It’s been a year of changes, including a 4-day week trial; new starters; a trip to Moët Hennessey to showcase our soil ecoacoustics innovations; hiring our first apprentice; a PhD for our Director of Bioacoustics, Carlos; securing funding to explore the use of bioacoustics for BNG monitoring, and jointly-authoring numerous pieces of new ecoacoustic guidelines.
We’ve got even more announcements to come in 2023, and if it sounds like the sort of variety and excitement you’d like in your career, please do get in touch. We will always chat to passionate and skilled ecologists about how they might be a fit for our team.
The first few months of the year have been focussed on implementing our 4-day week trial, when coincidentally, the full report on the global 4-day week trial was published last week. We were asked to comment on how it was working for us, and whether it could possibly make commercial sense in a services-based consultancy.
Here’s what our Consultancy Director, Gavin Ward, had to say;
“I’ve worked a 4-day week for the last 3.5 years and would never go back. Ecologists work anti-social hours doing night-time surveys, whilst also writing reports and advising clients and it is exactly because of these dynamic hours that we have embraced a 4-day week to ensure our staff get enough rest. We are currently conducting a 9-month trial and the early signs are good. Our word cloud for how people used their Fridays in the first month was sadly pretty heavy on the housework – but hopefully as it progresses and everyone settles into the new pattern, the gains in focus, well-being and productivity will mean they can then start to use them for more rewarding personal pursuits. We have managed to deliver the same quality of service to our clients, whilst giving our staff 3-day weekends, so what’s not to like! We’ll be closing our books for the year shortly so we can then also see how our revenue and margins have responded over the first two months.”
As the main survey season gets underway, our Monday meetings in the office are now even more vital. They help effectively plan our resources and movements, so we can make sure all our clients have their surveys scheduled in at the most optimal time – something made even more tricky, as survey guidance is constantly evolving. Thankfully, we are one of the only companies in the UK promoting and using static detectors to enhance our breeding bird surveys. This can actually improve their accuracy, whilst also reducing the number of transect surveys, and therefore costs, that are needed for each site.
To book a Preliminary Ecological Appraisal or your imminent breeding bird or GCN survey needs, please get in touch on: info@bakerconsultants.co.uk or 01629 593 958.
Alternatively, if you would also like to have a preliminary chat on how bioacoustics could help with your agri-environment or soil monitoring scheme, please contact: c.abrahams@bakerconsultants.co.uk