Loitering through The Guardian a few days ago I ended up with one of those mental images that has proved difficult to shift. What links a lighting design company, a lingerie manufacturer and a landscape architect. Well – what could that possibly bring to mind?
When we’re done with all the crunchy stuff; honing the cutting edge of design ; the synergistic relationship between specifier and maker – we’re left with having businesses to run. Along with the landscape architect and the lingerie manufacturer – and others – Neil Knowles, Director and Principal at Elektra Lighting has taken himself and his staff to a whole new place – the four-day working week.
And Neil’s written about it – and will continue to write about it, seeing as how he’s got all that extra time on his hands. Here’s the first issue . . .
For clarity: same salary, same workload. We just don’t work Friday, Saturday or Sunday. A 3-day weekend, every weekend.
If you are interested in how we did it, and to see if you can do it to, read on.
I first came across a 4 day week in the mass media at the end of 2018 (for example here) and I was immediately intrigued. Did it work? Seemed to. Research indicated that people were more productive in less time, with the same amount of work produced.
I’m really keen on work/life balance. I have 2 children who are growing up fast and who I want to be involved with. I have other interests apart from work – like art, baking and karate (I know! Outside interests!). So anything which more efficiently uses my time, allowing me to do more of the things I love whilst producing the same high quality work is a win-win.
Some background; for those not familiar with Elektra Lighting Design, we’re a UK based lighting studio. We are like interior designers with light, creating moods and spaces in projects like hotels and retail. As such we are very project focused – do the design, issue the drawings, tidy desk, start on next design. (lots of previous work on www.elektralighting.co.uk )
As such, when the design is done, we send out the corresponding invoice. So our immediate worry in implementing a 4 day week is, can we do the work and invoice the same amount every month? Counterintuitive I know but the research indicated it was possible. Another thing I am a great believer in is empirical studies, so although it sounds crazy, I went with it.
So one day I called a company-wide meeting and I said to the team, do you want to switch to a 4-day week?
After the whooping and cheering had died down, we started to discuss it in detail. Contracts need to be varied. Eventualities foreseen. For example, staff have 4 weeks holidays a year, or 20 days (min.). But changing to a 4-day week means we want them to reduce to pro-rata to 16 days (min.) holiday. Some of them shrugged and said OK makes sense. Some of them saw it as removing 4 days holiday and were very against (“But you’ll get 52 extra Fridays off” I felt like shouting). As a company, we talked. A lot. As a whole, in teams, at lunch. We wrote our thoughts down and shared our hopes and fears. We argued. It wasn’t always easy, but we had to get everyone on board with the basic idea – you have to work very hard, very focussed, very efficient.
We agreed to tighten up rules we had but just didn’t enforce – for example there is now no allowances for time off to go to the dentist / get boiler serviced / pick up delivery. Do it on Friday or take annual leave.
And then there were lots of new decisions to make. What if we have to come in on Friday for a meeting that could not be moved? (We agreed we’d do it – but I’d also do meetings on Saturday if I had to).
So my lesson for the end of part one is – it’s actually a lot harder to organise than you think.