Four days work for five days pay: what employees have to say

This is an audio transcript of the Working It podcast episode: ‘Four days work for five days pay: what employees have to say’

Shaun Rutland
There’s definite issues. There’s anxiety — people are stressed about trying to do five days in four. There are some staff that are worried about their social time with their teammates. Work is more than just a place to come and do work. It’s actually a social place for a lot of people. And then I get people coming back and saying “It is stressful, but actually I don’t mind the stress because I get the Friday off”.

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Isabel Berwick
This week on Working It with me, Isabel Berwick, we’re doing something different. For the past six months, Emma Jacobs, FT feature writer and columnist and friend of the podcast, has been following four different companies as they take on this radical experiment during the second half of 2022. So in this special four-part mini-series, which we are of course running daily over the course of a four-day week, you’ll hear from Emma as she talks to business owners and employees at four companies taking part in the trial. The participants will be reflecting on how it’s been going and we’ll ask whether we’re all about to see the biggest change to our working hours since carmaker Henry Ford introduced the five-day week in his factories almost exactly a century ago.

So yesterday we heard how the trial will be working from an organisational point of view. But Emma, how was it when you met the employees?

Emma Jacobs
So they were excited and also nervous. I mean excited about the possibility of having time off for the same pay. Who wouldn’t (laughter) . . . 

Isabel Berwick
Wouldn’t any (laughter) . . . who wouldn’t be?

Emma Jacobs
And nervous because they were worried about how they were gonna fit the work in and whether they were going to lose some of the social side of work.

Isabel Berwick
Let’s start with Yo today. That’s the telecoms company in Southampton. How did it go for them?

Emma Jacobs
So the way they were thinking about it was slightly different from the others. They were thinking about judging it on a month-by-month basis so that if they hit their objectives, then they could kind of unlock the four-day week for the following month. And if they didn’t, then they’d go back to five days.

Linda Tigrine
I’m quite a busy person and I like to be here to help people out. So I was a bit apprehensive and I thought, I don’t know how I’m gonna like this or how it’s gonna work for me.

Emma Jacobs
This is Linda, the chief operating officer. She’s been at Yo Telecom for five years. She wasn’t entirely convinced by having an extra day off at first.

Linda Tigrine
I was like, yeah, I’m probably maybe not gonna use it. The longer I thought of this I was, I actually know it’s gonna be really good. Cause you got that time to reset, rewind and then I’ll get more out of my week so I won’t feel like I need to be jumping around and helping people. Because I’m very customer-facing as is the rest of my team, we’ll have to be alternating what days we will be taking off. But for me personally, I think I’ll just be assessing who’s in, who’s around, what the current workload is, and then plan my week around that rather than saying, Well, I’m always taking Thursday off. I’m always taking Friday off. We work with key industries like medical, or care home, stuff like that. So the work that we do does make a difference and if something goes wrong, it can be life or death for some of these people. So when we put this out, some of our customers were a bit concerned. You know, does this mean you’re gonna be closed on a Friday? Like, how am I supposed to call you? ‘Cause we are a 24/7 service, so I wouldn’t wanna scare anyone off by thinking, Oh, she’s on a four-day work week. She’s never gonna get back to me. I’m never gonna be able to speak to her ‘cause there is always someone there to support them and someone there to help them.

Emma Jacobs
One of the key lessons for Linda going into the trial was learning how to delegate instead of doing everything herself.

Linda Tigrine
It’s a big realisation when you realise that your team doesn’t need you as much as you think they do. But it’s also quite a nice moment when you’re like, Actually, you guys don’t need me. You’re able to do this on your own.

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Isabel Berwick
Linda summarises that really nicely ‘cause we all want to be wanted, but not that much.

Emma Jacobs
(Laughter) I only want to be wanted in my office hours, really. There is a thing about this whole work experiment, which is how attached we are to work, and that if I think that somebody else can do my job well, maybe I’m not as important as I thought I was. And so that’s quite a hard lesson to unpick really, and try and get very clear about what makes you essential to the job and what can be done by other people.

[SOUND OF WAVES CRASHING AND SEAGULLS CHIRPING]

So we’re back at Platten’s, a family-run fish-and-chip shop on the east coast of England. And it’s run by Luke Platten, who was hoping that the trial would improve staff retention, which is obviously a big problem in the hospitality industry, and also lift staff morale and create a more attractive work environment. So according to Luke, the trial was going well in the early days, but I wondered how his employees were feeling about it. And I spoke to Michael Hill, a cleaner at Platten’s who’s been there for 11 years. He’d had a heart attack not long ago.

Michael Hill
Four-day-a-week is actually good for me ‘cause that means that I can spend time with my grandchildren and be with them more.

Emma Jacobs
Are there any worries about how you’ll get the job done in the time?

Michael Hill
No, no. I’m good at my job, so I get it done in time. And I, before we’ve done the four-day-a-week, I was doing longer hours. And I, and now, that’s gone down to four days a week, that’s good for my health and I get to spend more time doing what I want to do.

Emma Jacobs
Team leader Wyatt Watts has been working at Platten’s for about five years. He loves his job.

Wyatt Watts
It was just like the atmosphere and the fast pace. It felt like a challenge and I love a challenge, so kind of like drawing me in to really push myself.

Emma Jacobs
He was a bit worried about how the four-day week trial would go.

Wyatt Watts
I was very sceptical to begin with because there will be times in the afternoon where you’ll get hit with like another queue at the door. At that point, if people are then leaving, I don’t wanna leave it tough for someone else, but it’s the fact that knowing that there’s an opportunity to finish earlier ‘cause you’re also doing the set hours. And it just puts everyone on such a good mindset, knowing that oh today, I gotta come in a little bit later so I can do what I want in the morning, go for a walk and stuff like that. Like, last night I got to go see my friends.

Emma Jacobs
Wyatt doesn’t usually get much time to see his friends due to the long and unsociable hours.

Wyatt Watts
It always is the same. It’s like I have not got time for you guys. I am rushed off my feet and on my rest days I wanna sleep. Whereas now, I have so much more energy, so much more time and it’s really nice.

Emma Jacobs
This is an employer that’s thinking quite hard about its employees. And so I think the criticism of hospitality industry is that people are kind of disposable so they can work them hard and then spit them out. And this is a company that wants to retain staff and it’s a hard physical effort. So having time off to refresh is really important.

Isabel Berwick
So Platten’s is a bit different in that it’s physical effort, not an office job essentially. And that makes a difference in terms of depletion of energy levels.

Emma Jacobs
I mean, I guess it’s one thing to be sat at your computer, kind of sluggish and tired, but it’s another thing to be having to serve customers. And it’s really busy. They’re on their feet all day. And so part of it is also thinking about jobs that they can do together in the downtimes and kind of do productively and maybe socially like folding napkins in preparation for busy periods so they can sit down and chat rather than it being kind of full-on nonstop for long hours.

Isabel Berwick
OK, so we’ve got a slight change of scene now. We’re going over to Hutch, which is a games development company in east London.

Emma Jacobs
Yeah. It’s change of scene for sure. As we spoke about last time, it’s hoping to attract staff by using the four-day week. Previously it done hybrid work even before the pandemic, so it needed to come up with something else to attract staff and retain the best people. And once the trial was under way, I spoke to some of the employees.

George Coles
We’ve definitely taken a hit on culture time, by which I mean kind of holding events within the office and outside the office.

Emma Jacobs
So the first person I met was George Coles, the studio co-ordinator for Hutch. One of his biggest concern was that by doing this kind of relentless efficiency drive, that some of the sociability of work would be lost.

George Coles
Anything from like a movie night to taking people down the park — we used to have Hawaiian Fridays, your theme nights, your quiz nights, we had a shindig — not only there’s less time to hold them, but there’s less time to arrange them. It’s a shame to have lost them. But with a bit of time, we’ll find a way around and find a way back to it.

Isabel Berwick
I think all of that is so fascinating because team building at that company is absolutely the heart of what they do. And the impact of the four-day week might make that difficult, and I hadn’t thought about that before I listened to those interviews.

Emma Jacobs
Yeah, it’s fascinating. So Hutch’s workplace has a whole, kind of, bar area, which is obviously something that other employers could learn from. So they’ve got drinks — soft and alcoholic drinks — and obviously socialising is quite important, arranged activities. But when we talk about slack in the system, a lot of that slack is chatting. And is that a waste of time? Me chatting to you about what you did at weekend — is that inefficient? Or is it me creating a bond with you so that we work better in the future? So it’s a really tricky balance to get right.

Isabel Berwick
No, that is absolutely not a waste of time ever.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So Emma, in the last episode we heard a bit about how some companies were concerned about the impact on creativity in a very constrained four-day week. How did Hutch, which is a creative company, find it once they got going?

Emma Jacobs
That’s one of the issues that I spoke to Andy Bass about, the art director at Hutch.

Andy Bass
My team creates adverts for our live titles. We have almost a set amount of creatives that we need to output on a monthly basis — we do two concept videos and four iteration videos. My team is one of the easier teams to actually look at and see if we’re still being as prolific as we were before the four-day week started. So a task that used to take us a week still takes us a week, but obviously it was five days, and we’re now doing that work in four days.

Emma Jacobs
But Andy still did have some concerns, particularly around training for junior team members.

Andy Bass
Because previously they had the safety of being in a little hub of three and we could give them work that they weren’t necessarily quite ready to do. But a great way of learning is being just slightly out of your comfort zone. And we don’t have that luxury now because we need to hit our deadlines. So what we’re hopeful of is that we can actually finish our work a couple of days before the end of each month and keep training towards the end of every single calendar month. Fingers crossed. It’s a worry, but it’s not something that I’m losing sleep over. I think the team will help to find the solution.

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Isabel Berwick
That’s a really interesting point about the junior staff. Was that something you found is a concern in other companies?

Emma Jacobs
Yes, definitely. Tom Hind, regional manager at Stellar, the asset management company in central London, worried about how they’d measure productivity for new recruits into the four-day week trial.

Tom Hind
The major issues might come in is the new staff joining that haven’t gone through that process of pre-pandemic Stellar or during-the-pandemic Stellar, and understanding what the workload is to that move to a four days? Because if a lot of the move from the five days to four days is actually challenging efficiencies, how can you spot the efficiencies if you go straight to a four-day week? That’s the biggest challenge for us in that respect. In terms of standard slipping, I suppose. I don’t think it’s gonna be people that have been here for a while. I think it’s gonna be new joiners and getting them around that mentality.

Emma Jacobs
So at first, some of the younger staff were worried that the day off would mean less experience and that they’d be put as a disadvantage to competitors elsewhere.

Tom Hind
It’s quite a young staff, so to go up against someone who’s in another firm that’s working five days, is that gonna stunt my sort of development by only having four days to keep pace with them? It doesn’t seem like it’s gonna be that way. I think it’s actually been a really interesting process that people are using the gift days for.

Isabel Berwick
I remember from the last episode, at Stellar, they call the fifth day a gift day.

Emma Jacobs
That’s how they describe the day off from the five-day week. So Tom uses his gift day, his day for treats, as a career development day.

Tom Hind
The things that you can use that gift day for, which actually people in other firms that aren’t doing a four-day week maybe they haven’t time to do . . . What I found on my gift days, if I am working, is a lot of it is blue time, but it’s creative thinking, it’s strategy, it’s thinking about development days and trading, that sort of thing. And I think a lot of that is time I wouldn’t have had previously or I would be doing at seven, eight o’clock at night. So having that day, which maybe you don’t have phone calls or things, a lot of people in sort of my age range are using it for personal development. So, you know, they doesn’t mean you need to just go and sit down the beach or go and play golf. There’s opportunities and I know a lot of people are revising a lot more than they were previously. So actually professional qualifications are getting done quicker. I’ve started going to sort of public speaking courses and things like that so it’s a lot of time to yourself to think is actually good opportunity really for people to take a step back and think about where they want to go in their career or in their job, which I don’t think necessarily there’s an opportunity to do for within work time.

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Isabel Berwick
I’m really interested to see all the creative things that people are doing at Stellar. You do have a fifth day, and although you work a four-day week, so your fifth day isn’t a gift day, it’s actually a day off. What do you do with it?

Emma Jacobs
Well, sometimes I answer work emails and have to do bits of writing, but on days where it’s completely clear, I do do some personal, creative projects. But also it’s much clearer to be able to say, I’m gonna pick my son up from school than it might be on a weekday.

Isabel Berwick
Yes, exactly. It allows that sort of boundary between your personal life and your work life to be much firmer.

Emma Jacobs
I mean, as you said before, liminal day does help clear the weekend. You don’t spend the whole of Saturday getting over the preceding week.

Isabel Berwick
When I used to work four days a week, I basically just went to swim and have a coffee and that took up most of the day, so . . .

Emma Jacobs
(Laughter)

Isabel Berwick
Did nothing constructive with it.

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So how did companies benefit from their employees having this extra day? I think there’s something quite interesting there about staff being really proactive in terms of their personal development. It does help the company, I think.

Emma Jacobs
Well, I think part of it is the difficulty in figuring out what the difference between work and leisure is. So is me writing a short story, say, the same as doing a feature for the FT? Well, one I’m doing in my free time and the other I’m doing while I’m paid. So how do you demarcate the difference between leisure and work? And that is a problem that a lot of white-collar workers have. Are they doing professional development in their own time or are they doing it on company time? Do they love their job so much that they’re having kind of big ideas in that day off? You know, people often talk about the kind of shower, big idea.

Isabel Berwick
If only I had that. . . 

Emma Jacobs
I know . . . (Laughter) Exactly . . . 

Hutch were saying that their team often had a creative day anyway, where they’d spend a bit time on their own personal projects, and that creative free time feeds back into their job. So even by allowing people to have some kind of creative outlet, that improves the work that they do the rest of the week. So it’s interesting that how many people are spending their day off, in fact, working voluntarily.

Isabel Berwick
I know. It sort of seems to follow on from things that we used to hear about a few years ago, which was some of the big tech companies used to allow people to set aside 10 or 20 per cent of their working week for moonshots or personal projects or creative thinking. This seems to be very much in that same bucket.

Emma Jacobs
I mean, that’s the idea. And I guess this kind of makes it more legitimate. There’s always a kind of haziness about whether any of these companies actually allowed to or whether it was one of those PR exercises that they encourage people to make them think they were great a company. But by having that kind of day free of meetings or not having to do the commute, it does give people more expansive, free time really to think about their job if that’s what they want to do.

Isabel Berwick
So regardless of sector, there is a commonality here about feeling refreshed, ready, perhaps more creative.

Emma Jacobs
Yeah.

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Isabel Berwick
Next time we’ll be hearing from experts on the four-day work week and whether it’s succeeded in other places.

Unnamed speaker
So when we are thinking about condensing work or thinking about reducing the amount of work that needs to be done, it won’t be one recipe, a one-approach-fits-all. It’ll have to be a myriad of conversations within the main conversation, which needs to be how do we start working better and smarter and not harder and longer.

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Isabel Berwick
With thanks to the FT’s Emma Jacobs and to the staff at Hutch, Yo Telecoms, Platten’s and Stellar for this episode. If you’re enjoying the podcast, we’d really appreciate it if you left us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And please do get in touch with us. We want to hear from you. And we’re at workingit@ft.com or with me @IsabelBerwick on Twitter.

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Working It is produced by Novel for the Financial Times. Thanks to the producers Anna Sinfield and Flo de Schlichting, executive producer Jo Wheeler, production assistance from Amalie Sortland and mix from Chris O’Shaughnessy. From the FT, we have editorial direction from Manuela Saragosa. Thanks for listening.

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