After the successful trial of the 4-day week, a British company is embarking on another experiment and introducing a significantly longer but more flexible workweek. After that, employees were asked: What do you prefer? The responses are surprising.
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What lies behind the 7-day week? The British SEO consulting company Lumen had already had good experiences with the introduction of a 4-day workweek in 2023. Productivity increased, and employees were significantly more satisfied. However, the company’s CEO, Aled Nelmes, was curious if there might be more to it.
On Linkedin, the founder explained that they dared to embark on another experiment: moving away from the 4-day week towards a 7-day week, but with more flexibility for each employee. Specifically, this means:
- For 3 months, the team is required to work 32 hours per week, but they can flexibly arrange their working hours over all days of the week. There are no set core hours.
- In each week, there should only be 3 hours of mandatory appointments in which meetings or training take place.
- The hours worked by employees were not monitored during this phase. Instead, it was assessed whether the set goals could be achieved.
Aligned with the body
Why this second experiment? On one hand, of course, to further increase employee flexibility (and thus their satisfaction). On the other hand, Nelmes explained that this way, they could better take into account the female and male body cycles.
Menstrual health: We predominantly employ women, and there are phases in a woman’s cycle when energy and immune system strengths fluctuate. Flexibility allows women to utilize these phases and maintain high performance throughout their entire cycle.
Testosterone: The male cycle occurs daily, with many men (myself included) being most productive early in the morning before 9 AM and able to concentrate best.
What is the result of the experiment? After the 3 months ended, the CEO collected employee feedback and analyzed how the new 7-day week had impacted daily work life. His findings:
- Many employees surprisingly changed very little about their previous routines but took time as needed for, for example, doctor appointments, sports, or caring for kids.
- Especially among parents of younger children, the test was very well received because they could flexibly respond to sudden changes in the daily routine of their children at school or kindergarten.
- A female employee primarily worked on Sundays because she could apparently concentrate best then.
All in all, this second experiment was so positive that most employees did not want to return to the previous 4-day week. There were some employees who apparently could not handle this unusual freedom and flexibility and had to look for a new job.
What about you? Which model would you prefer: the normal 40-hour week from Monday to Friday? The 4-day week? Lumen’s flexible model? Feel free to let us know in the comments! By the way, such a test can also bring surprising results to light in other forms. A CEO found out after introducing the 4-day week that an employee was secretly working for another company
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