In June 2022, Trio Media joined 70 other companies who are participating in an organised trial of the 4 day work week, with no loss of pay. The trial is the first of its kind and is the world’s biggest trial of a new working pattern, running alongside similar schemes in other countries around the world. 

What is the 4 day week? 

The principle of the 4 day week is to allow employees who typically work 9-5, or a 40 hour week spread across 5 day, to work for 4 days instead of 5, with no loss of earnings. The hours are not compounded, you don’t complete 40 hours in 4 days, instead you work the same schedule but with one whole day off. Research shows that employees are only currently productive for around 3 hours of the day in the current, widely adopted work schedule of 9-5. The 4 day week aims to help people increase productivity and also gain a better work/life balance. 

The 4 day week is based on a model of 100 x 80 x 100, which stands for 100% of pay, 80% of the time/hours, for 100% productivity. When adopting the 4 day week, productivity was the key motivator here at Trio Media. 

Why are we taking part? 

At the start of the year, our CEO set our keyword as productivity. Returning from a nice long break at Christmas, the aim was to look at all ways we could be more productive in order to deliver on the strategy we set out for 2022 as a team in December. As a busy digital marketing agency, we have to juggle a lot of plates and client demands, but there were definitely improvements that could be made to the output of the business and individuals. 

As part of the 4 day week programme, we took part in a productivity workshop that allowed us to measure how we’re spending our time, and find efficiencies in the working day. We’ve already implemented a number of changes that have allowed us to become more productive.

One of the other benefits of taking part is the obvious improvement to employee wellbeing and mental health. Giving people more time to live their lives and invest in themselves personally is a huge benefit to the scheme.

How is it going so far? 

So far, after a month the trial seems to be going well. Everyone actually seems more relaxed and the team have been really open-minded to adopting new ways of working. At Trio, our 4 day week schedule has been divided into two, so that half the team work Monday-Thursday and the other half work Tuesday-Friday. This means we remain a 5 day a week business with no loss of service to our clients. One of the early benefits we’ve seen is that Monday’s and Friday’s are now super-productive days, as half the team are in, there are less distractions, less meetings, and the team manage to get a lot of their important work done in this time. 

We’ve also seen some amazing benefits as a business. We have been mentioned in most of the major newspapers, we were interviewed on BBC Radio Leeds and went on live TV with CGTN (watch it here). It has opened a number of doors for us and our CEO Claire is now regularly contacted to join panel discussions or to give interviews to private companies on how the trial is going. 

We asked some of our team taking part in the trial to give their feedback on how it’s going so far. 

For more information on the 4 day week, follow our Youtube channel for regular updates or contact us.