Small Business Survey Scotland: 2023-2024

Business Practices

• 68 per cent of SME employers had listed a social and/or environmental goal as being important to them over the last 5 years
• 19 per cent of SME employers had engaged in process innovation (i.e. introduced new or improved processes for producing or supplying goods or services) in the last three years
• 14 per cent of SME employers engaged in goods innovation (broadly in line with last year’s figure)
• 39 per cent of SME employers engaged in either goods, services or process innovation
• 54 per cent of SME employers had arranged or funded training in the previous 12 months (the same percentage as last year)
• 10 per cent of SME employers engaged with Modern Apprenticeship programmes
• 29 per cent of SME employers had used external information or advice on matters affecting their business in the previous 12 months

Figure 3: The most popular reason for using external information/advice was to help with business growth, which was reported by 23 per cent of firms.

Reasons for using information or advice (2023-24). Multiple answers allowed across this question.

Source: Small Business Survey Scotland 2023-2024 from DBT and Scottish Government. For Figure 3 data, see table ‘K5’.

• 89 per cent of SME employers paid all their employees aged 18 or over (excluding volunteers, apprentices and interns) £10.90 per hour, which was the Living Wage as defined by the Living Wage Foundation at the time the survey was written. This should not be confused with the 2023-24 rate of £12.00 per hour that was announced during the survey period
• of the SMEs in Scotland who received the Small Business Bonus Scheme (SBBS) relief, a majority (54 per cent) received relief of between 91 per cent to 100 per cent