IFOW June 2024 Newsletter

This is a shortened version of our full monthly newsletter giving a full roundup of the most important news around the Future of Work. For the full version, please subscribe on our website. Find the complete version here.

The first inkling we had of the July election was during a meeting of the Pissarides Review research team. Auspicious perhaps, as we were discussing the implications of fantastic new research on technological transformation and job quality - something we found to be directly related to electoral outcomes, both in the?2019 election?and before that the?2016 EU Referendum.?This highlights the importance of putting Good Work at the heart of any future-focused policy agenda, as we have outlined in?this election-focused blog piece.?We will be publishing more on this as we respond to party manifestos.

Already, we have seen all parties keen to trumpet the power of technology to improve growth and productivity. New analyses from our Disruption Index -?published?today as an Interactive Report, with an associated?web-based Dashboard?– cut through the political promises to the real challenges of removing innovation bottlenecks and renewing our innovation ecosystem, as well as revealing?new opportunities for how people’s prospects for work and wellbeing across the country could be turned around.

As we outline in our Deep Dive below, this work surfaces an urgent need for an industrial strategy that places creating good work through building up regional innovation ecosystems at its heart.?

An important month then as we look to the future direction of the country, and of policies around the future of work – this central thread that runs through our lives, our communities and our economy. We hope that you enjoy the reads and events we have curated and the election asks in our ‘deep dive’ below. We especially hope you enjoy reading the?blog post reflecting on the Seoul AI Safety summit?by Mia Leslie who we welcome from the Public Law Project to IFOW as our Researcher on workplace AI impacts.

Anna, Abby and the IFOW team?

Deep Dive - Election asks for a future-focused policy of Good Work

We have written to the leaders of all of the main parties outlining why we think that?good work needs to be a cross-cutting policy objective, especially at this critical inflection point in this fast-moving industrial revolution. We have produced a more comprehensive piece on this?in a post here?but, focusing on the future of good work, this ties together:

• robust measures to protect individual workers’ job quality, job security and wellbeing?through this technological transformation, and a focus on human capabilities,
• governance and regulation to promote responsible AI, giving firms clarity and confidence when developing and adopting new technologies, as well as research-led bases for managing ‘good’ automation,
• policies aimed at thriving, regional innovation ecosystems?shaping technological transformation to meet local challenges and augment local strengths.

Towards this, we have distilled our message to the leaders of all parties for this election to these five key asks:

1. Embed?Good Work as a cross-cutting policy objective, served by a new Growth and Future of Work Unit that guides the remit and targets of the Wealth Fund and British Business Bank. This also includes mandating impact assessments on Good Work for all new legislation passing through Parliament.
2. Devolve?power and funding to Combined Authorities?to empower them to develop and implement 10-year Growth and Future of Work Strategies. It is vital that a proper regional innovation ecosystem is created that spreads the benefits of technological transformation beyond the ‘golden triangle’.
3. Create a network of National Research and Innovation Laboratories?to support this, focused on building regional, firm and human capabilities, human-machine interaction and knowledge sharing.
4. Introduce a Responsible Innovation and AI Act?to create a world-leading, principles-based framework for regulation, with a dedicated chapter on LLMs.
5. An Employment Bill to match this?that extends to new rights and responsibilities to information, consultation and the monitoring of ‘good work’ impacts through technological transformation to underpin and future-proof protection updated for the new world of work.

With the rapid changes we are seeing as AI and automation technologies transform labour markets and people’s experience of work, it is vital that a new government takes a bold and research-led approach to restoring growth and sharing the benefits of it most widely. Whatever the outcome on the 5th July, we are ready to offer our expertise.

Disruption Index Interactive Report: Renewing the UK's Innovation Ecosystem

Our latest report from the Pissarides Review into the Future of Work and Wellbeing?- funded by the Nuffield Foundation - gets to the heart of the urgent need to renew our regional innovation ecosystem. Aggregating data from across a huge number of dimensions, the DI surfaces the bottlenecks in R&D, skills and funding - and proposes Regional Innovation Centres to 'level up' technological transformation across the country. This is being launched in parallel with a web-based Dashboard where policymakers and businesses can explore regional data across the many dimensions of the Disruption Index.

Reflections on the Seoul AI Summit: A Prelude to Paris

We are very excited that Mia Leslie has just joined us from the Public Law Project and will be leading on AI’s impacts on work. She attended a day-long briefing in London on the AI Summit in Seoul, and has?written an excellent blog piece summarising where things have come since the Bletchley Summit last November, and what we are doing to build for the next key event in Paris in February.?

Events

Sustaining Quality Work in Age of AI: What Do the UK Creative Industries Need from a New Government??(19 June, 4:00 – 5:30 PM, Somerset House)

As the election campaign hots up, join us on the 19th of June at?Somerset House – ‘the home of cultural innovators’ – for a focused discussion on what should be done to safeguard creative industries, and what we can learn about sustaining job quality in an age of AI.?Co-hosted by IFOW and UK Music in the South Wing Screening Room at Somerset House, this will be a chance for leading figures from the creative sector to deliver key election asks around sustaining job quality in an age of AI, and for politicians with responsibilities for creative industries to listen and respond. This will be a chance for leading figures from the creative sector to deliver key election asks around sustaining job quality in an age of AI, and for politicians with responsibilities for creative industries to listen and respond.?

Is Britain Working?: The labour market context to the general election?(25th June, 9:30 AM, Queen Anne’s Gate, London)

Hosted by the Resolution Foundation, this election-focused event will explore changes in the UK's labour market since 2010 and how the upcoming general election will shape its future.

Register to attend for free?here.??

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