The Industrial Society has announced the sale of its workforce training business to the Capita group. The two organisations are looking to develop a strategic alliance in the future. The Society will now concentrate on its building membership and consultancy services, and policy and research work aimed at improving working life.

Now that individual skills improvement is firmly on the national agenda for government and business, the Society aims to carry on its own innovative tradition into new areas, looking at major organisational change to make workplaces "productive, profitable and individually fulfilling".

Chief executive Will Hutton said: "We are confident that The Industrial Society’s learning and development business will have a dynamic future within Capita and welcome the possibilities that exist in the developing alliance between the two organisations. This will allow The Industrial Society to remain linked to its training heritage and will bring advantages to both organisations and the people we work with.

"The Industrial Society has set itself the challenge of improving the quality of working life in Britain. The UK has a dearth of creative, high performance workplaces; despite recent economic improvements, UK productivity still under-performs against its major industrialised counterparts in Europe and North America. And although we have experienced over 30 years of equality interventions many employers still find the implications of diversity too challenging – part of the same story of too many unfulfilling workplaces. It is clear that The Industrial Society and its members have a job to do.

"We have already made a major investment in generating new ideas, research and analysis. By translating our intellectual capital into practical propositions for the workplace, we can forge a new link between creative, and fulfilled employees and workplace productivity."