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involved all staff working four days
a week,” she says. “Everyone had
Friday off.”
She reports that “at the end of
the first year, revenues were up
57%, new clients had increased by
100%, client referrals by 50%, staff
absence and sick days were down
75% and, even better, productivity,
as a measure of overall
profitability, saw no dip at all”.
Similar findings were noted
by the 250-strong New Zealand-
based financial services firm
Perpetual Guardian, which made
a four-day week permanent
this year, after academics who
studied their initial trial identified
lower stress levels, increased job
satisfaction and an improved
sense of work-life balance.
Employee engagement rose by
40% and overall productivity
by 20%.
While these examples sound
promising, most trials of four-day
working weeks have been with
relatively small companies. Could
it translate to larger organisations?
Caroline Roberts, head
of people and talent at Visit
Britain has her doubts. “In niche
organisations, I can see how
you could make this work,” she
admits. “But in more traditional
businesses, you’ve got a whole
array of leadership that would
be really against it. If I think of
the struggle I have with some
line managers even when I’m just
talking about flexible working – a
move to a four-day week would
be very difficult.”
She argues that a more
practical option might be to offer
a four-day week as an option for
any employee who wants it. As
she explains, “a really experienced,
high-performing staff member
working four days a week could
certainly deliver a lot more than
someone else over five days.”
However, she warns of potential
unfairness in arrangements such
as these: “A former colleague
asked to reduce his hours to a
nine-day fortnight, and his line
manager said ‘I’m delighted,
because I know I will get a full
How to implement a four-day week
Tash Walker, CEO of market research agency The Mix, provides
first-hand advice on introducing a four-day week:
Beta-test it:
We trialled
the four-day
week for
three months
without telling
clients or other
stakeholders,
to experiment
with different
ways of
working.
Discuss it:
A four-day
week throws
up questions
about how
you work
together; not
everyone will
be comfortable
with it. Address
potential stress
points before
they arise. whole team
to make it
work, so allow
members
to come up
with the most
effective ways
of working. to ascertain
the effects.
For us, it was a
massive green
light, but be
prepared to
adjust or tinker
with the details.
Plan it: Review it: You can’t just
do five days’
work in four;
instead work
out ways of
being more
efficient. It
needs the Our three-
month beta
test gave us a
chance to see
how things
were going.
We spoke to
clients and staff Tell people
about it:
We’ve
shifted to a
knowledge
economy
but retained
the working
hours and
practices
of a former
industrial
age
Once we’d built
confidence
through our
three-month
test, we started
telling all
our clients.
As a service
business, we
can only work
in this way if we
are supported
by customers,
so it was just
as important
to get them
on board; to
date, they have
been really
supportive. At
times when
we send the
odd email on a
Friday they call
us out on it!
week’s work out of you and I’ll just
pay you less’. I think many people
would be worried that they would
end up doing five-days’ worth of
work in four.”
It’s a concern that Walker also
recognised, which is why she
made it explicit that staff were not
expected to be seen working on a
Friday or after office hours.
While Roberts isn’t alone
in her concerns around the
feasibility of introducing a four-
day week in large organisations,
there are plenty who question
its desirability. ‘Hustle culture’,
#riseandgrind and humble
bragging about being busy are
common workplace tropes, with
influential advocates.
Technology entrepreneur
Elon Musk recently tweeted that
“nobody ever changed the world
on 40 hours a week”. He also
pointed out that if you love what
you do, it doesn’t feel that arduous
to do more of it.
March – May 2019
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