Finding a Voice, Taking Action: Using Action Learning Sets to Support Change in the Scottish Hospitality Industry

Helen Timbrell, Calum Fox, Laura Robertson, Emma Congreve, Fiona McHardy, Chirsty McFadyen, Jennifer Davidson, Helen Vaupel-Schwittay, Allison Catalano, Anna Hirvonen

Research output: Book/ReportCommissioned report

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Abstract

This report summarises progress to date and key learning from the first stage of the action learning set (ALS) workstream within the Serving the Future (STF) project. STF is a three-year action research project working with hospitality employers and workers. The project is seeking to understand, reduce and prevent in-work poverty and identify changes that could be made within the hospitality sector. By working directly with employers and people with experience of low-paid work, the project is taking a variety of approaches to identify changes that can take place at an organisational level as well as necessary policy or systems-wide changes that are required across Scotland. The objectives of the Serving the Future project are to:

• Identify actions that can be taken by individual businesses to reduce and prevent in-work poverty.
• Support employers to identify changes that will enable them to prevent their staff moving into poverty or to alleviate their levels of poverty.
• Identify and support transformational change to address issues of in-work poverty that can take place at an organisational level as well as necessary policy or systems-wide change.
• Provide businesses and their employees with the confidence to adapt to changing external conditions beyond the life of this study so that good practices are sustained beyond the project.
• Help Scotland to meet its statutory child poverty targets by engaging with both employers, parents, and caregivers working within the hospitality sector.

The Serving the Future project was born out of a recognition that the hospitality industry urgently needs sustainable solutions which improve the situations of both employers and workers. By working with both business owners and managers, and employees in the sector, we hope to contribute to these solutions through our research. Serving the Future is funded by The Robertson Trust and is being delivered by the Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures, the Fraser of Allander Institute and the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship (all based at the University of Strathclyde), and the Poverty Alliance.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationGlasgow
PublisherUniversity of Strathclyde
Commissioning bodyThe Robertson Trust
Number of pages30
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Sept 2023

Keywords

  • action learning set (ALS)
  • hospitality
  • Scotland

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