5Closing the Gap: Workplace Innovation and Post-Covid Recovery

Substantial evidence shows that workplace practices which empower employees to make day-to-day-decisions, contribute ideas for innovation and improvement and be heard at senior level lead to superior performance as well as enhanced workforce health and engagement. Yet successive surveys indicate that most European businesses are either unaware of this evidence, or unable or unwilling to act on it. This gap between evidence and practice has significant implications for Europe’s competitiveness and workforce wellbeing

Teaching Land Use Planning case studies through Gaming: an example of the Trent simulation approach

This article shows how a series of carefully chosen and detailed case studies can be used to demonstrate how general principles drawn from political theory operate in the 'real world' of land-use planning. The case study considered here is one of several that were supported by OECD and UNESCO to facilitate cross-cultural learning from experiences in different socio-political environments. These case studies were later documented in: Wynn, M. (1985) Planning Games, E&FN Spon Republished in the Routledge Revivals series 2017 (http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/4577/)

Job design and employee engagement

Engage for Success White Paper no. 2014-0

The Corporate Response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution

From a critical perspective, Industry 4.0 risks being no more than the latest in the long line of technological predictions based on exaggerated claims. It risks drawing corporate decision-makers into patterns of investment that ultimately fail, because they ignore the importance of synergy between the design and implementation of technologies on the one hand, and human and organisational factors on the other. There is a need to articulate the choices and alternative narrative surrounding Industry 4.0.The technological advances represented by Industry 4.0 potentially offer real economic and also social benefits. At the same time, realising this potential, and avoiding the mistakes of the past, means recognising the importance of a new and more inclusive paradigm of innovation. The challenge is that of reconciling the ordered, rational organisation of work offered by emergent technologies with the creative, dialogical, serendipitous and even chaotic human interactions that can stimulate innovation

Closing the Gap: The Fifth Element and Workplace Innovation

Growing evidence shows that workplace innovation practices which empower employees tomake day-to-day-decisions, challenge established practices, contribute ideas, and be heardat the most senior levels, lead to better business results, as well as enhanced workforcehealth and engagement. Most businesses are either unaware of this evidence, or are unableor unwilling to act on it. Surveys demonstrate a gap between “what works” and commonworkplace practice.We lack an easily communicable way of sharing actionable knowledge, generated by diversebodies of research and experience, with enterprise-level decision-makers, publicpolicymakers and other actors. We need a “joint intelligence” shared by all stakeholders inthe workplace, and at the wider economic and social level. This task has been taken up byUK WON and its partners in the European Workplace Innovation Network (EUWIN).The literature emphasises the importance of internally consistent policies and practices inachieving superior outcomes for organisations and their employees, greater than the sumof individual measures. The Fifth Element captures this essential quality, providing aframework for the creation of sense-making narratives that build bridges betweenresearchers and practitioners