Want to make your staff happier and more productive? Try getting them to work fewer hours

theguardian.com:

I ’m interested in any idea that makes staff happier and more productive, because I work in HR. But until last year I hadn’t given a lot of thought to asking people to work less. When I first heard about the idea of a four-day week, I have to admit I thought it sounded a bit too good to be true. When we gave it a try, though, my teams and I thought it was a huge success.

Last year, from July to December, Citizens Advice Gateshead – where I work – was one of 61 companies, comprising about 2,900 workers, who took part in a six-month trial run by the 4 Day Week campaign. So far we’ve been continuing with the trial as our staff have found it so rewarding. We want conversations to continue so that staff are thinking about how they can improve their work-life balance and what we can do to support them.

To begin with we were paired with a mentor company in the US and we did a lot of research and listened to our staff because we wanted all our colleagues to feel involved and engaged. When I understood that the idea was about maintaining present productivity levels during a shorter working week, the idea began to make more sense to me.

For someone like me who manages their own workload, it wasn’t too difficult to change the days I work, but for those taking calls in a contact centre it helped to allocate set days off to ensure there were always enough staff on any shift. We talked about improving digitisation of some tasks, and handovers and consistency in others, and gave managers guidance about managing their teams. Some people were initially concerned about the potential impact on clients, but we continue to measure waiting times and other services levels and I’m not aware of any detriment.

I expected people to enjoy it, but I