If you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering how on earth you’re going to evidence Fair Work by 2027.
You already believe in it. You’re probably doing a lot of it already.
But from April 2027, if you receive Scottish Government-linked funding, belief won’t be enough. You’ll need to show measurable progress across the five Fair Work pillars:
- Effective Voice
- Opportunity
- Security
- Fulfilment
- Respect
The question isn’t whether you support Fair Work. It’s whether you can clearly show how it’s embedded in everyday experience across your organisation.
This isn’t just about meeting a requirement. It’s about strengthening how your organisation listens, learns, and improves.
That’s where Hive comes in.
We’re an intuitive employee voice platform built to make this easier. Not heavier. We help you capture meaningful data across the five pillars, track progress over time, and clearly show the difference your people strategy is making, without turning you into a full-time data analyst.
| Fair Work Pillar | What You Must Evidence | Hive Provides |
|---|---|---|
| Effective Voice | Continuous, safe voice and leadership responsiveness | Hive Surveying, Open Door, 360 Voice surveys, Dashboards |
| Opportunity | Fair progression & equality tracking | Demographic reporting, Key Driver Analysis |
| Security | Wellbeing, stability & safe reporting | Pulse surveys, Hive Messenger |
| Fulfilment | Meaning, growth & recognition | Engagement drivers, Hive Fives |
| Respect | Inclusion, dignity & psychological safety | Respect Metrics, Demographic comparison |
Start with the outcome you want to show
If someone asked you tomorrow:
“Can you show us your baseline across all five Fair Work pillars?”
“Can you demonstrate improvement?”
“Can you evidence what’s changed because employees spoke up?”
Would you feel calm… or slightly sweaty?
By 2027, organisations will need more than good intentions. You’ll need to demonstrate:
- A clear starting point
- Visible year-on-year improvement
- Oversight at board level
- Reporting that stands up in procurement conversations
The right employee voice approach gives you that foundation from day one. Hive gives you that structure from day one. You can map insights directly to the Fair Work pillars, see where you’re strong, and spot where attention is needed, all in one place.
No late-night spreadsheet stitching required.
Effective Voice: More than an annual survey
Running a survey once a year isn’t the same as having an effective voice culture. You know that. Your employees know that too.
Effective voice means people feel safe speaking up, and see that something actually happens when they do.
With Hive, you’re not limited to one moment in the year. You can create continuous listening, run targeted pulse surveys, and offer confidential channels like Hive Open Door for concerns. Hive also lets you go a step further and track actions and make manager accountability visible.
That’s when “you said, we did” stops being a slogan and starts being evidence.
Opportunity: fairness you can see
Most organisations genuinely want to be fair. The challenge is proving whether everyone experiences that fairness in the same way.
Hive allows you to compare experiences across different demographic groups, identify progression blockers, and understand where opportunity might not feel equal.
Sometimes the data confirms what you hoped. Sometimes it shows you something uncomfortable. Both are useful, and can paint a picture you may not have seen without gaining employee feedback.
Because you can’t improve what you can’t see. And with these insights you can start to get a clear understanding of what changes you need to make, or what things you can keep working on that you’re already doing well to create a fair workplace.
Security: catching issues before they escalate
Security isn’t just about contracts and pay. It’s about workload pressure, job confidence, psychological safety and how people experience change.
Often, early warning signs are there, you just don’t always have visibility of them.
Hive helps you spot trends in wellbeing, confidence and workload before they become retention or reputation problems. It turns instinct into insight.
And that’s a powerful place for HR to operate from.
Start making data-driven decisions about the future of your organisation
Fulfilment: what’s actually driving engagement?
When boards ask about engagement, they’re rarely satisfied with a single number.
They want to know:
“What’s driving it?”
“What’s shifting?”
“What are we doing about it?”
And that’s where things can get tricky. Because a headline score doesn’t tell you whether it’s lack of development, limited autonomy, poor recognition, or misalignment with purpose that’s influencing how people feel.
Fulfilment is about whether work feels meaningful. Whether people feel trusted. Whether their skills are being used. Whether they see a future.
With Hive, you’re not left guessing. You can see the underlying key drivers of engagement, purpose, autonomy, growth, recognition, and how they differ across teams, roles or demographics. You can track how those drivers change over time. And you can link actions directly back to them.
So instead of saying, “Engagement is at 72%,” you’re saying:
“We’ve seen a dip in perceived development opportunities in operational teams. We’ve introduced targeted progression conversations, and early pulse data shows improvement.”
That’s a very different board conversation.
It moves you from reporting a score to explaining a story. From reacting to leading. From measuring engagement to actively shaping fulfilment.
Respect: policy versus reality
You might have strong policies around dignity, fairness and inclusion. That’s important.
But Fair Work isn’t measured by what’s written down. It’s measured by what people actually experience.
Do people feel heard?
Do they feel treated fairly?
Do they feel included in decisions that affect them?
With Hive, you’re able to go beyond policy statements and understand lived experience in real time.
You can measure inclusion sentiment across your organisation, compare experiences across demographic groups, and track how perceptions shift over time. If something changes, positively or negatively, you’ll see it.
And when you want to dig deeper, you can run targeted pulse surveys specifically focused on inclusion. Whether that’s around belonging, equity, psychological safety or fairness during change, Hive makes it easy to ask focused questions and respond quickly.
We also provide a dedicated diversity and inclusion question bank, so you’re not starting from scratch or second-guessing what to ask. The questions are designed by employee voice experts, structured, meaningful, and aligned to help you surface insight that leads to action.
That means you’re not just pointing to policies in a board paper.
You’re showing:
- How inclusion is experienced across different groups
- Where disparities may exist
- What you’re doing in response
- And whether it’s working
And that’s where credibility really lives.
Make reporting feel empowering — not exhausting
Let’s be honest. Translating engagement data into something board-ready can be time-consuming.
Hive provides clear dashboards, direct mapping to the Fair Work pillars, and year-on-year comparisons that make progress visible. You can show where improvements have happened, where action is underway, and where attention is needed.
Instead of scrambling for narrative, you’re leading it.
This is HR’s moment
Fair Work 2027 isn’t just a compliance milestone.
It’s an opportunity for HR to step forward as a strategic partner, the team that brings clarity to culture, insight to leadership, and evidence to the board.
With Hive, employee voice becomes more than feedback collection. It becomes the infrastructure that supports fairness, progress and accountability across your organisation.
And when 2027 arrives?
You won’t be asking, “Have we done enough?”
You’ll be able to say, confidently, “Here’s the impact.”
You don’t have to figure this out alone.
If you’re curious about how Hive could support your Fair Work journey, book a demo and let’s talk it through. We’ll show you the platform, answer your questions, and help you see how employee voice can become a real strategic advantage, not just another requirement.
