Scottish Government Workforce Information 2015

Annex B: Staff/worker categories

B1 Permanent staff are directly employed staff with a permanent contract.

B2 Permanent on paid maternity, adoption, or shared parental leave. The Scottish Government allows 26 weeks of maternity or adoption leave on full pay, and from 5^th April 2015 this can be shared by both partners as Shared Parental Leave.

B3 Permanent on outward secondment. Some permanent staff go on outward secondment or loan to other organisations such as other government departments (including local and UK government), health, and the private sector. The purpose of these secondments is to provide staff with opportunities to develop in areas such as improved quality of policy making, operational and people management, leadership, project management etc; give them a more outward-looking and broader skills base, through exposure to innovation and creativity; and increase their knowledge of, and improve their links with host organisations whilst sharing good practice.

B4 Fixed Term Appointment (with competition) are staff recruited to the Scottish Government and selected on merit through a fair and open competition, on a contract with an end date to fill a temporary post. They may apply for permanent internally advertised vacancies and converted to permanent members of staff, so they are included within the permanent category for the purposes of this publication.

B5 Fixed Term Appointment (without competition) are staff recruited to the Scottish Government without fair and open competition where either the urgency of the need or short duration of the role make a full competition impracticable or disproportionate. These are for a fixed period which is agreed at the outset and must only be used for a specific task or related tasks (for example, a particular project) that cannot be completed with existing resources. FTAs cannot be used for an undefined period; or for regular, every day work normally undertaken by the business area. All FTAs must be reported to the Civil Service Commission as part of a regular compliance statement and the use of exceptions may be subject to audit.

B6 Fixed term student placements. These placements are offered by the Scottish Government to give students an opportunity to gain work experience and knowledge of the government. In turn these placements are a route for attracting new talent, as some of these students may apply for permanent positions when they finish their courses.

B7 Modern Apprentices are staff employed on the Scottish Government's Modern Apprenticeship scheme. Although Modern Apprentices are first employed on a fixed term contract when they are on the scheme, it is expected that they will become permanent employees on successful completion of the programme, satisfying the applicable performance and attendance criteria, and passing a competitive selection interview.

B8 Contingent workers are non-directly employed workers that are engaged in any capacity for the Scottish Government, such as contractors, inward secondments, and temporary agency workers.

B9 Consultants are specialist temporary workers brought in through a specific procurement exercise for a discrete piece of work not covering an on-going role or 'business as usual' activity. They are often engaged as a team rather than on an individual time hire basis. Payments are in arrears on delivery of agreed output. In this circumstance, the numbers of consultants can vary depending on how the external supplier chooses to resource the contract.

B10 Contractors are temporary workers, typically brought in under a service contract which has been let to an external organisation to supply a specific product or service. In this circumstance, the numbers of contractors can vary depending on how the external supplier choses to resource the contract.

B11 UK Fast Stream are staff assigned to the Scottish Government from the Civil Service Fast Stream Programme. These are non-directly employed staff as they are paid via the UK Government and can be moved from the Scottish Government to another part of the Civil Service as part of their prescribed development programme. This programme began in the Scottish Government in 2015. The Scottish Government also runs its own graduate entry programme and these workers are classified under Permanent directly employed staff (Table 1).

B12 Interim managers are temporary workers covering management or specialist roles on temporary projects, through a procured framework.

B13 Inward secondments are non-directly employed workers that are seconded on short term contracts from other organisations, such as the private sector or local government. The Scottish Government benefits from inward secondments by filling skills gaps, sharing people and practice and developing partnership working with stakeholders.

B14 Service Level Agreement (SLA) staff are NHS staff on Service Level Agreements contracted to the Scottish Government to provide a specific service.

B15 The Scottish Government offers temporary short-term youth employment initiatives to help prepare young people for the world of work. These include placements for students in Further / Higher / Post-grad Education on a formal (for example, part of course requirements) or informal (self-organised) basis. The students may be paid a stipend, rather than being paid directly by the Scottish Government, hence they aren't included under Fixed Term Student Placements in Table 1. It also includes former schemes which are now closed, which are: (i) Get Ready for Work Placements, which were work experience placements for 16-19 year olds as part of the national 'Get Ready for Work' programme; these were unpaid placements, but a training allowance was provided by the scheme. (ii) Employability Fund Placements were placements funded by the Employability Fund. The Scottish Government also offers one week work experience placements for school pupils. Due to the short length of these placements, these would only be identified in the quarterly "snapshots" of the data if the final day of the quarter fell during the week placement. Therefore the work experience placements have been excluded from Table 2 to avoid any misleading effects on the figures due to the timing of placements.

B16 Temporary agency workers are procured through a framework contract to fill generalist (especially administrative) posts.

B17 Other contingent workers are temporary workers that do not fit in any of the categories.