The recent news of Cardiff’s Lumen SEO moving from a 4-day week to an any-32-hours-you-like approach seems like an employee experience innovation worth talking about.
With larger firms cracking the whip on RTO, smaller firms can maximise every advantage, boosting recruitment, motivation and reducing turnover. CXM chatted with founder Aled Nelmes, about the pros and cons of the move, and what it means to the Lumen team.
What were the primary business and personal benefits your team saw from the 4-day week experiment?
From a business perspective, there were distinctive short-term and long-term benefits. That’s why we went for a minimum of 3 months and actually extended by another 3 months afterwards to ensure the benefits went beyond those initial short-term factors. It’s also worth mentioning we did the trial during winter, from January to March. I knew if there were benefits during winter, they would multiply in the summer when that flexibility is more enjoyable.
Short term, the staff reported better mood, higher energy levels and increased productivity – staff utility increased to around 75 to 80%. So, 80% of their time was used to create value for the client with less time in meetings, on calls, answering emails etc.
The long-term benefits after around 12 months were what spurred me on to explore flexibility further. We haven’t had one resignation, so 0% staff turnover. Recruitment is far easier, and we find we get over-qualified applications. People are happy to take a slight salary hit to spend more time with their children or explore more hobbies. Error count has reduced considerably. But what’s interesting is that I don’t know if that’s because of the increased focus and energy levels or reduced staff turnover.
What was the most amazing single result or event that made you go, “yep, this is working!”
Because many of the short-term and long-term benefits above took time with staff to gain feedback and much observation to realise, there were very few one-time eureka moments. Though one that stands out was our most recent recruitment run for an Account Assistant, we were warned that competitors were struggling to find talent and applications were low. We received 180 applications, 20 were very high quality with many referencing the 4-day week as one of their main incentives for applying. That made me smile. Young people are making lifestyle decisions over money decisions, and I rate that.
What app or system do you use to track hours/progress?
We use a great system that was created here in South Wales called Configur – it manages everything from task allocation to billing and tracking and reporting results. We simply couldn’t have a functional 4-day week without it. It plays an essential role in giving staff autonomy and decision making powers and means I tend to only receive questions or calls from staff maybe 4 or 5 times a week maximum, and that’s with 7 full-time staff.
What/how do you measure work/productivity at Lumen?
You definitely have to loosen your grip in a 4-day week or 32 hour week, you have to accept that staff may not work an entire weekday and not produce a thing because they’re making the most of the sunny weather and I have learnt to love that and trust them to make the right decisions.
We have a weekly hours-completed counter on Configur that allows me to see how many hours of billable work each team member has completed, that said, I haven’t looked at it in about 8 weeks – I am close with my team members and we have a very strong bond of trust, I know they’ll either get everything done that they need to or if they can’t, they’ll feel comfortable enough to reach out to me for help. To me, no news is good news, and if they’re completing the work it means it’s being completed better than I ever could.
Has this change been hard to implement?
I think the most common question asked is “Is it hard to implement a 4-day week?” The answer is yes. But I always say, nothing easy is worth doing. Once you go through the process of reducing 1 hour meetings to 30 minutes, setting up high-delegation workflow systems, flattening your organisational structure and organising Slack channels, you can have a highly functional 4-day week. You just have to work hard at it. Keep optimising the 1% gains in terms of time, and listen to your people. The reward is beautiful.
Let us know if your business is innovating on working hours. Or as an employee, what are the best parts of a working change you’ve been through?