Firms report positive results as four-day week pilot reaches halfway point
Many firms taking part in a groundbreaking four-day week pilot have said they will consider retaining it.
More than 70 organisations have signed up to the six-month trial, which kicked off at the beginning of June and has just reached its halway point.
The project is being run by 4 Day Week Global in partnership with leading think tank Autonomy, the 4 Day Week UK Campaign, and researchers at Cambridge University, Boston College and Oxford University.
More than 3,300 employees are getting a paid day off weekly through the course of the trial.
The indicative research being gathered by 4 Day Week Global reveals a general tenor of positive experiences alongside valuable lessons for some organisations that are striving to change decades of ingrained work cultures and systems.
4 Day Week Global CEO Joe O’Connor said: “The organisations in the United Kingdom pilot are contributing real-time data and knowledge that are worth their weight in gold.
“Essentially, they are laying the foundation for the future of work by putting a four-day week into practice, across every size of business and nearly every sector, and telling us exactly what they are finding as they go.
“We are learning that for many it is a fairly smooth transition and for some there are some understandable hurdles – especially among those which have comparatively fixed or inflexible practices, systems, or cultures which date back well into the last century.
“While for most organisations the pilot prompts many pleasing discoveries and outcomes – a lot of businesses have more flexibility and nimbleness among their people and teams that leaders often know at the outset – there is friction for others, and this can be based on a variety of factors, many of which can be addressed or substantially improved in the pilot itself.
“4 Day Week Global and our partners are supporting these businesses to ease their transition to a flexible work model, and using the findings to inform the process for many more businesses to trial, adapt, and reap the benefits of emphasising productivity over time – thereby transforming the world of work for all of us.”
As the pilot apprached its halfway point, a brief internal check-in survey was sent to participating companies.
A series of questions were posed with a multi-choice answer on a scale of 1 to 5.
Of those that responded (41 out of the 70 companies responded):
■ 88 per cent of respondents stated that the four-day week is working
‘well’ for their business at this stage in the trial
■ 46 per cent of respondents say their business productivity has ‘maintained around the same level’, while 34 per cent report that it has ‘improved slightly’, and 15 per cent say it has ‘improved significantly
■ On how smooth the transition to a four-day week has been (with ‘5’ being ‘extremely smooth’ and ‘1’ being ‘extremely challenging’), 29 per cent of respondents selected ‘5’, 49 per cent selected ‘4’ and 20 per cent selected ‘3’
■ 86 per cent of respondents stated that at this juncture in the trial, they would be ‘extremely likely’ and or ‘likely’ to consider retaining the fourday week policy after the trial period.
Sharon Platts, chief people officer for Outcomes First Group, said: “The fourday week [pilot] has been transformational for us so far. We’ve been delighted to see productivity and output increase and have also been able to make it work in our education and care services, which we thought would be far more challenging. While it's still early days, our confidence in continuing beyond the trial is growing and the impact on colleague wellbeing has been palpable.”
Nicci Russell, the managing director of Waterwise, says the pilot initially involved a learning curve.
She said: “We're proud to be involved in the trial and it’s going well for us.
“It wasn't a walk in the park at the start, but no major change ever is, and we were well briefed and prepared by the 4 Day Week Global team.
“We have all had to work at it – some weeks are easier than others and things like annual leave can make it harder to fit everything in – but we're much more settled with it now overall than we were at the start.
“We managed to incorporate a big media blitz on water efficiency – water efficiency is our bread and butter over the summer, which added to workload, but we still managed to stick to the four-day week and the standard working hours, and the team are pretty happy.
“We certainly all love the extra day out of the office and do come back refreshed. It's been great for our wellbeing and we're definitely more productive already.”