Welcome to the final chapter in my monthly column here in All Things Business following Amplitude’s journey as part of the UK’s official four-day work week trial. For those new to us, Amplitude is a creative marketing agency based in Northampton, working in branding, film production, animation, photography and design.
Back in June, we decided to take up the mantle as one of the first UK companies to move to a four-day work week. Over 70 companies signed up to the trial, which represents the biggest shake up to working life in a century. I’ve been charting the ups and downs, the good and bad. You can catch up with all my previous columns online.
The trial officially ends at the end of November, and at the time of writing this piece we’re heading into the last official week, taking stock of the results, and mapping out our forward plans. The first step in this for us is conducting one-to-ones with our team members to see how they feel about the trial, and how it has impacted their work and work-life balance. Of course, everyone has been happy to have the extra free time in their week, and for the most part the team are confident that the output has remained the same.
We all agree there were teething problems at the start with getting the project management tools in place and managing handovers. With half the team taking Wednesdays off and half Fridays, we had to ensure that no one was working siloed. Any one of our creatives or project managers should be able to step in if there is something urgent that a client needs. This took a while to crack, but the new workflows we’ve implemented have been really bedded in over the last few months. I think this has made us all more confident in our work. People have a much clearer idea of what needs to be done and when, and thanks to us improving how we take our clients on the briefing and creative journeys, we’ve had a better springboard from which to generate lovely ideas and content.
And the ideas have definitely been flowing. For me, looking in as a manager, I think we are a much stronger agency now than we were at the start, working at a higher level when it comes to our creativity. So, these are all elements that are really encouraging from the trial.
But – and I did say we’d be fully transparent with the outcomes, so this is a big BUT – the economic climate feels very different now from when this all began back in the summer. We are noticing some clients looking to reduce spend, and we’re being asked to compete a little more on price (which we haven’t done for some time to be honest). This is by no means a reflection on us and what we’ve achieved. The cost-of-living crisis combined with Brexit and a frankly shambolic political landscape has meant that the markets are spooked. Consumers spending less means businesses spend less and it’s something that we’re seeing across the board.
So that left us questioning the best way forward. I’m fully behind the four-day week, and I’ve seen the benefits first-hand, but we might have to work that little bit more (or for that little bit less) over the next six months during this financial hiccup. So, our plan is to meet in the middle.
For the trial, we took the team from 40 hours to 32 for the same benefits, so for the short term we’re going to split the difference and go back to 35 hours. But we are offering full flexibility. If people want to do a couple of longer days and keep a full day off, great. If people want to work every day but leave early some days, that’s fine too. The team will still have autonomy to get the work-life they need.
It is worth noting here that this is on a three-month review, and once the economy picks up it’s absolutely our plan to permanently move to the proper four-day week.
Overall, we think it’s been a great success, and our core value of ‘Happy Team, Happy Client’ has held true throughout.
If you are a business owner considering the move and you want to find out more about our experience please add me on LinkedIn or email jo@thisisamplitude.co.uk
