TOMORROW’S WORK ISSUE 25 Lancaster University Management School | the place to be FIFTYFOUR DEGREES Employment changes are coming 26Shaping a healthy and sustainable workplace 10Recruitment’s new dawn 18
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FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 3 Better Hiring Today for Tomorrow’s Workforce How can we make hiring faster, fairer and safer for all? Keith Rosser, Chair of the Better Hiring Institute, sets out his hopes for the future of recruitment. 6 In this issue... 34 Become the CEO of Your Career Navigating the world of work has never been straightforward. Never more so than now. Entrepreneur in Residence Sanjay Rishi explains how to take charge of your career. 22 Employment Rights and Increasing Job Security Change is coming to UK workplaces. The Work Foundation’s Rebecca Florisson outlines how the Employment Rights Act can create a more secure and inclusive working world. 14 The Ethics of AI-Enabled Hiring What pitfalls await if Artificial Intelligence alone is allowed to shape the future of hiring? Drs Huw FearnallWilliams and Emrah Ali Karakilic explain issues of oversight and bias. 30 No House, Lots of Avocados They may have high-paying jobs, and be able to travel the world, but young people today struggle to get on the housing ladder. Dr Renaud Foucart tells us why. Sustainable Work and Healthy Environments A healthy workplace is essential to well-being. Professor Stavroula Leka shows how she is helping to build healthy psychosocial work environments and promote sustainable work. Have we Forgotten how to Negotiate? The Work Foundation’s Alice Martin looks at what comes next as we face a pivotal moment for employment rights in the UK. 18 10 Future-Proofing Graduates Dr Eman Gadalla and Dr Mahmoud Gad discuss their work with Egypt University of Informatics students and graduates to prepare them for the future of work. 38 Who Cares? Ageing global populations bring major economic implications. Dr Qisha Quarina outlines her work in Indonesia on how to take the strain off both taxpayers and family members. 42 26 A Future Jobs Market In 10 years, we might all be applying for jobs that do not exist today. Professor Hilary Ingham looks at the factors that will shape future jobs markets. 46 AI and Myths: Principles for Business What do Frankenstein and Icarus have in common with Artificial Intelligence? Lee Francis looks at the links between myth, science fiction, and AI.
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Foreword Welcome to Issue 25 of Fifty Four Degrees. Professor Claire Leitch Executive Dean Lancaster University Management School FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 5 The world of work today is almost unrecognisable from 40 years ago. Even the workplaces of the 1990s and early 2000s compared to those of the 2020s are a different world. Who knows what our working lives will be like in 10 years’ time? Will workers of the 1970s be able to walk into their former businesses in 2030 and understand what is going on? Will those businesses still exist? The speed of change in the shape of what jobs people do, the skills they need to do them, and how they get roles in the first place, is unprecedented. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – moving at such a swift pace as to render anything written about it today obsolete months, even weeks from now – shifting attitudes and actions around climate change and sustainability, and new societal norms and structures, the (r)evolution is constant. Universities and business schools are at the front line of such disruption and development. We shape the workforce and leaders of tomorrow. Our alumni tell us decades later how we have moulded their lives; the same will be true for today’s students. We are responsible for equipping young people with the skills and knowledge they will need for careers that will last well into the second half of the 21st century. Across Lancaster University Management School we have researchers working to understand just what our graduates can expect when they take their first career steps, and to help positively shape that professional world. We also engage with organisations beyond our walls, gaining influence where pure academia cannot reach. In this edition, we capture aspects ranging from recruitment to employment rights, jobs market shifts to house buying trends. You will not be surprised to see AI come up more than once; you might be more intrigued by mentions of avocados, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the supersuper aged population of Monaco. Hilary Ingham’s career path veered away from youthful tennis ambitions to see her become an expert on labour markets, and Head of our Department of Economics. She outlines the jobs that might become more common and important in years to come. Our graduates will be applying for roles that do not even exist as you are reading this. How those graduates apply for and obtain those positions is covered in two articles. The first, from Keith Rosser – Chair of the Better Hiring Institute – looks at how hiring can be made faster, fairer and safer for both employers and candidates. Keith shows the work that has already taken place in collaboration with Lancaster to make it so. The second, from Huw Fearnall-Williams and Emrah Ali Karakilic, examines specifically the influence of AI on hiring, and how it requires proper oversight to avoid bias creeping in. We also have a pair of articles from the Work Foundation, Lancaster University’s thinktank, which works to influence government policy. Alice Martin’s overview of what we might find over the horizon with regards to employment rights paints an interesting picture in the wake of the Employment Rights Act of 2025, while Rebecca Florisson outlines a recent Work Foundation report that shows how the Act might help to create a secure and inclusive working world for those who need it most. The Work Foundation has collaborated with Stavroula Leka in recent years on understanding how we might shape healthier workplaces. Stavroula contributes to our pages with her insight into the importance of healthy psychosocial work environments and sustainable work. We need workplaces where we feel well in all sense of the word to have successful and enduring careers. Our Entrepreneur in Residence Sanjay Rishi is an experienced leadership coach, who has worked with established and aspiring leaders across the world. He has previously written about healthy mindsets in Fifty Four Degrees, but here he talks to us about how we can all become CEOs of our own careers, taking ownership of our paths, and finding convergence between our principles and those of our employers. Eman Gadalla and Mahmoud Gad go on to discuss their partnership with Egypt University of Informatics, helping students and alumni by equipping them for today and tomorrow’s workplace via specially designed programmes that deliver skills employers want. Even if everyone is successful in work, however, who can say what the future brings? Renaud Foucart shows us that a booming career does not guarantee a step on the increasingly expensive housing ladder; while our alumna Qisha Quarina looks at the economic impacts of an increasingly ageing society all around the world and asks who will care for us in our elderly years, and who will pay for it? It is a long road from student classrooms to retirement communities. Our undergraduates of today are setting out on a journey that will take them into an unimaginable world of tomorrow. Subscribe online at lancaster.ac.uk/fiftyfour SUBSCRIBE
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FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 7 In 10 years’ time, we might all be applying for jobs that do not exist today. Professor Hilary Ingham looks at the factors that will shape the jobs market in decades to come, who will end up working where and in what roles, and what skills we will need to succeed. A future jobsmarket
As we stand a quarter way through the 21st century, we are witnessing rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), changing demographics and, alongside these, climate change. Taken together, these are reshaping our social expectations not only about how work is done but, also, who does it, where this work is done and how it is valued. To the fore in public debate is automation and the envisaged job displacement. But underpinning this there is a much deeper transformation embedded in the interaction between technology, labour and unpaid care. It is the juxtaposition of these that will shape the future of work. Our understanding of the challenges society faces requires that we move away from the popular, but narrow, focus on productivity towards a much broader view of work, which sees it as part of a social system. TECHNOLOGY AND TASK TRANSFORMATION Although technological development has always brought about change to labour markets, the speed and scope of the current wave of digitalisation is unprecedented. AI, machine learning and automation are no longer confined to routine tasks. These tools are found in professional, administrative and cognitive work, including accounting, legal work, medical diagnostics and teaching. Crucially, technology does not eliminate jobs, it simply reconfigures tasks. Workers will increasingly combine human judgement, emotional intelligence and contextual reasoning with algorithmic tools. This task-based transformation will favour adaptable workers but there is a risk of polarisation between high-skill, highautonomy roles and low-paid tightly monitored service work. LABOUR SUPPLY Another driver of the future of work, one that is frequently underappreciated, is demographic change. In the UK and other advanced economies, rising longevity coupled with declining fertility are increasing the demand for health and long-term care, while reducing the growth of the working age population (read more about this in the article by Dr Qisha Quarina). The result is a structural increase in the demand for labour in care-intensive sectors alongside economy-wide labour supply constraints. Care work is pivotal in the future of work. This work is relatively resistant to automation yet remains low-paid and suffers from high turnover. Care provision remains underfunded and where there is unmet demand, care reverts to households and, disproportionately, to women. If care continues to be treated as a private responsibility, labour market inequalities – particularly gender inequalities – are likely to widen. Women are more likely to reduce hours, exit employment, or accept lower-quality jobs to accommodate care responsibilities. Conversely, policies that invest in childcare, care of the elderly, and flexible but secure working arrangements can expand labour supply, raise productivity, and reduce inequality. REMOTE AND HYBRID WORKING The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote and hybrid working arrangements, revealing that many jobs previously assumed to require a physical presence can be performed effectively at a distance. While not universal – care, hospitality, and manufacturing remain place-based – remote work has permanently altered expectations for a substantial share of the workforce. This shift has implications for urban 8 |
economies, regional inequality, and firms' organisation. Remote work can widen labour markets, allowing firms to access talent beyond major cities and enabling workers to live further from high-cost urban centres. However, it may also entrench inequalities between workers who can work remotely and those who cannot, often aligned with income, education, and occupational status. From a managerial perspective, the future of work involves balancing flexibility with coordination, trust, and worker well-being. Surveillance technologies and algorithmic management risk undermining autonomy and job satisfaction if used primarily for monitoring rather than support. The long-term success of remote work will depend on institutional norms, not just technological feasibility. SKILLS AND LEARNING A central challenge of the future of work is skills mismatch. Rapid technological change means that initial education alone is no longer sufficient for a lifetime career. Workers will increasingly need opportunities for retraining and skill upgrading. However, access to lifelong learning remains uneven. Higher-skilled workers are more likely to receive employerfunded training, while lower-paid and insecure workers face barriers of time, cost, and information. Without intervention, skill-biased technological change risks reinforcing existing inequalities. Public policy has a crucial role to play in supporting reskilling, particularly for workers displaced by automation or industrial transition. This includes not only technical skills but also transferable skills such as problemsolving, communication, and adaptability. Importantly, education systems must also recognise the value of care, social, and emotional skills, which are increasingly central to many growing occupations. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Perhaps the most important question about the future of work is institutional rather than technological. Labour markets do not operate in a vacuum; they are shaped by laws, norms, and power relationships. Minimum wages, collective bargaining, social insurance, and employment protections determine how the gains from productivity growth are distributed. In recent decades, many countries have experienced a weakening of labour institutions alongside rising inequality and job insecurity. The future of work presents an opportunity to rethink the social contract. Proposals such as portable benefits, stronger rights for non-standard workers, reduced working time, and universal basic services reflect attempts to adapt institutions to new labour market realities. Importantly, the future of work is not predetermined. Different policy choices can lead to very different outcomes. A high-inequality, high-precarity future is as plausible as one characterised by inclusive growth, shared prosperity, and greater work-life balance. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? The future of work is not simply about robots replacing humans or offices disappearing. It is about how societies choose to organise production, distribute risk, and value different forms of labour. Technology will undoubtedly continue to reshape tasks and occupations, but institutions will determine whether these changes improve living standards or deepen inequality. A sustainable future of work requires investment in skills, recognition of care, adaptation of labour protections, and a rebalancing of power between workers and employers. Ultimately, the question is not whether work will change, but whether it will change in ways that enhance human well-being. The answer depends on choices being made now. Our challenge then is one of transition management – reallocation, reskilling and mobility – rather than one where we need to confront a collapse in employment. For the UK, and other comparable advanced economies, the future of work will be shaped less by the technical feasibility of automation than by how societies manage task reallocation, invest in care and skills and regulate emerging forms of work. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 9 Professor Hilary Ingham is Head of the Department of Economics. Her research spans a wide range of applied economics/econometrics, including flexible labour markets in Europe and labour market transitions. h.ingham@lancaster.ac.uk
10 | Introducing better hiring today for tomorrow’s workforce If we make hiring faster, fairer and safer, then we can help make life better for workers, employers and the government. Keith Rosser, Chair of the Better Hiring Institute, sets out his hopes for the future of recruitment, having been involved with Parliament’s UK Hiring Taskforce, and having worked alongside experts from Lancaster University Management School.
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How long did it take you to start your last job? Did recruitment feel like a fast, smooth process? Or was it a chore that seemed to drag on for longer than necessary? When you started the job, did you find it was not for you? Hiring can be a drawn-out process. It takes on average anything from 30 days to 90 days, depending on the industry, to fill a vacancy, and there are no guarantees you end up with the right person in the right role at the end of it – meaning it is back to square one for both employers and potential recruits. There must be a better way, and we are working hard to put the UK at the forefront of hiring. A STAGNANT SYSTEM The Better Hiring Institute (BHI) was started between government and industry just after the Covid lockdown, when it was recognised that we needed to quickly sort out hiring to keep the UK working during the pandemic. Before then, recruitment was not really changing. There was a complex cottage industry approach to the problem, with excellent human resources (HR), hiring and talent acquisition (TA) leaders in their own organisations who talked about the issues with hiring, but could only influence the way things happened in their own company. There was no incentive or opportunity for them to do it on a bigger level. In the nicest possible way, everyone was looking after themselves. Even government was not necessarily engaged or joined up, so there was no ability to implement policy change that could make a difference. The BHI has worked with 15,000 employers to bring HR, hiring and TA leaders together to take a strategic national view, along with civil servants, government and academics on policy change. Before the pandemic, there was not the opportunity to change hiring nationally, and there was not the vehicle to do it either. Now we have both. To begin with, we looked at things like making Right to Work checks digital. Before the pandemic, to get a job you had to go and see an employer with your passport in person. Changing this opened the ability to make hiring completely digital and remote, severing the link between where people live and where they work. The thenDepartment for Business and Trade Minister for Small Business Paul Scully said at the time that by 2030, 25 million people will have been able to get a job remotely and faster than ever before because of the change. But there was more. FASTER, FAIRER, SAFER Since 2022, the BHI has evolved beyond seeking pandemic solutions and developed a broader mission to make UK hiring faster, fairer and safer. We want to make UK hiring the fastest globally, the fairest in the world, and the safest it can be. In May last year, we launched the UK Hiring Taskforce, led by Viscount Camrose and supported by the likes of Peter Cheese, the CEO of the CIPD (the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development), and Parliamentarians. In November, we launched the output of the taskforce, the UK’s first National Hiring Strategy. In that strategy, we outline how we get to faster, fairer, safer. Imagine if we could hire people in 10 days. That means people paying taxes to the treasury much sooner. That is reducing the costs of vacancy rates for employers. It improves productivity, and cuts waiting lists. If we could make hiring fairer, getting the right person in the job first time, we could also attack the massive cost of new starters who leave in their first nine months. The cost of broken hiring is £75bn annually, and we could help reduce the benefits bill by supporting those who want to be in work to get good jobs. The safer element comes in because the increased use of digital tools and technology in hiring is creating other safety problems. We have had misuse and abuse of AI – deepfakes in the hiring process, AI generated false qualifications, fake ID documents, candidates using ChatGPT in online interviews, and even fake job adverts. To address this technology element of the National Hiring Strategy, we launched the Association of RecTech 12 |
`Providers (ARTP) in the Churchill Room in Parliament in September. Employers were telling us they were unsure what sort of recruitment technology they should be implementing, that they were being contacted by numerous companies, many of which are startups, and employers were overloaded. The Association brings the industry together for the first time to create standards. Employers then know they are working with a firm that is compliant, and that follows best practice. The National Hiring Strategy is also about influencing government. What policy changes do we need around Right to Work or referencing? How do we create the best use of technology to enable the faster, fairer and safer elements? This faster, but ethically fairer element is something we have worked on with Dr Huw Fearnall-Williams from Lancaster University Management School – one of several projects I have been a part of with the School. Bringing academia, industry and policymakers together in such a way (as we did successfully on the AI in Hiring report, and as we do through our Modernising Employment All Party Parliamentary Group) is essential for us to succeed in making all of these positive changes. There is a key intersectionality here where we can work and act, rather than talk theory and hypothesise. We can see what we have done practically, and where the effects have been. There have been impacts already through the AI report – which has influenced Lord Holmes’ AI Regulations Private Member’s Bill – and there will continue to be more. Experts like Huw give the Better Hiring Institute credibility. He is an academic who brings rigour to the process, and confidence from the people we work with that our outputs are properly developed and researched. They are not opinion. More than 10,000 employers have downloaded our collaborative AI in Hiring guide, which shows the direct impact of policy on practice. WHO BENEFITS? For work seekers, these changes and the future development are about democratising hiring, so it is much easier for them to apply. We can level the playing field by using tools like AI to enhance applications, and we can speed up the process of people getting a job. The idea of a career for life, or even a job for five years, may not be true in the future, so the ability to move quickly and flexibly is going to be important. For employers, it is about helping them find the right person – and quickly – to improve productivity. Addressing the cost of holding vacancies is huge. For employers that do this well, there is a real brand reputational benefit for them too. Then you have government. Here, you have more money into the Treasury, a boost in productivity, a reduction in the welfare bill, and a resultant reduction in our debt ratings. A good hiring system might encourage more jobs to be located here in the UK. Britain is not very attractive right now as a place to build a new factory or to base a new company. We need to act so organisations want to invest in the UK. Knowing they can get good staff quickly is a means to that end. BEST FOOT FOWARD Our role now is to be proactive and build expertise on all aspects of hiring and related policy. When we see issues emerging that we know will be a challenge for industry, we look to get ahead in those areas. We need to visualise a future hiring system that has a trusted, easy, fast way to apply with AI and other technology; a way for employers to deal with recruitment fairly and quickly; and then a way to onboard people via their digital wallet, their national ID card, their digital passport, or other digital credentials. We can do this. We have already made great progress, and the UK can be global leaders in hiring once again like we were at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 13 Keith Rosser Keith Rosser is Chair of the Better Hiring Institute, and Director of Reed Screening. He is also an Honorary Teaching Fellow at Lancaster University Management School. The Better Hiring Institute (BHI) is a not-for-profit social enterprise driving the development of a modern, agile UK labour market, accelerating economic recovery. Working closely with all the major UK industries, the BHI is driving standardisation, best practice, and digital innovation to reduce hiring times, enable portability, and improve safeguarding.
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FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 15 The Ethics of AI-Enabled Hiring If Artificial Intelligence alone is allowed to shape the future of hiring, then there may be trouble ahead. Drs Huw Fearnall-Williams and Emrah Ali Karakilic explain why treating AI as either a human colleague or objective machine can cause issues, and how proper oversight of processes is needed to avoid mistakes and bias creeping in.
AI is rapidly reshaping all stages of the recruitment and selection process. The hope is that AI technologies (machine learning models and algorithms) are appropriately and ethically enrolled and configured within organisations to improve the hiring process for recruiters, employers, and candidates. However, problems can stem from how these technologies are paradoxically viewed as both cold rational-objective machines and anthropomorphised bots with humanlike capabilities and ‘personalities’. In anthropomorphising AI technologies, we enter a trap, a fallacy that views the machine as being capable of performing the same role as the human recruiter when it is performing an altogether different function. AI technologies are not a ‘like-for-like’ replacement, but are searching for statistical patterns in the data, while a human recruiter is encultured, socialised and embedded in the world. While relying on machines to perform human social functions is problematic, treating AI technologies as unbiased and objective also requires serious scrutiny. ELIMINATING BIAS OR SUPPLANTING IT? While there are claims that these technologies can ‘debias’ hiring processes, they can also exhibit ‘algorithmic emergent biases.’ These are troublesome, unexpected, and difficult to spot features of how the machine ‘learns’ from the data through probabilistic pattern recognition processes. For instance, machine learning algorithms programmed to objectively rank candidates can amplify preexisting biases. They can ‘learn’ statistical correlations that are dominant in sectors, such as men in STEM, and then actively filter out women applicants having developed a preference for men. Similarly, machine learning models could develop unwanted and unexpected preferences, unbeknownst to the original designers and programmers of the system. For instance, an applicant ranking AI system that is tasked with analysing video/audio recordings of successful candidates who all coincidentally coughed during their interviews, may determine that coughing makes the candidate more suitable for the position and more highly rank those who cough in future! A human interviewer would disregard this seeing it as irrelevant to the candidate’s performance, as it is a natural part of human-to-human interaction. OVERSIGHT REQUIRED Given these potential problems and their impact on job applicants’ careers and lives, AI recruitment should not be treated as a plug-and-play technology: it requires systematic ethical and operational oversight by organisations. Three normative ethical dimensions are regularly invoked as particularly important: fairness, accountability, and transparency. Fairness means ensuring that AI systems operate equitably, avoiding biases and discrimination. Because these systems learn from historical data, they can inherit and even amplify patterns linked to gender, ethnicity, education, or social background, and discover biases that we are not even aware of. 16 |
Organisations therefore need to actively test and monitor their tools across different groups, rather than assuming neutrality. Fairness is not something that can be “built in” once. It requires ongoing ‘red teaming,’ to borrow the approach from cybersecurity, which means rigorously checking, adversarial probing, and questioning the system as it iteratively develops by machine learning and interacts with new candidates in new ways as a recursive feature of how the algorithm develops. Accountability means establishing clear human responsibility for AI systems’ design, implementation, and outcomes; that is, keeping human judgement at the centre throughout the hiring process. It is people within an organisation who choose a specific system, define its goals, and decide how its outputs are used. Decisions, therefore, should not be justified by a simple “the algorithm says NO!”. Recruiters and employers should develop their ‘critical AI literacy’ to allow them to diligently review decisions, intervene where needed, and take ownership of processes and outcomes. Transparency, finally, means designing AI systems to try to make them interpretable and understandable for both employers and candidates, providing clear information on their functionality and decision-making processes. In practice, organisations should give candidates jargon-free explanations of how the system evaluates applicant performance, including what kinds of criteria it uses to assess their responses. Furthermore, they should also ensure there is a clear route for candidates to ask questions or challenge an outcome if something seems wrong. FROM WISHES TO REALITY While these principles of fairness, accountability, and transparency are a useful starting point, we also need to question the degrees to which they can be both meaningfully understood and realistically enacted in organisations, otherwise they risk becoming lofty aspirations – a nice wish list. To deal with the future ethical and practical challenges of AI in recruitment, we need to move towards a ‘disclosive ethics’ approach that is attentive to the concrete and entanglement of human-machine interactions. This is to examine the ways in which the social processes of hiring are reorganised and reconfigured around these emerging and constantly shifting AI technologies. In seeking to reconfigure the social and ethical around the technological, the potential dangers are not only anthropomorphising machines, but that we run the risk of mechanomorphising ourselves and our social practices. AI has already disrupted hiring, with the FT claiming that ‘recruitment is broken’, changing how job seekers find and apply for jobs, and how organisations source, shortlist, and assess applicants. Given this transformation, we are still playing catchup in terms of dealing with both its practical and ethical implications. Computer systems, even those that are labelled as artificial intelligence, are not infallible. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 17 Dr Emrah Ali Karakilic is a Lecturer in the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology. Dr Fearnall-Williams contributed to the Better Hiring Institute’s Artificial Intelligence in Hiring report, published in 2025. The guidance is the result of a collaboration with Reed Screening, Arctic Shores, Lancaster University, Tesco, and the TUC. huw.fearnallwilliams@lancaster.ac.uk; e.a.karakilic@lancaster.ac.uk Dr Huw Fearnall-Williams is a Lecturer in the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology.
18 | HAVE WE FORGOTTEN HOW TO NEGOTIATE?
FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 19 Employment rights are at a pivotal point in the UK. The Work Foundation’s Alice Martin looks at what we might see change in the years ahead, and why employers and employees need to have more direct communication and negotiation, rather than relying on the government to make all the decisions.
These are interesting times for employers in the UK. Many feel – rightly or wrongly – that an increasing share of responsibility is being placed at their door. Rising National Insurance contributions, higher energy costs and sustained interest rates have all taken their toll. Labour shortages continue to rumble on in the wake of Brexit and the pandemic, particularly in sectors like construction and care. At the same time, employers are being asked to adapt to a changing regulatory landscape that reflects a growing recognition that the UK labour market is not working as well as it should. The Employment Rights Act received Royal Assent in December, introducing a suite of new protections for workers. It marks an important milestone in the evolution of the UK labour market and the social contract of work that our generation has inherited. But it is not radical. Nor is it particularly groundbreaking. For someone who has spent over a decade researching employment rights, these reforms look more like a modest correction: lawmakers trying to catch up with a world of work that has become increasingly fragmented and insecure. A world shaped by outsourcing, digitisation and business models that have enjoyed flexibility, often at the expense of worker security. What interests me most is not just what is changing, but how change comes about. Debates about the UK labour market tend to follow a familiar script. Government consults. Employers respond. Workers are heard – often separately. Policy then emerges slowly, either through legislation or through voluntary schemes designed to balance competing interests. What is striking is how little room this leaves for employers and workers to negotiate change directly with one another. JUST THE START Alongside the Employment Rights Act, more reforms are coming. The UK Government plans to mandate pay gap reporting for ethnicity and disability among large employers. The minimum wage – arguably the UK’s flagship labour market intervention – is steadily rising, with a new remit to ensure wages are sufficient to live on. Reasonable enough. Layered on top of this are a growing array of asks on employers to voluntarily up their game. Employers today are invited to engage in improving population health and upskilling. The Mayfield review’s Keep Britain Working report sets out a group of vanguard employers to lead the way on healthier work. Mayoral Combined Authorities have employment charters, asking employers to sign up to commitments on pay, progression and job quality. The Disability Confident scheme encourages employers to self-assess inclusive practice (with limited results). Living Wage accreditation invites firms to go beyond the statutory wage floor – a gap now narrowing as the Low Pay Commission’s remit expands. There are many more examples. WHO GOES FIRST? It is often the same employers stepping forward: large organisations with capacity, strong HR functions, and a commercial incentive to take the high road; and smaller outfits who understand the win-win of being a good employer. What is left behind is the majority. The disinterested, the overstretched, and the small number of egregious employers who are happy to exploit gaps in the system. So, this leads me to ask, do we have the right balance? Are we mandating the right things, and politely asking for the rest? Will this combination of law and voluntary action get us where we need to go? And are these really the only levers we have to improve the labour market? The problem with new laws is not just writing them – it is enforcing them. That means enforcing old laws too, something the UK has a poor track record on, from tribunal backlogs to widespread minimum wage underpayment. 20 |
Good enforcement needs many ingredients. Workers need to know their rights, and they need the means to defend them. Employers need to understand their duties and have the capacity to comply. In reality, the world is much messier. Many workers do not know what they are entitled to or lack the time and power to challenge bad practice, and many employers take advantage – an arguably rational response. A MISSING ELEMENT Which brings me to the forgotten art of negotiating. One major missing lever in shaping UK working lives is negotiation itself. By this, I mean employers and workforces – at company or sector level – making proposals to one another and negotiating change. On wages. On working time. On parental leave. On flexibility. On the organisation of work. Negotiation has a simple but powerful advantage: it forces both sides to engage with each other’s constraints and priorities. Contrast that with the current model, where government “listens” to employers and workers separately and then attempts to design laws and schemes that placate both. It rarely satisfies either. None of this is an argument against minimum standards. The Employment Rights Act is an overdue example of why they are important. Nor is it an argument against encouraging best practice. But we have allowed negotiation – a core mechanism for shaping labour markets as old as work itself – to wither. Reviving it would allow government to step back from micromanaging employment relationships, and refocus on its core responsibilities: public services, housing, and enforcement. It would allow employers and workers to shape outcomes that work in practice, not just on paper. It would be dynamic, rather than limited to punctuation points that occur once the balance has tipped too far one way. This is intentionally a simplified framing, but the mechanisms matter. WHAT WE NEED So, how do we negotiate today, when only one in five workers is in a trade union? Two things are needed. Employers must be better organised and prepared to come to the table – often at sector level. And workers need a collective voice. Growing union membership is the longterm, bottom-up route. The repeal of anti-union legislation will aid this, but it is slow going. There is, however, a shortcut that has made its way tentatively onto the political agenda in recent years: sectoral collective bargaining. The government’s plans to set up Social Care Negotiating Bodies and Fair Pay Agreements by 2027 point in this direction, supporting workforces with low union density and high levels of insecurity to have a say over pay and conditions. As ever, the details are key. The bodies and their powers are still being designed. The real test will be whether workers genuinely get to shape outcomes alongside their employers, or whether the state hovers like an anxious parent, reluctant to let go. We need to get better at this. Otherwise, I fear we will be here again in a decade, tinkering with employment law whilst major technological, environmental, and societal changes race ahead. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 21 Alice Martin is Head of Research at the Work Foundation at Lancaster University. alice.martin@lancaster.ac.uk
Employment rights and increasing job security Change is coming to UK workplaces. Rebecca Florisson from the Work Foundation, outlines how the Employment Rights Act has the potential to create a more secure and inclusive working world for those who need it most. 22 |
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The UK labour market is at a pivotal moment. While employment has remained relatively resilient, insecurity has become a defining feature of modern work. In 2023, one in five workers – 6.8 million people – experienced severely insecure work, driven by unpredictable hours, unstable pay, and limited protections. The Government pledged to bring the world of work into the 21st century, and the new Employment Rights Act could mark a turning point. Our Work Foundation report, Increasing Job Security, examines the likely impact of two key reforms: day one unfair dismissal rights and stronger regulation of zero-hour contracts. Using 2023 Labour Force Survey data and the UK Insecure Work Index, we have estimated how these policy changes could have reduced levels of insecure work. SHAPED BY INSECURITY One in five workers (21.4%) were in severely insecure work in 2023. This reflects a combination of risk factors: short or temporary contracts; variable or zero hours; low pay; limited employment protections; and little predictability over earnings. The impact stretches beyond their working lives and influences whether they can plan financially, secure housing, and even plan childcare. The new Employment Rights Act seeks to address some of these structural drivers but some of the detail is still to be determined through public consultation and secondary legislation. A CHANGE OF POLICY In late 2025, the Government made a significant shift to a headline policy. Ministers had promised to introduce ‘day one’ protection from unfair dismissal, replacing the current twoyear qualifying period. Following challenges in the House of Lords and by businesses, the Government decided to retain a qualifying period for unfair dismissal, but dramatically reduced it from the current two years to six months. Work Foundation at Lancaster University research indicates that had this new right been implemented in 2023, the number of people in severely insecure work would have fallen by 1.2 million and up to 3.9 million workers would have had more secure jobs. Furthermore, it would have disproportionately benefited women, young workers, workers from ethnic minority backgrounds and disabled workers, who are currently more likely to experience the most precarious forms of employment. This shorter qualifying period will be implemented from early 2027. This will 24 |
mean workers whose employment commences from 1 July 2026 will be covered by the reforms. Both workers and businesses have a clearer picture. REGULATING ZERO-HOUR CONTRACTS The Bill also proposes a new right for zero-hour contract workers to receive a contract reflecting the hours they regularly work, based on a reference period likely to be around 12 weeks. Here too, the detail matters. Extending the reference period – for example to six months – would reduce the number of people who benefit. In sectors where zero-hour contracts are common, such as retail and social care, these choices could have consequences for the future job security of hundreds of thousands of workers. A POTENTIAL STEP-CHANGE Taken together, our analysis suggests that had reducing unfair dismissal to a six-month period and implementing a 12-week guaranteed hours reference period been in place in 2023, the impact would have been substantial. The number of workers in severely insecure work would have fallen by 1.2 million, from 6.8 million (21.4%) to 5.6 million (17.7%), a 3.7 percentage point reduction. Most strikingly, the proportion of workers in secure jobs would have risen from 44.1% (13.9 million) to 56.7% (17.8 million). In total, 3.85 million more workers could have accessed secure employment under this strengthened framework. KEY REFORMS Insecurity tends to be concentrated among specific worker groups and sectors. Previous Work Foundation research has shown that young workers, women, disabled workers and Black and Asian workers are disproportionately exposed to insecure employment. Certain sectors, particularly retail and social care, also experience high levels of severe insecurity. Our research suggests that the groups most likely to experience insecure work also stand to benefit the most from the new rules. For instance, sectoral impacts could be substantial. In retail, the severe insecurity rate would have dropped by 6.4 percentage points – from 45.3% to 38.9%. Around 160,000 retail workers would have moved into low or moderate insecurity, while a further 150,000 would have entered secure employment. In social care, severely insecure work would have fallen by 11.5 percentage points, from 32% to 20.5%. The proportion of workers in secure roles would have risen by 11 percentage points, from 30.8% to 41.8%. Improving security of work in these foundational sectors could provide important social and economic benefits. NAVIGATING CRITICAL POLICY CHOICES The Employment Rights Act is an important opportunity to reset the power dynamic between workers and employers and increase job security for millions of low-paid and precarious workers. However, our analysis highlights that there are still important decisions to be made on secondary legislation which will ultimately impact how reforms are implemented in practice. The UK Government must be proactive during the rollout of the Act over the next two years to close policy loopholes and mitigate the risk of displacement towards other forms of insecure work. Our research indicates that policy design matters, and it is vital to provide clarity and support for employers as the new rules are implemented. If done well, the Employment Rights Act could mark a decisive step towards a more secure, inclusive and productive labour market. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 25 Rebecca Florisson is Principal Analyst with the Work Foundation at Lancaster University. The report Increasing Job Security: The Potential Impact of Employment Rights Reforms in the UK was authored by Rebecca Florisson for the Work Foundation. r.florisson@lancaster.ac.uk
A healthy workplace is essential to worker well-being – and the future will provide new challenges for making that possible. Professor Stavroula Leka shows how her work in the UK and internationally is helping to build healthy psychosocial work environments and promote sustainable work. 26 | Sustainable work and healthy psychosocial environments
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The Global Commission on the Future of Work has highlighted that new forces are transforming the world of work by changing who works, when and for how long, and how work is organised and managed. These are driven by globalisation and population shifts; digitalisation, automation, robotisation and AI; climate change; and conflicts and security threats. Within this complex global context, forecasts on the future of work unequivocally recognise the psychosocial work environment as the number-one priority. The psychosocial work environment refers to work organisation, design and management and the social context at work and includes ten key dimensions: organisational culture and function; job content; workload and work pace; work schedule; control/autonomy at work; environment and equipment; interpersonal relationships at work; role in the organisation; career development; and the home-work interface. These are associated with the health and well-being of workers and sustainable work. Well-being refers not only to physical but also mental and social health. Sustainable work means achieving living and working conditions that support people in engaging in and remaining in work throughout an extended working life. Sustainable work and well-being in the future cannot be achieved unless risks associated with new forms of employment, and the psychosocial work environment (or work-related psychosocial risks) are proactively addressed. Examples of psychosocial risks include: • a poor psychosocial safety climate (PSC, i.e., the extent to which an organisation prioritises mental health and psychosocial risks at work, and consults with workers to address them) • excessively demanding work and/or not enough time to complete tasks • conflicting demands and a lack of clarity over the worker’s role, or a mismatch between the demands of the job and the worker’s competencies • a lack of involvement in making decisions that affect the worker and a lack of influence over the way the job is done • working alone, especially when dealing with members of the public and clients, and/or being subjected to violence from a third party • a lack of support from management and colleagues, and poor interpersonal relationships • psychological or sexual harassment and bullying in the workplace – the victimising, humiliating, undermining or threatening behaviour of supervisors or colleagues • an unjust distribution of work, rewards, promotions or career opportunities • ineffective communication, poorly managed organisational change and job insecurity • difficulties in combining commitments at work and at home. PSYCHOSOCIAL RISKS IN THE FUTURE OF WORK Future of work studies indicate these risks will increase and have the potential to lead to adverse outcomes. For example, since the Covid-19 pandemic there has been an acceleration of remote and virtual work. With the ability to work from anywhere, and many workers doing so from home, the boundaries between work and private life become blurred. As a result, workers may work longer hours and have difficulty disengaging from work, feeling physically and emotionally exhausted, especially where there is lack of appropriate support. Many workers may exhibit online addiction (wanting to always be “on”). Additionally, remote virtual work from home may result in lack of social 28 |
interaction and social support and increase feelings of isolation and loneliness. The introduction of faster data processing, algorithmic management and audible command technologies means that the pace of work will become faster, and workers might have less control and autonomy. As a result, work-related stress is expected to increase. The use of performanceenhancing drugs, that can lead to addiction, has been observed in organisational cultures of longer working hours and/or strict, often algorithmic, performance monitoring. Cyberbullying has also been increasing in virtual work and is associated with a rise in mental ill health problems, such as anxiety and depression. Sedentary work is common in virtual work and can lead to obesity, heart disease, diabetes and musculoskeletal problems and further mental health challenges. As the use of new smart equipment and devices such as virtual reality (VR) headsets increases, this can present challenges in terms of eye strain, repetitive strain injury, increased cognitive load and decreased situational awareness. Cybersickness, which refers to physiological symptoms such as nausea and dizziness experienced as result of exposure to a virtual environment, is expected to become more prevalent with the increased use of VR headsets. In the case of interacting with robots through VR interfaces and avatars, more cognitive load and technostress are possible, especially if the robot controls the pace of work and outpaces the worker. Numerous health effects on workers have also been linked to climate change, including injuries, cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory conditions and effects on their mental health. There are both direct and indirect effects on mental health: mental distress, anxiety, mood disorders, stress, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, domestic violence and depression after acute events. Additionally, increased conflicts and security threats have meant an increased burden of mental disorders in conflict-affected populations. Specific occupations where workers are exposed to insecure conditions and trauma carry a significant burden. These include first responders, recovery workers and humanitarian workers who are affected by PTSD, depression, high job strain, work overload and negative health outcomes. ADDRESSING PRIORITIES The Centre for Organisational Health and Well-being and the Work Foundation at Lancaster University are leading a research programme on the psychosocial work environment and sustainable work that feeds directly into national and international policies and practices in these areas. At national level, we have published two reports. The first was launched in 2024. It outlined how jobs can be made healthier to tackle economic inactivity on the basis of findings from various strands of research: analysis of the Understanding Society survey between 2017/18 and 2021/22, and tracking the employment and health journeys of 9,169 people; a survey of 1,167 UK based employers; a roundtable with employers in the north-west and semistructured interviews with employers and experts. The second was launched in 2025 and supplemented our previous findings presenting worker views on health and employment, based on a representative UK-wide survey of 3,796 working people. We have engaged with various stakeholders in the last two years to ensure impact. These included roundtables in Lancaster, Liverpool and London, as well as the launch of our Work and Health Forum and Work and Health Summit. The inaugural summit in Westminster aimed to position Lancaster as a leader in work and health research at a pivotal time in the UK Government’s Get Britain Working policy agenda. More than 120 leaders attended the summit, which featured discussions on young people’s health and mental health in the workplace. We are currently conducting a new employer survey, with future forums and summits planned. Later in 2026, we are also launching a three-year £1.8 million research programme, funded by the National Institute for Health Research, to promote sustainable work through healthy psychosocial work environments. At international level, I am supporting policymaking through work with the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the European Commission and trade unions. As part of this, I have led the development of the first international standard on psychosocial risks at work. My work is currently being used by a working group of governments, employers and trade unions examining the possible development of new EU legislation in this area, and I am advising the ILO on their 2026 World Day for Safety and Health at Work report that will be dedicated to healthy psychosocial work environments. Sustainable work and healthy psychosocial work environments are key priorities in the future of work. Our research and impact work position us as leaders in these areas nationally and internationally. As we embark on new research and engagement initiatives, we look forward to collaborating with colleagues across the University, as well as partner organisations across the nation. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 29 Stavroula Leka is Professor of Organisations, Work and Health and Director of the Centre for Organisational Health and Well-being at Lancaster University. She is also Professor Emerita of Work and Health Policy at the University of Nottingham and the President of the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology. stavroula.leka@lancaster.ac.uk
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