SSSC Have Your Say Workforce Wellbeing Survey 2025 report
Our first annual Have Your Say Workforce Wellbeing Survey report provides valuable insights from people working in the social work, social care and children and young people workforce on a wide range of topics, including wellbeing, pay, terms and conditions, support, access to training and qualifications and general experiences of working in the sector.
The findings will help us and key partners, including Scottish Government, to find out more about the experience of working in this field, as well as informing the development of national policies that have an impact on this sector and approaches on how best to support the workforce.
The survey was carried out on our behalf by Progressive Partnership from January to February 2025 and 6,581 registered and some non-registered workers responded.
NOTE: Around 24% of the Scottish social service workforce is employed by voluntary sector employers and is likely that many will be included in this survey. However, it is not clear how many of the 6,581 respondents are employed in the voluntary sector, and there is no data in this report on any differences between the sectors (ie public, private, voluntary).
Main findings
People told us they were more likely to be satisfied (56%) than dissatisfied (35%) with their current job. A majority (60%) said they feel safe in their work environment, while just under half (47%) said they would recommend their organisation as a great place to work.
Overall, respondents were more likely to recommend working in the sector than not. Two-fifths said they would be likely to recommend it while three in 10 said they wouldn’t.
When asked what they most like/enjoy about working in the sector, respondents tended to mention making a difference/ feelings of satisfaction/ the job being rewarding and/ or aspects related to the service users they work with/ relationships with clients.
Suggestions about what should be done to make the sector an attractive and rewarding place to work focused on better pay. Other common suggestions included improvements in how staff are recognised and supported, reducing workloads/ time pressures and issues related to staffing/ recruitment.
Overall, just over half (54%) said they were very or fairly satisfied with their terms and conditions of employment.
Roughly half of respondents are paid an annual salary and half are paid hourly. Half of those on an hourly rate (of £13.10 on average) said they were finding it more difficult to manage financially than this time last year.
The survey highlighted that while attitudes towards training were generally positive, with two-thirds saying they are supported to gain qualifications for registration, they also mentioned barriers to training and learning, with lack of time, employers not allowing time off for training and unavailability of courses being the most commonly mentioned obstacles.
Staff turnover was reported to be high by almost half of respondents, leading to increased stress levels, increased workloads and lower staff morale among remaining staff.
Just over a fifth of respondents (22%) said they were likely to leave their role in the sector in the next 12 months. Almost half of the respondents said they are likely to leave their role in the next five years. Their key reasons are being overworked, low pay and poor employment or working conditions in general.
Forty-three per cent of workers who plan to leave the sector have experienced either bullying, discrimination or harassment in their role. Overall, 45% of social worker respondents revealed that they have experienced this behaviour along with social care workers (37%) and workers in children and young people services (34%).
Despite these challenges, social care staff were generally the most positive in their responses, reporting the fewest sources of stress and the highest levels of job satisfaction.
