Scottish Business Pledge – Statistical Overview October 2018
Pledge Elements
As at 24 October 2018, 552 businesses had signed up to the Business Pledge – representing 0.3% of the Scotland’s registered business base. The table below shows the number and share of businesses signing up to each of the nine pledge elements.
| Pledge Element | Businesses | % Share |
| Paying the living wage | 552 | 100% |
| Not using exploitative zero hours contracts | 552 | 100% |
| Playing an active role in the community | 461 | 83.5% |
| Committing to an innovation program | 451 | 81.7% |
| Committing to prompt payment | 443 | 80.3% |
| Investing in Youth | 432 | 78.3% |
| Pursuing international business opportunities | 427 | 77.4% |
| Supporting progressive workforce engagement | 401 | 72.6% |
| Making progress on diversity and gender balance | 212 | 38.4% |
As shown in the chart below, 87 businesses (16%) are already fulfilling all nine elements with the remaining 465 businesses working towards this. Note that overall, 480 business (87%) are already fulfilling at least six of the nine elements.
Businesses signing up to the Pledge
To find out more about the signatory businesses, we have matched the 552 signatory businesses to the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR). The IDBR is a database of all businesses that are VAT and/or PAYE registered. It was possible to match 490 of the 552 signatory businesses to the IDBR extract from March 2017. An IDBR match could not be found for 62 of the 552 businesses – the main reason for non-match was that the signatory business was relatively new and therefore not on the register yet.
Analysis of the 490 signatory businesses that could be matched to IDBR shows that:
1Medium firms account for 15.3% of pledge signatories and large firms account for 16.3%; these firms respectively account for 2.2% and 1.4% of the Scottish business base overall.
Pledge Elements
As at 24 October 2018, 552 businesses had signed up to the Business Pledge – representing 0.3% of the Scotland’s registered business base. The table below shows the number and share of businesses signing up to each of the nine pledge elements.
| Pledge Element | Businesses | % Share |
| Paying the living wage | 552 | 100% |
| Not using exploitative zero hours contracts | 552 | 100% |
| Playing an active role in the community | 461 | 83.5% |
| Committing to an innovation program | 451 | 81.7% |
| Committing to prompt payment | 443 | 80.3% |
| Investing in Youth | 432 | 78.3% |
| Pursuing international business opportunities | 427 | 77.4% |
| Supporting progressive workforce engagement | 401 | 72.6% |
| Making progress on diversity and gender balance | 212 | 38.4% |
As shown in the chart below, 87 businesses (16%) are already fulfilling all nine elements with the remaining 465 businesses working towards this. Note that overall, 480 business (87%) are already fulfilling at least six of the nine elements.
Businesses signing up to the Pledge
To find out more about the signatory businesses, we have matched the 552 signatory businesses to the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR). The IDBR is a database of all businesses that are VAT and/or PAYE registered. It was possible to match 490 of the 552 signatory businesses to the IDBR extract from March 2017. An IDBR match could not be found for 62 of the 552 businesses – the main reason for non-match was that the signatory business was relatively new and therefore not on the register yet.
Analysis of the 490 signatory businesses that could be matched to IDBR shows that:
- The majority (68.4%) of signatory businesses were small, employing less than 50 people. However, as small firms make up 96.4% of firms within the Scottish economy, proportionately more medium and large firms had signed up to the Pledge than these firms’ share of the Scottish business base.1
- The signatory businesses collectively provide 106,450 jobs, 4.3% of all jobs in Scotland.
- Nearly half (45.7%) of all signatory businesses operated in two broad sectors: ‘Professional, scientific and technical activities’ (28.6%) and ‘Information and communication’ (17.1%); whereas in the overall economy, these sectors make up 18.6% and 5.9% of firms respectively.
- The pledge businesses have a total of 1,400 business sites (offices, shops, factories, etc) across Scotland: over one third of these are situated in Glasgow City (18.2%) and City of Edinburgh (16.4%).
1Medium firms account for 15.3% of pledge signatories and large firms account for 16.3%; these firms respectively account for 2.2% and 1.4% of the Scottish business base overall.