- Shaping the Mayor’s health strategy for London
A series of workshops and seminars run jointly with The Work Foundation and the London Health Commission during 2005 explored different aspects of workplace health and wellbeing, attracting attendees and speakers from public and private sector organisations. It led to the Healthy Work: Productive Workplaces report and helped shape the Mayor’s health strategy for London.
- Supporting the Creative Industries
Commissioned in June 2007 by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) The Work Foundation authored Staying Ahead: The economic performance of the UK’s creative industries .
This was a unique analysis of the nature of the creative industries - their size, the factors that have shaped their comparative success in recent years, the challenges they face in the years ahead – and contributed heavily to the production of the DCMS's Creative Economy Programme (CEP) strategy in 2008.
- Focusing on fitness for work
Our contributions have been to the Dame Carol Black Review of the Health of the Working Age Population on Good Work and ‘Fit for Work’.
We also contributed to the idea of the ‘fit note’ which will replace the GP sick note in 2010. This will help GPs and employers focus on an employee’s capacity rather than their incapacity and help them stay in, or return to, work. This was endorsed by the Swedish presidency of EU and a prominent United Nations initiative.
- Enhancing our understanding of the knowledge economy
We are the UK’s leading researchers on the knowledge economy.
Commenting on the project, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Gordon Brown, said:
"Vital to the future prosperity of advanced economies is understanding how to generate success and economic value from knowledge...This exciting and important project will identify the ways in which the knowledge economy can boost the performance of the British economy, and the steps we must take in the years to come to become the leading location in the world for knowledge-based industries."
- Managing absence in the public sector
The Work Foundation facilitated the initial work of the Ministerial Task Force on Absence in the Public Sector; conducting work to develop and test a series of absence management toolkits which have helped several government departments to reduce absence rates.
- Reforming public services delivery
We conducted research on collaborative approaches to reforming public service delivery. This led to the development of the Cabinet Office Drive for Change website and toolkit which has helped many public bodies plan and manage changes to service delivery in collaboration with staff and unions.