The four-day week. A solution we've all been looking for?

Support for a four-day working week was gaining momentum before the pandemic.

Various companies were trialling versions of this working pattern and noticing impressive benefits in terms of productivity and wellbeing. However, recent events have put flexible working front and centre of every major company’s thinking. Organisations are now looking at a variety of different ways to increase flexibility, both in terms of time(when employees work) and location(where employees work).

The impact of covid and associated lockdowns has led many companies to focus on employee wellbeing and productivity, which, more often than not, includes the serious consideration of switching to working four days each week instead of the usual five. But what do we mean by the term four-day week?

We’ve found that if you read between the headlines, a four-day working week often means different things to different people. There are also many challenges related to making this change, which includes:  

• Limiting operational impact
• Measuring impact
• Ensuring employees perceive any changes made to working hours to be fair and equitable

In order to achieve this, organisations need to focus on a sequence of key steps to making the four-day week a success:

STEP 1: Define the Case for Change

Make sure that you define the business case and your drivers for making this change (as these may be different).

STEP 2: Clarify your Definitions

Define what your organisation means by a four-day week.

STEP 3: Track and Measure Impact

Consider how you are going to measure the impact of a change to a four-day week.

STEP 4: Decide on an Implementation Approach

STEP 5: Take a long term view

Ensure that your approach to introducing this new way of working is led by systematic role design.

RoleMapper’s Future of Work modules allow you to design, integrate and implement sustainable, consistent and fair hybrid and flexible working practices, at scale.

We give your organisation the tools to:

• Automate and operationalise flexible working policies into every role
• Help managers design flexible working that will work for the team and business
• Automate the flexible working request process for employees
• Ensure flexible working options are business-led
• Eliminate bias
• Shift manager mindsets
• Have total visibility of flexibility and work patterns across the organisation

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Download Five Steps to the Four-day Week

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Join our webinar: Five Steps to the Four-day Week

Thursday 30th June @ 2pm BST