Four day working week – is it really worth it?

 

I don’t know how you have felt reading about the introduction of four-day working weeks – the trials and experiments – but I guess I’ve always started with the perspective of how can it possibly work?

All the way through the pandemic I instinctively felt like workplaces would suffer, but individuals would gain, from the working from home phenomenon. I think the balance that many workplaces have got to now, with specified days in the office for the purpose of collaboration, problem solving and relationship building makes a huge amount of sense.

But what of the four day week experiment?

Back in February The Guardian hailed a ‘major breakthrough’ as many firms extended the trial or made four day working permanent. Often articles such as these quote directly from organisations that exist to promote the four day working week and seem to stem back to a press release – quoted widely across the media. It can lead us to believe that it is an out and out success. Yesterday’s Times article on the four day week even suggested a report was edited and management comments covered up in order to paint the picture as an out and out success.

So I’m particularly interested to read stories from other sources giving us more detail.

London Tech firm Krystal cancels four-day working week trial

Krystal provides internet services in London. They introduced the trial in June, and abandoned it in September citing increased staff stress, more unhappiness and no increase in productivity. Customer service declined and it just wasn’t possible to complete the same amount of work in less time (as most busy, engaged people will tell you!).

Simon Blackler, founder, explained “While the outcome isn’t what we expected, I’m glad that we tried. Our heart was in the right place and the exercise hasn’t been a total failure. After listening to feedback we’ve made a major adjustment I hope will improve staff work-life balance with fewer trade-offs — staff can now finish at 5pm instead of 6pm and have more evening time.” You can read about their journey on their blog.

Longer days but shorter week

The offer of a 4 day week is rarely a free extra day of holiday each week.  Some firms have extended the working day earlier, e.g. 8am -5.30pm instead of 9am – 5.30pm, or to a later finish, such as Krystal. It is interesting that some cases have explained team members requesting to work 5 shorter days instead of 4 longer ones. Certainly if you have children at school then working longer days becomes very tricky.

The Iceland Study

A good comparator study in Iceland compared companies that either moved their team to a four day working week or cut the weekly hours worked by the same number of hours over five days. The article, widely heralded as a four day working week success story actually showed that shorter hours (40 hours down to 35 or 36 hours per week) did lead to improved employee wellbeing, less stress and burnout, and a maintenance of productivity – or improvement.  The greatest improvement was for shift workers.

“The key lesson to takeaway from the research, says Haraldsson, is that we unquestionably waste hours at work. What needs to change? One trial participant said work meetings were shortened, with one office banning meetings after 3pm. Routine unnecessary tasks were ditched, while other workplaces reduced coffee breaks.” Read more about the experiment at wired.co.uk

The take aways

At People Puzzles, we have always been a flexible-first company. The majority of our team (around 110 people at the moment) work part time – both our Portfolio People Directors across the country, and also our central team in head office. This is what we believe works:

• Wherever possible, don’t force people into a 9-5.30 routine. That means allowing flexibility in the number of hours they work each week, and the working pattern. Make sure it works for the business as well as for the individual, and make sure your clients get great service.
• Let people be flexible within their working pattern. Life happens – like boiler service visits, the dentist and the dog. Operate in a way that encourages high trust in both directions.
• Be really clear about expectations on what can be achieved within someone’s working time. Agree achievable but stretching targets. Align your reward around this where relevant.
• Run a tight ship. Don’t have meetings for meetings sake, but ensure there is enough to get clarity and collaboration going well.
• Treat everyone as an individual. What works for one person doesn’t work for somebody else. That means you have to know, and engage, with everyone on a one to one basis.
• Try new things, but be ready to admit when you’ve got it wrong, and take people on the journey with you. People love to rise to challenges and deliver great results, so give them the opportunity to do so.

We’d love to speak to you about your people puzzles – do drop us a line on 0345 646 5201 email us on [email protected] and let us know what you’ve tried that has or hasn’t worked with your team.