‘It would be impossible to go back’: inside the UK’s four-day work week trial

Com­pa­nies involved in the UK’s four-day week tri­al plan to con­tin­ue with a short­er work week indef­i­nite­ly, despite ini­tial logis­ti­cal chal­lenges and rota mix-ups.

Start­ing in July, some 70 organ­i­sa­tions and 3,300 staff made the switch to the 100:80:100 mod­el. This sees staff retain 100% of their pay for 80% of their time, in exchange for a com­mit­ment to main­tain at least 100% pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. It is part of the biggest four-day week tri­al in the world. 

Ini­tial reports described the “chaot­ic” first week of the four-day tri­al, as busi­ness­es strug­gled to adapt to the new work­ing pat­tern. But now, halfway through the six-month pilot, many of the busi­ness­es involved are opti­mistic that the short­er work­ing arrange­ment could con­tin­ue well beyond the end of the exper­i­ment.

Theo Krish, co-founder of audio com­pa­ny Sounds Like These, says that now his com­pa­ny has expe­ri­enced the ben­e­fits of a health­i­er work/life bal­ance “it would be pret­ty impos­si­ble to go back to nor­mal”.

Although some coor­di­na­tion with clients was required, Krish says the switch to a four-day week has been “plain sail­ing” since and his team is bet­ter rest­ed, hap­pi­er and more pro­duc­tive.

Initial challenges

Not every par­tic­i­pant has had a such a smooth tran­si­tion. James Dean, CEO and co-founder of Lon­don-based dig­i­tal map­ping start­up Sen­sat, admits that the com­pa­ny “did not get every­thing right at the begin­ning” and had to learn a few things along the way.

One of the biggest dif­fi­cul­ties was deter­min­ing how to stream­line work­loads, rather than hav­ing staff try to con­dense five days’ work into four. “We had to reframe think­ing in the organ­i­sa­tion so that teams under­stood it was about doing the tasks that real­ly mat­ter and make an impact, and cut­ting out the menial tasks,” Dean says.

The social ele­ment of work also took a hit as a result of the new work­ing arrange­ment. Dean has tried to rec­ti­fy this by intro­duc­ing cof­fee bars, sofa areas and break­out rooms to the office to encour­age col­lab­o­ra­tion. The com­pa­ny has also host­ed addi­tion­al social events to ensure “team bonds are not missed”.

Finan­cial ser­vices firm Stel­lar Asset Man­age­ment has faced sim­i­lar chal­lenges, with some indi­vid­u­als report­ed­ly strug­gling to get their week­ly work done with one few­er day. Chief oper­at­ing offi­cer Daryl Hine says: “We’re look­ing at how we can sup­port those indi­vid­ual teams to improve effec­tive­ness and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, so they can ful­ly enjoy the ben­e­fits.”

Flex­i­bil­i­ty has been impor­tant in this regard. The busi­ness has been open about the fact there may be cer­tain times when peo­ple will be required to attend a meet­ing or do some work on their extra day off dur­ing this adap­ta­tion peri­od.

But there have also been numer­ous ben­e­fits. “We believe this is going to help staff morale and in terms of attract­ing and retain­ing staff. But it also means that the whole com­pa­ny is more focused on effi­cien­cy,” he says.

Sen­sat has also noticed improve­ments to tal­ent attrac­tion and com­pa­ny effi­cien­cies. “We are see­ing our team more refreshed and inspired by the world around them,” he says, adding that there is an ambi­tion for the four-day week to become the norm at Sen­sat beyond the end of the exper­i­ment. 

TRO Media, anoth­er tri­al par­tic­i­pant, has report­ed a 44% improve­ment to per­for­mance, despite the 20% reduc­tion in work­ing time.

Gift site Book­ish­ly also hopes to con­tin­ue oper­at­ing under a four-day week, despite ini­tial issues around organ­is­ing rotas and couri­ers for deliv­ery of its prod­ucts, in part due to its small size — it has 10 employ­ees.

Com­pa­ny direc­tor Louise Ver­i­ty says: “When we worked five days, peo­ple were able to book time off at the last minute with no issues and they did­n’t need to con­sid­er who else was off at the same time because we could man­age to cov­er what was need­ed.” 

The com­pa­ny has since imple­ment­ed a shared cal­en­dar to organ­ise time off and has encour­aged col­leagues to con­sid­er the busi­ness needs before book­ing hol­i­day. But this is some­thing Ver­i­ty believes is a “very small con­ces­sion” when bal­anced against the ben­e­fits of the four-day week.

Companies of all sizes seize the benefits

Even at larg­er organ­i­sa­tions, the response to the four-day week tri­al has been a suc­cess. Gam­ing com­pa­ny Hutch is one of the largest busi­ness­es involved in the tri­al, with all 150 of its staff across stu­dios in Lon­don, Dundee and Nova Sco­tia tak­ing part. 

Its CEO and co-founder Shaun Rut­land says that the switch to a four-day week was a “mas­sive shift for the busi­ness and the team’s estab­lished rou­tines” but, three months in, the expe­ri­ence has “rein­forced our con­fi­dence in the process”. He adds: “We had to rewire our brains and our approach to deliv­er more work in less time, with­out cre­at­ing a stress­ful and com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment.”

There were con­cerns that los­ing a work­ing day would increase the stress lev­els expe­ri­enced by staff. Rut­land has been encour­ag­ing peo­ple to have an open dia­logue about their work­loads in week­ly stand-ups and one-to-one meet­ings.

“What we’ve found is that you have to change how you think about pro­duc­tiv­i­ty from the ground up to make it a suc­cess. You have to be out­put focused, not time focused,” he says.

Although he claims the tri­al has been a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence, improv­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and help­ing the team lead “bet­ter, fuller lives”, it is still “too ear­ly to say” whether the change will be made per­ma­nent.

Oth­er com­pa­nies have been sur­prised by the ease of the tran­si­tion. Cos­met­ics com­pa­ny 5 Squir­rels employs 14 peo­ple and has avoid­ed any issues with the imple­men­ta­tion of the four-day week.

“We hon­est­ly haven’t real­ly had any chal­lenges,” says Gary Con­roy, co-founder and CEO. “We even had a Covid out­break ear­ly on with dif­fer­ent depart­ments affect­ed at dif­fer­ent times, but we pulled togeth­er and got through it, even with one day less to get every­thing done.”

He describes the expe­ri­ence of the tri­al as “100% pos­i­tive” and it has left peo­ple “ques­tion­ing how we used to work and how much time was being wast­ed on non-pro­duc­tive tasks or dis­trac­tions and need­less meet­ings”.

The only issue com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tan­cy The Sto­ry Mob has faced to-date has been peo­ple log­ging in on their addi­tion­al day off. Its com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor Karen Low says this has been due to FOMO (fear of miss­ing out) and has hap­pened despite the com­pa­ny set­ting clear bound­aries around respect­ing oth­er people’s time off.

“Many want to make sure the clients and the team feel sup­port­ed. I think that’s a tes­ta­ment to the cul­ture and the kind of peo­ple we employ,” she says.

Over­all the major­i­ty of com­pa­nies involved in the UK four-day week tri­al have found the expe­ri­ence to be a ben­e­fi­cial one, with sev­er­al look­ing to make the short­er work week a per­ma­nent perk for staff. Stel­lar Asset Man­age­men­t’s Hine says: “The com­pa­nies which are involved in this pilot are trail­blaz­ing. It’s a dif­fer­ent way of work­ing that requires a dif­fer­ent mind­set and hope­ful­ly it will get much more broad­ly adopt­ed as we move for­ward.”