The HR world is abuzz with talk of big data and the transformative potential of HR analytics. This article takes issue with optimistic accounts, which hail HR analytics as a 'must have' capability that will ensure HR's future as a strategic management function while transforming organisational performance for the better. It argues that unless the HR profession wises up to both the potential and drawbacks of this emerging field and engages operationally and strategically to develop better methods and approaches, it is unlikely that existing practices of HR analytics will deliver transformational change. Indeed, it is possible that current trends will seal the exclusion of HR from strategic, board-level influence while doing little to benefit organisations and actively damaging the interests of employees.

Studies of the benefits of human resource development (HRD) for organisations have assumed a direct connection between training strategy and a hierarchy of performance outcomes: learning, behavioural change and performance improvement. The influence of workplace practices and employees' experiences on training effectiveness has received little attention. This study investigates evaluation strategies designed to elicit greater training effectiveness, and explores the influence of trainees' perceptions and work environment factors on this. Drawing on detailed case study findings, the authors highlight the importance of management practices, trainees' perceptions of the work environment and systems of reward in explaining behaviour change after training.

Accounts of the shift to post-industrial modes of employment have tended to present an over-simplified view of networks as an assemblage of contacts used to gain individual advantage in the labour market. Creative industries represent a challenge to this as typically they rely on networks to foster collaboration, trust and co-operation. In this article we explore how a variety of networks are used to promote both individual competition and co-operation in an industry where re-regulation has resulted in the break up of bureaucratic organizations and widespread casualization of the labour market. We argue that there is a need to extend the debate on the role of networks in a casualized labour market to examine how individuals organize themselves via the plethora of networks that result from organizational break up.We use qualitative data from a series of interviews with freelance television production workers in the United Kingdom to suggest that workers use networks as a source of competitive advantage and, at the same time, support and co-operation. Overall our research suggests that network activity is more complex, and networks themselves more dynamic, than existing research and theory implies.

In 2011, the UK Coalition government introduced its flagship welfare-to-work programme, ‘The Work Programme’ (WP). Based on a ‘payment by results’ model, it aims to incentivise contracted providers to move participants into sustained employment. Employer involvement is central to the programme's success and this paper explores the ‘two faces’ of this neglected dimension of active labour market policy (ALMP) analysis: employer involvement with the programme and the engagement between providers and employers. This paper draws empirically from a regional survey of primarily private and third sector SMEs, and from interviews with providers and stakeholders about provider engagement with SMEs and large employers. Findings indicate that SMEs had recruited few staff through the WP and had little awareness of it, and that providers engaged in intense competition to access both SMEs and large employers. Employers are critical to the success of ALMPs, but an underpinning supply-side ideology and a regulatory context in which business interest associations are weak policy actors means that their involvement is based on implicit and flawed assumptions about employers’ interests and their propensity to engage.

This paper examines the potential of web-based networks for representing the interests of freelance audio-visual workers. It suggests that while such networks provide fora for the expression and mobilisation of interests, their ability to represent workers is limited. Consequently, they provide an opportunity for trade unions to extend organisation.

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This article examines Jarley's contention that trade union revitalization is conditional upon the generation of social capital through the systematic creation of networks. It draws on a qualitative study of freelance workers in the UK audio-visual industry to consider two propositions. The first, that 'social capital within networks is forged on "bonds" that are conducive to trade union identity' was not sustained by the data, which instead suggested that social capital is more likely to be generated by networks outside trade union structures. However, the data did support the second proposition that 'trade unions can harness social capital in order to achieve concrete industrial relations outcomes' by linking networks to reservoirs of expertise and influence.

Many commentators have argued that a shift towards post‐industrial modes of production and employment has progressively undermined the conditions for collective labour organisation and regulation. The capacity of trade unions to respond to these changes and represent the interests of contingent workers has become a key issue in many industries in which employment has become increasingly fragmented. This article examines patterns of interest representation pursued by freelance workers in the UK audio‐visual sector. In particular, it examines three critical cases to explore the potential of networks of freelance workers for representing their interests and to consider the implications for trade unions as traditional collective actors. We conclude that networks can provide forums through which interests can be articulated, but their limitations in representing freelance workers offer trade unions a crucial opportunity to extend collective regulation.