By Nicci Russell, managing director at Waterwise.
I’d been following the Four Day Week movement and progress for a few years and was increasingly drawn by the wellbeing benefits – as well as the fact that more and more organisations, across the private, public and third sectors, and of all sizes, were reporting great results in terms of outputs and impact: what the movement likes to call ‘productivity’.
I hadn’t though had the confidence to be able to answer questions both my Board and me might come up with, so when our team’s Wellbeing Champion Laura sent me an article in the spring that the Four Day Week Global campaign was launching a UK trial, I signed up. It’s been fantastic being part of the UK trial, and the team supporting it has provided such valuable briefings, mentoring and handholding, which I have really appreciated.
The team were pretty excited when we told them about the six-month trial. At Waterwise, we have a strong culture of wellbeing – I put this above driving water efficiency which is our external mission – and this is evidenced in our staff surveys. At the same time, we were all a bit worried about workload – our star is shining quite brightly currently in our own world, and for a few years, our biggest challenge has been prioritising and saying no.
Some of us attended the Zoom training sessions the 4DW campaign put on, with experts in productivity hacks and the science behind it and loads of leaders who’d moved to a 4DW, and we shared these recordings and tips with the team. Before the trial even started we put changes in place – it’s amazing how much time moving to a default of 30 mins rather than an hour for both internal and external meetings can save you! Our mentor at 4DW Global told us that organisations with a strong culture and who have prepared do tend to land better when a 4DW trial actually starts.
In June, after the extended bank holiday weekend, we took the plunge. We’re capturing experiences from the team at the end of every month, and these show that it started harder and got easier, we’re doing OK, and it doesn’t just happen, but everyone needs to keep working at it – and everyone says the extra day off more than makes up for the busy-ness of the week. We also incorporated a month-long blitz of media interviews (drought! heatwave!) during a high annual leave period. We are still managing to stick to our hours, and we’re proud of that. Our Wellbeing Champion cites the 4DW as one of our key wellbeing benefits.
In terms of our funders and stakeholders, they seem very happy with us at the moment. We’ve just published a national strategy for the UK which has garnered tons of support. We’ve published a refresh of Waterwise’s own strategic direction and are flexing our independence. When we told funders we were taking part in the trial, we had no negative comments at all, and a few queries along the lines of ‘wow this sounds amazing, let us know how it goes!’.
As for my Board, they are supportive and obviously have lots of questions. Some of these I can answer and for others it is really helpful to have the support and expertise of the 4DW team. For example, the 4DW trial team is measuring organisational and individual employee metrics for all participating organisations, but for the Waterwise-specific ones, the guidance we’ve been given is really helpful: there’s no need to recreate the wheel. How did you know you were on track and doing well on a five day week? Use the same approach for the 4DW! If we are on track for budget, our stakeholders and funders seem pretty happy, and we can see our influence as a campaigning organisation, that’s enough – and we are, can and do! My Board thought it would be helpful to run a 12-month trial, so we’re extending it and will then decide whether to move to a 4DW permanently.
The 4DW campaign press released stats halfway through the trial, showing that 88% of respondents stated that the four-day week is working ‘well’ for their business at that stage in the trial. They quoted me in the press release, so I’ve had lots of national media requests, and as I speak am preparing for Radio 4’s You and Yours. Fatima from our team was also featured in a Guardian piece.
Tips from the team and from me?
- Don’t over-complicate it – this is a trial, if something doesn’t work, change it!
- Stick to timed slots for emails at specific points in the day
- Make sure there’s a purpose and agenda for every meeting invite, internal and external – and only invite the people who need to be there
- Default to 30-minute meetings or less
- Stick at it, it gets easier
- Make sure everyone is fully committed to making the 4DW work in principle
- Share tips around the team as you pick them up
- Go for it – the founder of the global campaign, Andrew Barnes, says it’s hands down the best thing he ever did for his business.
