Business support can promote good work – a workshop with Wakefield Council

Uncategorized Wednesday 6 May 2026

By Rich Crisp, Sheffield Hallam University and Kostas Maronitis, Leeds Trinity University

Supporting employers to create good work and inclusive workplaces is a key ambition of local councils. Business-facing teams often use interactions with businesses to promote inclusive practices – such as recruitment of groups facing barriers to work- but often lack the time or capacity to think about how all their interactions with businesses could support good work objectives.

Conversations between the YPIP team (working on ‘Good Work and Better Business) and Charlotte Audsley, Economic Programme Manager at Wakefield, sparked the idea for a workshop on ‘Leveraging business support to promote good work and inclusive growth’. This took place on 24 March 2026, bringing together two academics on the YPIP team, Rich Crisp and Kostas Maronitis,  and Wakefield Council staff to explore how business support teams can more fully embed good work into their everyday practice.

The four-hour session was divided into two parts. The first explored what we mean by good work. Participants reflected on their own experiences of work – from their current role to first ever Saturday jobs – using prompt cards covering themes like good pay, job security, work-life balance and meaningful work.

This exercise generated lively discussion and helped surface the many factors that shape job quality beyond just pay and conditions. It also highlighted the diverse ways employers can improve job quality.

The second part examined how far good work featured in conversations with businesses, and how existing touchpoints could be further harnessed to promote job quality.  Participants noted a genuine appetite among businesses to be a good employer although small businesses often lacked the time, knowledge or resource to do ‘people stuff’.

A final group exercise explored new ideas for promoting good work and inclusive growth through Wakefield Council’s business support activity. Suggestions ranged from better strategic alignment of all business facing teams through shared outcome targets around good work, to incentivising employers to provide good work through financial support such as business grants and rates relief.

Participants engaged enthusiastically throughout the day and fed back that they valued the time and space to step back, reflect and think creatively about new ways of working.

The YPIP team is now analysing all the insights from the workshop to draft a strategic approach for promoting good work through Wakefield’s business support system including practical actions and opportunities for further collaboration with the Council.

Check out the other work from the ‘Good Work and Better Business’ team including:

• an evidence and policy review of Good Work
• a blog from the series of fairer recruitment workshops
• case studies of inclusive recruitment