Goodbye Friday afternoons; hello happier, more productive team
For almost two years now our team has been logging off at 1pm on a Friday, with no loss of pay. And the data shows that we feel more positive about our work and productive than ever.
Back in January 2024 we ran a three-month trial. Our question: “Could cutting our working week to 4.5 days give staff a better work-life balance and help us work more effectively?” Some in the team expressed a touch of scepticism. It wasn’t as though we were proposing to give people a whole day off. Surely finishing at 1pm on a Friday couldn’t make that much difference?
The answer was a resounding yes.
- All staff found the trial had a positive impact on their productivity. The 1pm cut-off helped people to prioritise tasks, plan their time through the week, not just on Friday morning, and be more motivated to get everything wrapped up.
- All staff reported a positive impact on work-life balance. Interestingly, a higher proportion of staff felt that it had a “very positive” impact the longer the trial went on.
- All staff reported a positive impact on their wellbeing. One person reflected that they weren’t expecting such a dividend in terms of how it made them feel across the whole weekend from just a few extra hours on a Friday.
We’ve always been lucky in having a committed and high-performing team. Coming out of Covid and through the cost-of-living crisis we thought hard about our responsibilities as an employer. How could we make Revolving Doors as rewarding and caring a place to work as possible? As a small charity, we couldn’t match salary rises to inflation. We gave small uplifts to help with cost of living, but mostly had to find non-monetary ways to support staff. We proposed a range of measures to our board, who gave us free range to decide which to test out. Moving to a 4.5 day working week had the potential to be the biggest game-changer, but also required the most work.
For anyone following the official 4-day working week trial, our lessons learned won’t come as a surprise. Here’s our take:
- Prepare. Any permanent move to a 4.5 day working week would mean a contractual change, so we ran a formal staff consultation. We also had several team and individual conversations. This gave us the opportunity to explore concerns and get into the detail of what we all needed to do to make the trial work. We reviewed our standing meetings to check that we really need them all. We don’t have a meeting-heavy culture, so it was a question of tweaking what we do, rather than radical changes. For example, we cut the length of one weekly meeting and moved it from lunchtime to 9am, when it naturally feels snappier and more business-like. In the quest for time savings, however, we made it clear that we still value and need to make time for reflective meetings. We’ve now become more conscious about the sort of meeting we need and who needs to be in it.
- Get practical. It’s not enough to talk about working productively. Get specific about how you do that. Give your team practical tools and techniques to make it work. The best thing we did to prepare was to bring in Happy to run its 5-day productivity blitz. For one week, the team came together for 15 minutes at the start and end of each day. Each morning, Henry, Chief Happiness Officer and possessor of a wardrobe of eye-popping shirts, gave us all a productivity hack to promote deep, focused working. We tried out the technique for the day then reported back on it in the evening. Some of the techniques weren’t new – anyone for a pomodoro? The power came from us all having to use them at the same time. Some of the techniques were transformational. (Read this if you want to know how to stop being a slave to email.) Not everything worked for everyone, but we all got something useful out of the week. Most importantly it made cutting our working hours and continuing to deliver feel more possible.
- Communicate. We made sure that partners, clients and, most importantly, our lived experience members were all informed about the change. This was the area that staff were most worried about in the run-up to the trial. Would clients be annoyed that they couldn’t contact us on a Friday afternoon? Would members feel that we were ignoring them? However, we’ve had nothing but positive interest and feedback. We also made it clear that we are still available for external events if needed. And staff haven’t resented the odd Friday afternoon still on the job.
- Evaluate. If you’re proposing a big change to how you work be clear about whether it’s really a good thing. We ran a baseline survey to record staff wellbeing and feelings going into the trial. We then asked staff to complete a brief survey each Monday for the 3 months of the trial. Questions included how easy it had been for people to stick to the 4.5 days that week, impact on delivery, work-life balance and wellbeing. This gave us detailed data, allowing us to match how people felt about the trial to the different rhythms and pressures of each week, rather than capturing general impressions. We also ran a couple of focus groups at the end to reflect on the whole trial period. And we’ve continued to monitor through our annual staff survey to check that it’s still working for us.
We’re thrilled that the 4.5 day week has continued to be such a success. When we ran our annual staff survey this autumn, all staff continued to report that the 4.5 day week has a positive impact on their health and wellbeing, productivity and work-life balance. And when we asked about staff wellbeing more generally, all staff agreed that Revolving Doors cares about their wellbeing.
“It’s really motivating, helps to ensure efficient and effective use of time and is mentally a great perk to appreciate each week.”
– Staff survey respondent, October 2025
The 4.5 day working week is a large contributor to that feeling.
