Deadline: 01-Sep-2024
The Scottish Government (SG) is inviting applications for grant funding for the Fairer Workplaces Fund.
The Fairer Workplaces Fund (the Fund) offers grant funding to organisations to work mainly with third and private sector employers. The Fund focuses on delivering new projects that support flexible working practices and improve diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) within the workplace.
Funded projects should contribute to the Scottish Government’s wider ambition of creating a Fair Work Nation by 2025, and the First Minister’s key priorities of reducing child poverty and growing the economy.
Projects are expected to commence in early October 2024 and must be completed by the end of March 2025. Tangible learning and dissemination deliverables are expected to be central to funded projects.
The purpose of this Fund is to deliver on the need for continued and focussed support to employers to expand provision of flexible working, and in relation to taking further steps to improve conditions and experiences of disabled people, racialised minorities, women and the over 50s in the workplace to help maximise the numbers of people from these groups in and progressing within work. In addition, the Fund aims to demonstrate the benefits to businesses and other employers of adopting fair work practices and continuing to make improvements.
Funding Information
- You can apply for a grant of up to £50,000 per project. The total available budget for the fund in the 2024 to 2025 financial year is £350,000. A minimum of £75,000 of this is ringfenced for projects relating to flexible working.
What funding can be used for?
- Funding must be used for new activity or show additional benefits to any previously funded activity relating to Fair Work in the workplace. Expanding existing projects may be considered where prior learning has resulted in a new approach being developed.
- You must also be able to demonstrate that your project fits with Scottish Government Fair Work ambitions and related key priorities of government such as:
- reducing child poverty
- reducing economic inactivity
- filling labour shortages
- reducing the disability employment gap (DEG)
- reducing the gender pay gap
- eradicating structural inequalities
- supporting carers
- working flexibly
- You can use funding to deliver activities such as, for example training, awareness raising/ campaigns, pilot projects, projects that will improve the existing equalities evidence base, and development and delivery of new processes or practices, however you are not limited to this.
Eligibility Criteria
- The fund is open to organisations working with private and third sector employers in Scotland. This is mainly, but not restricted to, small and medium sized employers (SMEs). Public sector involvement is permitted only as part of a wider collaborative approach and not with a public sector body as the primary beneficiary.
- Applicants need to demonstrate that they are following mandatory Fair Work First principles regarding the Real Living Wage and Effective Voice, unless exceptions apply.
For more information, visit SG.