Aileen McNiven, ILF Scotland – Winner 2025, Family-Friendly Champion of the Year, sponsored by Arnold Clark
Aileen McNiven is Head of Business Services at Independent Living Fund Scotland (ILF Scotland), where she has been instrumental in designing and implementing the life-friendly approach that has grown a dedicated, high performing team as evidenced by the organisation gaining over forty business awards for excellence across every facet of the business.
Putting people first
Leading on all elements of people and culture, Aileen has shown compassionate leadership, innovation, and determination for almost 10 years. As well as seeing ILF Scotland through a period of growth from twenty to eighty employees, Aileen has played a key role in the development of a supportive culture by co-designing the life-friendly working model that gives autonomy and dignity to staff. Dedicated to researching best practice, she has collaborated with colleagues and external experts to build policies from the ground up. By introducing measures that allow people to meet their own needs, ILF Scotland has a motivated and high-achieving staff team with a staff turnover of less than 2% since 2015. Alongside the policy framework, we have introduced initiatives that demonstrate to staff that their health & wellbeing is always a priority for ILF Scotland, including reducing the working week from 37 to 35 hours without sacrificing pay, which continues to promote and enhance employee engagement and is reflected in the consistently high rating we receive in our annual staff survey.
Building foundations
Aileen is an advocate of ensuring colleagues have choice and control, which mirrors some of the key foundations of the independent living movement and this is reflected in the way staff at ILF Scotland work. She has ensured that life-friendly working is integral to our corporate strategy, annual business plans and policies, and she has secured an annual budget to enable life-friendly initiatives and working. To ensure the successful and consistent implementation of flexible working, Aileen facilitated an ongoing programme of line management training, open-door sessions with HR and regular managers’ meetings. Aileen strives for ILF Scotland to continue to evolve, evidenced by her creation of an influential and representative staff group to better the employee offering, along with the Chrissie Plastock Staff Awards for Excellence, named after and remembering a colleague who embodied the values of ILF Scotland.
Aileen’s diligence, commitment and leadership in successfully establishing ILF Scotland’s governance framework is also to be commended given the complexity of doing so and recognising the value that it brings to the organisation. Aileen’s strategic vision, meticulous planning and deep understanding of business needs, regulatory requirements, and what motivates colleagues has been demonstrated in her ability to ensure we are transparent, accountable, and operate with integrity, while ensuring we manage risk, remain compliant with legislation and good practice and continue to grow successfully.
Inspiring change
Aileen has been a pioneer of menopause provision across the public sector in Scotland, sharing her lived experience at conferences and seminars long before public awareness became mainstream. Aileen has informed research and public policy by sharing her insights and giving evidence at parliamentary working groups, as well as being a vocal advocate of the life-friendly approach at events and conferences. A force for change, she led the business casing and implementation of the reduced hours working week in 2023 that further enhanced ILF Scotland’s employee offer. She showcases her own life-friendly working at every opportunity and encourages all managers to ‘real model’ flexible working wherever possible.
