A co-founder of a personal training course who implemented a four-day work week said the compressed hours actually hindered productivity.
Luke Hughes is the co-founder of personal trainer course providers OriGym. He trialled a four-day week with some departments and found that employees switching from an eight-hour working day to 11 was on the whole “stressful“.
“We did it for 18 months so we gave it a fair shot,” he told i. “People were happy initially, but then average times to complete projects and to get back to customers dropped. Marking assignments took longer. And our sales were down.
“I’m not saying it doesn’t work, but it didn’t work for us. I think the reality is a four-day week doesn’t always fit for every business model and does not work for every employee.”
Mr Hughes is nevertheless a believer in flexible working.
“Workers are never classed as turning up late. I appreciate people have school runs and stuff to do. We never set meetings before 10am. People take lunch when they like. I’m not a fan of monitoring people closely,” he says.
This comes as the Government is reportedly taking steps to strengthen full-time workers’ rights to ask for a four-day working week.
Labour’s proposal involves “compressed hours”, which allows employees to work their regular normal working week over fewer days, as first reported by The Daily Telegraph last week.
Employees currently hold the legal right to request flexible working conditions from day one, but their employers are under no obligation to agree. But the Government’s plans could shift that balance of power, making it harder for employers to reject requests for greater flexibility.
However, the official four-day week campaign is not about condensed hours, and is calling for the same pay for fewer hours.
Campaigners argue that a huge cultural shift is needed to protect the nation of workers. Research from Mental Health UK earlier this year found that 20 per cent of employees needed to take time off work due to stress in the past year as long-term sickness absence reached a record high.
The report found a third of adults experienced high or extreme levels of pressure and stress “always” or “often” in the past year.
According to ONS figures, 2.58 million people are off work due to long-term illness, a figure that has risen by 449,000 since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in January 2020, reports HR Magazine.
The UK is “rapidly becoming a burnt out nation”, Brian Dow, chief executive of the charity, said.
‘Longer days means poorer productivity’
Tech and business expert Kevin Fitzgerald is very vocal about the topic. He is MD of Employment Hero, a global employment management platform which serves 300,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)and recently held a webinar about the upcoming legislative changes.
He said when the four-day week involving condensed hours inevitably came up, “it was largely a negative reaction” from SME owners.
He said: “The feedback was that it inevitably results in longer days, which means poorer productivity.”
Mr Fitzgerald believes condensed hours can only worsen work-life balance. “The 4-day work week is just another trendy gimmick dressed up as a well-being initiative. In reality, it piles on the pressure, squeezing the same workload into fewer days and leaving employees more stressed than ever. “
Instead, true flexible working is the real game-changer he said. “At Employment Hero, we don’t micromanage our team’s time. We give them the freedom to set their own schedules – if they need to run an errand, pick up the kids, workout, or login earlier/later to fit their own rhythm – that’s fine. Flexibility isn’t about fitting life around work; it’s about making work fit life.”
Mr Fitzgerald urged the Government to consider the needs of SMEs. “Many owners of SMEs are working six days a week. To tell them to have their employees working shorter days across fewer days may not be practical. They’re already dealing with enough economic pressures from inflation,” she added.
The Conservatives have warned that the move would cause growth to “suffer” and leave businesses “petrified”, however, Labour has pushed back, saying it has “no plans” to force businesses to accept employees’ requests for flexible working conditions.
‘Compressing hours is counterproductive’
Gillian Crawford, founder of jewellery firm Lily Blanche, has implemented a four-and-a-half day week where employees do not have to make up the time off.
With a team of just five in-house staff, the move has lost the small business the equivalent of 15-20 staff hours a week, yet Ms Crawford feels the pluses outweigh the minuses.
She told i: “My team already had flexible hours – they can start at times that suit them and most take a compressed lunch break to finish at 4.30pm.
“Then 18 months ago, they asked if they could experiment with taking Friday afternoons off. We ran an eight-week trial. It was hugely successful and productivity increased. I did not ask them to compress their hours or work longer during the week, as that felt counterproductive to the benefits they would get from Friday afternoons off.
“Everyone loved it so much and it improved mental health and well-being as well as goodwill towards the company that we decided to introduce it full-time. Senior staff also work one day a week from home.
“It sounds counterproductive but it works. We all work smarter as a result. Revenue is up 40 pecent year-on-year and we’ve just been nominated as Growth Company of The Year in the Women’s Enterprise Scotland Awards, the leading female entrepreneur awards in Scotland.”
The world’s biggest trial of a four-day working week was hailed a “major breakthrough”.
The scheme, involving 61 firms and 2,900 employees, found employees reported levels of anxiety, fatigue and sleep issues decreased and improved mental and physical health. Some 39 per cent said they felt less stressed and 71 per cent said they felt less burnt out.
Workers said several measures of work-life balance improved, and that it was easier to manage both their household finances and maintain their relationships.
The trial, which started in June 2022 and ran for six months, involved no reduction in wages for employees.
Of those who took part in the scheme, that had a variety of businesses participating, from a chip shop to large corporations, 92 per cent are continuing to operate a four-day work week, while 18 have made the policy a permanent change. Only three paused the four-day week for the time being.
The trial was run by the 4 Day Week campaign, think-tank Autonomy and researchers at Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College,
Campaigners are urging lawmakers to give every British worker a 32-hour working week.
However, the scheme was not without problems. Several staff at one large company reported concerns about increasing workloads, finding their work intensified or they were battling to work through lengthy to-do lists in the time available.
The results also revealed that some managers and staff felt the focus on efficiency had made the workplace less sociable, which was a particular concern for the creative companies involved.
One criticism of the change has been that certain industries will find it harder to transition to a shorter working week, particularly those in manufacturing, or those which already operate on shift patterns.
Do you have a real life story? Email claudia.tanner@inews.co.uk.