Fair Work - economic inactivity: flexible working project report

Project Foundations and Approach

Ahead of formal project delivery, we worked closely with our strategic partners CeeD (Centre for Engineering, Education and Development) to identify and engage three suitable employer partners operating in manufacturing, engineering and recycling. These sectors were approved ahead of time by our Scottish Government partners.

This was a sizeable piece of work in itself as we were ideally looking for a range of sizes of organisation and different types of frontline workers, which we achieved; our three employers included one small, one medium and one larger sized organisation. Their frontline workers included: factory-floor, assembly, repair, production, manual, technical, digital and construction workers. As this project depended on strong and trusting relationships with a varied group of employers, this early phase of the project therefore focused on:

• Identifying employers with a suitable mix of frontline workforces
• Securing senior sponsorship and commitment from each organisation Understanding each organisation’s operational context and starting point to ensure it fitted the project requirements

This groundwork took longer than initial thought, but was essential in ensuring the project was realistic, relevant and capable of delivering meaningful learning in the available timeframe.

Three employers were ultimately engaged:

1. Scottish Leather Group (SLG)

2. Merson Group

3. WEEE Scotland (now Circulus)

Note: Alex Begg Group was initially involved in the project before WEEE Scotland, and there were several productive conversations held with their HR team to develop a project plan, however they withdrew formally from the first week in September due to a senior leadership change and therefore a reduced capacity/ appetite to take on a culture change project such as this. It was disappointing to lose a project partner but with our range of strong employer relationships within out network, we were able to work quickly to secure WEEE Scotland as a replacement partner later that month and the project officially began with them in early October.