Measuring Scotland's performance as a leading Fair Work nation
The Fair Work Convention, established in 2015, is an independent body with a remit to advise Scottish Ministers and advocate and promote Fair Work in Scotland. Within the Fair Work Framework (2016), the Fair Work Convention set out a vision that “by 2025, people in Scotland will have a world-leading working life where fair work drives success, wellbeing and prosperity for individuals, businesses, organisations and society”. The Fair Work Convention developed a Fair Work Measurement Framework to track progress in Scotland against the five dimensions of Fair Work (effective voice, security, respect, opportunity and fulfilment).
The Fair Work Convention commissioned Alma Economics to carry out research to support tracking Scotland’s progress in these dimensions. To complete this research, we (i) updated the Fair Work Measurement Framework with the latest available data, (ii) conducted a wide review of key data sources to address evidence gaps, (iii) developed a new International Fair Work Nation Framework and benchmarked Scotland’s performance on a list of critical indicators against a group of comparator countries that share similar characteristics to Scotland, and (iv) carried out a rapid literature review to explore success factors in countries that demonstrate leading performance in Fair Work.
Updating the Fair Work Measurement Framework helped pinpoint areas where progress has been achieved and areas where more ambitious steps need to be taken. Looking to the future, the International Framework enables an understanding of what constitutes leading performance in Fair Work compared to other countries. It also helps to understand the scale of Scotland’s ambition to become a Fair Work nation in the short and long term. Scotland performs well in some areas and has the potential to achieve leading status in the coming years. For areas where Scotland lags behind compared to the rest of the countries in the Framework (e.g., the disability employment gap), more ambitious steps are needed to improve performance.
Additionally, our report highlights a set of policies and best practices that have facilitated success in countries achieving leading performance in key areas of Fair Work.
Active labour market policies (ALMP), such as workforce training, job search assistance, job creation, and various subsidies can support improvements in indicators such as involuntary part-time work and involuntary non-permanent work, worker underemployment, skills underutilisation, and the disability employment gap.
Policies supporting families with young children: Key policies in this area include (i) improving access to childcare at an earlier age, and (ii) providing substantial paid parental leave for both parents.
Policies promoting health, safety and wellbeing in the workplace, such as providing clear guidance to workers in relation to health and safety best practices in the workplace, as well as continued improvement in collecting data on the incidence and outcomes of workplace inspections by government authorities.
Policies to promote gender parity in pay: Policies in place in the leading countries in terms of gender pay equality include (i) policies to promote transparent firm-level approaches relating to remuneration, (ii) actively supporting the improvement of employee appraisal practices through schemes such as government-offered training to ensure job evaluation practices are gender neutral, and (iii) promoting the adoption of gender neutrality action plans by businesses.
Trade union membership and collective bargaining: As outlined in recent Scottish Government Fair Work action plans, promoting increased trade union membership and a higher incidence of sectoral collective agreements is a key area of interest of the Scottish Government.
Our full report as well as the Fair Work Convention's policy recommendations developed on the basis of our findings can be found here.