Several charities have begun a four-day working week trial as part of a second, broader six-month pilot in the UK.
Last week, not-for-profit organisation 4 Day Week Campaign and social enterprise Timewise announced that 17 companies and organisations were participating in a second four-day week pilot this autumn.
Participants include charities Bioregional, Bron Afon and the British Society For Immunology (BSI).
International non-governmental organisation Global Witness and Youth Environmental Service, an independent programme launched by the Eden Project, are also taking part.
‘Vital we maintain service quality’
The four-day week is based on a principle of 100:80:100 whereby employees retain 100% of their original pay for 80% of their time while maintaining 100% output.
Starting today, the pilot includes organisations that would like to experiment with other forms of flexibility such as a shorter working week, flexible start and finish time, nine-day fortnight and compressed hours.
The vast majority of participating organisations, including BSI, are trialling a four-day week, with no loss of pay for workers.
BSI, which has 18 employees, said that “participating staff members’ weekly working hours were reduced from 35 hours across five days to 32 hours across four days.
Chief executive Doug Brown said: “We’re excited to offer this new benefit to those employees at the BSI who choose to participate, and hope that this will further enhance our working culture, providing staff with the opportunity to improve their work-life balance and making us an even more attractive employer.
“Of course, it’s vital that the quality of service we provide to our members is maintained, and we will regularly review this throughout the pilot to make sure we continue to provide the full coverage of offerings and high-quality customer service that our members rely on us for.”
Meanwhile, community housing charity Bron Afon said it is taking part in the scheme as it believes that staff are best placed to decide their approach and one design does not suit all.
Most of the charity’s 400 staff are taking part and were all actively involved in shaping what the four-day week will look like in their frontline and central support teams, which range from community housing officers to governance and compliance.
Executive director of people, change and technology Unji Mathur told Civil Society: “The wellbeing of our colleagues is a priority for us and the four-day week encourages teams to think creatively about how we use our time.
“We’ve already learnt so much about the art of the possible and I’m sure there will be more to learn during our pilot. Our customers are and always will be our top priority and we remain committed to delivering great customer service.”
‘It took us a year to get ready’
Global Witness has just under 100 staff and offices in London, Washington DC and Brussels.
In a LinkedIn post, director of people and impact Nadia Bunyan said that all employees at Global Witness will work a 30-hour week, with a Friday off and no loss of pay.
Bunyan said it has taken Global Witness 12 months to get ready for the pilot. She recommended organisations considering whether a shorter working week would work for them to partner with an expert and “carry out focus groups and 1:1’s by demographic, not teams”.
“Ensure you have adequate internal resources when designing your pilot. Our people team priorities were impacted this year as we’ve redirected resource to designing the pilot,” she wrote.
“From engaging with our staff and our board, gathering baseline data for our evaluation framework, working with teams to develop their shorter working week plan and working with our legal partners to make sure the pilot is legally compliant in all countries we work in – we didn’t expect it to take up so much time and resource.”
She added that Global Witness “nearly fell into a trap of over designing the pilot” as this showed up as if it “didn’t anticipate every potential obstacle and barrier and have a solution for every eventuality the pilot could fail”.
“This was stressful and unrealistic. We’ve switched our mindset and are starting the pilot knowing that some elements won’t go well and we can’t possibly anticipate everything. When this happens, we will stop, pause, adjust and move on.”
‘We’re excited to see if we can make it work’
Environmental entrepreneurship charity Bioregional’s 29 staff are all taking part in the trial.
Chief executive and co-founder Sue Riddlestone told Civil Society that the charity’s staff forum “asked us to bring in a four-day week, but we initially couldn’t see how we could make that work”.
“So, they set up a working group and provided evidence from organisations already working reduced hours, convincing us of the benefits for the team, for the organisation, and our clients,” she said.
“As a new pilot was starting, with training on how to make a success of it, we decided to jump in and pilot a nine-day fortnight.
“We’re excited to see if we can make it work, and we’ve determined which KPIs to track. We believe that with a bit more focus on value-add work, and streamlining processes, including using AI, it could all work out.”
The 4 Day Week Campaign and Timewise will present the results of the pilot to the government next summer.
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