From its origins as an unplanned and haphazard entity, the education and training (ET) system in England has become one of the core policy areas of any government. The role of employers within this, and in particular in relation to full-time 14-19 ET, has proved problematic. This research moves beyond the more usual factors of history, culture, policy and structures to investigate the relatively rarely discussed relationship between employer identity and behaviour and their influence on policy assumptions and outcomes, and system structures. It involved interviewing a number of employers, and a range of individuals and organisations, all of which to some extent represent ‘the employer voice’, about the employer role in full-time 14-19 ET. Findings include that the multiple identities of individual employers have different, often contradictory and surprising influences on policy, shaping in turn their interaction with system structures in ways that cannot easily be controlled in a voluntarist system. This research proposes practical measures to counter some of these influences. It calls for a greater understanding of how employer identity affects their interractions with the system and for this to be applied to future ET initiatives
