Scottish Government Workforce Information 2015

2. Introduction

2.1 This publication presents:

• Full-time equivalent numbers of directly employed Scottish Government staff (Section 3).
• Headcounts for contingent workers, who are those not employed directly by the Scottish Government (Section 3).
• Sickness data for directly employed Scottish Government staff (Section 4).
• Diversity data for directly employed Scottish Government staff (Section 5).

2.2 This publication expands on the Public Sector Employment (PSE) statistics published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which include full-time equivalent numbers and headcounts for directly employed Scottish Government staff, by gender, for each quarter. This publication provides further breakdowns of the numbers in the PSE statistics by diversity characteristics and staff categories. In addition it includes sickness data for directly employed staff, and headcounts for contingent workers which are not published in the PSE statistics.

2.3 The data in this publication are taken from information held on the Scottish Government's electronic human resources system (this will be termed the "HR system" in this publication). As the HR system is a live database that is continually updated to reflect workforce changes, this publication presents "snapshots" of the data as it appears on the system at the end of each year quarter. The first quarter of the year ends 31^st March, the second ends 30^th June, the third 30^th September, and the last quarter 31^st December. See Annex A for more information about the data sources. Quarterly updates to the data in this publication will be released on the Scottish Government's website approximately three months after the end of each quarter.

2.4 Data are presented from the first quarter of 2012 to the final quarter of 2015, which is the most recent quarter available. When future publications and quarterly updates are released, the new data will be appended to the data series in this publication, so that the first quarter of 2012 will always be the first in the data series and the series will grow with subsequent data releases.

2.5 Directly employed Scottish Government staff are those employed on Scottish Government terms and conditions and paid via the Scottish Government payroll. This publication excludes directly employed Scottish Government staff not currently in paid employment, for example, those on career breaks, and unpaid sick or parental leave.

2.6 Non-directly employed workers are those not employed on Scottish Government terms and conditions, who are engaged on a temporary basis to provide short-term cover for vacancies or where skills cannot be sourced internally. They will be referred to as "contingent workers" in this publication.

2.7 This publication only includes workers assigned to core Scottish Government directorates. It does not include workers in Scottish Government agencies, non-ministerial departments or non-departmental public bodies.