We’re trialling a 4-day work week! Here’s why…

And we get all of our projects completed well and on time for our valued clients.

But recently management spent some time thinking about work-life balance, and how it could help the team achieve this better – as sometimes it was all work and no play!

It’s about sustaining our ability to produce such high-quality output over not just the short term, but over the longer term as well, because it’s important to maintain the passion we have for what we do, rather than have it be drained by working more hours than we need to. We also all want to spend more time with our family.

So after hearing the Prime Minister talking about a four day work week, and encouraging the introduction of this (where possible) to enhance work culture, we thought perhaps it was a good idea to try it here at THE DESIGNFIRE, to help reduce some of the stress we all inevitably face in our jobs. So over breakfast at our recent launch of the new brand and business name, we all chatted about the possibility of working across four days, and while the idea of it was met with a positive reaction, there were some more ‘challenging’ aspects to overcome.

Through further discussion, it was found out that the approach wouldn’t work for everyone as some team members thought that a 10 hour workday may be a bit too hectic for them. There would also be a need for the office to still be open five days a week, so it wouldn’t affect our clients and their ability to contact us when required. And another issue was that the distribution of public holidays on Mondays versus Fridays is quite unbalanced – so for those who don’t work Mondays, it wouldn’t be fair to ‘miss out’ on paid days off that the rest of the team would get.

But of course, there are ways around the above, and so we have negotiated the days off between the team to ensure the office can remain open five days a week. And ultimately we haven’t made the four-day working week mandatory, so for those who felt it wouldn’t be right for them, they didn’t have to do it. However, the majority of the team did decide to trial the 4/10 option of working, and this ‘new way’ of working commenced on the 22nd of June.

This has certainly been a very interesting transformation for a professional consulting business like ours, and particularly so for our directors Louie and Ryan who had never heard of this concept, despite 15 years in the industry.

However, we also know a fresh change can result in good things, even if it comes with some risk. And here at The DESIGNFIRE, we embrace innovation. So we will try the 4/10 working environment and if it is sustainable for us, the policy will be put in place permanently for our all-star team to benefit from.

Check back on our blog soon for an update on our trial run!