Public policy engagement at the CIPD involves both engaging with ministers and other policy makers and engaging our members to ensure that we draw on the knowledge and expertise within our 135,000-strong membership to inform our views to government. This two-way engagement can help influence policy making and day-to-day people management practice, for example by ensuring members are aware of changes to legislation or new practitioner guidance developed in response to our public policy work.
We engage with government and policy-makers in a variety of ways. We regularly attend private meetings with Secretaries of State, Ministers and Shadow Cabinet members, as well as key stakeholders in Whitehall and other business organisations. We also produce a large number of reports each year that provide insight into the wide spectrum of issues that affect the workplace. Finally, we respond to a wide range of consultations, ensuring that the CIPD voice is heard in matters of policy that will affect our members and the wider business community.
We involve our members in the development of our policy responses where possible, using our branch network to engage with our members throughout the UK. We value our members’ contributions to our consultation responses, where information and opinions from those ‘on the ground’ adds real value to the work we do to engage government and policy-makers. We also regularly hold focus groups with our members on various issues, and find that their knowledge, experience and commitment helps us to build strong cases with which to engage government and other stakeholders.
The CIPD is the leading independent voice on workplace performance and skills. We draw on our extensive research and the expertise and experience of our members on the front-line to highlight and promote new and best practice and produce practical guidance for the benefit of employers, employees and policy makers.
On a macro-economic scale, our expertise and the data we gather from our membership gives us an unrivalled capacity to accurately forecast labour market trends and to consider the impact of employment legislation across all sectors and sizes of organisation.
Making an impact: our recent engagement
Our Head of Public Policy, Ben Willmott, works with the Government's Employee Engagement Task Force. He also influenced the Government's recent sickness absence review and met with Welfare Minister Lord Freud on the impact of changes to the welfare system on our members.
Our Labour Market Adviser, Gerwyn Davies, works closely with the Migration Advisory Committee to ensure the viewpoints of our members are considered in their recommendations for changing migration policy. Gerwyn's work contributed to the MAC's recent recommendation (accepted by the Government) to maintain the number of Tier 2 visas for the coming year.
Our Skills Adviser, Katerina Rudiger, leads the CIPD's 'Learning to Work' campaign and has produced employer guidance on offering high-quality apprenticeships and work experience placements. The latter was recently launched by Employment Minister Chris Grayling as part of the Government's drive to promote work experience as a valuable route into the workplace. Katerina has also given evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee on youth unemployment and the Government's Youth Contract, and has worked with Skills Minister John Hayes to promote high-quality apprenticeships as a means of tackling youth unemployment.
Our Employment Relations Adviser, Mike Emmott sits on the Government’s Flexible Working Taskforce and has also sat on the specialist forum of the MacLeod Review into employee engagement. He has been an influential witness to the new Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill Committee and has also advised the Treasury Select Committee on corporate governance issues.
Our Performance and Reward Adviser, Charles Cotton, has advised the Treasury Select Committee on banking remuneration and corporate governance issues. He has also given evidence to the Superannuation Bill Committee on civil service redundancy pay and the Committee on Standards in Public Life on MPs’ expenses.
Our Diversity Adviser, Dianah Worman OBE, has worked with the Government Equalities Office and the EHRC on voluntary and gender pay reporting. She has also worked extensively on the issue of older workers, producing practical guidance to help employers make the most of older talent in the wake of the removal of the Default Retirement Age.
What are our successes?
The CIPD Public Policy team have had several meetings at Number Ten on issues including the labour market, pensions and employee engagement.
The Rt Hon Chris Grayling, Minister for Employment, launched our updated guidance on high-quality work experience placements at the launch of the Government's Youth Contract . He has also pitched to a senior CIPD member audience, on the business benefits of working with welfare-to-work providers.
John Hayes, Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, recently addressed a senior CIPD member audience at a roundtable discussion on the business benefits of high-quality apprenticeships. He has separately endorsed our employer guidance on apprenticeships and is an advocate of our Learning to Work campaign.
Norman Lamb, Employment Relations, Consumer and Postal Affairs Minister, gave the keynote speech at our annual Employment Law Conference 2012, where he spoke of the value that HR brings to business performance.
Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone, took part in a Public Policy podcast on equality in the workplace.
Our Internships that work: a guide for employers has been used as the basis for the Government’s Common Best Practice Code for high-quality internships launched in July 2011.
Thanks in large part to the work of CIPD, the Government started to phase out the Default Retirement Age in May 2011 which was removed completely in October 2011.
We worked closely with David MacLeod and Nita Clarke on establishing the evidence base for the MacLeod review into employee engagement.