Today’s stats paint a picture of a weakening labour market. Unemployment is rising (4.6%), vacancies are falling, and more people are returning to the labour market—often out of necessity, not opportunity. This should be a red flag ahead of tomorrow’s Spending Review. 🧵(1/6)

Spread the word! Exciting new fully funded PhD opportunity to research disabled people's lived experiences of benefit reform and the costs of disability. Deadline: 10 April @uofglasgow.bsky.social @uofgussp.bsky.social @uofgsps.bsky.social @sgsss.bsky.social @clemmiehilloconnor.bsky.social

Great to see our @irhws.bsky.social findings covered in @thetimes.com over the weekend, in this article exploring five years of remote and hybrid working since the pandemic (well worth a full read, despite the depressingly cynical picture accompanying it).

Five years of the WFH experiment: is it working?

After half a decade of ‘you’re on mute’, are we all about to be hauled back to our office desks full-time? Matt Rudd reports

thetimes.com

Great to see the @bigissue.com pick up on our policy paper today on disabled workers' experiences of remote and hybrid working @irhws.bsky.social with @lancasteruni.bsky.social @manmetuni.bsky.social & Universal Inclusion, supported by the @nuffieldfoundation.org www.bigissue.com/news/employm...

Working from home vital for disabled people to keep a job, DWP told

A staggering 80% of disabled people in fully remote jobs told researchers that WFH had a “positive impact” on managing their health.

bigissue.com

Pleased to see the launch of the first output from our @irhws.bsky.social project today, exploring disabled workers' experiences of remote & hybrid working and putting forward a number of policy recommendations for the government. Thread below on some of our key findings 👇

Beyond the Office? How remote and hybrid working can help close the disability employment gap - Lancaster University

New interim report from Lancaster University, the Work Foundation, Manchester Metropolitan University and Universal Inclusion - funded by the Nuffield Foundation - reveals that five years on from the ...

lancaster.ac.uk

Great to see support for the proposed Employment Rights Bill across the political spectrum, with nearly 3 in 4 in support of banning zero hours contracts, widening access to Statutory Sick Pay and granting employment rights from day one. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Labour urged to defend workers’ rights bill as poll shows huge public support

Exclusive: Poll reveals 72% of UK voters favour ban on zero-hours contracts, including majority of Tory and Reform supporters

theguardian.com

Shows that zero-hours can be a very permanent state, with some people stuck in this for years not knowing how many hours/wages they'll get week to week.

Natalie Sedacca@nataliesedacca.bsky.social · 2y ago

Research finds majority of zero-hours contract workers have been with their employer for more than 12 months and one in eight for over a decade, while only seven zero-hours contract workers say they are happy not to have regular working hours www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Costly sticking plaster with ONS hiring temp staff to try and improve reliability of Labour Force Survey. For a longer term fix, why not make responding to the survey mandatory, like in Canada, Belgium, France, Germany etc. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

ONS to spend millions on temp workers to fix ‘unusable’ UK employment data

Exclusive: Office for National Statistics to spend £8m in deal with employment agency Randstad to recruit hires

theguardian.com

Good to see @timewise.bsky.social in the news today highlighting flexible working inequalities. A key takeaway for me is the business case for supporting workers to find a better work-life balance, particularly when it comes to recruitment and retention. See below for a link to the full report 👇

Inequality in flexible working dividing Britain into ‘two-tier workforce’

Exclusive: Office workers have more flexibility than frontline staff such as nurses and shop workers, report says

theguardian.com

A great 🧵here from @rebeccaflorisson.bsky.social on the need for more actual evidence and research across the back-to-office debate, rather than the "gut feelings" of individuals 👇

Work Foundation@workfoundation.bsky.social · 2y ago

This morning the BBC reported that Lord Rose stated that working from home is 'not proper work'. https://buff.ly/3E40aDl Our Principal Analyst, @rebeccaflorisson.bsky.social commented: “The recent push-back from some employers to roll back on hybrid and remote work is unhelpful...

A great read showing how difficult it is for workers on UC to take on more hours. "The reality is that most low-paid workers are within the scope of Income Tax and National Insurance and so their effective deduction rate is 68 per cent." On min wage, this means people are left with £3.71 per hour.

Ashwin Kumar@ashwin-kumar.bsky.social · 2y ago

Overlapping tax and benefit withdrawal means two-fifths of Universal Credit claimants will face effective deduction rates of more than 55% See my blog from new @mmuperu.bsky.social research funded by @financialfairness.bsky.social www.financialfairness.org.uk/en-gb/what-w...

Now that the @irhws.bsky.social is coming to an end, I'm happy to say that from next week I'll be beginning a new role as a Senior Policy Adviser at Acas: exciting times! I'll miss academia, but also looking forward to the chance to enact positive change from the inside, for a change 👀

Important New Year reading here, with this final report of a project exploring regional differences in the disability employment gap. Results show strong correlation between the size of the DEG and levels of economic deprivation across an area: well worth a deep dive into the data (see👇for more).

New research reveals where in Great Britain people with a disability find it hardest to be in employment

The five areas in Great Britain where disabled people are least likely to be in employment compared with non-disabled people have been revealed in a new report from the University of Sheffield.

sheffield.ac.uk

Had a great time on Friday filming for the first stage of production on our @irhws.bsky.social film 📽️ The idea is to give disabled workers a chance to talk about their remote & hybrid working experiences in their own words. Watch this space for the final product in the spring!

Two new research jobs with a health inequalities focus currently being advertised at Strathclyde @centrehealthpolicy.bsky.social - both would suit qualitative researchers who like working in large, cross-disciplinary teams, who also enjoy community engagement and policy engagement. Thread 1/3

A number of issues at play here, from the penalising nature of the current benefits system (e.g. suspending payments for anyone suspected of fraud), to the adoption of AI without a clear understanding of issues of bias, and to the need for greater oversight for how AI is used for policy more widely.

Revealed: bias found in AI system used to detect UK benefits fraud

Exclusive: Age, disability, marital status and nationality influence decisions to investigate claims, prompting fears of ‘hurt first, fix later’ approach

theguardian.com

This speaks to today's report from the Work Foundation exploring the linkages between job quality and ill health (link below), as well as our findings for the @irhws.bsky.social project about the need for inclusive flexible working models to retain people with disabilities/ill health in employment.

Heejung Chung@heejungchung.bsky.social · 2y ago

Stephen Phipson also talks about how the most important thing employers are worried about is recruitment/retention of skilled staff& skill shortages are one of the key challenges. In addition to training/upskilling we need to address workers leaving the labour market due to bad working conditions

Our Trustee, Kate Bell, says when considering trade offs between improving employment rights and costs to employers, we can’t just focus on short term adjustment costs. We need to take a long view of how we want our labour market to grow and evolve.

So how did the Plan for Change do? Good news is it contains plausible theories of change for how the targets will be met and, in some cases, how these will contribute towards overall missons. BUT the targets are v ambitious given tight budgets and will inevitably mean loss of focus on wider goals

Nick Davies@njdavies.bsky.social · 2y ago

On Thursday, the govt will publish its Plan for Change. This will include key 'milestones' for each of the govt's five missions. Targets such as these have been used extensively by previous govts trying to improve public service performance. But how effective are targets? A short🧵on the evidence:

Great to see this report published today by my project colleagues at the Work Foundation on the need to improve job quality to more effectively tackle economic inactivity across the UK. Access to flexible working models and concerted employer support at the onset of ill health considered crucial 👀

Stemming the tide: Healthier jobs to tackle economic inactivity - Lancaster University

New Work Foundation research aims to provide new evidence, insights and policy direction for how Government and employers can work together to retain more people who experience health issues in employ...

lancaster.ac.uk

Great to be in London yesterday for the 2024 Early Career Network Day at @nuffieldfoundation.org HQ: as a funder they are putting a lot of effort into helping to support ECRs looking to pursue academic careers within an extremely precarious sector, so great to see these efforts continue.

Future of Work starter pack is live! Filled with people who are active on Bluesky and have enough expertise in the field that I personally want to read their posts 😎 go.bsky.app/4nEu3PY I surely missed people. Please tag anyone who belongs here! #futureofwork #remotework

Had a first go at creating a starter pack for social policy research. I’m new here and have surely missed lots so please say if you’d like added or removed!

Lots of helpful detail here on the Get Britain Working white paper: youth guarantee, localised employment support pilots, less of the tick box in jobcentres and more personalised focus. 🧵 1/3 www.personneltoday.com/hr/get-brita...

Get Britain Working: DWP unveils employment support reforms

Government unveils biggest reforms to employment support for a generation with the publication of its Get Britain Working white paper.

personneltoday.com

A brilliant exploration here from my colleague @asliatay.bsky.social on the inequalities concerning who has access to flexible working models in 2024, and the need for bolder action in expanding the right to flexibility to millions more workers across the UK: well worth a read.

Working From Home Was Supposed to Be the Big Revolution. The numbers tell a different story

The hybrid work dream and who gets to live it

asliatay.substack.com

Great report from #HealthierWorkingLives Commission on the link between poor job quality and workforce health: ✔️Job insecurity harms wellbeing ✔️Excessive/irregular hours predict ill health ✔️Lack of control leads to poor outcomes ✔️Adverse behaviours severely impact wellbeing

Institute for Employment Studies @employmentstudies.bsky.social · 2y ago

📢New research! Our report for the Commission for #HealthierWorkingLives, supported by @healthfoundation.bsky.social reveals that poor job quality threatens the health of the UK workforce with 1.7 million people reporting work-related ill health in the last year. Read: bit.ly/3CH4uYB 1/

Really good to see this emphasis placed by the Health Commission for #HealthierWorkingLives on job insecurity as one of the key drivers of poor health in our ailing labour market. Not only are people falling sick, bad job qual and insecurity can also drive them out of work entirely.

Institute for Employment Studies @employmentstudies.bsky.social · 2y ago

We identified four key aspects of job quality with the strongest links to health · Job security and precarity · Excessive and/or irregular hours · Demands and control at work · Relationships and support 4/

Incredibly important new report out today from the @employmentstudies.bsky.social's Commission for #HealthierWorkingLives: a lot to dig into, and absolutely damning about the extent of insecure work in the UK, and the health impacts on the lives of millions of workers across the country.

Institute for Employment Studies @employmentstudies.bsky.social · 2y ago

📢New research! Our report for the Commission for #HealthierWorkingLives, supported by @healthfoundation.bsky.social reveals that poor job quality threatens the health of the UK workforce with 1.7 million people reporting work-related ill health in the last year. Read: bit.ly/3CH4uYB 1/

Some fascinating findings emerging from @benbgeiger.bsky.social & team's FlexPlus project (details of study below), particularly around the need for employers and job design considerations to be a key part of exploring how to help people with disabilities thrive in the workplace: well worth a read 👀

Can flexible job design help people with fluctuating disabilities?

In this blog piece, Catherine Hale outlines the early findings of a new study exploring the flexible working practices in the post-COVID era and their impact on disability employment outcomes.

kcl.ac.uk

Hello, I put together a starter pack for employment policy wonks since I couldn’t find one before! Let me know if I missed anyone or if you’d like to be added. 🔗https://go.bsky.app/4U7rFk8