As companies seek innovative ways to attract and retain talent, the four-day working week has emerged as the latest initiative to make the headlines.
Sparked by last year's Government proposal for a law allowing employees to request a compressed four-day working week1, and the recent findings from Autonomy, the organisation behind the world's largest four-day working week trial2, HR professionals are keen to set themselves apart and enjoy the reported benefits.
And, when those benefits include the potential for improved employee wellbeing and increased productivity, often resulting in higher employee retention, reduced burnout, and a more positive company culture, all while potentially maintaining the same output with fewer working hours, it’s no wonder that there’s a growing interest in the four-day working week.
This is certainly the case for ElectraLink, a London-based technology organisation and a member of the Best Companies community, who first explored the idea of a four-day working week after it was suggested by its employee forum in 2022.
“It’s been a journey,” explained Eira Huckstep-Holt, Head of HR at ElectraLink.
“When we rewind back to 2022, and when we were all properly coming out of Covid, lots of people were handing their notices in, leaving companies, and there was a war for talent as well. Salaries were creeping up at quite a pace, actually, at a rate we hadn’t seen in a long time. At ElectraLink, like many others in the tech sector, we were really facing the challenge of recruiting – and holding onto – good people. So, it [a four-day working week] was an interesting way of looking at how we could tackle a problem that was the same for everybody, but in a different way.”
In addition to being a way of recruiting and retaining talent, ElectraLink was making a concerted effort to focus on culture, after it had seen change at senior management level with the introduction of a new CEO.
Colleagues from the employee forum worked with the HR team to look into several different models before putting a business case together for the trial, including condensed hours, a nine-day fortnight, and the four-day working week. They decided on the four-day week and pitched it to ElectraLink’s senior leaders.
“One of the questions I get asked the most now is ‘how did we get senior buy-in?’”, she continued.
“And my answer is, if you have a sound business case for doing something, then you can get that buy in. From a HR perspective this could be a business tool, an attraction tool. Our SMT were already supportive of the concept, so once we achieved that, it was around the practical steps.”
ElectraLink introduced set trial periods to ensure that it was monitoring and understanding the impact of the four-day week on the organisation and also its people. It held an initial six-week pilot in summer 2022 and measured the impact through a series of pulse surveys looking at mental health, engagement, and performance. After concluding the initial trial was a success, it ran another pilot in October, which lasted through to the end of the year.
“The second trial was a bit longer in a much busier period,” Eira continued. “But we did the same pulse surveys, did the same evaluation, and we did find it was more challenging but, on the whole, nothing fell over. Everything got done, everything got completed. So we started to then think, well, actually, this could work on a longer term basis.”
In June 2023, ElectraLink decided to introduce the four-day week on a rolling yearly basis, with an annual review, at the same time as it joined Autonomy’s national pilot trialling the same model.
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ElectraLink has continued to develop its model, with an opt-in agreement being introduced that would give employees the choice to utilise the model. This was rolled out at the same time as a framework, called ‘The Ways of Working’, which set out the principles of the model and expectations of those using it.
“ElectraLink formulated the opt-in agreement, and it's very much a two-way partnership,” explained Keira Forster, ElectraLink’s Marketing and Inclusion Executive.
“Employees acknowledge that they still need to achieve their objectives and provide good service, and the customer always comes first. In return, you don’t have to work Fridays unless you want to.”
Like with any significant change, one of the first things that organisations want to know is how it will affect financial performance.
Initial signs from ElectraLink, and other early adopters of this practice that completed the national trial, suggest that there is a positive effect.
“Bottom line; we are improving outcomes. We are financially performing better than we ever have as a business,” explained ElectraLink’s Director of Diversity and Engagement, Amelia Heatley.
“We were always measuring how our business performed, but now it's performing better than it's ever been… people are willing to give more when they recognise that they get more back.”
Alongside the financial benefits, the four-day working week at ElectraLink has had a positive impact on other areas of the business, including fewer sick days, better project delivery, and increased wellbeing.
Looking at its Best Companies survey data, there are significant improvements in ElectraLink’s overall engagement (BCI score), as well as how its employees feel about their wellbeing and their overall pay and benefits.
Since its 2022 survey, the organisation has not only improved its overall accreditation rating from a ‘Ones to Watch’, representing ‘Good’ levels of engagement, to 2-Star, ‘Outstanding’ levels of engagement, but it has also increased scores relating to wellbeing by +14% and those relating to Fair Deal by +12%.
In addition, ElectraLink not only scores above the benchmark for these factors compared to all 3-star organisations (+5% for wellbeing and +6% for fair deal), but it also scores +5% higher for wellbeing and +7% higher for fair deal compared to the average of all surveying organisations in the Technology sector.
ElectraLink is not alone in seeing benefits from implementing a four-day working week. Data gathered from other trials suggests that productivity and wellbeing do increase when working under the reduced hours structure.
For example, 66% of companies that completed the Best Companies survey and that offer a four-day week (either compressed or reduced hours) saw their wellbeing scores increase by an average of 4.24% between 2023 – 2024.
Furthermore, organisations that participated in Autonomy’s pilot3 reported that 39% of employees were less stressed, 71% had reduced burnout levels, and anxiety, fatigue and sleep problems in employees declined.
Other organisations have also seen productivity and employee wellbeing improve. Microsoft Japan saw an incredible 40%4 increase in productivity during their four-day week trial, and employees at Tyler Grange increased their productivity by 2% and decreased absenteeism by two-thirds5.
With recruitment and retention being key challenges ElectraLink hoped to solve by implementing a four-day working week, would Eira say they’d achieved it?
“It's a total game changer in terms of our retention… a few months ago we'd only had one person who'd voluntarily left our organisation this year,” she explained.
“We rarely have to negotiate on salaries anymore, when before we were really fighting for talent. That rarely happens now, even if the other company is offering a bit more money.”
Like the other benefits, retention is also being positively impacted by organisations trialling, or implementing, four-day weeks.
Some 70% of organisations within the Best Companies community that have implemented a four-day week are outscoring their sector averages when it comes to voluntary leavers.
Moreover, organisations involved in Autonomy's pilot program experienced a 57%6 reduction in employee turnover during the trial period, and 15%7 of employees stated that “no amount of money” would convince them to return to a five-day week.
Despite the benefits being widely reported, ElectraLink’s team is keen that other organisations considering the reduction in working days do so with the proper amount of research and understanding required.
“Don't just go full throttle into it,” said Eira. “I would definitely suggest trialling it, doing it phase-by-phase, gently bringing it in.”
Eira suggests allowing employees to get a feel for how the new structure works, to find ways of working that ensure that deadlines are still being met, and creating the opportunity for your business to reflect on what did and didn’t work during the trial.
“We organise annual four-day working week town halls to gather all employees in person and talk about the model,” said Keira. “These sessions are led by our SMT and also set aside time for breakout groups to share how we’ve all adapted to achieving our outcomes with less time in a week.”
For ElectraLink, the four-day-week policy will be continually reviewed on an annual basis, to ensure that it is still fit for purpose and the company will use feedback, including the survey data from Best Companies, to ensure it is understanding how employees are feeling about their working lives.
Communication, the company says, and communicating with clarity, has underpinned the success of the rollout, and the engagement of employees.
“It just proves that communication and trust on every side is the most important thing,” said Keira. “That trust and transparency is passed from senior leaders to employees, which then is passed on from employees to external clients that we’re speaking to. It just makes the world of difference.”
To find out more about how Best Companies can support your organisation with change initiatives using actionable data and insights, contact us.
1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gl5w83z7do
2 https://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/The-results-are-in-The-UKs-four-day-week-pilot.pdf
3 https://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/The-results-are-in-The-UKs-four-day-week-pilot.pdf
4 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/04/microsoft-japan-four-day-work-week-productivity
5 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64669987
6 https://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/The-results-are-in-The-UKs-four-day-week-pilot.pdf
7 https://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/The-results-are-in-The-UKs-four-day-week-pilot.pdf
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