Institute for Employment Studies Sovereign House Church Street Brighton BN1 1UJ UK Telephone: +44 (0)1273 763400 Email: askies@employment-studies.co.uk Website: www.employment-studies.co.uk Copyright © 2011 Institute for Employment Studies IES project code: 99993-2281 Institute for Employment Studies IES is an independent, apolitical, international centre of research and consultancy in HR issues. It works closely with employers in all sectors, government departments, agencies, professional...

It was refreshing to see an article advocating the merits of substituting land value taxes (LVT) for taxes on enterprise. (Perverse tax system needs reform, page 22, 31 May). One wonders whether there is a conspiracy of silence! As an economist I have studied this topic for over 40 years, and have rarely seen much more of a mention of the tax in economics textbooks (even those specialising in fiscal studies), let alone journals. Yet I have yet to find published anywhere valid criticism of the...

Just north of Johannesburg, next to where the city’s high-tech firms are concentrated, land has been cleared for developing "offshore operations". If Johannesburg is to follow Bangalore or Shanghai as a centre of such operations, it is here in the Gauteng province that the revolution will probably begin. Alec Erwin, the South African minister for trade and industry, hopes that his country will become "the back office to the world". South Africa offers a sophisticated business community, a...

When dentists in the Morecambe Bay area of Lancashire want to arrange a hospital visit for patients, they can, increasingly, make an appointment instantly by computer link from their surgeries. No longer do patients have to wait for referral letters to go through the system. The weeks saved – which in some instances could save lives – is just one of numerous improvements made as a result of a national NHS experiment with team-based pay. Morecambe Bay Trust’s 32-strong maxillofacial surgery...

The concept of "knowledge workers" isn't new – for many years, researchers, lawyers and other professional groups have been working in different ways to other employees, demanding more independence and less control. So why the need for more attention now? What's different is the numbers. In some organisations, knowledge workers now constitute the majority of the workforce. In fact, it could be argued that the whole employee proposition needs to shift to take account of the rise of the...