Will a four-day week ever REALLY work? Owner of gift firm taking part in trial says staff will be back full time at Christmas to cope with demand – and they can only take Wednesdays off because otherwise they fall behind
- Louise Verity, CEO of Bookishly, insists the four-day week pilot is going smoothly
- The firm can only take Wednesdays off otherwise it struggles to deal with orders
- She added that staff will go back to working five days a week again in November
- This will be to meet surging demand over Christmas, their most profitable period
The boss of a gift company taking part in the four-day working week trial says staff will have to go back to working five days a week to meet demand.
Louise Verity, CEO of Bookishly, an independent business that sells literary gifts, has revealed that despite the trial ‘going smoothly so far’, her business will return to five-day working weeks over Christmas.
She said the decision had been made so she could be sure they would meet increased demand over the festive period, which is when her company makes the bulk of its profit.
The gift company’s founder has also admitted that staff can only take Wednesday as their extra day off because otherwise they would fall behind dealing with orders.
That’s despite her firm’s participation in an ongoing pilot scheme, where workers are supposed to complete all the work they would normally do in a five-day week, in four days.
The trial is being coordinated by campaign group 4 Day Week Global, think tank Autonomy and academics at Oxford, Cambridge and Boston College in the US.
Northampton-based firm Bookishly is taking part in a trial scheme where staff work do 100 per cent of their work in four days a week with no reduction in pay. Pictured are commuters heading into work in London
More than 3,000 workers are taking part in the scheme, which has seen employers such as the Royal Society of Biology, hipster London brewery Pressure Drop, Southampton computer game developer Yo Telecom, a Manchester medical devices firm, and a fish and chip shop in Norfolk take part.
Staff will be given 100 per cent pay for 80 per cent of their time — but they have made a commitment to produce 100 per cent of their usual output.
However some critics say the concept would be impossible in customer facing jobs, or 24/7 operations including where overtime payments would present an extra cost to employers or the taxpayer.
Speaking to Felicity Hannah on Radio 4’s Today show this morning, Ms Verity said while it was ‘so far so good’ for the trial at her firm, staff would be needed back in the office five days a week later this year.
Ms Verity, who started the business in 2013 and now employs 10 people, said staff currently have Wednesday’s off.
She said: ‘We’ve gone with Wednesday and I really like it. I think my team do too.
‘It was important to us that we didn’t add to the catch up – after the weekend is quite significant for us, because we are processing orders that have come in over days that we weren’t in, so adding another day to that would make that Monday or Tuesday very difficult.
Louise Verity, CEO of Bookishly, said the pilot was ‘going smoothly’ but admitted staff will be back working five days a week to meet demand over Christmas
‘So we’ve spread it out a bit more by picking Wednesday and we’re all off on the same day so that nobody has to cover anyone else’s role, rather than staggering the days off.’
Ms Verity said the Northampton-based firm has had complaints from customers or suppliers about not being able to contact them on the day the business shuts, as ‘it’s all about communication and making sure people understand what to expect’.
Despite the smooth-sailing so far, she did admit staff would be going back to the office five days a week in November and December to meet demand over Christmas.
‘We talked about this as a team and it is a really key time for us, the peak is huge at Christmas and basically all of our profit happens in December,’ she said.
‘We want to be a four-day week company and if we could do the five days in just six weeks of the year, we still felt that was an amazing improvement to our work-life balance.
‘For three weeks of November, three weeks of December we’ll be working on Wednesday’s too and we’ll be focused solely on Christmas prep – everything that we do for preparing for Christmas will happen on those Wednesdays in November.
‘Then by December hopefully we’ll be so busy that we’ll need those Wednesdays for production over and above the normal days which will mean that we won’t need any Christmas temps and it will focus our Christmas prep on those days.
‘Normally we would be doing a couple of hours here or there preparing, and by focusing everything on those Wednesdays I think it’s really going to help us. Everybody was on board with that.’
She added that there would be no increase in pay for working the extra day, despite the scheme promoting people being paid 100 per cent of their wages for working four days a week, not five.
Where did the five-day week come from?
Prior to the Great Depression, the first example of a five-day week was seen in 1908.
A mill in New England, US, allowed a two-day weekend so that Jewish workers could observe the Sabbath on Saturdays. Sunday was already a work-free day due to its holy status in Christianity.
In 1926, carmaker Henry Ford gave his staff both days off, and created a 40-hour week for employees.
By 1932, the US had officially adopted the five-day week, to tackle unemployment created by the Great Depression.
The UK followed suit in 1933, when John Boot, from Boots corporation, closed factories on Saturdays and Sundays, and made it the company’s official policy the next year.
Ms Verity said: ‘At this point, they’ve agreed that we’re going to step back up at that point. And it really is only six weeks.
‘One of the key things about our Christmases is that we don’t work more hours. Some people I know, in small businesses like mine, work into the night everyday things are so crazy. We really do finish at 5.30pm, we’re done, we’re out the door.
‘And this is what we’re going to try out – if people aren’t into it, if it doesn’t work, if it doesn’t fit into people’s lives by the time they’ve been living the four-day working week for a while, then we’re going to rethink it. We’re open to talking about these things.’
The team of researchers involved in the pilot will study each company and assess the impact on staff, including stress and burnout, job and life satisfaction, health, sleep, energy use, travel.
They will also look gender equality, with the four-day week thought to benefit women, who make up a higher proportion of part-time and flexible-hours staff.
However, the scheme has been slammed by some business owners who claim it sends the wrong message to workers.
Charlie Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, branded the pilot ‘ridiculous’ and said if people can cram five days worth of work into four days, they ‘weren’t really doing five days work before’.
Speaking to MailOnline last month, he said: ‘Now they’ll be doing three days worth of work.
‘People just want to get paid for doing nothing. Long term, this isn’t going to work and we’re going to suffer badly.’
Mr Mullins said that more workers want to ‘do less’, and that a four-day week is ‘inviting people to do nothing’.
‘The economy is in a bad way, we’ve got a war on, strikes on, and people want to do less work and be paid for five days.
‘It’s an impossibility — five into four doesn’t go.’
The businessman was also concerned that condensing work could lead to overworking, and accidents in some industries.
He added: ‘Anyone that runs a business will have to more staff.’
Critics of the four-day week have suggested that loosing a day and condensing work into 80 per cent of the time could impact human interactions at work, and lead to colleagues being emailed when they are out of office.
Charlie Mullins, founder of Pimlico Plumbers, called the pilot ‘ridiculous’ and said that it is sending the wrong message to workers. Pictured is Mr Mullins outside the Royal Court of Justice in London in 2016
Brendan Burchell, a sociology professor at University of Cambridge, said that many people in the office are happiest when they have interactions with their colleagues.
‘It’s really important for them to have those coffees or water-cooler conversations with their colleagues,’ the professor, who has been studying the 4 Day Week Global trials, told Wired.
There are also concerns that burnout could be an issue if staff have to cram 100 per cent of their work into 80 per cent of their time.
Jane Gratton, Head of People Policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, said: ‘A four-day working week is an interesting proposition and shows again how firms are looking to be innovative and offer more flexible opportunities for their staff.
‘Increasing productivity and helping people better balance their work-life commitments makes good business sense. But the potential trade-offs needed to make the 4-day week successful may not suit everyone in the workplace. Ultimately, every employer must decide what works best for the business and its employees.
‘In most cases, adopting flexible working practices is a good way to support employees. From job sharing to hybrid working – it can have a big impact on morale, attendance and productivity as well as boosting staff recruitment and retention.’
A trial of the four-day working week in France found workers were putting in the same amount of hours even with a day fewer and companies were having to pay them for their extra time.
The UK companies taking part in four-day week scheme from tech firms, recruitment consultancies to charities:
5 Squirrels – Healthcare
Adzooma – Tech
AKA Case Management – Domiciliary Care
Allcap Limited – Industrial & construction supplies
Amplitude – Creative Marketing Agency
Bedrock Learning – EdTech (Primary and Secondary Education)
Bookishly – Gift
Boom Studios – Creative & Cultural
Charity Bank – Financial Services (Banking)
Comcen – IT
Eurowagens – Automotive
Everledger – Technology
Evolution Money Limited – Financial Services
Future Talent Learning – Online Education
Girling Jones – Recruitment
Happy – Learning
Helping Hands – Housing/Health and Social Care
Hutch – Games
IE Brand – Digital & Branding
Literal Humans – Marketing / Advertising
Loud Mouth Media – Digital Marketing
Merthyr Valley Homes Limited – Housing
MOX – Advertising
NeatClean – Consumer Goods
Our Community – Technology & Training
Outcomes Based Healthcare – Healthcare
Outcomes First Group – Care and Education services
Platten’s Fish and Chips – Hospitality
Pressure Drop Brewing – Brewing / manufacturing
Rivelin Robotics – Software / Manufacturing
Royal Society of Biology – Charity
Salamandra.uk – Animation
Scotland’s International Development Alliance – Charity
Secure Digital Exchange Ltd – IT
Sensat – Software Start Up
Sounds Like These – Media
Stellar Asset Management – Financial Services
Stemettes – Charity
The Story Mob – Public Relations / Comms
Timberlake Consultants Ltd / TLKE Ltd – Software Training Consultancy
Trio Media – Digital Marketing
Tyler Grange – Environmental Consulting
Unity – Public Relations / Comms
Waterwise – Environmental campaigning organisation (not4profit)
We Are Purposeful – Not for profit
Yo Telecom – Telecommunications Southampton
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