Fairer Scotland action plan: progress report 2020

Employment, including youth employment

Central to our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is a new national mission to help create new jobs, good jobs and green jobs. Working with employers and individuals to build the skills and infrastructure that we all need to succeed, in the industries of the future.

To help our young people into good jobs at a time when they are most vulnerable we will deliver our Young Person's Guarantee – ensuring every young person has access to a job, education, training or development programme. To support people aged 25 years and over at risk of redundancy we will provide re‑training opportunities through our new National Transition Training Programme.

Our economic recovery must be a green recovery. As part of our commitment we will dedicate £100 million over the next five years to a Green Jobs Fund, investing alongside businesses and organisations to support new and increased opportunities for green job creation across Scotland.

FSAP	42. We will do more to promote the Living Wage
FSAP	43. We will do more to help people in Scotland work flexibly
FSAP	44. We will improve employment services for disabled people
FSAP	45. By the end of 2016, we will launch a pilot 'Returners' project to help bring experienced women back into the workplace after a career break
StC	1. Build on Living Wage Accreditation – a focus on larger employers, and on incentives, would be useful
StC	2. Encourage pay ratio disclosure as a way of tackling pay inequality
StC	4. Make family flexible working more explicit within the Business Pledge, and consider whether approaches such as the Timewise programme could promote flexible working in Scotland
StC	13. Do more to tackle occupational segregation
Life Chances	5. The Scottish Government should, through the 15-24 Learner Journey Review, ensure our FE and HE systems have more flex built in so young people can shift between routes
Life Chances	6. Employers need to think about 'job design' and recruitment processes that are free from bias and that match requirements for the job with the skill level needed to make applications
Life Chances	9. Lobby the UK Government about exploitative zero hour contracts

Updates on the recommendations and actions listed above can be found in the Tackling Child Poverty Progress Report.

Fairer work

FSAP	46. We will tackle discrimination on pregnancy and maternity leave in the workplace
FSAP	47. We will help those older people who want to keep working after they have reached state pension age

The pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on women's jobs and incomes. Women have made up the majority of the workforce in many 'shut down' sectors, and in our care sector, as well as undertaking additional unpaid caring responsibilities. The vast majority of lone parents are women. All of this has made them more exposed to the impacts of earnings reductions or losses. Evidence highlights the potential damage the pandemic could do to women's employment and career opportunities longer term and the potential to increase both the gender employment gap and the gender pay gap in coming years. We will review the actions within our Fairer Scotland for Women: Gender Pay Gap Action Plan to ensure they are fit for purpose and will effectively support our economic recovery through the pandemic and beyond

We are also taking immediate action and on 4 November 2020 we launched a £500,000 Women Returners Fund. The fund aims to support women returners across Scotland who have had a career break due to childcare, other care or health commitments. The programme seeks to support women to gain up to date skills, training and work experience to fill that gap in their CV while providing peer support and networking opportunities. This programme is more important now than ever due to the disproportionate economic impact COVID-19 has had on women's employment opportunities and earning potential.

The Women Returner's Fund will also help address the 'motherhood penalty', a key driver of the gender pay gap, and will respond to the 2015 Equality and Human Rights Commission's (EHRC) research findings on pregnancy and maternity discrimination. The findings of which revealed that 77% of women reported a negative or discriminatory pregnancy/maternity experience. In response to the 2015 EHRC Report recommendations Scottish Government took forward a suite of measures to tackle these issues head on. We have continued to work with relevant organisations from the public, private and third sectors, along with trade union representatives through our Pregnancy & Maternity Discrimination Working Group, chaired by the Minister for Business, Fair Work and Skills. The Group has responded to the EHRC recommendations by developing guidance and information to employers and workers on rights and responsibilities, sharing existing good practice and encouraging improved employment practices, communication and partnership working. As the Group nears the end of its remit we intend to invite a stakeholder member onto the Gender Pay Gap Working Group to allow pregnancy and maternity issues to be taken forward as part of that group's remit.

Following on from our response to the UK Government's consultation on its Good Work Plan, in January 2020 the Minister for Business, Fair Work and Skills wrote to the UK Government, urging them to improve the package of support offered to all parents. He recommended an increase in maternity pay for all women workers over a 52-week period, and a review of eligibility for maternity allowance. The Minister also suggested an additional 12 weeks paid leave for fathers/partners on a non-transferable 'use it or lose it' basis. This supports and exceeds the recommendation from the First Minister's National Advisory Council on Women and Girls report to provide two months of paid 'daddy leave'.

Increasing the level and length of statutory provision would provide financial support to families throughout the maternity leave period, supporting parents and children to get the best start in life and not feeling the imperative to return to work due to a low income level.

Going forward we will influence the development of the new Employment Bill urging the UK Government to strengthen parental pay and leave and protect women, including pregnant women, and carers against discrimination and dismissal and also introduce the right for all employees to request flexible working from day one of employment.

The need for better paid flexible work is felt most acutely by those experiencing higher levels of poverty, for example women, and in particular lone parents and those with larger families. In 2020 we provided flexible working experts Timewise with £132,000 to deliver a Fair Work Flexible Work Programme for Scotland. This will include training employment advisers to better support low income parents, carers, older workers and those with health issues to access flexible working. The Fair Flexible Work programme has been designed to benefit the specific priority family groups identified within Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan for whom access to better paid flexible work is evidenced to be a key factor in helping them to raise their household earnings.

Together with the Hunter Foundation we are also providing £175,000 in 2020/21 to Flexibility Works to assist employers to adapt to flexible working practices and by highlighting best practice, during and beyond the pandemic.

A Fairer Scotland for Older People – A Framework for Action^[6], published in April 2019 recognised that older people wanted flexible employment opportunities as well as measures to address issues around a rising retirement age. Actions in the Programme for Government support those aims including an initial £25 million National Training Transition Fund to provide retraining opportunities.

In October 2019, the Minister for Business, Fair Work and Skills launched the Workplace Equality Fund 2019/20. The fund aims to remove labour market barriers for certain protected characteristics including older workers.

The 2019/20 fund supported 25 projects with a collective £800,000 worth of funding. One of those projects involved Age Scotland providing Immersive Unconscious Bias training to private employers. Age Scotland also took part in the 2018/19 Workplace Equality Fund where they developed an Age Inclusive Matrix for employers.

As the economy recovers from the impact of COVID-19 officials are working with key stakeholders to shape the recovery plans to ensure that older workers are supported and older people who want to keep working can continue to do so.

Living wage

Life Chances	10. Lobby the UK Government on the need for the National Living Wage to apply to all those over 18 years old

The Scottish Government recognises the National Living Wage does not support young people under 25, nor will it fully compensate workers for reductions to welfare. Scottish Ministers continue to press the UK Government on this issue.

Young people's employment

FSAP	36. We will take action to reduce youth unemployment by 40% by 2021
FSAP	37. We will significantly increase the numbers of young people getting industry experience while still at school to help them kick-start a successful career in their chosen field
Life Chances	2. Continue work to improve data collection and sharing to track post school participation in learning, training and work for young people and make better use of that information to improve service delivery and develop Scottish Government policy
Life Chances	3. Do more to enhance the effectiveness of the work of the Developing the Young Workforce regional groups in building systematic engagement between local employers and schools and colleges on local and regional skills shortages
Life Chances	4. Do more to value non-academic learning routes, post-school
StC	11. Reduce the number of government-supported employment programmes targeting this group of young people and simplify the landscape, to provide a clearer, sharper focus
StC	12. Ensure that the new approach to employer engagement in education is having an impact on improving skills for work of young people

Prior to the Coronavirus pandemic, we were on target to reduce youth unemployment by 40% by 2021 through our Developing the Young Workforce (DYW) Scotland's youth employment strategy, having originally achieved this in 2017. It is clear, however, that this will no longer be the case and as a result we are working with Education Scotland, Scottish Qualifications Agency, Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and Skills Development Scotland to understand the implications Coronavirus will have on the implementation of DYW and and the wider skills landscape. We also hope to build on the success of the 2019 #mylearnerjourney campaign promoting all learning routes.

Through our programme of COVID-19 response we have continued to provide opportunities for young people to engage with employers in an online setting. As a response to the increasing levels of youth unemployment we have secured an additional £10 million of investment in DYW's Regional Groups which will strengthen our offer to young people, particular in the senior phase with the roll out of DYW School Coordinators. Through these Groups we continue to build partnerships with education and employers with approximately 4,000 in existence before the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to the global health crisis we have flexed our model of delivery and continue to engage young people through our development of E-DYW^[7], DYW Skills Academy and Scotland's Big Parent's Events which were aimed at young people and those who support them. These have been viewed over 50,000 times.

We are also engaging with employers through the network of DYW Employer Groups to support continued employer engagement with schools and colleges. Student displacement whilst on Foundation, Modern and Graduate Apprenticeships continues to be monitored by Skills Development Scotland. We are working with Education Scotland, Colleges Scotland and Universities Scotland to consider the implications for transitions from school to college, university, apprenticeships and training providers and are focused on supporting more young people into positive destinations, despite the many challenges the Scottish economy faces.

The Scottish Government is also committed to increasing choices for learners and increasing flexibility within the further and higher education sectors. This is also central to the SFC Review recently commissioned by the Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science. The Review will cover provision; delivery outcomes and targets; and funding, including support for research activity across the college and university sector. The outputs of the Review will form an important part of the Government's thinking on the future strategy for tertiary education.

Building on the Scottish/Local Government Partnership Agreement for employability and shared ambition for transformational change in the design, development and implementation of employability services, through our 'No One Left Behind' approach we will strive to support those who struggle most in the labour market. We published our No One Left Behind Delivery Plan on 24 November 2020 providing a renewed focus on partnership working across the employability system, building consensus with partners on the approach to be taken and providing clarity on future funding arrangements, timeline of implementation and governance of No One Left Behind.

In addition, we are working closely with Local Government partners to deliver employability and employment support for young people under the umbrella of the Young Person's Guarantee.

We have also been working with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to improve the data for 16-24 year olds which feeds into the Shared Dataset and the Annual Participation Measure (APM). The sharing of employment data will give more robust information for the 16-19 year olds in the APM age group and more detail on the employment status for 20-24 year olds.