Scotland at Work How Scotland Works

Scotland is changing.

The population has never been higher.

More than five million people live and work here.

The country is more diverse,

with more people speaking Polish than Gaelic at home.

The ethnic mix is richer than ever.

I find myself speaking with words like "wee".

Scotland's industries are evolving and digital businesses booming.

Engineering and old industries are being replaced by the new.

The growth and the jobs and the amazing new stuff is here.

More than two million foreign visitors a year

are boosting the Scottish economy.

You can swim with dolphins all over the world.

This is where you get to swim with monsters.

Wonderful!

So how does modern Scotland work?

What does it mean to be Scottish in 2015?

How are Scotland's jobs and industries

competing on a global stage?

How do others see us?

This series goes to the heart of contemporary Scottish life

to reveal how Scotland works.

Scotland was once an industrial powerhouse.

But today, the world of work is changing.

A new industrial revolution is transforming the Scottish economy,

now worth almost ?150 billion a year.

More than two million Scots are in employment.

Their working lives are very different from previous generations.

So what are the new industries

bringing jobs and prosperity to Scotland?

And who are the innovative Scottish trailblazers

building the businesses of the future?

What do Scots want from their working lives?

This is modern Scotland at work.

Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull,

a tradition Scottish island community.

Not the kind of place you'd expect to find a hi-tech revolution.

But change is coming.

This remote part of Scotland is about to be connected

to the mainland and the world

by a new internet service...

..superfast fibre broadband.

It promises to transform the working lives of people here.

Until now, a slow connection to the internet

has been damaging the local economy.

This printing company,

run by married couple Brian and Christine Swinbanks,

is being affected by the slow internet service.

We make jigsaw puzzles from photographs.

We also make canvases for clients as well from photographs.

Now, this is just us working... Chris, could you hold that for me?

That's great. ..on a new sign that we're doing

for one of the hotels down the street here.

We're just taking off what we call the application tape.

It's this lovely thing about making things, isn't it, Chris?

There's something very satisfying in actually making something

and seeing it for sale on a shop or on someone's wall

and going round and knowing that you

have actually helped make that product.

We get a huge amount of data coming down the line to us.

Some of the biggest files that we've had,

from one of our graphic people that we work with in London,

was over 900 megabytes.

Really, for us to have high-speed broadband

will make a tremendous difference.

A 45-minute ferry crossing separates Mull from the mainland.

The island has just under 3,000 inhabitants.

In the last decade, the population has been rising.

More people are choosing to live and work here.

Families are arriving in search of a better quality of life

and more young locals are opting to stay.

The increase in population here has been dramatic, it's been good,

and I think it's in part due to many of the things that are going on,

many of the small industries, the increases in tourism,

but they all demand, they demand instant communications nowadays

and that's critical to us all, it really is critical.

All kinds of ventures are being held back

by Mull's slow connection speeds,

including Tobermory's thriving artistic community.

At the An Tobar Arts Centre, local musicians can perform and record.

The facilities are equal to anything on the mainland,

but the lack of a decent internet service is causing problems.

Everyone's working at really high levels of quality

and then you have to put it all on a hard drive

and put it in an envelope and post it.

It's quicker to walk to Glasgow with your information rather than

try and send it down the line, so it can't come soon enough.

We just want to be connected up with the rest of the world.

Everybody likes the remoteness of living here,

but we want the best of both worlds.

Now, at last,

Mull is being hard-wired to the network.

It won't be the first time this part of Scotland

has made communications history.

In 1956,

Oban became the landing point

for the first ever transatlantic telephone cable.

Now it has become the hub

of Scotland's newest fibre broadband network.

This is one of the largest broadband roll-out programmes in Europe,

right across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Chief engineer Bob Matthews is the man in charge of the project.

So, what is it? 15 minutes before we...?

They're ready to go.

I think most people think that a lot of communication is by satellite,

whereas it's certainly not now.

I'll guess 99% of communication is international communication...

I thought 95, but...

Yeah, 95 to 99 is by these kind of cables, undersea cables.

The cable is behind you. Yes... Ready to start.

Just waiting for the right time.

Costing ?145 million,

this project aims to connect at least 84%

of homes and businesses in the region to fibre broadband by 2016.

It's a huge engineering challenge

for the workers who are laying the cable.

The area to be covered is 15,000 square miles,

the size of Belgium.

Over 800km of land-based cable is being laid across the region.

Spanning the water between the mainland and the islands

is a trickier job.

Over 400km of subsea cable

will be laid underwater via 20 separate crossings

to connect the outlying islands to the main network.

These are the 20 cables that we're installing as part of the project.

So far, we have delivered 17 of the cables. We're on the 18th one now.

The main challenges, I think, are a lot of this area

is primarily fishing grounds where we have small fisherman

fishing there for crab and prawns, et cetera.

The logistics of asking those people to move has been quite hard.

This ship carries enough cable to cross an ocean.

The crossing today is just eight miles.

Even in summer, weather conditions can cause delays,

but the team is on schedule.

Once the cable has reached the island,

it can finally be connected to the local network,

linking Mull to the world via high-speed optical fibre.

The data cable itself, wrapped in layers of protective steel,

is just a couple of millimetres thick.

That's the piece there, right in the centre.

That's 48 fibres.

Very small.

WORKER CALLS OUT

Connection complete.

Mull has been brought just a little bit closer

to the world beyond its shores.

That's quick.

Yeah.

Sheesh!

For islands like Mull,

the hi-tech lifeline promises to transform the world of work.

It will allow innovative local businesses to flourish.

We were watching the boat yesterday, actually,

laying the cables out in Tobermory Bay

and it will make...

It's like the second revolution in Tobermory.

The first revolution, to me,

was the steamers and steam ships that came through Tobermory

and they touched all the towns and they made such a difference,

because this linked all the Highlands and Islands,

it linked all the small ports, and at the same time,

from about 1820 to 1850,

you saw a massive expansion in Campbeltown, you saw it in Oban,

you saw it in many other ports up and down the west coast of Scotland.

I think with digital broadband, this is going to be the second revolution.

In the Highlands and Islands,

jobs and prosperity are being boosted by technology.

On the mainland, it's also having a major impact.

For years, ambitious Scots were forced to leave for London

or overseas to compete in the global market.

Or to become what are known as WILLIEs -

people who Work In London, but Live In Edinburgh.

But today, more Scots are pursuing high-flying careers at home

and creating the Scottish industries of the future.

Scotland is becoming a global force in computing.

Around 70,000 Scots now work in the digital industries.

Companies like Edinburgh-based Rockstar North

are making Scotland a world leader in computer games.

The latest edition of their Grand Theft Auto game

smashed records to make $1 billion in just three days.

For a new generation of Scottish entrepreneurs,

all this means one thing -

a massive opportunity.

Investor Jamie Coleman is a man with a vision.

He wants to help build new Scottish technology companies

that have the potential to go global fast.

When you think about the start-up communities

and what's really happening across the world,

clearly, people think of Silicon Valley and so on,

but the reality is that what we're building here

are the new businesses, they are the new ways of working.

Um, you know...

When your mammy told you that you should be a doctor or a lawyer,

those days are over, OK?

The growth and the jobs and the amazing new stuff is here.

Jamie sees Scotland as a place

where the really hard programming problems of the future

are being solved.

and facing possible demolition.

Today, Jamie has transformed it into the biggest cluster

of new technology companies in the UK.

Having so many businesses together who,

while we're doing widely different things,

are all in similar places in their company's life cycle,

makes a huge difference. There is something inherently lonely

about starting a company that very few people

who aren't doing this can understand.

Peekabu's product should appeal to everyone.

It could change the way that all of us use our phones.

The general idea of what we build

and what we've got here is a system that we can train

to look at stuff with a camera and remember what it is.

We want to take passwords, which are a pain,

and turn them into the simplest interaction possible.

You can draw a picture on just about anything, like these cards here,

and when you go to a website to log in,

you'd just be confronted with, instead of a password field,

you'd be able to take a picture,

something as simple and as random as this -

it could be on a Post-it note, a sheet of A4,

or even a photograph that you keep in your wallet, whatever it is -

and you hold it up and right away,

it remembers who we are within about a second

and immediately gets you where you need to be.

Incubators like this give companies like Peekabu space to evolve

and they're helping to put Scotland on the technological map.

What Scotland's got is this right mix of people and of resources

and of passion for this kind of work

that means that we have a real...

We have the germ of a real community here around this digital revolution.

It fits with that ethos of the changing world,

of the way that this...engineering and old industries

are being replaced by the new in a really fundamental way.

Starting any new business is risky.

For every success story, many others will fail.

But Jamie's vision is more than a pipe dream.

Just down the road is a massive Scottish success story

that shows what's possible -

Edinburgh-based flight comparison website Skyscanner.

In 2013, the company was valued at ?500 million.

Founded in 2001 by three computer programmers,

it's on course to become Scotland's first billion-pound tech business.

They're hiring the cream of Scotland's programming talent

to help them grow.

21-year-old graduate Ryan is starting his first real job

as a programmer at Skyscanner's Edinburgh HQ.

How's it going?

Yeah, I'm good, how are you? Good. What are you working on today?

Just doing the car hire campaign for the US market.

When you look on the television

and you see all of the big companies like Facebook and Google

all over in America,

you assume that's where the big technology happens

and I went into university thinking exactly the same,

and as I went through my studies,

I realised that I wouldn't need to move anywhere

to do the level of work that these other companies do -

it's right here in Scotland

and we're riding the front of what could be a massive wave here.

This isn't a specialist technology company.

Its website is for ordinary customers

looking for bargain flights.

Crucially, those customers aren't just in Scotland,

but worldwide.

Being online gives Skyscanner and other Scottish companies like it.

A potential customer base of seven billion people.

This 21st-century Scottish factory

shows how times have changed.

Heavy industry has gone and new ways of working have replaced the old.

There is this conception

that Scotland doesn't make anything any more,

but if you look around here, what we make now is technology

and we make it really well and we make a lot of it.

Through in Glasgow, there's a lot of banks.

Up north in Dundee, there's a lot of games. It's all technology.

It's not as tangible as a ship is,

but certainly there's a lot of production

still happening in Scotland.

Yeah, it's great. It's great.

And in 21st-century Scotland, innovation is crucial

for every industry, even the most traditional.

Farming has been at the heart of Scottish working life

for thousands of years.

Today, it's big business.

73% of Scotland's land is given over to agriculture,

over 13 million acres.

Six and a half million sheep, almost two million cattle,

and 300,000 pigs grow fat on the land.

Every year, Scotland grows more than one million tonnes of potatoes.

But making a profit from traditional farming can be challenging.

Prices fluctuate and bad weather can be devastating.

To stay competitive,

some Scottish farmers are turning to technology.

Allan Stevenson's family

have farmed this land in East Lothian for generations.

He grew up here, but left for a career in business.

Now, he has returned and he's on a mission to turn the family farm

into a model for Scottish agriculture in the 21st century.

I was born here. This is the 100th year

since my grandfather came to East Lothian from Ayrshire.

100 years ago,

he grew his first crop of potatoes over in this field over here.

Just felt the tug of my heritage,

an emotional appeal to come back here.

I continue to build the business

and things have changed massively in the 100 years,

including the fact that we've now got modern buildings.

Allan now grows a range of Scottish veg

destined for supermarket shelves.

This field here is one of our best fields,

right on the farm at the door,

and in here we've got parsnips.

We're growing these parsnips specifically for Aldi,

who are looking for a Scottish provenance.

They want to be able to pack a parsnip

that was grown and sourced in Scotland.

Allan has developed a long-term plan to make his farm

one of the most innovative and competitive in the country.

Innovation has been fundamental to our way of trying to move forward

and do things better for the customers,

more efficiently at lower cost.

He's focusing on potatoes.

These fields produce some of the best potatoes in the UK.

A hi-tech harvester ensures every one is picked and graded.

The tractor is guided by GPS.

The cab contains a bank of computers.

Pretty straightforward - touch screen, big buttons.

You know, there's a map of the field -

once my guidance line's there

and it's there from the planting time when we set the ridges out,

I come back in the field and all I have to do is press "Go"

and it steers itself,

so that gives me all my time just watching the cameras

and making sure the potatoes are coming out the ground

and into the box.

Despite all this technology,

there's still a need for human beings to get involved.

Many of the manual workers who bring in Scotland's harvest

come from abroad.

But on this farm today, local workers are on shift.

They've had to adapt to these new ways of working.

Originally, I thought I was harvesting potatoes,

I was going to come to the farm

and be down on my knees, picking potatoes out the ground,

but I never knew this sort of technology existed, to be honest.

It's all completely new.

This kind of futuristic farming kit isn't cheap.

But Allan and his staff believe that this is the future

and that they must change with the times or be left behind.

We've sat round the table - "What can we do to be in the game?"

It is now about last man standing.

You've got to have the attitude for change.

Farming sometimes in the primary sector

is possibly stuck in the same gear for too long.

It can't afford to stay in the same gear, just like any other industry.

Allan's passion for agricultural innovation has made him

a global ambassador for hi-tech potato farming,

and around the world, people are paying attention.

Today, an agricultural scientist

working for China's biggest potato producer

is visiting to see cutting-edge Scottish farming for himself.

His name is Dr Hu.

Today we've brought Dr Hu from a Chinese potato company

and it's China's largest for propagating potatoes.

And we want to translate some of that potato technology

to China.

For cooperation.

Excellent.

No stone.

Very fertile land.

With moisture.

And it has a history of growing potatoes

for a long time.

The future is bright, because we have prime land.

And farming goes in ups and downs.

Because we've made the investment

and managed to make the investment during the hard times,

we will enjoy the good times.

Everything on this farm is geared around sustainability

and efficiency.

Even the storage shed is state of the art.

It uses renewable energy generated on the farm

and it has an intelligent climate control system

that keeps the potatoes in perfect condition.

This cold store was designed to be extremely energy-efficient.

What we need to do is bring the crop in

and then bring the temperature of the potatoes down gradually

over a couple of weeks.

Therefore, we will be investing in a lot of energy and chilling capacity

to both dry and gradually cool down potatoes.

The type of equipment and technology we've got

in the back of the store for distributing air around the building

and the walls with high insulation in them

is designed to minimise the cost that it takes

to hold the potatoes in here

at round about three and a half degrees through the winter.

Farming is just one of the traditional Scottish industries

being reshaped by science and technology.

It's a key element in one of modern Scotland's

biggest industrial success stories, food and drink,

which has replaced heavy industry

to become the country's biggest manufacturing sector.

Scottish food businesses turn over ?9 billion a year

and employ 50,000 people.

This is projected to keep growing.

Produce like beef, salmon and even porridge are creating jobs

and boosting the economy right across the country.

But despite all the technological advances,

there's one traditional Scottish food industry

that is still a very risky business -

fishing.

Lying off the northeast tip of Scotland,

Orkney is a land apart.

These islands have been inhabited since the Stone Age,

and since ancient times,

fishing has been in the lifeblood of the people here.

27-year-old Jimmy is starting his career on the boats.

It was either a toss-up between farm work or fishing

and fishing just seemed most appealing to me at the time.

So that's what I went for.

Better that being cooped up in a factory or an office.

Jimmy's working week starts early - 5am.

This is what you have to do to go and earn a penny.

Got to get up.

Jimmy crews on a boat that fishes the deep water of the North Sea.

He's away for several days at a time in all weathers.

Fishing is still one of the most dangerous occupations.

In the last ten years, almost 100 British fishermen

lost their lives at sea, so each trip out has one key aim.

Getting back at the end of the week,

landing our stuff, getting ashore, everyone's back safe

and no-one's been hurt.

And obviously being out on the sea, the freedom.

Just being out on the sea.

Get the catch ashore.

Get it all ashore fresh and alive

and we're going to get paid for it.

If it goes ashore dead, then we don't get paid.

Probably going to be away for about three or four days now.

Then maybe come back, have a day off.

Then do it all again.

It's a vicious cycle, this working.

Traditional deep-sea fishing

is still a key part of the Scottish economy.

These wild waters are full of valuable seafood.

Scotland's annual catch is worth more than ?400 million.

But margins are tight. All right, Douglas, time to get up now.

This is the best bit about being a fisherman.

To save money on fuel,

boats like this one go to sea for days at a time.

There's no guarantee they'll catch enough to make a profit.

For young fishermen like Jimmy,

a future in this traditional Scottish industry

is far from secure, so today, some seafood producers

are rethinking the business of fishing altogether.

While Orkney's sea-fishing fleet has been shrinking each year,

fish farming is booming.

Salmon production has doubled in a decade,

and all around Scotland's coast,

new ways of harvesting wild seafood are changing the fishing business.

The Isle of Mull is surrounded

by some of the clearest waters in Europe.

Intensive fishing has taken its toll on marine life,

but this is still the home of one particularly valuable bivalve.

The scallop.

Here, fisherman Guy Grieve runs his business

harvesting wild scallops in the most sustainable way possible.

OK, and go!

Hand diving.

The length of dives depend very much on how much current there is,

how hard you have to swim, how deep you are, how shallow you are.

If it's a shallow dive, you'll swim for a long time,

up to maybe an hour, an hour and 20 minutes.

If it's quite a deep dive,

then you're not going to be down for that long.

For years, over-fishing

decimated stocks of seafood around Scotland's coasts.

Guy and his team saw that a new approach was needed,

if stocks were to have the chance to recover.

I remember when I first started diving around here,

we would see a great variety of sea life -

fish and crustaceans,

and various corals and weeds and stuff

that you just don't see any more.

But we used to go in and if we saw a monkfish...

If it wasn't big enough, we wouldn't take it.

We'd wait until we saw a big enough monkfish, but...

I can't remember the last time I saw a monkfish around here, you know?

You don't see them any more.

Because the spawning grounds have been destroyed,

and the general marine environment is just degraded.

We see this every time we go in the water.

We see the results of this every time we dive. Every working day.

It's heartbreaking.

Guy is at the vanguard of a new, more sustainable approach to fishing

which aims to protect Scotland's valuable marine environment.

What working people need,

and working communities need to do -

and Scotland is perfect for this -

is to create high-value luxury seafoods.

And there are guys doing it up and down the west coast of Scotland.

Not just the diving, there's beautiful creel fishing going on,

there's fantastic fish farming going on, with mussels and oysters,

there's a hell of a lot of beautiful food being created in Scotland.

These artisan ways of producing food, I believe,

instead of being an anachronistic thing of the past,

this is the future.

Small-scale food production of a high value.

The market for Scottish seafood is also changing.

Much of it is still exported.

France, Spain and Italy take most of Scotland's shellfish.

And the biggest market for salmon is America,

worth ?200 million a year.

But the food is getting more popular at home,

so Guy doesn't send his scallops abroad.

They are destined for Britain's top restaurants,

many of them in Scotland,

as well as a few discerning chippies!

OK, that's our man up.

You've got to love what you're bringing to your chefs,

because otherwise it becomes a commodity that you treat like trash.

It doesn't matter to you.

This one really does matter to us.

You know, to me it is always a miracle -

we send out 5,000 of these every week,

and, to me, there's just something

quite miraculous about the fact that every one of these

is picked up by a man's hand.

And that means a great deal to all of us.

Erm, you know, there's a real sense

that when you get these through diving,

it feels like you're picking the apples

without trampling the flowers.

And that is the key point of diving for scallops,

and that's what drives us crazy about them.

With seafood, freshness is key.

Once the week's scallops have been packed, it's a race against time

to get them delivered in prime condition.

A lot of scallops are packed for London.

They head down to London.

They get to London tomorrow morning -

at about three in the morning -

and then our driver in London

picks them up and delivers them to all our restaurants in London.

And if they're late, the ferry won't wait.

A-ha. Here's our van.

Thank God. We've got eight minutes to leave this pier.

The week's catch is dispatched to the ferry...

just in time.

From seabed to plate in less than 24 hours,

these scallops are world-class.

Some of them are heading for a world-famous Scottish establishment.

Gleneagles Hotel.

Andrew Fairlie is Scotland's top chef.

His restaurant inside Gleneagles

is the only two-Michelin-starred establishment in the country.

Every ingredient has to be of the highest quality.

He used to source from abroad,

but today home-grown Scottish produce

can meet his exacting standards.

In food terms, Scotland has completely reinvented itself

in its whole attitude to food -

the diversity of food, people's appreciation of food.

It is now a world, internationally recognised food destination.

Not just for the ingredients, but we've got some of

the best restaurants in Europe here in Scotland now.

People, when they come to the restaurant,

they expect it to be Scottish.

When they're in the middle of Perthshire,

and they look out the window and can see beef cattle,

and can see lamb, can see mushrooms...

So they expect and they want you as a chef

to make the effort to source it the best that you possibly can,

and then they want to eat it.

I can buy ducks down the road that are every bit as good,

if not better, than anything I can buy in France.

And they pride themselves on their poultry.

We used to buy all our poultry from France.

Now we buy everything from Scotland.

So there is a huge realisation

in the artisanal producers in Scotland now,

that there is a massive market out there for it.

It's not just traditional Scottish produce

that is inspiring Scotland's chefs.

More unusual native ingredients are being rediscovered,

like seaweed.

I never associated it with Scotland

until I'd been to Japan,

saw what they were using as seaweed and thought,

"Surely we can get this in Scotland."

Coming back from Japan, and then looking at it,

it was everywhere.

Scallops and seaweed are combined

to create a dish from Scotland's wild waters.

So that's it - hand-dived scallops from Mull,

a selection of Scottish seaweeds,

with Scottish dashi broth.

Simple as that.

Andrew's restaurant, and the hotel,

are aimed at the top end of the market.

But right across Scotland,

from humble pubs to five-star hotels,

hospitality has become huge business

and a huge employer and trainer of staff.

Hospitality is particularly important

in Scotland's rural areas.

Here at Gleneagles, hundreds of local jobs depend on it.

This iconic Perthshire resort was built in 1924

as a luxury destination for railway travellers to the Highlands.

Today, Gleneagles offers a distinctive Scottish experience,

with golf, fishing, and even falconry.

The hotel has over 200 bedrooms,

and it employs up to 900 staff

from the front desk to the kitchens.

This makes it one of the biggest employers in the area.

We have flowers in the main restaurants,

we have flowers in the toilets,

in the bedrooms...

So that's something we are constantly keeping an eye on,

having to check and renew.

People are always quite surprised that there's a florist,

but they're more surprised to find that there is more than one.

We're actually a team of five people.

We work in the hotel,

one of the busiest times of the year - Christmas.

From the two mixes, we'll make approximately

between 90 and 110 two-pound Christmas puddings,

and then we'll make probably

about 50 or 60 one-pound Christmas puddings.

The recipe, to be honest with you - I'm not going to lie -

erm, is not my recipe.

It's a recipe that's been used at Gleneagles

for over 25 years.

And I've just carried on using it because it was better than mine.

Like all the staff here,

Neil knows that in the hospitality business,

maintaining high standards is key.

I think, you know, we've built up a business in Gleneagles

based on consistency.

There's nothing worse than going to any business

and being good two days a week, not so good three days a week,

and brilliant the rest of the week, you know?

I used to work in a country house hotel in my first job,

and the manageress there was very, very proper,

and what she always used to say was,

"As soon as you put on your uniform, you're on stage, dear."

This is what she used to say.

And the other thing that she taught me, one of the first things -

and it's one thing that I always echo to other people, as well -

is, you work in a business like Gleneagles,

where there are so many different cultures

and nationalities coming through the door,

and what we would say is, "A smile is the same in any language."

Hotels like Gleneagles are part of another industrial revolution

that has changed how Scotland works.

The rise of the service sector.

Like many European countries, much of our economy

is now based not on what we make,

but on what we can do for other people,

from hospitality, catering and retail

to legal, technical and financial services.

These businesses are now employing hundreds of thousands of Scots.

Together, they are worth ?84 billion a year, and rising.

For young people coming into work,

this is where many jobs are to be found.

Here on the River Clyde,

we once built ships that would cross the world.

Today, Glasgow is at the forefront

of a very different kind of global business.

They used to be known as call centres.

Since the advent of online communication,

they are now called contact centres.

Glasgow is home to around 30 contact centres.

They provide customer services

for some of the world's biggest firms, including banks,

supermarkets, telecoms providers and insurance companies.

In this office, and more than 400 like it across Scotland,

workers answer enquiries by phone, e-mail, and via social media.

Teleperformance is the worldwide leader in customer service.

In Scotland we've been around for quite a long time.

We have a number of different sites in Scotland

where we're supporting customers for some of the UK's leading brands.

The service sector in Scotland

is such a huge part of what makes up our economy now.

And if we were to rewind 20 years, 30 years, 40 years,

that would be a very different situation.

Over 100,000 Scots now work in this industry.

And as more big businesses choose to use Scottish-based contact centres,

skilled workers are increasingly in demand.

Companies like Teleperformance have to be proactive

in the ways they recruit new staff,

so they offer unemployed people training

to help them get off the dole and into a job.

Today, a group of potential new recruits are being assessed.

Well, hello! How are we all?

Good. Fine, yeah. Yeah? Good.

It's starting in November. Anyone got any questions?

No? OK.

Not everyone here today will be offered a job...

..and then there's a letter-writing exercise, OK?

So, use your own style, and your own language.

You'll be scored on spelling, grammar and punctuation.

..but the idea is that with a bit of help

they'll be able to sign off and start a new career.

So, how do you think you've got on today?

Yeah, I was quite confident... Yeah. ..with my answers.

Um, you have passed, OK?

So we will get in contact with you before close of play on Tuesday.

Thank you!

One of the successful candidates is 19-year-old Amy from East Kilbride.

Amy has only been unemployed for a few weeks,

but she's happy to be getting back to work.

Everybody wants to work.

I don't know why anybody wouldn't want to.

I really don't. Because I think it's quite...

It's quite a boring life,

if you don't have anything to get up for in the morning.

You do the same things over and over again,

and you keep saying to yourself,

"Well, what can I do today to take up my time?"

This way!

But while Amy is keen to get started,

she doesn't quite know what to expect.

I don't know what my first day's going to be like.

It's probably going to be a wee bit nervous.

I think the scariest thing I'm worried about is,

see every time you answer the phone, you introduce yourself

and say what you need to say,

I'm scared in case I just pick up the phone and I'm like, "Hi!"

For Amy, the contact centre offers the prospect of a long-term career.

She might start by answering phones,

but she's already got her eye on promotion.

I'd like to move up in the company.

Because there is lots of room for improvement.

There's lots of chances to step up, and...

do all different kinds of things within the business.

I'll miss my dogs when I start working full-time.

Cos I'm used to being with them all day, every day.

Will you miss me when I go to work?

Yes?

Junior.

For some of the other candidates,

the prospect of a job is even more significant.

Working alongside Amy will be 20-year-old Chantelle from Airdrie.

She's been unemployed since leaving school,

and has found herself stuck in a rut.

Getting up, when I'm working, getting out. I enjoy getting out.

Yeah, I enjoyed that two weeks' course with Teleperformance,

I really enjoyed that. Getting out, instead of sitting in the house.

Because I have nothing to do, I generally sleep into the afternoon.

But it would be good to get up and get out.

Today, Chantelle is finally leaving the Jobcentre behind.

Her little sister goes with her for the last time.

I'm just going in to sign off. Hopefully.

Cos I start that new job on Wednesday.

It's the length of time I've been on the Jobcentre

and no' getting anywhere.

And then, finally, getting somewhere, with a job.

So, it's quite - quite overjoyed, to be honest.

Right.

Yeah!

All sorted, and start my job on Wednesday!

That should be me.

All sorted.

Right, come on. We'll walk.

Young Scots aged 16 to 24 are the group most likely to be unemployed.

Many have never worked.

But employment rates in the contact centre industry are high.

For Chantelle,

there should be an opportunity to get on a promising career path.

There is jobs out there for people, but it's just...

Basically, they're looking for experience, but for young ones,

like my age, like, and 15, they don't have a lot of experience.

They've gone out and come just from school, and try to get out,

but nobody's given the opportunity.

It will be quite nerve-racking.

So I will be nervous, and I will be panicking.

Erm, it's just a case of getting used to it.

And getting into the swing of...the "working life", as people call it.

The first day at any new job can be daunting.

Today, Amy will be answering calls from the public for the first time.

A wee bit nervous, but I'm excited at the same time, so I am.

It'll be good to eventually get in, and get started,

cos the training was long!

What are you nervous about?

Just taking that first call.

Chantelle is also starting work today.

Unlike Amy, she has never had a job before.

This is a big step.

Hundreds of people work in this building,

responding to customer queries and complaints

on behalf of some of Britain's biggest companies.

The standard of service they offer has to be high.

Chantelle and Amy are thrown in at the deep end.

Good afternoon. Store reception - you're through to Amy.

How can I help you?

I'll just check to make sure that's in for you.

I do apologise.

Yes...

I can't seem to...

I'm not able to do that for you.

OK, have a nice day.

Thanks for your call. Bye.

After a few hours on the phones, the girls get a break.

My first call was scary.

I was, like, trying to put them on hold, take them off hold,

put them on hold,

and I didn't even realise I was doing it.

And then, as soon as I got them through, I hung up!

It was like...

"They've hung up on me!"

But when I looked at the computer, I was like,

"Nah, I hung up on them!"

You have your first call - nervous. You'll be fine the next time.

No, I'm nervous on every single call that comes in.

But no...I like being out working.

You don't get a minute. When a call goes off,

you have another call coming straight back in.

It needs to be real, it needs to be human,

and the people that work here need to be from every single walk of life.

Yes, we want them to do things in a way that is professional

and courteous,

but we don't want people to change and come in and talk a certain way,

we don't want people to, um, to lose their individuality.

Now, I don't think I could go back to sitting about the house all day.

It's so boring. Where here, you feel important.

You feel like they want you here, which is good.

From contact centres to hi-tech start-ups,

from the field to the sea,

Scotland's new jobs and industries are changing the ways people work.

And there is one other Scottish workplace

that is looking to the future and starting its own revolution.

It's where 700,000 hardworking young Scots graft each day without pay.

School.

Scotland has always valued education,

but in today's fast-changing world,

Scottish schools are in need of a reboot.

So, across the country,

a new generation of schools for the future is being built

at a cost of ?1.25 billion.

17 have already been built.

14 more are under construction.

These new buildings

will turn the traditional image of school on its head.

The big idea behind this nationwide project is to prepare students

for the 21st-century workplace.

Once, school trained pupils for a job in a factory or an office.

That job would probably be for life.

Today, the skills young people need to get ahead

are very different.

They need to be flexible, creative, self-motivated.

So education needs to acknowledge this,

and make the experience of school

more like the modern world of work outside.

Portobello High in Edinburgh is one of the next schools

scheduled for demolition and rebuilding.

For some students, it's not a moment too soon.

It's not a pretty building, at all.

I mean, they didn't even decide to give the school a nice colour,

they just kind of chose beige and more shades of beige.

Sometimes, when a draught gets in the main building,

the tiles of the roof go up and down.

And sometimes they fall out, and then...

the music corridor collapsed a while ago, on some first-year pupils.

No-one was hurt, but, like, you don't want to be here.

It's not great.

The new schools programme also aims to give pupils a say

in the planning process.

They have been asked to think about how different kinds of spaces

can change the way they learn.

Today, a team of architects have come to Portobello

to find out what pupils think of their designs.

Today there's loads of really exciting things

going on in the school programme.

In Scotland there's a lot of authorities being really innovative -

how they build their new schools, looking towards the next 50 years,

and not looking back to how schools used to be.

Say what you like about the ideas,

say what you don't like about the ideas,

feel happy to tear the ideas apart.

Like, if you had, like, five friends,

and it was a four-person table, and there was no other tables there,

you couldn't really do anything about it.

Or if a student's doing a presentation here,

maybe the bean bags allow you to kind of sit comfortably.

I can't see all the teachers sitting on bean bags talking to the class.

When I came into the first meeting, I was kind of thinking,

"Look, we don't need fancy tables and things like that,"

and then, when you think about the effect it could have on learning

and things like that,

it's actually quite interesting to think there is more to it.

The school-building programme is also having an impact

on other Scottish industries - in particular, construction.

The cost of building the new Portobello High School

is projected to be ?40 million.

The project, and other schools being built across the country,

will provide jobs for hundreds of Scottish builders,

engineers, and a host of other trades.

It also boosts the number of apprenticeships available

to local young people.

On the other side of Edinburgh from Portobello,

one of these new schools, James Gillespie's,

is halfway to completion.

It's a complex build on a tight city-centre site,

which involves demolishing

and rebuilding the existing school in stages.

Every morning, site manager John Allan conducts a safety briefing

to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing.

OK, Peter?

Er, no issues.

Jimmy?

Infrastructure projects like this

are helping Scotland's construction industry to grow.

In 2014, by 10%.

We can build anything.

At the end of the day, for us, that's the easy part.

It's getting the design concluded,

it's understanding what the client requires.

Once we're in a position we've got construction issue information,

we can build it.

Who was last in?

LAUGHTER

You're safe to work, then.

Right, guys, thanks for that. Cheers.

So, how much of a doddle is it?

Oh, no, it's not a doddle at all. No.

You can sit in my chair for half a shift

and see if you think it's a doddle!

Teacher Janis Croll has been liaising

between the school staff and pupils and the architects and builders

for the past two years.

The new design has 21st-century technology built in.

So we've got booths, we've got tables, we've got, um...

a touchdown area, so if you have a smartphone,

or if you have an iPad or whatever, you can just use the Wi-Fi.

The whole place is going to be Wi-Fi. Mm!

The fact of getting everyone together,

everyone using the facilities, and sharing facilities,

and working together in the facilities -

hopefully we'll get a great atmosphere going

in the school, of collaboration.

Once again, the plans were developed in consultation

with the students.

It was brilliant.

We could say anything, and they'd let you put it down.

Like, we said goats,

and they actually said, "OK, we can try for that."

Yeah, we also asked for a hot tub.

It's their place of work. That's what education is, their place of work.

They've got to learn it.

They're coming to be educated,

but they've got to learn this is their work environment.

Being aware of working in teams, collaborating, it's all so important.

That's the skills you need for today's life.

OK, this is your new school.

As the first phase of the school nears completion,

Janis gives two pupils a first look inside.

So this is going to be the new library.

So you'll walk in, and there'll be the librarian's reception desk

about here, for getting all your books.

And this is the art terrace.

It's outside?! It's outside. We have an outside terrace!

We have an outside terrace. Oh, that's fancy.

JANIS LAUGHS

I'm lost for words.

I think people have realised that it's not just a classroom,

it's not just a blackboard,

it's not just sitting in a row reading from a book.

That is one way of learning. Probably not the best way of learning.

I feel privileged that we get this,

rather than just having an old building

that we've been living in for a while.

It's strange, cos we're so used to old-fashioned classrooms

that were just square blocks - but this is so different.

And open.

JOHN ALLAN: It must be a far improved experience for the kids,

you know, to come to a school like this. No doubt about it.

Does it make you want to go back to school? Er, not quite. No.

No!

I'll just do what I do, thanks.

The Scottish education system is evolving

to prepare the next generation for a fast-changing world.

Right across Scotland, new native businesses

and big global companies

are building a future for Scotland's economy,

and creating opportunities for young Scots

as they start their working lives.

Everybody wants that wee bit more success than what they've got.

Everybody's always got that wee drive to do more.

Well, I know I do, anyway.

I always want more!

But I think that... I don't think that's a bad trait.

It's how a lot of successful people get where they are the now.

Cos if you give up then you're never going to do what you want.

For entrepreneurs like Jamie Coleman,

it's creativity and innovation

that will ensure Scotland's future prosperity.

We CAN build these companies.

It turns out we're really good at it.

And it is the brainpower,

and it is that cultural heritage of making stuff.

We're great at that.

Next time - how important is Brand Scotland?

This is just phenomenal.

How do others see us?

Perhaps the most famous bit of freshwater in the world,

and it's got a monster in it.

Wonderful.

And who are the people that sell Scotland to the world?

When they take that sip, that transports them

to a country which they may have never visited,

but which exists somewhere in their mind.