Accountant in Bankruptcy work from home policy and office occupancy rates: FOI release
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
Information requested
Please include the following information for the following years 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26(so far):
- Copies of your work from home policy for staff for each year.
- If the data exists, office occupancy rates.
- The most common work from home policy that staff adopt.
Response
Accountant in Bankruptcy is an Executive Agency of the Scottish Government. As such, the Agency’s staff are on the same terms and conditions as those working directly for the Scottish Government. The Agency retains flexibility to set working patterns within the Scottish Government’s standard 35 hr week to meet business needs.
In 2022 AiB developed local guidance (“Transition to Hybrid Working”) for staff returning to the office following the Covid-19 pandemic. This guidance applied only to the Agency. Staff were requested to attend the office for 40% of their working week (usually 2 days from 5 for full-time staff). An earlier experiment immediately on the return to offices post pandemic of asking staff to attend 60% of the time had suggested additional flexibility would not undermine business need. Broadly speaking, the policy has remained unchanged since, with the most modern draft version of the guidance also attached.
AiB do not centrally monitor office attendance – this is done at a team level and is not collated. We are a small Agency with currently less than 100 FTE staff, so that a general picture of office attendance is easily obtained.
Although we do not have precise numbers, it is clear most staff chose to attend the office for the two specified days. Around 10% chose to attend every day, and there are a limited number of roles which require full attendance (such as those linked to our post room). I am sorry we do not have precise numbers to demonstrate this pattern.
About FOI
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Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG