The IWP conference, Work, well-being, and performance: New perspectives for the modern workforce, was held on 18th – 20th June 2008 in the St Paul’s hotel in the heart of Sheffield city centre. The main sponsor was Pearn Kandola.

The conference included:

• Symposiums on a range of topics including work relationships and emotions, teams,  emotional labour, human resource management and well-being, and on how psychology can help governments
• Themed Paper Sessions on well-being, organizational performance, family-work conflict, leadership, psychological contracts, emotions at work, health care work, and human resource practices with speakers from all continents
• Key Note Speakers: Ellen Kossek, Michigan State University, Sabine Sonnentag, University of Konstanz, Germany, Anat Rafaeli, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
• Pavica Barr on BT’s Transformation through ‘Staying Ahead of the Game’ and the role of psychology in this
• Panels debating the state of job design theory, coping strategies, and team interventions
• The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology Review workshop where editors gave feedback on delegates papers 
• A workshop on the Sloan Work and Family Research Network

Before the main conference, a number of Pre-Conference Events sponsored by the Economic and Social Science Research Council, were held: 

• Professional Development Workshops presented by our keynote speakers and other leading international scholars. Topics included: leadership, selecting a positive workforce, innovation, evidence-based management; work-life balance
• Postgraduate and Early Career Event involving academics such as Doris Fay, Fred Morgeson, Nick Turner, Mark Griffin and Ellen Kossek

In addition to this, Methodology Workshops were conducted by Chris Stride on Data Management using SPSS Syntax and Multi-level Modelling using SPSS

Sponsors’ reactions to the conference

“I thought the IWP Conference was one of the best professional conferences I have attended in a long, long time. The venue and administration were excellent, it was clear you had a strong and friendly team holding everything together, the content was quite extensive and dense, the unusual feature of more than 30% of delegates coming from overseas added a special dimension – it all added up to an enjoyable and fruitful experience. My sincerest and warmest congratulations to the conference team.”
Michael Reddy, Human Potential Accounting

See also: Conference programme [pdf], abstracts of all papers [pdf], and picture gallery.