Employer Skills Survey 2024 - Scotland
Scotland results from the UK Employer Skills Survey 2024
High performance working (HPW) 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” a site must have adopted 7 or more of the 10 practices covered by the survey.
(In 2024 the list of HPW practices was reduced from 11 to 10, with the removal of the ‘work shadowing’ practice. The threshold at which to classify an employer as ‘high performing’ was kept at 7 practices. Comparisons between years for the proportion of employers classed as ‘high performing’ should therefore be interpreted with this change in mind).
The proportion of employers classed as HPW employers and change over time
Overall 6% of employers adopted 7 or more High Performance Working practices
(classified as a High Performance Working employer). The proportion is in line with those classed as HPW in 2022 (7%). Sites offering some specific HPW practices has, however, decreased since 2022. The proportion of sites with practices around task variety has decreased from 56% in 2022 to 50% in 2024, and those who practice flexible working has decreased from 37% to 33%. Other practices saw no statistically significant change in the proportion of employers adopting them when compared with 2022.
Overall, 6% of employers were classed as High Performance Working employers. The most common High Performance Working practice was having an equal opportunities policy.
Figure 26: Prevalence of High Performance Working practices, 2024 compared with 2022
Base: All sites in Scotland (2024 (Module D): 1,246, 2022 (Module D): 1,213).
The proportion of HPW employers increased with site size, from 1% of employers with 2 to 4 employees up to 34% of employers with 50 to 99 employees. However this pattern did not continue for sites with 100 or more employees. The proportion of these sites adopting HPW practices has decreased between 51% in 2022 and 24% in 2024.
Specific High Performance Working Practices varied substantially by site size. Larger employers (100 employees or more) were more likely to provide on or off-the-job training (94%), have a trade union (31%) and have employee consultation (72%) compared with the average (63%, 9% and 15% respectively). Larger employers with 100 or more employees were also more likely than average to hold ISO9000 (39%), create teams to work on projects (52%) and have an equal opportunity policy (99%) in comparison to the average (16%, 9% and 81% respectively).
In comparison, smaller sites with 2 to 4 staff were more likely to have task variety (54%), task discretion (59%) and flexible working 41% (compared to averages of 50%, 47% and 33% respectively). Sites with 2 to 4 staff were also more likely to not embed any High Working Practices (5%), compared to an average of 3%.
In line with 2022, by sector, employers in Public Administration (17%), Information and Communications (16%) and Health and Social Work (16%) were more likely to be HPW employers compared to other sectors. In addition, by sector, employers in Education were more likely to be HPW employers (15%) compared to the average (6%). Local or central government funded (18%) sites were also most likely to be HPW employers (compared to 6% on average).
Contact
Email: FHEstatistics@gov.scot