The project was undertaken to try to improve the work life balance of GSS’s hardworking and dedicated team, to improve overall wellbeing, and to give people more time for themselves and their family through an extended weekend, while also fostering flexibility and extending capacity if needed.

In this Q&A, Neill Rickets, Chairman of GSS, discusses the trials, the findings and how the team reacted. 

What structure did you put in place?

We’re a manufacturing site and, unlike service industries, we can’t have people from the manufacturing floor working from home, and we do need machines running for long enough that capacity won’t be affected.

We therefore adopted a shift to work four nine-hour days per week, with staff at the site from 6:45 – 16:30 Monday to Thursday.

This left Friday free for maintenance and gave the ability to add extra capacity if needed, this was agreed by the team as the best compromise.  Anyone who didn’t want to take part in the trial could opt out, with a small number of employees choosing to do so due to personal or family reasons. These were respected.

How did you go about implementing it?

We saw early on that it would be vital to get the team’s buy-in. It would also be vital to run the program initially as a trial.

The idea was pitched to the company as whole, however only the production team decided to go ahead with the trial. The nature of this team means it naturally makes up a large proportion of our small company.

Discussions were held before and after to gain an understanding into everyone’s thoughts about the changes and if the move was viable and if had met the original objectives.

Overall, we saw mostly positive results, with morale up, and we don’t think anyone would want to return to a 5-day work week. For those who chose to opt out, we have implemented other forms of flexibility.

How long was the trial?

We ran a 3-month trial first to ensure that there were no unexpected problems and that everyone was happy to continue after the trial period was over.

How did you research it/decide best practice?

I had previous experience with companies who had moved to the 4-day week. We therefore used my knowledge and looked for case studies that demonstrated best practice and positive impacts.

What we found was that these are in short supply, which was another reason why we were adamant to undertake the trial first and to develop strong lines of communication with all participants to ensure small issues didn’t become big issues.

I would strongly recommend that anyone doing such a trial do the same.

Were there any teething issues?

 Currently two-thirds of the company have switched to the four days week. Probably the biggest was an initial confusion about holiday allowance, with the introduction of approximately 50 extra days off each year, holiday allowance was reduced slightly and there were concerns. But these initial teething issues have been quickly resolved through communication.

What were you nervous of doing?

Initially it felt like I was losing a day’s worth of production tasks each week. This was perception, however, and wasn’t a real reflection of what was happening.

Loading of the work happened correctly and having the calibration staff – two of which had opted out of the trial - in on Fridays prevented any loss of productivity.

Have you seen any negative aspects of doing it?

Very few. And like my worries, were more to do with a lack of understanding and clarity, which could be cleared up easily.

Indeed, I think the only negative aspect that I saw was the reaction to the reduction of holidays. It is a difficult one for companies to broach. Many employees felt as though too many days were taken from them. More open communication of the reduction from day 1 would have been better. What we thought was a simple reduction turned out to be more difficult as part of the year was five days of working and the remainder four days.

To solve this, we improved our communication. We held multiple sessions with the staff to discuss working days and holiday benefits. We fielded lots of questions and at the end, I don’t think there was a single employee that wasn’t satisfied.

What positive effects have you seen?

In general, I think everyone is very happy having a Friday off – certainly that’s what our interviews showed. And moral certainly appears to be a lot higher throughout the week.

The shift, I believe, was embraced fully by the everyone involved, with the majority being shop floor operators.

You hear stories about abuse of such policies in the media, but we’ve not seen any reduction in output and if you treat people as grown-ups then they tend to behave accordingly. And while it’s difficult to quantify an actual improvement statistically, we are running as efficiently as we were on five days.

What was the overall effect on the company?

Very positive. It has really enabled everyone to have a better work life balance.

And there are benefits to the staff beyond this, for example the team identified that the change in hours reduces commuting time and costs to get to work.

And overall, I think everyone seems better rested when they are in on Mondays and then very excited its soon to be the weekend on Thursdays.