1. CCPS Business Resilience Survey 2016
Heather McCluskey
Housing Support Enabling Unit

2. Levels of Optimism Introduction:
We’ve been running the Optimism Survey since 2009 (2012 for HSEU) and have built up several years of data about general levels of optimism, finance, procurement and contracting and workforce issues.
The survey this year ran over June and July – we’re now presenting the results & getting feedback from several groups about the findings before we produce a report.
This year, we got 47 responses to the survey – on par with previous years – from organisations across Scotland from very large to very small.
Comments:
Almost half of respondents mentioned (lack of) funding (21) as being a reason that they were less optimistic.
But the second most cited reason for not being optimistic was because of recruitment, pay (unfunded), or other workforce issues like sleepovers. (11)
Many people also pointed to the current political and economic uncertainty as a reason for not being as optimistic. The Brexit vote happened about halfway through our survey but event then, featured in many comments.
Of the 9 people who said that they were more optimistic, many cited policy shifts and increased focus on collaborative practices.
First, I’m going to show you some general financial trends and then we’ll move on to the more specific workforce questions.

3. Income Trend
Most of those who said that their income was going up said that it was by a very small amount (up by 1-5%) – those that said that it was up significantly, it was to do with winning significant new contracts – and taking on new staff and new costs.
The number of organisations saying that their income has increased has consistently been higher than the number saying that their income has fallen. However, this is not always “good growth” meaning it’s not always sustainable. With increased income, comes increased costs and possibly, increased risk of deficits.
We also ask about services running at a deficit – which might happen if this income growth is bad growth.

4. Services Operating at a Deficit
Over the past couple of years, it seems like the trend for services being run at a deficit is increasing – now with 50% of respondents saying that the number of services run at a deficit has increased and only 7% saying that it had decreased.
We also ask what percentage of services are run at sustainable levels. This year, 35% of respondents said that fewer than half of their services were run at sustainable levels.
From comments, it seems that many organisations (6) are subsidising these services with reserves or through fundraising. Many of the “extra costs” are because of pay increases like the National Living Wage and sleepovers.
We also ask respondents to say what percentage of their service received an inflationary uplift. Not surprisingly, 82% said that less than a quarter of their services had received an uplift in the last year. For those that did receive an uplift, for many, it was related to the Scottish Living Wage (4) or that the uplifts were from grant funded projects – rather than from statutory funding. Many of those that did receive an uplift said that it was the first in many years.

5. Organisational Reserves
About half of respondents said that reserves had remained stable, about 30% said that reserves had decreased and about 25% said that they had increased. Both the increases and decreases tended to be small ( between 1-5%) and many of the increases came from sale of property (2) and capital appeal or fundraising (3).
Again, though some comments indicated that organisations were subsidising some services from reserves (5).

6. Housing Support Trend
We ask respondents whether they deliver housing related support – about 85% said that they did. Then we ask those people what has been the general trend for housing related support provision – as you can see, it’s remaining fairly stable. Consistently more than half of respondents say that’s it’s remained about the same and roughly the same percentage of respondents have said that it has gone up or down. In the main, this would indicate that while work might move around, the total amount of housing related support is staying fairly stable.
However, it’s hard to tell from these figures what the nature of support is, how that support is funded and whether this is changing. Some comments would indicate that services aren’t receiving uplifts or that the nature of support has shifted. Interestingly, it seems to be shifting in different ways – some comments said that the shift had been toward people in greater need, with more complex support needed and some comments indicated that welfare reform had been the driver for the shift – toward more budgeting support, welfare rights referrals and other things that we think of as more low level support.

7. Numbers employed Now – lets look at some workforce figures.
First, overall, many (44%) of respondents said that the numbers employed by their organisation had increased. About half of these (22%) were small increases (1-5%) and comments indicate that the increase has been mostly part-time or sessional staff or fixed term contracts tied to specific funding.

8. Recruitment
We ask organisations whether they have any difficulty with recruiting suitable staff. The vast majority (74%) said that they experienced a lot or some difficulty – while high, this is slightly lower than last year, when 91% of respondents said that they experienced a lot or some difficulty.
I’d be interested in your views about whether this is an indication that recruitment is getting easier – or slightly less hard - or if reflects other factors?
What are your feelings about the skills and qualifications of the applicant pool – especially with registration for support workers on the horizon?
We also ask about the impact on the organisation. Comments included:
Increased time and resource spent on recruitment
Increased use of agency staff and sessional staff

9. Staff Pay and Conditions
We ask respondents to say whether there has been any change in pay and conditions for their workforce in the last year. Most of these increases in pay have been small (improved a little – 23)
The drivers behind the pay increase appear to be the Living Wage (8), and very small, below inflation pay increases (1%) awarded across all staff. Many of these pay increases have come after 7 or 8 years of stagnant wages.
As you know, there is still a lot of uncertainty for many about funding for the Scottish Living Wage, but overall comments across the board were clear that organisations are concerned with ensuring that they offer fair pay, and good terms and conditions and improve these whenever possible.

10. Did the National Living Wage (£7.20) affect your organisation?
For many organisations, there was no or little effect of the introduction of NLW.
Many respondents said that because they were already Scottish Living Wage employers, they did not need to increase wages upon the introduction of the NLW.
However – it’s not all good news – many (9) respondents said that sleepovers were not fully funded by existing contracts, that there was no increase in funding from LAs
Given that there has been no increase in funding, and that future increases look unlikely, there was concern about upcoming increases to the NLW.

11. Training and Development Budgets
For most organisations, training and development budgets have remained stable (though those organisations have emphasised that they have protected these).
Several comments from respondents who said that they had increased training budgets mentioned that the upcoming registration requirements were a driver for this.

12. Has the introduction of pension auto-enrolment increased overall costs?
This is the first year we’ve asked this question, although auto enrolment has applied to some organisations for several years. Based on the comments, the impact has been small relative to the size of the organisation, but the take up has been good, with most staff members choosing to remain enrolled.

13. Questions
Do these numbers and trends ring true for you? Are there factors influencing the trends that we have not addressed? What are the upcoming opportunities and threats that we should think about for next year?