The Scottish Government has set out a working-from-home “expectation” for its civil servants that is significantly more flexible than controversial hybrid-working rules for departmental officials elsewhere.
A Freedom of Information Act response states that there is no centrally-fixed requirement for a minimum number of office working days for staff every week. However, it says the “expectation” is that staff attend a Scottish Government workplace “at least once a week”.
The rules, which apply to the Scottish Government’s approximately 28,000 staff, stand in stark contrast to the 60:40 mandate introduced elsewhere in the UK civil service in 2023 by the Sunak administration and maintained by Labour following last summer’s general election.
The mandate, which sets an expectation that officials will attend their workplaces for at least three days every week – 60% of their working time, has been condemned by unions and staff.
When it was introduced, then-PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka dismissed the 60% rule as “arbitrary” and symptomatic of a “regressive” government. Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, said the 60:40 split had been “plucked from thin air by ministers to suit their political agenda”.
Some departments have yet to fully enforce the 60:40 mandate and it is the source of industrial action at HM Land Registry and a constituent part of a successful strike ballot at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Last week, hundreds of staff at the Office for National Statistics voted to extend their industrial action over the organisation’s less-strict 40% office-attendance requirements. So far, the protest has been limited to working to rule. But PCS members at the body, which is an executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, have a mandate to escalate their protest to strike action.
The Scottish Government’s FoI response detailing its hybrid working policies followed a request for annualised information on the number of staff working remotely dating back to 2019-20 – and spending on equipment to facilitate remote working.
The response stated that the Scottish Government does not hold data on hybrid working agreements because they are “reached locally between the employee and their manager” and “are not recorded centrally”.
However, the Scottish Government did provide a commentary on the evolution of its hybrid working policies, starting from the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic – when civil servants switched from majority in-office working to largely remote working, except for essential workers.
The FOI response said that from February 2022 a hybrid working model was adopted as part of the “transitional response” to the later stages of the pandemic. It became the long-term operating model for the majority of employees in May 2023.
“Hybrid working arrangements ensure that colleagues combine working from home with a presence in a workplace (and for some roles, with stakeholders and in communities) each week and may vary from week to week depending on business need,” the Scottish Government said.
“Consequently, there are no centrally fixed mandated number of days that staff must work in the office per week, however there is the expectation that staff attend a Scottish Government workplace at least once per week.”
In February this year a survey of members of the FDA union – predominantly officials in higher-grade roles – found that the 60:40 mandate was not considered to be a success, with almost two-thirds of respondents reporting a negative impact on productivity.
Around half of the survey’s 7,000-plus respondents held line management responsibilities. The FDA said many of them had expressed concerns about being perceived as “micromanaging” in relation to enforcing the office attendance rules.