The Fair Work Convention and CIPD Scotland last month joined together to form a strategic partnership, working to ensure fair work drives success, wellbeing and prosperity for individuals, businesses, organisations and society across Scotland. Fair Work Convention Co-Chair’s Professor Patricia Findlay and Grahame Smith explain why putting fair work at the heart of workplaces and economy has never been greater.
HR professionals are key influencers when it comes to whether fair work is delivered and we are looking forward to working together in a new strategic partnership to deliver Fair Work in Scotland. Fair Work is good for business and workers. It is proven to have a positive impact on performance and productivity, facilitates effective change and enables innovation.
Since the launch of the 2016 Fair Work Framework and the challenge set down by the Fair Work Convention for Scotland to be a world leading Fair Work nation by 2025. There has been widespread support for this vison, new government departments established, a Fair Work Implementation Plan and high level commitments to ensure delivery. However, the CIPD’s recently published ‘Working Lives Scotland’ report highlights that access to fair work is not consistent across the economy, with key workers and the lowest paid facing the greatest barriers to fair work, a finding which mirrors the Convention’s Fair Work in Scotland Report from earlier this year.
The Fair Work Convention welcome and fully endorse the recommendations from the Working Lives Scotland 2021 report which is the first snapshot of job quality across all five fair work dimensions during the COVID-19 pandemic as we look towards a post-pandemic future of the workplace.
More than ever employees are being asked to work in different ways. Fair Work should be at the heart of finding solutions to the challenges that arise from home working, the management of working time, balancing working and caring responsibilities, and, not least, the requirement for safe and healthy workplaces.
The Fair Work Convention and CIPD Scotland aim to support each other’s work around fair work, with a particular focus on increasing job quality in Scotland. To help achieve this there are a number of tools and guidance available. We have published a Fair Work Self-Assessment tool to enable workers to assess how far their work and their workplace match up to the five dimensions of Fair Work. The results will provide workers, individually and collectively, with the evidence they need to identify priorities, to organise, and to engage employers in dialogue on the action required to improve work and workplace practices. There is also the Scottish Government’s Fair Work First Guidance and Scottish Enterprise’s Fair Work Assessment Tool for employers. This together with our Fair Work Self-Assessment tool are very useful resources in helping both employers and employees assess where they are on their fair work journey and make practical changes which embed fair work in their workplace.
There remains much to do if we are to achieve our collective vision that, by 2025, people in Scotland will have a world-leading working life where fair work drives success, wellbeing and prosperity for everyone. That is why we are excited and encouraged to join with CIPD Scotland collaboratively in achieving inclusive growth and improving job quality and productivity for all workers and employers in Scotland.
Patricia Findlay and Grahame Smith
Co-Chairs of the Fair Work Convention
Find out more about what the Fair Work Convention do on our website https://www.fairworkconvention.scot/ and follow us on our social media channels:
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