IMPLEMENTING A 4 DAY WEEK: THE HUTCH BIG GUIDANCE DOC!

Posted on 6th March, 2023

Back in June 2022 we began trialling a 4 day week here at Hutch as part of 4 Day Week Global’s official trial alongside 61 other companies taking part to show the value of a change to working practices. We tried out this new way of working in our 3 offices in London, Dundee and Nova Scotia - tracking our productivity, staff wellbeing and a host of other metrics along the way.

At the end of the trial, we were over the moon to see that our productivity had remained stable, we’d had a lower turnover of staff and higher job offer acceptance rates. And with staff feeling happier and healthier, we decided to keep the 4 Day Week. It’s now been added as a rolling 12 month policy for all our staff (to be reviewed annually).

We’re excited to embrace this new way of working permanently and also to share our experience with others. Our greater ambition has always been to motivate the industry to change for the better. And that’s what this bumper document is all about! We’re putting our wins, challenges, trials and tribulations on full display for everyone to see - in the hope that this resource will lead to others in the industry trying a 4 Day Week for themselves.

An Introduction to 4 Day Weeks
What We Did
What We Measured
Watchouts!
Productivity Hacks
Resources

WHAT EXACTLY IS A 4 DAY WEEK? HOW DOES IT WORK?

The premise of the 4 Day Week is for staff to work 4 days a week instead of 5, using the 100:80:100 mode. This means they get 100% of their salary, while working 80% of the working week, while maintaining 100% of the productivity. In a nutshell, staff work a 4-day week with no reduction in pay for staff.

Of course, this relies heavily on staff being able to complete their work and fulfil their responsibilities in a shorter space of time. With this in mind, there is work to be done to make sure that staff have the tools they need to be more productive. And most importantly, to ensure that they can be productive without feeling more tired - for us it was extremely important that staff didn’t feel that there would have to be a sacrifice of physical and mental health in order to unlock the 3 day weekend. We’ll talk more about the balance of productivity and wellbeing in future sections, so keep reading for our learnings and productivity hacks!

Another major consideration is which day to choose as the day off for your organisation. For us, Friday made the most sense as we were able to cover the Friday by extending the hours of outsourced staff who were already set up to cover player support over the weekend. But other companies have chosen to vary the day between employees so that they have cover throughout the week and there’s no one day when everybody is out. Really it’s a case of what works best for your company and how you work.

WHAT WE DID / THE ROLLOUT

The Research Phase

Our CEO, Shaun introduced the idea to our leadership team having heard about the 4 Day Week Global trial. This was the start of talking about it at length, including potential challenges, wins etc.

We talked to lots of different companies that had gone before us globally, read countless reports and books etc to gain insights.

Once we had agreed that the 4 Day Week was something we could potentially, really actually do… we explored working with external partners to support us, and eventually decided to work with the 4 Day Week Global organisation. They have specific expertise in this area and offer support that could be utilised as part of the UK pilot with lots of other businesses on the same journey.

We arranged a TOP SECRET meeting with team leads to discuss challenges, concerns and practicalities. This was a slight departure from our usual approach of being transparent about any major with all staff - but we wanted to get our ducks in a row first to avoid disappointing people if the trial became unviable.

We worked with managers to update sickness records on our HR system etc. and encouraged staff to complete our regular company staff survey so that we would have accurate data for pre-trial.

We gained legal advice re contracts and any changes to terms and conditions that would be needed. We also looked at the impact on visa sponsored staff.

The Staff Announcement

We announced the news in an all-staff meeting and the reactions were just incredible. Seeing countless jaws dropping in front of our eyes was something really special. The comments section went wild with notes of thanks and how pleased people were. We outlined the 100-80-100 principle

We also found it useful to acknowledge that change can be difficult and that we’d likely be confronting a great deal of challenges - but all in the name of creating an even better place to work!

That said, there were staff who were unsure of the change. We listened carefully to those who felt that the shorter week could negatively impact their mental health, or change the culture of the office for the worse. We were on hand to give reassurance to anyone who was unsure of taking part in the trial and encouraged them to open a dialogue with their line manager to identify ways we could support them.

Based on the range of feedback we heard, we decided that the four-day week would not be mandatory. Anyone who felt working the full five days would be better for them, was welcome to do so. However, we’re very proud to say that after months of planning, consulting and carefully preparing, everyone at Hutch was onboard and signed up to working four days a week.

The Preparation Phase

Once everyone was on board with the trial, there was lots to do to prepare before we could actually start with our 4 Day Week...

We ran an anonymous Q&A doc for all staff to set a benchmark from where we were starting.

We arranged ‘clinics’ for all teams to ask any remaining questions / raise concerns in smaller groups with leadership members.

We sent out a survey so that staff could vote on which day of the week should be our day off.

We conducted a company-wide meeting audit so that we could find opportunities to reduce meeting time length, frequency, attendee number etc.

We established a 4DWW Task Force with reps from every discipline and discussed the status of everything at weekly leadership meetings. They were tasked with:
- Sharing feedback each week (wins / challenges etc)
- Tracking metrics per team and collating results
- Additional ongoing support (e.g attending productivity training courses and sharing key learnings).

We clarified and shared details regarding holiday allowance. Holiday allowance needed to be pro rated and we had to update each individual allocation on our HR system

More legal stuff! We worked with lawyers to arrange ‘Opt in’ form and also to help clarify our expectations of staff. Employees have to sign up to take part. This also allows the opportunity to make expectations clear, include caveats, make clear what’s expected. This also allows your company the option to pull back if there is a business need / the 4 Day Week suddenly becomes unviable for whatever reason.

We updated our appraisal process. This included arranging goal setting training for managers and staff to ensure that appraisals included clear/agreed expectations.

We shared resources with staff, including:
- Arranging speakers / internal events / Q&As with 4DWW Mentors / experts.
- Setting up an area on our company intranet to share useful guidance.
- Sharing an ‘Out of Office’ message template for all staff to use.
- Setting up a 4DWW team slack channel to share ideas - productivity hacks etc.

TIP: Understand that you will likely need to flex / change / implement practices along the way and during the trial. You can’t account for EVERYTHING in the prep phase, as much as you may want to!

The Start of the Trial

We kicked off a regular monthly survey and also shared surveys from 4 Day Week Global at key milestones.

We allowed teams and individuals to find ways of working that work for them in order to make a success. This led to introduction of a ‘Quiet Hour’, and a defined ‘Max no of meetings per day’, plus many staff started using the Pomodoro technique.

We arranged a core committee (SR, JM, BH, CSJ) meeting with Alex Pang (Hutch Mentor) to discuss next steps / current queries at 3 month point.

Our CEO, Shaun held check in meetings with all line managers for honest feedback at the 3 month point.

We established a quiet zone in our bar area where staff could work and be confident that they wouldn’t get distracted by others.

Press! We were excited to receive a lot of press requests in the run up to the trial and during. We leaned heavily on our PR agency to manage requests and made sure that guide spokespeople who were waiting in the wings, ready to be matched with the right request.

TIP: We underestimated the amount of time that press interviews / podcasts etc would take up. It’s definitely worth deciding early on who your spokespeople will be and ensuring they have relevant media training and have some bandwidth built into their week!

WHAT WE MEASURED

When it came to implementing the 4 Day Week, our priorities right from the start were productivity and of course, wellbeing. This meant we had to do our best to track metrics related to both of these aspects.

Productivity Metrics

For productivity a key measurement for was and continues to be Sprint Velocity. We appreciate this can be a little complex if you don’t work with this process so hopefully this will help explain…

Essentially we work in 2 week Sprint cycles using a process called Agile. This includes the number of points completed by our games teams in one sprint. Some teams use measurements such as the days required to complete the work or the size of tasks e.g. a small task might be 3 points and a large task might be 8 points. However, whatever measurement is used, the concept remains the same as the sprint velocity indicates how much work the team has finished in a sprint cycle.

Using sprint velocity as a key metric really made sense for us as it was data we already tracked. We were able to compare the average number of team points completed pre-trial versus the data during the trial.

If we had £1 for every time we were asked how do you measure productivity, we’d never have to work again, let alone for 4 days a week. The truth is that a lot of companies don't measure productivity now, so how do you pluck a magic measurement out of thin air? We struggled a lot with this too and even arranged a specific meeting with our 4DWW mentor for his advice. The take out was not to overthink this! Yes, you should of course have an idea of what is happening in the business, but think about how you know this right now and go from there. Some companies have lots of things that can be tracked easily, like average response time to answering customer calls or billable time to clients. We ended up scaling right back the number of things we measured. Our mentor advised us that some 4DWW businesses only tracked 2-3 things so that was reassuring.

Other Metrics

We also measured things like wellbeing (number of hours worked, how manageable was workload etc), staff turnover, offer acceptance rate for new hires etc.

We encouraged staff to complete official Boston College Surveys as part of the 4 Day Week Global trial - (in May, August and November) this also included very detailed questions including impact on the environment, chores in the home and more detailed wellbeing questions such as burnout and happiness. We also introduced our own monthly check in survey (7 key questions). Here are some of our top metric tips!

Don’t overdo it with survey questions. Ask what you need to but keep it short to avoid survey burnout. You’ll find more about this in our learnings section here.
Be prepared that stress / hours might go up initially - but that’s okay and in some ways to be expected
Look at what you already track or measure as this will be easier to continue doing a trial.

WATCHOUTS!

Now that we’ve finished our trial and found it to be a success, it’s easy to forget about the challenges along the way. Here are some of the things that we wished we’d known at the start or lessons we learnt on the way that might help others!

Be ready for press attention. It is incredibly helpful but overwhelming at times - think about who will be your spokespeople in order to share the load / perhaps have a crib sheet of the key messages that you want to get across that can be referred to easily. Have a plan of what you will say yes and no to

Keep reinforcing the reason why you are doing it and the expectations from staff to make it work e.g. the 100/80/100 principle for Hutch. This really helped us keep everyone motivated in working towards the same goal.

Staff can get confused re pro rating holidays - be clear about the fact that it’s not being lost and just the equivalent. It’s also worth pointing out the benefits - e.g. holiday may be adjusted (not lost!) to reflect a 4 day week but you will gain 28 Fridays off throughout the trial - that’s equal to 5.5 weeks off with full pay etc

Be prepared for some that may not be in favour of a four day week (for example, some people may be worried about their impact on mental health). What will you do to support them? As mentioned previously, Hutch did not make the 4DWW mandatory (although everyone signed up in the end). The important thing for us was to make sure that people had the choice.

Think about and keep up social activities and consider how you will keep up morale so it doesn’t feel like it’s all about heads down / compressed working. This is really important for culture. Don’t lose the fun!

Think about contractors and ensure that they have communication with their line managers and that they feel comfortable working autonomously on Fridays (or whichever day is affected by your 4 Day Week.

Initially we tried to measure too much and we soon found that productivity measures are hard to define!

As well as new practices for teams and individuals, we found it important to have company wide practices, for example meeting etiquette guidelines.

Bank holiday weeks were challenging for us! On a bank holiday weekend, staff would have a 3 day week instead of a 4 day week and this meant getting all our work done was tough! Now that the trial is over, we’ve decided to ask staff to work on the Friday when there is a bank holiday Monday in order to compensate for this.

Peak annual leave season e.g. July/August was also a challenge. Given this, it seems that we made the right call by pro-rating holiday, as trying to manage additional holiday at this time would have been even harder.

PRODUCTIVITY HACKS

The success of a 4 Day Week is dependent on everyone being able to do 100% of the work in 80% of the time. But for this to happen, staff need help with adapting, and guidance on tools and resources that can help them do this. For us, this included finding efficiencies in how we work, reducing meeting time and finding ways to allow the team to focus.. Here are the top productivity hacks that worked for us:

We reduced standard meeting lengths to 25 / 50 minutes rather than 30 /60 minutes.

We introduced 2 hours of meeting-free time on Wednesdays. This is blocked out in everyone’s diaries.

We introduced a Quiet Zone in our 3rd floor bar area during working hours, which people can use when they need a quiet space to focus or even just some time out.

We introduced the Pomodoro technique to those who weren’t familiar with it - this is a timer technique that helps you break up your day into timed intervals of focus and rest. For us, we use the in-built Pomodoro time on Momentum (an add-on for internet browsers), but there are lots of free versions out there too.