Decent work: live happier, live healthier

I’m involved in a project led by Vanessa Dodd at the University of Derby looking at the issue of ‘decent work’. The two researchers working on the project (Jacky Woods and Karen Hooper) have just presented initial findings as a poster (Decent Work Poster). This provides an overview of the project so far.

We’re looking for people to get involved by filling in our survey exploring your experience of work (decent or otherwise). We hope to publish the results both as a discrete UK study and also as part of a series of international papers exploring decent work in different countries.

Complete the decent work survey

 

Tell us your views on your working life – Survey on ‘decent work’

Getting a job is only the start. In general people don’t just want ‘a job’ they want one which pays them enough to live on, which in interesting, which offers them opportunities for career progression and so on. I’ve always thought that it would be worth politicians talking a lot more about improving the quality of job, rather than just promising to increase employment.

Because of this I’ve been working with some of my old colleagues at the University of Derby on an international research project looking at the concept of ‘decent work’ across a wide range of countries.

As part of this research we are really interested in your views on your working life.

This survey is for UK residents only.

The decent work survey

Calling all teachers! Tell us what you think about careers work

Over the years we’ve done a lot of research on careers work in schools. One of the main things that we’ve found is that careers work is too important to be left to careers advisers. Of course careers advisers are critical to supporting young people’s careers – but they need to be part of a whole school approach. Inevitably this means that teachers have an important role.

We’ve written about this in the paper Teachers and Careers.

We are now conducting some research to find out more about teachers attitudes to career education and guidance. So if you are a secondary school teacher in England we would really like to hear from you.

Take our survey on teachers’ attitudes to careers work

Survey – HE Careers Service: Use of Resources

We are currently working with LifeSkills, created with Barclays, to undertake some research on the way careers & employability services in UK higher education use resources. LifeSkills are hoping to understand what new resources would be useful for HE careers services.

We are ideally looking for a single response from each careers service. If you think that you could answer on behalf of your service then please complete our survey. There is a prize draw for all entries to win Marks and Spencer vouchers.

Complete the survey – HE Careers Service: Use of Resources 

Exploring employers’ understanding and experience of Higher Apprenticeships

Higher apprenticeships are an important new part of the educational landscape. Yet at the moment very little is known about how they are working out. We are undertaking some research to explore this and particularly to look at employers attitudes to higher apprenticeships.

We are interested in the views of all employers, not just those who have direct experience of higher apprenticeships.

Please can you send the survey link to any employers who you think might be willing to fill this in (or fill it in yourself if you are an employer).

Employer survey on higher apprenticeships

Career image survey to close

We have been undertaking a survey looking at career professionals’ attitudes to “career image”. In essence we are interested in whether those who provide advice on career and learning and employment choices ever talk about how clients look or should look as part of their practice.

We are closing the survey at the end of February, so if you haven’t filled it in yet we’d really like to hear from you.

Fill in the career image survey

Are you thinking about a postgraduate degree?

We are interested in how and why people make decisions to return to university to undertake postgraduate study. iCeGS is working with  Careers Research & Advisory Centre (CRAC), a national careers charity on a project for the Higher Education Funding Council in England (HEFCE) and other funding bodies in the UK.

 

If you or your students/clients are currently in the process of considering postgradute study or if they are currently undertaking/have recently completed a postgraduate programme please fill in our survey.

 

Survey: Are you considering taught postgraduate higher education?