Introducing a 4-day week

July 23, 2024

Anne Pridham – Operations Director

Earlier this year, London Plus began trialing a 4-day working week. In this blog, Anne, our Operations Manager, reflects on the pilot so far and what the future looks like for our team…

When I joined the team in June 2023, the Board of Trustees and staff had been asking themselves, what would make London Plus a great place to work? One idea was to introduce a 4-day working week. This may sound simple, but putting in place a company-wide change takes time and we did not start our pilot until February 2024.

London Plus is a small and passionate team. Our purpose is to support charities and community groups across the capital and we do this primarily through networks, so we are naturally flexible in our approach and we pride ourselves on being great communicators. However, we still had to consider a wide range of issues before moving forward…

Would reducing our working days genuinely have an impact on people’s wellbeing and stress levels? If we were condensing our hours, would people still have enough time to complete their work? How would a change to working hours affect part-time staff? How complex would it be to amend contracts? We also had to consider the way we work with one another. Often, the best ideas come out of a casual chat – would there be enough time for genuine connection with colleagues? We had many discussions within the team and got advice from our Board of Trustees. I also spoke to other organisations who were trialing this. People were so helpful and gave great insights into what worked and what didn’t.

At London Plus, we trust one another. Not only to deliver our work, but to support each other as the organisation faces new challenges. Based on this, we knew we could run a pilot of the 4-day working week. We knew that staff would be reflective, honest and open about the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of the trial.

Now, we are half-way through the trial and it’s proving successful – so far! We are still learning what works for us as a team and we will keep reflecting, to make sure the 4-day working week works for us all. I will keep you posted on our progress and learning as we continue on this adventure.