海角社区

Hilda Ragnarsd贸ttir at IER has joined the Board for at the Centre for New Midlands, a not-for-profit think tank focused on creating and sharing new ideas to strengthen the West Midlands.

She will be undertaking research and contributing to the conversation on how to reduce economic inactivity, improve employability and address the skill gap in the region.

IER's Peter Dickinson joined meetings in the Horizon Bridges 5.0 project in Vienna.

He led one of the workshops as part of the foresight element of the project, discussing the policy implications across a range of potential scenarios that the transitions might bring.

At the end of January, Professor Peter Elias, CBE and Prof Chris Warhurst of IER attended the 3rd Global Labour Markets Conference (GLMC) in Riyadh. There were over 5000 delegates at the conference. Now an annual event, the GLMC is a bit like Davos for labour markets, attended by lots of government ministers, company CEOs and senior trade union officials.

Drawing on his recent experience of co-developing the UK Standard Skills Classification, Peter was asked to talk about how skills could be measured. Chris was asked to talk about policy development to help support the business case for good jobs.

The project has formally concluded, marking the end of a three-year Horizon Europe collaboration that explored how skills systems can better support labour-market transitions across Europe. The project, coordinated by 3s (Austria), brought together seven interlinked work packages to tackle some of the most pressing questions facing Europe鈥檚 labour markets: how to support workers to update their skills, navigate career transitions and stay resilient throughout life – and how to give employers access to a workforce ready for the demands of green and digital transitions.

For the past two years research staff at IER and the University of Sheffield, in collaboration with Omnifolio, have been working to create the first Standard Classification of Skills (SSC) for the UK on behalf of Skills England.

The prototype version of this classification was released on November 27, 2025, accompanied by a , allowing users to browse the classification and explore links to occupations and qualifications, plus an , detailing the methodology, information sources and examples of use cases. An overview of the tool and its beneficiaries is provided in the . Initial responses to the release of the prototype have been favourable.