Salary Benchmarking across the Arts

Published: 14 Dec 2023

Creative Scotland is seeking to appoint a consultant/consultancy to undertake a salary benchmarking exercise of jobs across the arts sector.

In collaboration with organisations and practitioners in the arts sector, Creative Scotland is seeking to undertake an exercise in researching salaries and providing a salary benchmarking guide and a methodology which has the potential to be built upon and expanded in future years.

This should create a framework by which similar jobs in similar organisations can be usefully compared and used as reference for those recruiting in the sector. In addition, there should be recommendations as to how this work can be expanded and further developed to encompass a wider range of sectors and roles in the future.

Ensuring fair pay for employees includes considering consistency across similar job families, sizes of organisations and levels of responsibility. Understanding the appropriate salary for jobs in the creative and cultural sectors has proven to be challenging, with a multitude of job titles, responsibilities and the diversity of organisations. While many organisations do some salary research before advertising roles, there is no guide to salary levels across the sector or any information about comparable jobs and their salaries.

Fair Work is a Scottish Government initiative which seeks to promote Fair Work practices across private, third sector and public sector organisations in Scotland. Fair Work is one of Creative Scotland’s four Strategic Priorities. Building on the Review of Fair Work, undertaken by Culture Radar, Creative Scotland are in the process of developing a Fair Work Strategy to guide future work and identify how we can best support the sector to align with the principles of Fair Work.

We expect the budget for this project to be between £10,000 to £15,000 including VAT. Tenderers registered for VAT should indicate this in their proposal.

Tenders should be submitted through the Scottish Government e-Tendering System no later than 12 noon on Friday, 19th January.

To apply for this opportunity, please register with PCS as a supplier if you are not already registered.

Once registered, please then complete your application via the PCS Portal using Reference No. DEC494753.

The contract will commence upon acceptance of the offer until Friday, 31st May 2024.

For further information, please contact Kelly Neill by emailing kelly.neill@creativescotland.com, or visit https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/