Cost of living crisis and trial move to a 4-day week

Everyone is affected by the current cost-of-living crisis. Inflation (currently sitting at around 11%) means that costs for most things are rising dramatically. This affects us all including Melville staff. Other organisations are considering higher wage increases to ensure staff are protected, as much as possible, from the worst of these rises. However high wage increases have an impact on budgets and services. This is the challenge we face.

What’s happening with rents?

Melville budgets, including tenant rents and staff salaries, are reviewed now with any increase applied from 1 April. Any increase in staff salaries in recent years has typically been linked to the annual rent increase.

Currently in Scotland rents are frozen until 31 March 2023. The Scottish Government took this decision in October. They will announce in the middle of January what their plans are for rents from 1 April.

What are the options to help staff?

We have 4 choices available to us:

1. A much higher rent increase than normal (if the Scottish Government rent freeze ends) to pay staff in line with inflation
2. If rents remain frozen then we could take money out of the home improvement budget to fund a staff pay increase
3. Keep staff pay increase low and risk harm to staff morale and possible industrial action
4. Look at more creative solutions to help staff out

What are you proposing?

Even if allowed to we don’t want to increase rents significantly as we know how difficult things are for everybody and we don’t want to make them worse. At the same time we want to help staff, without having a significant impact on services, therefore we have been exploring more creative solutions.

To help staff out without having a big impact on Melville’s finances, we will be moving to a 4-day working week for all staff on a trial basis. This means that Melville will be closed every Friday throughout 2023. Staff will continue to be paid their full salaries (and receive a 2% cost-of-living salary increase) but will work 32 hours a week spread across 4 days rather than the current working arrangements of 35 hours a week over 5 days. This has been approved by the Melville Board.

What impact will there be on services?

Many of our services are now available online and remain available even when we’re closed. We will also be working to improve our digital services throughout the year.

When it comes to repairs, Fridays won’t be the same as weekends. The normal repairs service (not the out of hours service) will continue to operate meaning you will still be able to arrange appointments and book in routine repairs.

Our opening hours will remain the same however we will extend our office opening hours one Wednesday a month to help those who can’t contact us during normal working hours.

We don’t expect there to be a negative impact on services and will measure performance over the course of the year. If there is a significant dip in performance, then it won’t become permanent and we will go back to existing working arrangements.

Why Fridays and when will this start?

Fridays are typically the quietest day of the working week for many Melville staff and therefore the obvious choice. Similarly it made sense to begin the trial at the start of the new year so it will begin on 1 January 2023.

Have others tried this?

Yes, there are a growing number of organisations introducing a shorter working week. One London-based housing association, Causeway Irish, introduced it in 2017. We have consulted them closely on how it has worked and they tell us it has been very positive, leading to benefits including increased productivity and reduced staff sickness.

Have you already consulted tenants and how can we give feedback?

We consulted our tenant reps before the trial was approved by the Board. Feedback from the reps was largely positive and they recognised that Melville needs to approach things differently in the current challenging economic climate. We welcome all feedback on our performance during the 12-month trial. Please get in touch in any of the usual ways.