UK Employer Skills Survey 2022 – Scotland Report

High Performance Working Practices

“High Performance Working” (HPW) practices are practices recognised to ensure employee skills are harnessed and nurtured and used to their best effect. To be classed as a “High Performance Working employer” an establishment must have adopted 7 or more of the 11 practices covered by the survey.

The proportion of employers classed as High Performance Working employers and change over time

Overall, 7% of employers adopted 7 or more High Performance Working practices (classified as a High Performance Working employer).

This proportion has not changed since 2020. The proportion of establishments offering some specific HPW practices has, however, decreased since 2020. For example, the proportion of establishments with an equal opportunity policy has decreased from 85% to 79%, those with a training needs assessment from 53% to 51% and those offering work shadowing from 25% to 23%. The proportion offering several other HPW practices has increased, with 62% offering on- or off-job-training compared with 59% in 2020, 56% having task variety compared with 49% in 2020, and 45% having task discretion compared with 40% in 2020.

Overall, 7% of employers were classed as High Performance Working employers. The most common High Performance Working practice was having an equal opportunities policy

Base: All establishments in Scotland (2022: (Module D) 1,213; 2020: 3,497).

The proportion of HPW employers increased substantially with establishment size, from 3% of employers with 2 to 4 employees up to 51% of employers with 100 or more employees.

The proportion with some specific practices in place also varied substantially by establishment size. Larger establishments with 100 or more employees were more likely to have an equal opportunity policy (97%), provide on- or off-the-job training (92%) and have a training needs assessment (78%) compared with the average (79%, 62% and 51% respectively). Larger employers with 100 or more employees were also more likely than average to hold an ISO9000 (44%), have employee consultation (89%) and have trade union consultation (59%) (compared to averages of 16%, 14% and 9% respectively).

In contrast, smaller establishments of 2 to 4 staff were more likely than average to have task variety (62%), task discretion (56%) and work shadowing (31%) (compared to averages of 56%, 45% and 23% respectively).

By sector, employers in Public Administration (24%), Health and Social Work (13%), Information and communications (12%) and Arts and Other Services (11%) were more likely to be HPW employers compared to those in other sectors.