Social work bodies urge action to boost flexible working opportunities

Social worker bodies have urged action from employers to improve flexible working opportunities for staff in Scotland, after finding there was a “long way to go” in this area.

The Scottish Association of Social Workers (SASW) and Social Workers Union (SWU) released research today showing that 55% of public sector social work employers – the 32 councils plus with NHS Highland – offered flexible working in their job advertisements.

A further 36% did not, with 9% unable to answer, according to the data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

An average of 28% of social workers had formal flexible working arrangements in place across the 17 employers that provided this information, though this ranged from 1% to 89% between areas.

Eleven employers also supplied data on the number of flexible working requests from social workers that they received in 2022-23, which ranged from 0 to 25 between areas, with all but two of these being granted.

Fewer jobs being advertised on part-time basis

The findings follow the results of SWU’s 2024 analysis of social work job advertisements to identify the proportion offering part-time or flexible hours. 

While Scotland had the highest proportion of such adverts of the UK nations, this had dropped from 30.5% in 2022 to 26.7% last year.

SASW and SWU also said that the number of social workers working part-time in Scotland had remained stagnant over the past decade, citing Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) figures showing that the number in 2022 – 1,307 – was broadly the same as that in 2013 (1,350).

Flexible working and the law surrounding it

As well as part-time hours, flexible working includes remote or hybrid working, term-time hours, flexitime, under which employees can choose their working hours within limits, staggered hours, where staff have different start and finish times to the norm, job sharing or compressed hours.

Under the Flexible Working (Amendment) Regulations 2023, which came into force in April 2024, employees can request flexible working from day one of their employment and are able to make two requests in any 12-month period.

Employers must respond within two months and must agree the request unless there is a permitted business reason – such as additional costs or a detrimental impact on quality – to refuse. They must consult with the employee on the practicalities of the request before refusing it.

Social work context

In their report, SASW and SWU said enabling flexible working had the potential to improve the retention challenges social work faced in Scotland.

A 2019 SSSC report found that three-quarters of practitioners were registered six years after graduation, entailing that a quarter had left the workforce during that time, while the regulator reported that 9.3% of local authority posts lay vacant as of June 2024.

SASW and SWU said flexible working was of particular benefit to women, who make up the vast majority of the workforce, given they took on the bulk of unpaid caring responsibilities within the home.

The social work bodies also cited the value of part-time working for workers aged over 55, with the same 2019 SSSC report finding that they constituted a fifth of the workforce.

‘Disproportionately’ high workloads for part-time staff

However, it cited barriers to social workers reducing their hours, including issues raised by part-time staff being given a caseload in line with the proportion of full-time equivalent hours they worked.

This failed to take into account the fact that they often had to spend as much time as full-time staff in meetings or training, leaving them less time per case and meaning their workloads were disproportionately high.

The report suggested this could be tackled by job sharing or part-time workers taking on duty work, co-working cases with less experienced colleagues or taking on specific pieces of more complex work.

Call for caseload monitoring

Other recommendations for employers included employers having monitoring systems to ensure caseloads were manageable, particularly for part-time staff.

SASW and SWU also called for employers to “actively encourage and support social work managers to consider how part-time working can be implemented in teams safely and effectively”.

They also recommended that employers hold information on who is working flexibly in their teams as a central dataset, enabling them to pool hours left over from people who had reduced their working week in order to offer job sharing opportunities to others.

Employers ‘need to offer more part-time roles’

John McGowan, Social Workers Union (photo: Simon Hadley)

SWU general secretary John McGowan said: “With recruitment of social workers still proving challenging for employers, now is the time for concerted action. We need to see social work employers offering more roles on part-time or flexible hours contracts.

“Flexible working provides clear opportunities to address social work staffing shortages; it will attract and retain present workers who need a flexible working environment. This can only improve wellbeing and work-life balance which is much needed in our challenging profession.”

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