SSA - Four Day Week update

The Scottish Sports Association (SSA) has made a variety of commitments and internal changes in recent years to support our ambition to be a flexible, family-friendly and more inclusive employer. We have held sessions with our wider membership on key topics such as staff benefits beyond remuneration and aim to practice what we preach in terms of providing opportunities for volunteering and taking part in physical activity within the working week. 

In support of this ambition to support the wellbeing of our staff, we have previously conducted research into four day working week approaches and considered whether this could be applicable for our own organisation. 

The research supporting a transition to a four day working week is impressive, with organisations from a wide variety of sectors seeing benefits to staff health and wellbeing, reduced sick leave being taken, a happier and more engaged workforce and improved staff recruitment and retention, along with improved productivity. 

In late 2024, we were presented with the opportunity to join an official pilot scheme for organisations looking to trial a four day working week, kindly supported by the Four Day Week Foundation, which provided us with access to a network of organisations who were also considering implementing this working pattern to share queries and considerations. We also gained access to support from the University of Sussex to capture baseline pre-trial data on a range of measures and ongoing measurements throughout the trial to provide us with an independent review of the approach.

We have been working to this new pattern, initially on a six month trial period and subsequently on an ongoing official basis with permanent staff as we now move into the final stage of roll out to all staff, capturing data from staff members on their experiences and gaining insight from our engagement with other organisations taking part in the trial.

We have taken inspiration and learned from the inclusive approaches of wider partners across the voluntary sector, providing us with the support and advice that has empowered us to take the opportunity to be innovative and lead with inclusion. We’d particularly like to thank Jenni Snell of The Young Women’s Movement for sharing her experiences and insight with us in the early stages of exploring this approach. 

One of our key incentives to take part in the trial initially was to generate a body of evidence that we could, in turn, share with our Members and partners. We are aware that several organisations we work with have discussed what a four day working week might look like for your own organisations, as part of your own approach to staff wellbeing and your approach to benefits, and we are now in a position to share our direct experience, with data from our trial period and how we have managed our approach since.

The results of moving to a four day working week have been very positive across a number of metrics. Our ambition was always to achieve a better work life balance for our staff team, while maintaining or even improving our levels of productivity and service to our Members. In support of this ambition, we have introduced new efficiencies and automations to our own ways of working and supported our staff through training on workload and time management.

The subjective measures on staff wellbeing, energy levels and engagement have all been very positive and we believe that there have been numerous benefits for our team from taking this approach. 

If any of our partners would like to find out more about our approach or are interested in exploring this for their own organisations, please do not hesitate to get in touch to discuss what we have learned from the experience and top tips to consider.