of economic activity, the process of marketization also creates and ignores negative social and economic consequences. Focussing on uncertainty and insecurity in labour markets, the research by Crouch, Marginson and Meardi addressed the capacity of public and private employee relations and corporate governance arrangements, including collective bargaining and immigration, to offset these negative consequences. European policy makers are now gaining an interest in mitigating the effects of marketization. As a result, this timely research has challenged conventional wisdom that marketization promises unqualified gains and has stimulated significant ongoing policy and trade union debate across Europe.
Professor Pedro Martins' research expertise is on labour economics, including dismissals, wages and social returns of education. From June 2011 until February 2013, he was seconded from Queen Mary to undertake the key role of Portuguese Secretary of State for Employment. Informed by his research, he initiated and implemented a programme of effective labour market legislative reforms over a relatively short period of time. A reformed labour code (four changes of law) and several ordnances, resolutions and other policy change were the outcome, affecting individual dismissals, working time, collective bargaining, training and active labour market policies. His aim was to reduce unemployment by partly deregulating the labour market, so reducing the disincentives for firms to employ people, and by promoting active labour market policies to raise skill levels within the economy. The reforms affected approximately five million people. Following the reforms, Portugal moved to eighth place (in 2009 it was first) out of 34 countries in terms of the strength of permanent employees' protection (OECD Employment Outlook 2012); and unemployment fell, from 17.7% to 15.6%, and GDP increased, by 1.3%, between the first and third quarters of 2013.
Research carried out by the University of Nottingham has significantly informed international policies designed to transform technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and its role in development. This has been achieved through direct contribution to policy making at global, regional and national levels, most notably for UNESCO, the Southern African Development Community and the South African government. This has led to the revision of global, regional and national policy guidelines and the development of new regional and national indicators. Conventional policy wisdoms have been questioned at global and national levels and new concepts introduced into the policy debate.
The impact of the research programme led to advice being provided to inward-investment companies on labour supply; to the re-working of the Northern Ireland Department of Employment and Learning's [DEL] training provision; to participation on the government's Task Force charged with re-integrating the unemployed into the labour force and to formulating the Northern Ireland [NI] response to the UK-wide welfare reform agenda. The research covered company recruitment experiences, spatial behaviour and perceptions of young people and benefit claimants, and the views of Job Centre advisors. It found that targeting jobs to deprived areas did not necessarily bring jobs to residents of these areas, that recruitment experiences were dependent on locational context, that some people are in a low mobility trap, and that advisors sometimes find it difficult to assimilate rapidly changing policies.
A new methodology has been developed that enables a more flexible approach to understanding the effects of immigration on the labour market and the native-born labour force. The key finding is that the effect of immigration on wages and employment depends on the extent of the substitutability between immigrant and native born labour. This substitutability differs at different skill levels, so that immigration has a greater effect on unskilled native born workers. This new methodology's findings have informed the debate over labour market effects and have influenced the development of related policies by Government and other key stakeholders.
The evidence produced by Professor Wadsworth's research directly has shaped or influenced policy made by government. In particular, the research has been used as input into several key policy recommendations made by the Home Office sponsored Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) (of which Wadsworth is a member) to inform the coalition government's declared aim of achieving a reduction in the levels of net migration in the current parliament to the tens of thousands. The research has been cited by numerous stakeholders in the debate on the impact of rising immigration on the labour market. There are numerous examples of citations in a public discussion, consultation document or judgement.
The research outlined below was instrumental in the development of a new classification of graduate occupations, beyond a dichotomous graduate/non-graduate distinction, which has become a standard typology for analysing the graduate labour market. Policymakers and research bodies, such as HECSU and Universities UK, have used it to better understand the impact of higher education, labour market and wider social policy reform, such as migration policy. Most UK HEIs have used this typology to compare employment outcomes for their graduates and it has also proved to be an important point of reference for careers advisors and students to aid educational and career decision-making.
Southampton based research on the interactions of a minimum wage policy and tax evasion has had a direct and clearly acknowledged impact on shaping the labour market policies of Hungary and other Southern European countries, while its research on the role of universal versus targeted benefits on employment has had a significant impact on Swedish fiscal policy. Looking at labour market policies in a broader context and from a behavioural economics point of view (e.g. payroll giving), our findings on charitable giving and workers' motivation have also been used by the UK government's Behavioural Insights Team and impacted its recommendations on giving. The same research is currently influencing US policy on the tax treatment of charitable contributions.