Introducing a shorter working week in Scotland’s public sector
27th August 2025
This report presents research findings related to two shorter working week initiatives in Scotland’s public sector: a year-long pilot of a 32-hour working week, and a contractual move to a 35-hour working week among a selection of public sector organisations.
Following the Scottish Government’s open call for interested public sector bodies in 2023, two organisations made the decision to take part in a year-long pilot of a 32-hour working week. The organisations were Accountant in Bankruptcy (AiB) and South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE), who entered into the pilot with a combined workforce of 259 staff in 2024-25.
The pilot involved implementing a 32-hour working week across the whole organisation for a period of one year, without any loss in staff pay or benefits, and with a commitment to maintaining standards of service delivery. Whereas AiB started from a standard full-time working week of 37 hours, SOSE began with a normal working week of 35 hours.
Each organisation chose to schedule the 32 hours in the form of a four-day working week, staggering the non-working day among staff to ensure a full coverage of key organisational functions. Each organisation also included its part-time staff by offering them pro-rata (proportional) working time reductions.
Key pilot findings
• AiB and SOSE successfully shortened the working week, giving staff more autonomy over their time, integrating more efficient working practices and maintaining organisational performance across the key metrics investigated.
• Both organisations demonstrated an increase in productivity. AiB found stability within all three of its key organisational processes during the pilot, as compared with the year prior and its own process target times. SOSE’s KPI assessment, focused mainly on client response times, also showed stability as compared to the year prior. These results suggest that the pilot coincided with an increase in productivity.
• Staff interviews helped explain these performance results. Staff shared their pilot initiatives around work planning, task-sharing, focus periods, new meeting conventions, the digitalisation of processes and the use of task-managing software, among other things.
• Well-being also improved across a range of measures.
To give highlights from AiB:
• Self-assessment of mental health saw an 18.4% improvement and average scores for work stress dropped by 18.4%, with improvements also documented in areas of fatigue, burnout and sleep.
• Average scores in the area of ‘satisfaction with time’ increased by 46.8% and participants were on average significantly more satisfied with their jobs and their lives in general.
To give highlights from SOSE:
• The percentage of staff feeling ‘very satisfied’ with their work-life balance rose very sharply, from 4% pre-pilot to 84%, nine months in.
• 83% of staff reported a ‘very positive’ or ‘positive’ impact on stress (meaning a reduction in stress) and 98% believed the pilot had led to a ‘very positive’ or ‘positive’ improvement in the area of motivation and morale.
• Overall instances of sickness saw a modest drop and there was a very significant drop in sick days taken for psychological reasons (a decrease of ~25.7% during the pilot period, as compared to the year prior).
• In general, the pilot was also extremely popular with staff. Staff who were interviewed often gave highly enthusiastic accounts of their experiences and almost unanimously hoped the policy would be continued beyond the pilot. Staff with care responsibilities seemed to be particularly supportive of the pilot, often using emotive phrases such as ‘life changing’.
• The pilot captured a range of good practice lessons to learn from. These included (but were not limited to):
• Ensuring a strong level of staff consultation before introducing the policy, in order to anticipate problems, gauge approval, and gather ideas for the successful transition to the new working pattern.
• Providing staff with comprehensive FAQ documents, answering any and all questions about the terms and conditions of a shorter working week.
• Preserving existing flexibility arrangements, which are clearly important to staff, as well as including part-time workers in the shorter working week policy using pro-rata (proportional) working time reductions.
• Staggering the day off for the sake of maintaining a five-day service and scheduling inter-team tasks within the ‘core week’ (when all staff are working).
• Thinking carefully around what kind of 32-hour rota is right for different work teams and their organisational challenges, as well as a transparent process for allocating days off among staff.
• Asking staff to be flexible about working on the day off as a contingency measure in exceptional circumstances – but not undermining the policy’s value by relying on this too greatly.
• Ensuring that staff can easily reclaim any time worked on days off as TOIL.
• Developing robust conventions for handing over work and covering staff on their day off, including more interdependent working.
• Paying special attention to the impact of changing work schedules on staff with school-age children or health conditions.
• Both organisations extended their pilot beyond the research period. SOSE were permitted a six month extension and AiB were permitted to extend for two months.
• The pilot was a good example of social partnership working. Scottish Government and the two pilot organisations showed a clear commitment to principles such as consent, transparency and staff collaboration in the setting up and running of the pilot. The processes outlined in this report may provide a useful model for other national governments considering pilots.
Research team
Dr. Will Stronge
(Chief Executive, Autonomy Institute)
Dr. David Frayne
(Research Fellow, University of Salford)
Dr. Tatiana Pignon
(Head of Workplace Consultancy, Autonomy Institute)
Kyle Lewis
(Director, Autonomy Institute)
Niamh Bridson-Hubbard
(Research Assistant, University of Cambridge)
Rachel Limage
(Researcher, Autonomy Institute)
Liam Mullally
(Researcher, Autonomy Institute)
Research team
Prof. Juliet Schor
(Prof. of Sociology, Boston College)
Dr. Wen Fan
(Associate Prof. of Sociology, Boston College)
Guolin Gu
(Research Assistant, Boston College)
Ami Olson Campbell
(Project Liaison, Boston College)
With support from
Prof. Daiga Kamerāde
(Prof. of Work and Well-being, University of Salford)
Prof. Brendan Burchell
(Prof. in the Social Sciences, University of Cambridge)
Prof. Kate Sang (Heriot Watt University)
Dr. James Richards (Heriot Watt University)
The Autonomy Institute also wishes to thank the project liaisons based within the participating public sector organisations, both for their openness and their invaluable assistance in organising data collection.