New Opening Hours
Yorkhill Housing Association will move to new working hours from April 2026 in a 12-month pilot of a 4-day working week.
Notice
From April staff will compress and reduce their hours into a 32-hour week (pro-rata for part-time staff), working Monday to Thursday. The office will now be closed on a Friday from 3rd April.
Opening Hours from April 2026
Below is a graphic showing the change in opening hours from our current position to our pilot as of April 2026.
Currently the office remains closed until 10am, however the phones open at 9am. We close at lunch at 12.30pm, and reopen at 1.30pm, except on a Wednesday where we don’t reopen after lunch. On Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday we close our office at 4pm but the phones remain open until 5pm, and on Friday we close the office and phones at 4pm. This is relatively complicated, and customers are understandably unlikely to remember this. We have met customers attempting to visit our office when we are closed, and overall our opening hours requires some explanation.
Our new opening hours from April 2026 are much more simple, and the office is open longer despite being closed entirely on a Friday. We will be open:
9am until 5pm Monday to Thursday.
This includes the office and phones.
This changes means the office will now be open 8 hours per day – 32 hours per week instead of 22.5 hours per week.
Background
After a thorough exploration the Senior Management Team and Management Committee feel that this will bring benefits to the organisation as a whole, while improving its offering as a modern and forward-thinking employer.
We considered examples from elsewhere in the country, but it was learning from other organisations in the Scottish social housing sector which proved that this change can work, and has considerable benefits for the organisation and its customers. We learned that other organisations who have trialled a 4-day working week found their staff to have a better work-life balance, and were happier and less stressed in their workplace. These benefits were passed on to customers through improved productivity and evidence exists that performance results do not drop. Therefore we feel that customers will remain satisfied with the our services during this pilot.
We have implemented a new website, with a customer portal, where customers can access many services that they may normally contact the office for. Repairs can be raised online, complaints and other requests for service can be made, rent and factoring balances checked and payments processed, among many more services.
However, we recognise that an improved online presence does not replace human contact. We do not wish to turn Yorkhill Housing Association into a primarily online organisation, and we do not want to lose contact with our tenants – quite the opposite!
As a result of this review we will now be opening the office longer than we currently are. We will be reopening the office from 9am each day Monday to Thursday, and we will no longer close at lunch. Additionally, we will no longer automatically close on a Wednesday afternoon, however we may still decide to close for staff training or events on occasion. We will notify tenants in advance if this happens.
We feel that this change is a good balance in that it improves our office opening hours, while piloting a modern working environment, and most importantly we would maintain our performance levels and customer satisfaction.
FAQs
Below are some answers to potentially key questions you may have. If you still have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact us at the office, by telephone on 0141 285 7910, or email at administration@yorkhillha.org.
Yes. Our repairs service provided by contractors is not changing. Our contractors will continue to work as normal, including scheduling in work on a Friday if appropriate. We will still take emergency repairs through our phone service as normal – our out-of-hours contractor, Saltire, will cover calls on a Friday in the same manner as they do on weekends, and our normal contractors will carry out the work.
Non-emergency repairs will be processed on the next working day, much like if you reported these on a weekend.
No. Not at the moment. This is a pilot project of 12 months, April 2026 to March 2027.
Our Senior Management Team and Management Committee will be carefully reviewing how this performs on a regular basis. If we see this being successful we may decide to keep this it beyond the 12 months pilot.
However, to be clear that if this is not a success then we will not make this permanent, or may end the pilot early. We will notify tenants of our decision later in the year. The future beyond the pilot is not set, and will only be decided upon evaluation of how the pilot performs.
No. We have assessed the impact of the change and we expect that we will see at least a slight financial saving in implementing this project. We did not propose this as a cost-saving measure, however in our planning and exploration we foresee savings for example in utilities and other expenditure for our office as it will now be fully closed for an additional day per week.
There is also evidence that suggests sickness absence reduces as staff feel a better work-life balance, and retention of staff is improved, thus reducing costs relating to staff turnover and absence. This will be carefully monitored throughout to evaluate the actual impact.
Yes. During our exploration we sought advice from our HR representatives, Unite union, Scottish social housing sector bodies, and notified the Scottish Housing Regulator.
As the principle of a 4-day working week is gaining traction nationally all groups were interested in our pilot to see how effective this would be. We are not, however, the first Housing Association to make this change, and our discussions with other organisations has found evidence that this pilot should be overall positive.
The staff structure at Yorkhill HA is the responsibility of our Management Committee and Senior Management Team to consider. However, like the majority of the sector our staffing terms and conditions are set by a third party, EVH. This change has been made in line with these terms and conditions.
For privacy and commercial reasons we cannot divulge personal information relating to HR matters, however staff salaries are not increased as part of this change. Instead, the benefit for staff will be an improved work/life balance; staff will work longer hours each day, but will work fewer days. Leave entitlements will be reduced relative to the compression and reduction in hours worked, and some other HR terms are reduced or restricted.
Yes. We always welcome feedback from our customers. We recognise that this is a significant change to our opening hours, and we will be carefully monitoring how the new arrangements operate in practice.
Our priority is to maintain, and where possible improve, the quality and responsiveness of our services. This change is being introduced because we believe it will support more focused working time and deliver better outcomes for customers, not reduce service standards.
We encourage customers to experience the new arrangements once they are in place, and we will actively seek feedback later in the year to understand how they are working and whether any adjustments are required.