During the winter of 2020/21, Carnegie UK ran a series of online conversations under the banner Rethinking Scotland. We asked for people’s views on what needs to happen and who needs to act to put some of Scotland’s big ideas into practice.
The key shift they identified was in the need for greater democratic wellbeing, by opening up policy making to more diverse voices, and moving from consulting to sharing power with citizens and communities.
We are publishing this to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Christie Commission in order to support the shared agenda of improving public services for our citizens and communities.
As always, we are happy to discuss the issues and insights or receive any feedback on this paper.
The report reiterates the need to eliminate the digital exclusion of children and young people for good, and sets out a 10-point action plan to ensure that all have an opportunity to access the benefits of the digital world, both to ensure their right to education and for the sake of their wellbeing.
Closing the Digital Divide for Goodnotes the increased awareness of digital exclusion during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in light of the shift to remote learning, and commends the rapid responses put in place to get more children and young people online.
However, the report also underlines the need for a continued focus on digital inclusion, to ensure that learning from the crisis period is maximised, and that a long-term strategic approach is put in place, given that challenges remain.
The 10 recommended actions include implementing a co-production process to develop a nationally agreed definition for digital inclusion, recognising that a device, suitable connection, skills and a safe online environment are essential components.
The report also calls for regular measurement of the levels of digital inclusion amongst children and young people, and the development of proactive solutions such as working with teachers and education staff to identify gaps in skills and revising teacher training requirements and curricula accordingly.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss further, please feel free to contact Anna Grant (Senior Policy and Development Officer, Carnegie UK Trust) via anna.grant@carnegieuk.org.
The UK Government has been urged to hold firm on its commitment to boosting the minimum wage over the course of this parliament, in order to give low paid workers a much needed pay rise. But the government must also take wider measures to boost job quality and tackle poverty, and provide additional support for employers to adapt to higher minimum wage.
New research published by the Carnegie UK Trust and the Learning and Work Institute argues that despite the pandemic and the recession it has triggered, the ambitious minimum wage targets of the next four years are both deliverable and vital for low paid workers.
In 2019, the Government pledged to increase the National Living Wage – the legal minimum wage for workers aged 25 and over – to two thirds of median pay by 2024, and to extend this rate to workers aged 21 and over. Polling commissioned by Learning and Work Institute and Carnegie UK Trust shows that a majority of workers (66%) and businesses (54%) support the move.
The report argues that increases in the minimum wage must be part of awider mission to support ‘good work’ across the economy.
Polling of employers as part of the research found that 22% of employers with a high proportion of workers on low pay said they may respond to a higher wage floor by using more insecure job contracts, with 17% saying they would cut back on non-pay benefits. 12% of low pay employers said they may remove supervisory or managerial roles in response to a higher minimum wage, risking more ‘bunching’ of workers at or near the wage floor and making progression more challenging.
The report calls for the increase to the minimum wage to be part of a wider strategy for good work, including promoting sectoral collective agreements in low pay sectors, in order to agree common standards beyond the minimum wage.
While recent increases in the minimum wage have been successful in reducing the number of people on low pay, the number of people in in-work poverty has continued to rise.
This is in part because increases in the wage floor have been accompanied by cuts to in-work benefits for those on low incomes and with high living costs, which have pushed more working people into poverty. Any increases in the wage floor need to be accompanied by better support through the social security system, including through retaining the £20 uplift in Universal Credit which is due to end in April.
The report considers support needed to help employers who are hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic to adapt to the new wage floor.
It calls for a temporary re-balancing of employer national insurance contributions (NICs) as a transitional measure to support employers to adapt and minimise any risks to employment of a higher minimum wage.
Through both increasing the threshold at which employers start to pay NICs, and increasing the rate at which NICs are paid, government could reduce the tax burden on employers who are impacted by the increase, supporting them to adjust to higher wage costs, whilst protecting overall revenue for the Treasury.
Douglas White, Head of Advocacy at Carnegie UK Trust, said:“Good work has a vital role to play in supporting wellbeing – and decent pay is of fundamental importance. Many low pay workers have been on the frontline during the pandemic and we were pleased that November’s spending review confirmed a rise in the minimum wage.
“Our report sets out a path towards future sustainable minimum wage increases – providing support for employers as they recover from the pandemic and ensuring that workers receive the pay rise that they deserve and need.
“We also urge government to be ambitious in driving forward other crucial aspects of their good work agenda, including supporting workers to train and re-skill and making progress to build back a resilient labour market from the pandemic”.
Joe Dromey, deputy director of research and development at Learning and Work Institute and author of the report, said: “Government can still achieve its commitment to boosting the minimum wage, but this will be trickier after the pandemic. A temporary rebalancing of employer national insurance contributions would help businesses to adapt to a higher wage floor, minimising any potential job losses.
“While increasing the minimum wage would deliver a much-deserved pay rise to millions of low-paid workers, this alone will not tackle the scourge of in-work poverty. Government must ensure sufficient support through the social security system, starting by retaining the £20 increase in Universal Credit.”
We have published the final report in our series looking at the future of the minimum wage, and exploring its impact on workers, employers and the economy.
The UK’s minimum wage is widely regarded as a successful policy which has achieved broad political support over the last two decades, and successfully reduced extreme low pay without damaging employment.
Despite these successes, a rising minimum wage has not been enough to tackle in-work poverty.
And even before the pandemic inflicted severe pressures on the economy, there was a need to understand the ability of businesses to adapt to a higher wage floor, and ask whether changes made by employers to accommodate higher pay might compromise other important aspects of job quality, such as progression or terms and conditions.
Our report makes recommendations about the future path of the minimum wage, and sets out proposals for how an increased minimum wage can be delivered as part of a wider labour market strategy that promotes good work and tackles in-work poverty.
We would be delighted to hear your views on the ideas in the report.
You can get in touch with us on Twitter @CarnegieUKTrust, using the hashtag #MinimumWage or you can let us know your thoughts by emailing Gail Irvine, Senior Policy and Development Officer, ongail.irvine@carnegieuk.org.
“… by such means as the Trustees may from time to time select as the best fitted from age to age, remembering that new needs are constantly arising”, or “how to solve a problem like improving wellbeing?”
Along with his substantial endowment, Andrew Carnegie left his UK and Ireland Trustees an obligation to undertake regular reviews of the most effective means of securing his mission to improve wellbeing (writes Carnegie UK Trust Chief Executive SARAH DAVIDSON).
This has translated over time into quinquennial strategy reviews and the subsequent production of 5-year strategy documents. Those of you who follow our work may have spotted that the most recent one (2016-2020) expired at midnight on 31st December. So, what’s next for the Carnegie UK Trust?
For an organisation whose entire purpose is focussed on the improvement of wellbeing, the past decade has been a remarkably fertile one in public policy terms. Across the world, as well as here in the UK, the concept of “societal wellbeing” – everyone having what they need to live well now and in the future – has gathered momentum. The Trust has been at the heart of that debate, bringing accumulated expertise to policy and practice and adding to our own understanding as we went along.
It has been an incredibly busy period, no more so than in the last few years. In our work on digital futures; fulfilling work; enabling wellbeing; and flourishing towns we have ranged widely across the public policy landscape as well as the actual geographies of our 5 jurisdictions. In doing so, we have enjoyed multiple collaborations and partnerships, developed a diverse playbook of approaches, and invested in the thinking and doing which we believed were necessary to stimulate positive change. It has been challenging and exhilarating and – at times – exhausting.
As we entered 2020, we knew that it was almost time to draw breath, to look back and to look forwards and to take stock, as Andrew Carnegie asked us to. And then came the pandemic, and the year that was to have been one of review and reflection became the year when we doubled down on the insights and learning we had gained throughout the strategy period and brought them to bear on the greatest challenge to individual, community and societal wellbeing of our lifetimes.
However, we quickly discovered that 2020’s clarity of focus on questions of wellbeing actually acted as a stimulus to our strategy review, rather than a distraction. We added to our existing evidence base about what influences wellbeing, and we worked alongside partners old and new to understand how Covid-19 was affecting communities across the UK and Ireland.
At the same time, the experience of remote working during a pandemic encouraged us to reflect on ourselves. What is our identity as an organisation when we are not working together in our familiar building in Dunfermline? What does it mean to work across the UK and Ireland when you never leave your home? Faced with immense challenges to public policy and practice, how can a team of 16 FTE reasonably make an impact, and what does “impact” mean anyway, in our business?
In the course of last year, we started to address some of these questions, drawing on the extensive experience and insights of our own team and Board of Trustees, as well as undertaking a thorough stakeholder survey carried out on our behalf by The Diffley Partnership.
We heard some very encouraging and positive things during this process.
People who engaged with our work in 2016-2020 said that they regarded our activities as relevant and influential. We have strong relationships and active networks across all the jurisdictions where we operate, and across sectors, allowing us to fulfil a valuable convening function.
The quality of our work, our approach to partnerships and our varied menu of ways of working are all perceived as strengths, as are my colleagues who are highly valued by all who engage with them. As the Trust’s still-relatively-new CEO I am privileged to enjoy the reflected glory of much of that feedback.
However, a period of reflection and review is most useful when it sharpens your ambition and signals future opportunities. So, while we are proud of the work that we have done over the past decade in order to improve wellbeing, we also recognise that in this rapidly changing world we must evolve our approach to build on the work we have done to date and become even more effective in pursuit of Andrew Carnegie’s mission.
This is what we are working on as we enter 2021.
We are exploring how to strengthen the focus on our USP, which is wellbeing. As part of this, we want to invest more consciously in our ongoing learning as an organisation (both at a governance and an operational level), and we intend to become much more explicit about our values and how they shape us and our work.
We need to revisit the sheer volume of activity that we undertake and reflect on the trade-offs between individual busyness and the overall depth, quality, and impact of our output as a team.
We want to understand more fully how the work we do and the way that we present our evidence connects with those we seek to influence – or doesn’t. Does everyone understand what we mean when we talk about “wellbeing” and if not, how can we communicate that more effectively?
It’s also important for us to keep abreast of and emulate the very best practice in assessing impact in the complex world of social change. We are currently inviting expressions of interest from people interested in working with us on refreshing our brand, and also on a review of best practice on impact. If either of these falls into your area of expertise, we’d be keen to hear from you.
At the same time, we are continuing to assess our own ongoing development as an organisation.
In common with many others in our sector, the events of summer 2020 added further urgency to the challenge we had already set ourselves to examine our policy and practice on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
We’ve started some important conversations, but we have much more still to do here. We were already auditing our environmental practice a year ago, but an 11-month period without travel has shown us what is really possible with the aid of technology and the goodwill of partners.
The realities of lockdown created opportunities for team members to step into new spaces, take on additional responsibilities and demonstrate the power of collective leadership. Our Organisational Development strategy will be founded on our strengthened belief in the capacity and desire of individuals, teams, and the organisation as a whole to learn and grow.
So, that’s what we are up to here at the Trust, while at the same time making sure that we bring any remaining work under the 2016-20 strategy to a positive conclusion. The next six months will be the time when we lay down the critical foundations for successful delivery in the years ahead.
We expect to publish our 2021-2026 strategy in the summer, along with the accompanying operating plan. Between then and now, we will go on sharing updates on how our review is going. We are always keen to learn from others, so if you have experience and learning to share, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the landscape that services operate within. Traditionally face-to-face delivery organisations have been forced to move online, many for the first time, as lockdowns and continued social distancing has meant it impossible or impractical to deliver their work in person.
To support organisations as they continue to navigate this process, we partnered with Your Own Place to produce ‘Our Digital Lockdown Journey’, a blog and vlog series during 2020, exploring how organisations have managed to continue providing vital services by shifting online.
Today we have published a short summary paper: ‘Going Digital or Going Bust’which brings together the key insights, learnings and questions raised through this series.
Through this reflective case-study series we wanted to support organisations to reflect on their capability and confidence to test out new digital techniques, to ultimately ensure that individuals receive the services they need to support their wellbeing throughout and beyond this pandemic.
The series explores topics including tensions in delivering outcomes when delivery models change, safeguarding, the role of values, impacts on the team and cost.
We hope you find this report, blog and vlog series of interest and if you would like to find out more about this work, or any of our Digital Futures portfolio, please do get in contact.
Yours sincerely
Anna Grant
Senior Policy and Development Officer Carnegie UK Trust
At the start of 2020 there was a gathering momentum to conversations about the role of kindness and compassion in health and social care in Scotland. When COVID-19 happened, the healthcare system entered a period of rapid transformation in which many of the previously insurmountable ‘barriers’ to kindness appeared to fall away. In this context, it felt important to capture what was happening.
The courage to be kind draws on a series of reflective conversations, conducted between April and September 2020 with five medics working in different parts of NHS Scotland.
The conversations reflected on what can be achieved when there is a common purpose, and when work is underpinned by relationships and collaboration. But alongside the opportunities presented by changes in practice and a renewed focus on wellbeing, there was concern that these may be lost amidst a focus on remobilising and ‘getting back to normal’.
The voices in this report offer a particular perspective. But the depth of reflection, and the clear message about the need to ease some of the pressure in the system in order to ensure the wellbeing of staff and patients is one that resonates with many other conversations and is relevant and urgent right across the health service.
At the end of a year that has demanded so much from our health service, we hope that this report adds to our collective understanding of the impact of COVID-19.
As we look to develop this work, we would really value your thoughts and reflections, which you can share withben.thurman@carnegieuk.org or by joining the debate on twitter @CarnegieUKTrust.
COVID-19 is bringing into sharp focus the importance of societal wellbeing. The pandemic has laid bare the disparities that persist for many people living in the UK, and the interconnection of different factors that have an impact on how we live our lives together as a society.
From the quality of our relationships to our health, to the places we call home and our income – the contribution of each to wellbeing cannot be understood in isolation. What is more, the narrow parameters of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) do not – and cannot – tell an accurate story of whether life is improving, where the gaps are, and who is being left behind.
Gross Domestic Wellbeing (GDWe)™ offers a holistic and relevant alternative to GDP as a measure of social progress. Using the framework and data in the Office for National Statistics Measures of National Wellbeing Dashboard, we have developed – for the first time – a tool that provides a single figure for GDWe in England, and mapped this against GDP for the past six years.
Our analysis found that GDWe in England was in decline before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Urgent action is therefore needed to focus decision-making on wellbeing.
Undertaken alongside a thematic analysis of the recommendations made within 48 key commissions and inquiries undertaken in England since 2010, we have identified areas of mutual focus and concern, to highlight the key actions that should be taken to improve wellbeing.
An overview of the main findings is provided in our summary document.
We hope that the findings of this report will be of interest to you. To let us know your thoughts, please email hannah.ormston@Carnegieuk.org or join the debate online by tagging @CarnegieUKTrust #GDWe – we would be pleased to hear from you.
The report draws together findings from over 80 conversations with people across the UK during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on how organisations and communities were adapting to meet the changing needs of the people around them, as well as the evolving relationships between different sectors.
The report reflects that at the onset of the pandemic, it was often communities who stepped up to offer essential support, such as food and checking in on isolated individuals. The report calls for more partnership working between the public and voluntary sectors and communities: investing in communities to unlock their power.
Looking to the future, the Trust considers how to maintain working together and sharing power across sectoral and professional boundaries. The report highlights actions taken in the pandemic that could be a springboard for moving towards long-held ambitions of partnership working and more people-focused and preventative public sector services.
You can read the full report here and an accessible version is available here.
A blog on the report’s key messages is also available on our website.
We would be delighted to hear your views on the ideas put forward in the report, and you can share the report with your networks over Twitter using the hashtag #COVIDConversations.
Best wishes
Sarah
Sarah Davidson Chief Executive Carnegie UK Trust
For regular updates on all of the Trust’s projects and activities click HERE to subscribe to our bi-monthly e-newsletter.
Race Inequality in the Workforce: Analysing the state of play in the coronavirus economy
The impact of Covid-19 on the labour market has affected specific groups of workers more than others, including those with an ethnic minority background. In this new report, we explore evidence that shows the specific impact that the pandemic has had on Black and ethnic minority workers, demonstrating the ways in which they face a range of additional risks during the economic downturn, in terms of both loss of employment and poorer quality work.
The report makes 11 recommendations for government and employers to ensure that job quality is protected for all and that groups at particular risk are safeguarded.
This short report complements our Good Work for Wellbeing in the Coronavirus Economy report which was launched last month. It seeks to understand how we can ensure the best possible jobs recovery and achieve good work for all in the coronavirus economy.
You can read Race Inequality in the Workforce: Analysing the state of play in the coronavirus economy here.
You can read Good Work for Wellbeing in the Coronavirus Economy here.
Join the conversation on Twitter @CarnegieUKTrust or please feel free to get in touch via Georgina Bowyer, Policy and Development Officer (georgina@carnegieuk.org).
I hope this email finds you safe and well in these difficult times.
I am pleased to share new research from the Carnegie UK Trust, looking at how we can achieve ‘good work’ for all in the UK coronavirus economy.
The coronavirus pandemic has severely impacted jobs and livelihoods, but it has also seen labour market interventions that were previously unimaginable and given rise to calls to build back a better labour market. For our research we interviewed labour market experts including academics, business and trade union representatives and leading think tanks, and undertook analysis of the impacts of the crisis on different groups of workers.
Our report Good Work for Wellbeing in the Coronavirus Economy draws together these insights and presents a package of over 30 proposals for how good work can be achieved and sustained, to ensure work improves wellbeing for many more people.
You can read the report’s key messages and recommendations here
We would be delighted to hear your views on the ideas put forward in the report. You can get in touch with us on Twitter @CarnegieUKTrust, using the hashtag #GoodWork #COVID19 or you can let us know your thoughts by emailing Gail Irvine, Senior Policy and Development Officer, on gail.irvine@carnegieuk.org.
