Whilst the typical working week consists of five days, an increasing number of businesses in the UK have started to trial allowing employees to work for four days instead – reducing the work week by 20% for slightly lower pay.

So far, 100 businesses with a total staff count of 2,600 people have implemented a four-day working week – with the majority reporting success in areas such as productivity, employee happiness, and staff retention. 

With occupational stress making up 55% of all lost working days between 2019-2020, it makes sense for businesses to want to improve employee happiness as much as possible.

Connor Campbell, business finance expert at NerdWallet commented: “The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a range of new working styles, as an increasing number of employees have prioritised their free time over working.

“We’ve already seen remote and hybrid working become commonplace, and the newest trial offering a four-day working week to employees at 100 companies in the UK is likely to influence the adoption of this working pattern in the future.

“Whilst some business owners may be reluctant to implement a shorter work week due to concerns about getting everything done on time, the successes being reported by those taking part in the trial show that it is possible to restructure your working week and still cover all bases.

“It’s likely that more businesses will start to offer this option to employees as an incentive to potentially encourage them back into the office, and even to maintain a good staff retention rate.

“The trial has already highlighted that staff performance and productivity is increased in a four-day week, with employee satisfaction also improving. A shorter work week could even have further benefits for businesses in the UK at the moment, as it will help to cut down on their energy consumption.”

For business owners that are unsure about how to successfully implement a four-day working week into their business, Connor has shared the following tips:

Ensure all departments are covered throughout the week

The most important factor to consider when implementing a shorter work week is how you can ensure that the workload still gets done and that there are still employees available to support clients with queries. One way of doing this is staggering the ‘off day’ for different members of staff across departments, ensuring that each department still has some members of staff present on each day of the week. 

Business owners should determine how many staff will be required each day to maintain the workload, and should ultimately decide whether this approach is necessary or whether the same schedule can be applied to all staff regardless of department.

Promote a culture of trust

Having a shorter working week requires trust between staff and management. Business owners should focus on building positive relationships with their employees before shortening the work week, and ensuring that they feel comfortable reaching out for assistance if it’s needed during days wherein other members of staff are not working.

Another key component of this is ensuring that all employees have access to a suitable and functional online workspace that allows them to communicate with one another, even if they’re not physically working on that day. However, employees should be informed that this is a last-resort measure and should be encouraged to refrain from contacting other employees on their ‘off day’ unnecessarily.

Determine whether the schedule will be fixed or flexible

Different staff may have different needs depending on their lifestyle and outside commitments. Therefore, business owners should determine whether they will have a fixed schedule that determines which days staff can take off, or whether a degree of flexibility will be offered in terms of selecting dates. 

Of course, the most important factor to keep in mind when deciding whether to make the schedule fixed or flexible is how you’ll ensure the workload will still be covered appropriately if staff are allowed to determine which days they take off work. If opting for a flexible approach, measures will need to be taken to ensure that entire departments don’t all choose not to work on the same day, and that there is an even workload distribution.