The four-day week pilot programme and why we decided, as a team, to not take part – and ended up with something better.

We are one month on from the kick-off of 4DayWeek’s six month UK pilot of a four day working week – without a reduction in pay. It’s a concept that continues to divide opinion, not only in our industry, but across the country.

On our quest to rethink paraplanning, we’ve taken a good look at ourselves from top to bottom, not only what we do, but how we do it – including our working hours.

Everyone wants to work less and live more, surely it’s a no-brainer, or is it? Six months ago we thought we’d all jump at the chance to make the switch. Inspired by our CEO Kimberley Sare, who herself follows a four day working week, we considered the shift in working pattern for the whole team.

Does it just make working days harder?

It seems there’s a wave of uncertainty around compressing the hours into four days or whether four days actually means that – less hours, but with the same pay. The debate around this and how we wanted to handle it sparked a load more questions – are we just making life difficult for ourselves, having to work harder, faster or longer days in order to ensure the fifth day remained free?

Better productivity? Or added pressure?

So what about productivity? A 2019 four day week trial by Microsoft Japan yielded a 39% increase in productivity – a trend that has been repeated by multiple four day week trials and studies across the globe since.

Interestingly, one of the key concerns that arose from our team was the increase in pressure that the change could create. Paraplanning is, in essence, a time and materials business model. Would the detriment of fitting their work load into four days outweigh the personal benefits of having an additional day off.

The perceived increase in pressure that would come from working at 100%, 100% of the time felt like the additional day off would be more about stressing over what they had not achieved and recovering from the intensity of a four day week.

Would it simply force us to pack more in, resulting in fewer – but more stressful days?

Which days will we work?

Who works when – and is it the same for everyone? It may sound simple, but this initial key question sparked a whole range of further implications and additional questions.

Surely everybody wants to have a Friday off? What about the person who would prefer to break the week up with a Wednesday. Does forcing them to have a Friday off improve their work life balance?

Closing on Friday’s or shutting up shop each Wednesday may sound simple – but we were so mindful of the impact on our clients and their expectations and felt that we could ill afford to have radio silence for 20% of the working week.

Also, if our clients start their own four day weeks with Monday’s out of office, Suddenly the pressure is on to drive a workload through in three days.

We went round in circles and couldn’t find a single solution that solved all of these challenges.

Were we already flexible?

It was becoming clear that the move to the four day week wasn’t for us – trying to fit everyone into the same working pattern, albeit a shorter one, was like putting round pegs in square holes.

Those who work three day weeks are happy with just that, whilst a five day week didn’t bother others in the slightest. It soon became clear that it was the CEO driving the change and that didn’t work for everyone else.

“Whilst I wanted us to embrace the four day week for everyone, our conversations and exploration of the idea led me to realise that while it works for some [including me] if doesn’t work for others – I was assuming everyone felt the same as me.” – Kimberley Sare, CEO

If you worked four days, then obviously you would want that, and those on three days didn’t want to increase their daily hours or go ‘full time’ up to four days. What we were quickly learning was that the hours we each worked, worked for us. Would ‘enforcing’ a working week of four days be any better than a five day week?

Our solution: flexible, but accountable.

From our numerous conversations as a team, it became clear that flexibility over anything else was the most important factor. Whilst some prefer extended lunches to go swimming, others prefer later starts to do the school run. Compressing five days’ work into four works well for our CEO, others found the whole idea unappealing, adversely impacting their preferred tempo of the working week.

So our solution is: giving our staff as much freedom as possible to decide what works for them.

We’ve never followed a traditional 9-5-5 policy and it really works for us – and importantly, our clients too. Turns out we’ve been doing a pretty good job with a solution that works for all.

Four day week? We think we’ve got something better.