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This paper aims to explore a health at work initiative (“Fair Chance at Work”) for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and identify opportunities for improving engagement of businesses in such activities.

A case study approach is used

Two problems are identified ‐ engagement and participation. A model of engagement incorporating aspects of Prochaska and DiClemente's transtheoretical model of behaviour change is proposed based on findings from the case study and existing literature. It is concluded that improving the engagement of SMEs requires a greater understanding of their current needs, perceptions and attitudes towards health at work. Schemes such as the Teaching Companies Scheme could be useful in testing the model.

The Teaching Companies Scheme could be useful in testing the model.

These findings may inform the development of health promotion projects to SMEs using an applied model behaviour change.

This paper is useful to health promotion workers when developing projects in SMEs.

This

Authors’ note: To capture the collaborative feminist process in writing this article, we list authors’ name alphabetically rather than the traditional presentation of lead author first.

We use Third World, Materialist, and Poststructuralist feminist perspectives with an intersectional transnational lens to analyze our self-reflections about feminist pedagogy and the messy business of conducting our research. We draw on student participant interviews and responses to follow-up questions to support key arguments.

Much feminist pedagogy discourse constructs consciousness-raising and empowerment as positive. However, our research indicates our students’ experiences of these processes as well as our own as teachers and researchers is contradictory; outcomes are often unintended and not always positive, despite our best intentions.

Our work seeks to destabilize problematic notions of empowerment and consciousness-raising by contributing accounts of how feminist pedagogy impacts students in sometimes negative, unintended ways. These contributions should be utilized to better understand power relations between students and teachers, as well as refine pedagogical approaches to best address and reevaluate their impacts on students.

Rather than perpetuate decontextualized and overly optimistic notions of feminist pedagogy, consciousness-raising, and empowerment that fail to capture the complexities and contradictions of women’s lives and the gendered relations in which they participate, this chapter stands as a call to feminists to problematize their key concepts and practices and lay them open to critique.

Nicky Whitsed is Director of Library Services at the Open University's Jennie Lee Library. The Open University is one of the world's largest suppliers of distance education; it has a student body of over 150 000, the vast majority of whom are not located on campus. The library is at the centre of developing electronic library services to meet the needs of the student body, and so the first question had to be:

This preliminary study aims to examine the use of a co-designed immersive virtual reality intervention programme in improving access to health care for people with intellectual disability.

A co-production approach was used to design a virtual reality intervention in collaboration with people with intellectual disability, their families and carers. A mixed-method single sample pre-test-post-test design examined using a virtual reality intervention simulating health-care environments to improve access of attending health-care appointments. Qualitative feedback was used to understand participants’ experience and opinions of using the digital technology.

The study found that the intervention did help people access health-care appointment and reduced their fear. Improvements were also found in quality-of-life post intervention. Positive feedback was provided from participants on using digital technologies indicating the novelty of the approach and potential further applications.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study which has used virtual reality to support people with intellectual disability access health care.

This paper aims to demonstrate the utility of using some indication of emotional intelligence (EI) to identify high potential in managers. Presupposed correspondences between the EI Personal Factors Model (Bar‐On) and Briscoe and Hall's metacompetency model of continuous learning are elucidated.

The study sample consisted of 51 high potentials and 51 “regular” managers, matched onto one another by managerial level, gender and age. All participants completed an online survey containing Bar‐On's Emotional Quotient Inventory, Blau's career commitment scale and a self‐anchored performance item.

EQ‐i subscales: assertiveness, independence, optimism, flexibility and social responsibility appear to be “covert” high‐potential identification criteria, separating between high potentials and regular managers. Furthermore, high potentials display higher levels of job performance and, supposedly, less boundaryless career attitudes.

Using emotional intelligence – or at least some of its subscales – in identifying high potential may well contribute to the validity of such processes. Furthermore, the importance of cultivating positive emotions at work is spelled out in relation to high‐potential identification and development policies and retention management.

In the majority of studies on high potentials, direct supervisors serve as research samples or a non‐empirical, rather normative approach is taken to the matter. The empirical study presented in this paper is rather unique since it departs from the viewpoints of high‐potential individuals, thus delivering added value to the study domain.

Self Help Services is a pioneering charity in how it champions personal experience of mental health and uses these experiences in the treatment of people living with common mental health problems – anxiety, depression, phobias, and low self‐esteem issues. This paper aims to describe how the charity grew from one individual's journey with agoraphobia to being the main provider of primary care mental health services in the North West of England.

The paper charts the growth of Self Help Services over time, with a particular focus on its employment of people with personal mental health problems. It describes the experiences of its founder and Chief Officer and includes case studies of a user of its e‐therapy services and the charity's Informatics and Governance Lead.

The case studies illustrate how the charity has grown in both size and success as a result of harnessing the skills and experience of large numbers of staff and volunteers living with a mental health problem. The case studies illustrate that, rather than being an issue, these personal experiences are vital tools in helping others work through their own difficulties.

The paper provides a detailed overview of a charity which was unique when it was formed and now thrives as a result of its uniqueness. It provides other similar organisations with advice on lessons learnt along the way, and advice for individuals or groups looking to establish similar organisations.

A survey study was conducted in seven best practice organizations in the field of talent management. By cross‐checking their existing high potential lists, the authors aimed to examine to which extent assessments of learning agility were able to predict being identified as a high potential or not above and beyond a baseline prediction by job performance. Furthermore, they aimed to investigate whether learning agility increased with career variety.

The study had a case‐control design, comparing supervisor ratings of employees recently identified as high potentials (n=32) with supervisor ratings of a carefully matched control group of non‐high potentials (n=31).

Learning agility (mediated by job content on‐the‐job learning) was found to be a better predictor of being identified as a high potential than job performance. Career variety was found to be positively associated to learning agility.

This study's design did not allow for the demonstration of causal effects. Longitudinal studies are needed to further clarify the causality of these findings and their implications for organizational performance.

Organizations should do well to incorporate measures of learning agility into their high potential identification and development processes. Furthermore, they need to reflect on how HRM practices might enhance their high potentials' career variety and commitment.

The current study responds to urgent calls in the literature for more empirical research on the identification and development of high potentials, as well as on career variety.

To broaden the scope of our knowledge of collective voluntarily simplified lifestyles in the UK, by exploring whether voluntary simplifiers achieve their goals by adopting a simpler life.

Radical forms of voluntary simplifier groups were explored through participant‐observation research. The methodology can be broadly classified as critical ethnography, and a multi‐locale approach has been used in designing the field.

Although for some of these consumers voluntary simplicity seems to have reinstated the enjoyment of life, certain goals remain unfulfilled and other unexpected issues arise, such as the challenges of mobility in the attainment of environmental goals.

This is an ongoing research, however many opportunities for further research have arisen from this study. Quantitative research could be undertaken on the values and attitudes buttressing voluntary simplicity specifically in the UK. The extent to which such communities influence mainstream consumers could be studied both quantitatively and qualitatively. Mainstream consumers' attitudes to the practices of such communities could prove useful for uncovering real consumer needs.

Despite these communities position in the extreme end of the voluntary simplicity spectrum, their role in shaping the practices and attitudes of other consumers is clear.

This paper provides new consumer insights that can re‐shape policy‐making and marketing practice aimed at achieving a sustainable future.

Dual-careers are an increasingly common typology among professionals yet very few studies have considered how two potentially competing career trajectories are managed in relation to the broader aspects of life, such as family and personal life. This article addresses the gap through an exploration of the strategies adopted by dual-career professional couples as they seek to navigate these challenges whilst satisfying individual and shared goals and aspirations.

Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were carried out with 18 couples (dyads) from a range of professional occupations. Interviews were conducted individually, and then responses analysed and compared for key themes.

Rather than focusing on how couples manage work–life balance on a day-today basis this study shows how couples incorporate a more strategic approach to dual-careers so that both careers are able to progress, albeit within situational constraints.

To satisfy personal, business and economic performance goals, organisations and governments will need to find more creative ways to support employees as they seek to navigate careers while balancing the work and nonwork needs of themselves and their partner. The challenges faced by dual-career couples have implications for human resource managers as they seek to attract and retained talent within their organisations.

Demographic and social changes at the household level will ultimately require changes at an organisational and broader societal level to meet the work and family needs of this growing cohort.

Rather than focusing on how couples manage work-life balance on a day-today basis this study shows how couples incorporate a more strategic approach to dual-careers so that both careers are able to progress, albeit within situational constraints.