Four-day week pilot in Scottish public sector shows benefits for wellbeing and productivity

University Fellow Dr. David Frayne from the University of Salford led the study alongside the UK’s Autonomy Institute. Two major public sector bodies took part - Accountant in Bankruptcy (AiB) and South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE) - with a combined workforce of 259 staff.

The pilot saw staff reduce their weekly work time to 32 hours over four days, with organisations staggering the day off among staff in order to maintain a full five-day service. This was offered to all employees for one year, without any loss of pay or benefits. Part-time staff were also involved, by allowing them proportional working time reductions.

Both organisations implemented the 32-hour working week without any detriment to identified Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The pilot was very popular, with 83% of staff reporting reduced stress and 98% believing the pilot led to improved motivation and morale.

The research aimed to understand the impact of the policy on both staff experience and service delivery. Key findings were:

• With an almost 100% rate of participation amongst staff, AiB and SOSE both successfully shortened the working week, giving staff more autonomy over their time and maintaining organisational performance across the key metrics investigated.
• Both organisations demonstrated an increase in productivity. Staff shared their initiatives around work planning, task-sharing, focus periods, new meeting conventions, digitalisation of processes and the use of task-managing software.
• Wellbeing improved across a range of measures. At AiB, self-assessment of mental health improved by 18.4%, and average scores for work stress dropped by 18.4%. At SOSE, the percentage of staff feeling ‘very satisfied’ with their work-life balance rose from just 4% pre-pilot to 84% nine months in.
• Instances of sickness dropped, with a very significant drop in sick days taken for psychological reasons (a decrease of 25.7%)

The pilot also captured a range of good practice lessons to learn from, such as ensuring staff consultation, preserving existing flexibility arrangements, staggering the day off and including part-time workers in the shorter working week policy using pro-rata (proportional) working time reductions.

Dr David Frayne said: “The University of Salford has been at the forefront of research on the four-day working week - a bold policy to reduce weekly working hours, without any loss in pay.

“Our research is helping to demonstrate the exciting potential of this policy, deepening understanding of its impacts, and unearthing best practice to help organisations and employees to implement the change successfully and fairly.

“We were also extremely fortunate to have AiB and SOSE as our participating organisations. As complex organisations with clear processes, important public functions, and a healthy degree of scepticism about the policy, they offered an excellent stress test for the promise of a shorter working week in the public sector.”

The findings in Scotland follow South Cambridgeshire District Council voting to become the first Council in the UK to permanently adopt a four-day week, after rigorous independent analysis from the Universities of Salford, Bradford and Cambridge showed most services got better or were maintained, with significant improvements to staff recruitment and retention. The Scottish public sector pilot also follows the UK’s 2022 four-day week pilot in the private sector – another joint project involving University of Salford and the Autonomy Institute, and the largest pilot of its kind.