BALANCING ACT

摘要

Ifirst came across the idea of a four-day week in the mass media at the end of 2018 and was immediately intrigued. Did it work? Seemed to. Research indicated that people were more productive in less time, with the same amount of work produced.I'm really keen on work/life balance. I have two children who are growing up fast and who I want to be involved with. I have other interests apart from work - like art, baking and karate. So anything which more efficiently uses my time, allowing me to do more of the things I love whilst producing the same high quality work is a win-win.Like all lighting design companies, we are very project focused - we do the design, issue the drawings, send out the invoice, tidy the desk, start on the next. As such, my immediate worry (probably like many I expect) was would we still be able to do the work and invoice the same amount every month?It's counterintuitive I know, but all the research I read indicated it was possible. So one day last year I called a company-wide meeting and I said to the team, 'do you want to switch to a four-day week?'. So we wouldn't work Fridays or, of course, weekends.After the whooping and cheering had died down, we started to discuss it in detail. Contracts needed to be varied. Eventualities foreseen. For example, our staff had four weeks holidays a year, or 20 days (as a minimum). But changing to a four-day week technically meant going pro-rata down to 16 days.Some of them shrugged and said OK. Some saw it as removing four days holiday and so were very against. So those are things you have to work through and think about. So, as a company, we talked. A lot. As a whole, in teams, at lunch. We wrote our thoughts down and shared our hopes and fears. We argued.