The four-day work week trial
At Connected Accountants ‘better business’ means a sustainable business that thrives now and well into the future, while also looking out for others – profit, people, & planet. This applies to the business advice we provide to customers as well as to our own operations and is a primary reason for trialing a four-day work week.
The four-day working week – a trial for Connected Accountants
We are set to trial a four-day working week, kicking off on February 10. As keen advocates of finding new ways to work smarter and more efficiently, our research and internal debate led us towards undertaking a six-month trial period.
During this period, we’ll actively be inviting client feedback to ensure our levels of service remain as expected. We’ve also come up with a few other (financial & non-financial) performance measures so that we can evolve and improve along the way.
We’ve decided that Friday will be the day when our office is closed for regular accounting and advisory services and believe that this approach should improve how we deliver positive outcomes to our clients.
Why are we trialing this?
We’ve considered a number of factors and are led by the fact that we want to continue to improve our offering. Here are a few we’ve considered:
- Innovative ideas excite us and we wanted to try something different for our industry
- Recent research points to a rise in productivity with a four-day week and we think this is a ‘win-win’ for us and our clients
- The people factor – we believe that our team will thrive and be happier and more engaged at work
- We have in place measures of success – if targets & KPIs are not met, the benefit isn’t realised by our team
- We are looking to become an industry leader in areas of social wellbeing, environmental care and agile working environments. We have to live it!
Since the 2018 trial by Perpetual Guardian we’ve seen the idea gain worldwide attention and engagement, mainly via the research and efforts of the team at 4 Day Week Global Foundation. For example, as stated by Andrew Barnes in a recent interview “at one point, the perpetual Guardian four-day week was the most-read story in the New York Times after the Trump/Putin summit”.
In a world where we all seek balance and there are increasing demands on our time, a more focused work week makes sense. We are encouraged by the results observed by Perpertual Guardian, Microsoft Japan, and others and are inspired to set off our own journey with the aim to improve and adapt for the long term.
We believe this fresh approach will help our talented team find better ways to deliver our services. But this doesn’t affect the nature of the services that we provide. As always, we remain committed to providing high-level advisory and accounting outcomes.
How does it work?
Our hours will remain the same from Monday to Thursday and on Friday we will be closed for regular business. We have asked our team to deliver 100% of their agreed work in 80% of the time, in return for 100% of their remuneration. That’s the simple methodology that we’ve followed here.
During February we will be sharing more around the ‘why’ of the future of working in our industry and how this will play out.
In short
- The Connected four-day working week trial begins on February 10 and will be assessed over six months
- Our hours remain 8.30 to 5.00pm Monday to Thursday
- On Friday our offices will be closed for regular business
- We would appreciate your feedback on this approach and will be sending a survey to clients, our team, and some other stakeholders in the next couple of days
- In an ‘accounting emergency’ on a Friday you’ll still be able to contact any of us by phone for urgent service.
Please get in touch and let us know your thoughts around this initiative. We look forward to sharing some of the research feedback and progress as we move through the trial.
Let’s make 2020 a year for opportunity and growth!
Connected Accountants.
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