The middle third of our pilot seems to have flown by; particularly in April and May, where the Bank Holiday weekends made planning, resourcing and juggling our deadlines especially challenging. We knew that we would need to adapt, learning as we went along, and those lessons led to us adjusting how we manage our additional hours across the teams. Given the seasonal nature of our work, it is tricky to strike a balance between meeting our project commitments whilst preserving our three-day weekends for everyone. Thankfully, we haven’t had to deliver any site work on Fridays to date. In fact, any Friday inputs that we have had, were restricted to phone calls and short meetings and all of our clients have been very flexible and supportive, adapting to our new pattern of working with minimal disruption.
We haven’t seen any drop-off in the quality of our work or our ability to meet deadlines, and this is has been one of the most pleasing aspects of the trial so far. Likewise, as you can see from our updated word cloud, the team are now routinely enjoying recreational and social activities on their day off. All of which has meant that we are both better rested and more motivated each Monday, which was one of the main aims of this journey in the first place.
We have also seen a significant increase in interest from speculative candidates, almost all of which are very keen to learn more about our four-day week. As the industry matures, a sustainable work-life balance is increasingly vital and it is key to attracting and retaining the best staff. We are pleased to have already welcomed some new faces to the team this year, with hopefully more new faces still to come.
If you are interested in hearing more about our team, our culture and the exciting opportunities we can offer, then please get in touch with our Consultancy Director, Gavin Ward, on careers@bakerconsultants.co.uk.