Four-day week pilot in Scottish public sector

Project Description

Scottish Government have released a call pertaining to the running of a 12 month four-day working week pilot in Scotland's public sector, as well as a smaller desk-based piece of work capturing lessons from previous private sector pilots. The projects will run between October 2023 and March 2025.

The call is by invitation only. A similar call was launched several years ago, but in the last instance the government pulled its project funding. The organisations who advanced to a certain point through the original call have now been invited to resubmit their proposals (hence the unusually tight call deadline). This includes the joint proposal originally prepared by Autonomy and David Frayne, prior to his position at Salford, with Autonomy as the leading organisation.

Autonomy will once again lead and - to maximise the chance of success - the bid features a wide range of partners including academics, a Scotland-based policy think-tank, plus political representatives from Iceland and Spain, where similar pilots have been run. David Frayne and Daiga Kamerade have been costed in to advise on research design for the public sector pilot.

Only a handful of organisations are bidding on this competitive call. If successfully won, this promises to be a very high-profile and high-impact piece of work, directly informing a national government on a cutting edge public sector policy. Scotland's pilot would be the third of its kind globally, and the project is likely to attract significant interest from a range of stakeholders, including national governments, unions, business leaders, and academics in the field of working time.

This also represents a remarkable opportunity to gain access to interview and survey data on impacts and implementation of a public sector working time reduction, making it invaluable to the ongoing research programs of David Frayne and Daiga Kamerade.