Graeme yesterday took part in a debate on flexible working. He took the opportunity to highlight the excellent Carer Positive initiative. You can watch or read his speech below.
Graeme Dey (Angus South) (SNP):
As is customary, I congratulate Ruth Maguire on bringing the matter to the chamber. The Timewise report raises important issues. Among other things, it identifies an important distinction in the availability of flexible working in noting that the majority of employers offer it to employees they “know and trust” and see it as a “retention tool”, but that many employers fail to use it to attract people when recruiting. The report states that employers seem to have a default position of advertising jobs as full time even when they seek to replace someone who was working part time and, similarly, of failing to note flexible working as an option even when the previous occupant of the post was able to work flexibly.
There is a lesson to be learned by us all, including MSPs in our role as employers. Put simply, if employers do not change how they advertise, they run the risk of missing out on excellent staff. People need to know that they can ask for flexible working. Spelling that out in adverts helps prospective employees to identify that flexible working is on offer, and it might make the difference between them applying and not applying.
The Angus area, which I represent, performs relatively well on advertising—13 per cent of adverts for jobs with salaries of £20,000 or more note flexible working opportunities. However, low-skill and part-time roles are being taken by overqualified staff, who are pushed into those roles to get the flexibility that they need. We may well have the makings of a vicious cycle, as people with appropriate skills become unfairly locked out of the labour market.
I will highlight a good-practice example of flexible working for a significant sector of our community: carers. Although it is not focused on advertising by employers, the carer positive initiative seeks to provide carers with a degree of flexibility so that they can manage their employment and caring responsibilities. At the beginning of the year, I was delighted to host an event here at which the Scottish Parliament received its carer positive accreditation. There are now 81 accredited employers across Scotland, with 272,255 staff between them. They range from councils and health boards to large companies such as Scottish Gas and Standard Life.
Carer positive highlights not just obvious things, such as accommodating part-time working, flexitime, job sharing and granting emergency leave when it is needed, but things such as ensuring that carers know that they are allowed to take a call at work and that there is somewhere private for them to do so. Fife Council allows carers who wish to access its counselling service during work time to do that. Carers should feel comfortable making their employers aware of their responsibilities, but they should not feel under any obligation to do so. A carer positive logo on an advert might make people aware that a prospective employer is willing to listen to people’s needs. Voluntary Action Shetland lets new starts know, through its staff induction pack, that carers are welcome to identify themselves to the executive team or their team leader, but that they do not have to.
Why should organisations become carer positive? What is in it for them? Caring responsibilities impact people across the working-age spectrum but tend to hit a peak when people have gained valuable skills and experience. Carers leaving the workforce might not only have a negative impact on those carers’ wellbeing and financial circumstances but damage employers and the wider economy. The impact is cumulative, and it will only increase as the population ages and the number of carers rises.
Supporting carers to remain productively in work delivers benefits to employers. Evidence shows that it increases morale and productivity, reduces stress and sickness absence, and helps employers to attract and retain experienced staff. Without support, combining employment and caring can lead to stress, exhaustion and people not performing to their full potential. Losing valuable members of staff can result in a loss of skills, knowledge and experience, and it leads to increased recruitment and training costs.
I recognise that becoming carer positive is not without its challenges for small businesses but, where it can be implemented, the flexible working that the carer positive initiative delivers is quite simply a win-win.
