Public Service Reform Operational Summit: Workshop Feedback 14 October 2025

Workshop 6: Enabling Workforce Change

Summary of workshop:

The purpose of this workshop was to explore the levers needed to reshape Scotland’s public sector. The session focused on the following areas:

• Workforce Policy - what guidance and support are needed to implement workforce change?
• Redeployment - what would an effective redeployment strategy look like for the public sector?
• Severance - how can severance schemes be deployed effectively and what principles should govern use?

Points of discussion:

Participants split into smaller groups to discuss each theme, identifying barriers, opportunities and recommendations. The session continued with a summary of group feedback, highlighting common themes, tensions and priority areas for improvement. Attendees were invited to join small test groups to support product development and sign up for a future session focused on workforce planning.

Workforce Policy

Challenges:

• Fundamental differences in workforces across public bodies
• Annual funding cycles hinder strategic long-term workforce planning (priority 1)
• Public bodies often work across several Ministerial portfolios. Clarity over what policies across SG are a priority (priority 3)
• Workforce planning is rudimentary in a lot of public bodies with inconsistent data quality.
• Leadership challenge and difficulty sourcing specialist skills
• Funding models and procurement rules complicate using shared services.

Opportunities:

• Developing unified approach to workforce planning across public bodies (priority 1)
• Enhancing data quality and independent assurance.
• Centralising services should be seen as a way to build resilience, e.g. sharing Finance/HR roles

Recommendations:

• Develop a collective approach to workforce planning
• More unified pay structures and collective bargaining –approach to current pay round is a barrier to change and soaks up time and resource
• Use an independent data body to ensure quality assurance
• Guidance on fundamental principles of workforce planning
• Tailored approach for small organisations.
• employ a tactical approach to centralising services (priority 1)

Redeployment

Barriers:

• Common citizenship applies in SG Main Bargaining Group; however, policies are inconsistent across Non-Departmental Public Bodies with differing pay/terms.
• Redeployment has negative connotations
• Retraining budgets are limited
• Lack of confidence and time to carry out effective change management.

Opportunities:

• Use redeployment pools for short-term recruitment and broader opportunities
• Roles often don't need to be grade specific.

Recommendations:

• Reframe redeployment as ‘workforce pathways’ or “succession planning”
• Create standardised frameworks and contracts that enable free movement (priority 1)
• Establish national or skills-based redeployment cluster pools (Clarity over who pays, how time limited it should be, when severance comes in) (priority 2)
• Harmonisation of Terma & Conditions in redeployment clusters
• Invest in performance management to prevent redeployment being the default response to performance concerns (priority 2)
• Need flexible, agile policies around restructuring and allow time for re-training
• Needs to work as an internal recruitment pool where people are recognised as able to provide value in another role.

Severance

Barriers:

• SG severance caps differ from UKG, leading to staff dissatisfaction.
• Mixed messages around Non-Compulsory Redundancy (NCR) processes.
• Pension scheme differences, e.g. clarity between voluntary exits and voluntary redundancy
• Risk appetite for public bodies to offer schemes and impact on morale
• SG scrutiny process causes delay and impacts savings – does this add value when AO makes decision
• Becomes very personal in small organisations.

Opportunities:

• How do you get the right people leaving – easier if you know objectives/direction.

Recommendations:

• Clarify severance options and processes with tailored solutions for different types of organisations and share case studies – what worked well / less well (priority 1)
• Offer enhanced packages in exceptional circumstances (priority 2)
• Clarity over NCR – process needs to outline what steps public bodies should follow
• Streamline approval processes between within SG.

Actions:

• Workshop attendees to be kept informed of progress and invited to a follow-up.