Work, Career and Employability
About the consultancy
Dr Ricky Gee can offer consultancy in the areas of critical employability and career development.
Dr Tom Vickers can offer consultancy in the areas of work and employment, precarious work, and volunteering.
Further input is available from other members of the Work Futures Research Group, enabling us to create bespoke provision and a carefully selected team tailored to your needs.
How the consultancy works
Dr Ricky Gee can support with:
- Curriculum consultancy
- Practice evaluation
- Staff training
Ricky’s consultancy will be particularly relevant for schools, colleges, universities, and career guidance organisations.
Dr Tom Vickers can support with:
- Research design, supervision, evaluation and delivery
- Delivery of qualitative and mixed methods research
- Advising on organisational development
- Brokering networks and alliances.
Tom’s consultancy will be particularly relevant for trade unions, charities, campaign groups, employers, government departments, and local authorities.
The following areas of expertise, as they pertain to work, career and employability, can be drawn on according to your needs:
- Equalities, diversity and inclusion
- Work quality, decent work and good work
- Worker voice and advocacy
- Digitalisation
- Migrant rights and immigration controls
- Career navigation
Vickers has previously completed work with or for the International Community Organisation of Sunderland, Nottinghamshire County Council, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum, the GMB Union, and Hope Projects (West Midlands) Ltd.
I am writing to thank Dr Tom Vickers and his research collaborators for their contributions to our organisational development in relation to precarious work challenges experienced by our members. Following Vickers’ study of our organising campaign at Amazon, which demonstrated the considerable benefits of such research for our union and our members, I requested NTU’s assistance to review other campaigns. The appreciative inquiry approach that has been developed by Tom Vickers and Banu Ozveri has so far been applied to five other recent GMB campaigns: Asda; British Gas distribution centres, CNC Speedwell, Special Metals, and Medirest. This methodology has proven very effective in creating space for reflection and identifying lessons we can implement into our future campaigns. This has strengthened our learning cycle, which offers the potential of long-term benefits for the improvement of our work.
Tom Rigby, Education Officer, GMB Union
NTU's evaluation has been really helpful, not just in proving the value of the work that we have done, but in providing input that enabled us to improve the quality of the service that we provide. Particularly the data from the first round of evaluation which picked up ways where we could improve the way we communicated, both verbally and on paper, with our clients. Later waves of data confirmed that the changes we made to our service led to better outcomes and a better qualitative experience for our clients. Put simply, Hope Projects is better because of the work NTU did.
Phil Davis, Director, Hope Projects (West Midlands) Ltd
As a charity working with migrants in the North East of England, we have had the pleasure of working with Dr Tom Vickers on several projects. We have found him to have a good understanding of research methods and his involving and inclusive approach has indeed been very beneficial when engaging with excluded groups- economic migrants, refugees and those seeking asylum. Moreover, we would also like to stress that his qualities in terms of project management and governance had a very good impact on achieving the outcomes of the project, as he was able to function well within a diverse partnership of voluntary and community organisations, universities and academics. Finally, he had a good understanding of the complex interplay between the needs of the research and the needs of partner/non-research organisations.
Michael Chantkowski, Development and Services Manager, International Community Organisation of Sunderland
How to access this consultancy support
For more information on the support available, how it could work for you, and to discuss your ideas, contact Kelly Smith, Commercial Manager at kelly.smith@ntu.ac.uk.
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