Our culture and values
Want to know more about what it’s like working for Scottish Enterprise, what values we work to and how we work together? Find out more about our culture and values.
Working at Scottish Enterprise
Diversity of experience and thought is vital to the success of our vision for the future of every community across Scotland. So, we welcome different strengths and perspectives to our friendly, flexible and inclusive culture.
Scottish Enterprise is a place where you can be yourself. We’ll nurture your talent and skills, so that you can be your best. And we’ll help you balance your work and home life in a flexible environment, where you feel empowered to decide how, when and where you deliver your best work for our customers and stakeholders.
Our values
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Be brave
We feel empowered to continuously improve so that together we can grow and deliver for our economy. We will trust each other, celebrate our success, and learn together at every opportunity.
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Be fair
We will act with respect and empathy towards each other — championing an inclusive environment that cares for everyone, and the planet.
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Be the difference
We will connect and collaborate with others to unlock our collective potential and make a real impact.
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Be our best
We will own our performance by looking after our wellbeing and investing in our development to ensure we can offer our best to others.
Everyday flexibility
As one of Scotland’s Top 10 Flexible Employers, we pride ourselves on empowering our colleagues to work when and where they can best deliver their role in support of our corporate plan. Some roles are more flexible than others, but we’ll always do our best to help you get the right work-life balance for you.
You can choose one of two work styles: you can either work mainly from the office or mainly from home. There may be a few exceptions where we can’t offer this choice, depending on the responsibilities of your role. You may flex your working pattern so that it meets the demands of your role, the needs of the business and suits your preferences.
We aim to create a flexible work environment where we support you to flourish and be your best in meeting the needs of the business and our customers.
We’ll do this by providing:
- A progressive workplace, being brave and trying new practices and ways of working
- A culture that is rooted in our values, our amazing people, and our mission of helping the Scottish economy grow
- The opportunity for you to determine where and when you work from to ensure you can make the biggest impact in the delivery of your role
- A range of wellbeing resources to help keep you healthy and well at work and in your home life
- The flexibility you need to help you meet the demands of your professional life and accomplish the things you identify as priorities outside of your career
A diverse and inclusive workplace
We have diversity communities in a range of areas, who help to raise awareness, gather feedback and offer peer support. Each group has a leadership ambassador from our leadership team, to make sure that any issues raised are given a platform to be resolved.
Our diversity communities are:
- Disability Positive – with a focus on creating an accessible and inclusive organisation where people of all abilities will want to work
- Gender Balance – with a focus on engaging people across the organisation to attract, develop and retain women at all levels, including reduction of the gender pay gap
- Pride – with the goal to support colleagues across the broad spectrum of diversity of sexuality and gender identity
- Multi Cultural – with a focus on creating an organisation which is inclusive of race, ethnicity, nationality and faith
- Multi Generations – working towards an age-inclusive Scottish Enterprise
A connected community
We value the connections our people make outside of their immediate working teams. As well as our diversity communities, there are plenty of other ways to join communities and connect with each other.
- Hobbies and interest groups – from gardening to hillwalking, bookworms and gigs to travel and TV, it’s easy to connect with colleagues who have similar interests
- Support groups – with groups like our menopause support group and families with disabled young people, you can share your experiences and get support from others
- Fika – in Swedish it means “coffee and cake break”, so join our fika sessions for monthly 30-minute chats with colleagues you might never have met otherwise
- Volunteering opportunities – give something back to the community and connect with colleagues using paid volunteering days
Developing you and your career
As an investor in people, we’re committed to supporting and developing our people. We can offer a range of courses and development opportunities, including supporting higher and further education. We also offer in-house opportunities for mentoring, coaching, job shadowing and individual assignments.
Everyone at Scottish Enterprise is encouraged to make space in their diaries for other personal development – catching up on industry developments, reading the latest blogs from other teams across public sector, joining webinars or trying out new tools.
Your voice, heard
Our employees' voices matter to us. Everyone gets regular 1:1 catchups with their people manager to discuss how they’re getting on and raise any issues. We also send out regular surveys where you can share how you’re feeling about things like workload, sense of purpose, opportunities for growth, level of autonomy and more.
And when we’re working on big changes that affect you – like when we introduced our new flexible working arrangements – we’ll always make sure your voice is heard.
Support for young people at Scottish Enterprise
We want to make sure everyone at Scottish Enterprise feels supported and has access to development opportunities. But we know that young people sometimes need extra support to get their careers started, figure out their career goals, and settle into life in the workplace.
As a Young Person Guarantee and Investors in Young People (Gold) employer, we:
- Encourage all young people to aim for 10 development days a year rather than 5
- Have a Youth Strategy in place to ensure we’re considering the needs of our young people and valuing the contributions of our young people
- Will ensure you’re supported at all levels by highly skilled and trained colleagues
- Can offer you access to a buddy and coach to give you extra support
- Can offer you the same development opportunities as all our employees – training opportunities, work shadowing, coaching, and achieving recognised qualifications where they’re relevant to your role
And if you join us as a young person, you’ll also have the opportunity to get involved with the Young Leaders Group who can offer support, gather feedback, make sure our young employees’ voices are heard, and help our young people to find their full potential.
If you're a young person and are just starting your career, you may be interested in our graduate programmes, internships and apprenticeships.
Join the team
If our culture sounds like a good fit for you, have a look at our current vacancies to see if there’s a role for you.
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