logo
Would you work 32 hours over seven days?

Would you work 32 hours over seven days?

Irish Times26-05-2025

A few weeks ago, the 29-year-old boss of a small tech start-up in Wales went on LinkedIn to say he was going to try a new way of
working
.
'We're abandoning the four-day work week,' said Aled Nelmes, whose staff had just spent two years working roughly 32 hours a week from Monday to Thursday, with no cut in pay from their previous five-day week.
This had boosted output and staff retention, he said. So he was going to go a step further with a three-month trial of a completely flexible 32-hour week. Employees could work any time on any day from Monday to Sunday, anywhere they liked.
The idea was to make Lumen SEO, the Cardiff search-engine optimisation company he founded in 2020, as attractive as possible to parents, new joiners and its existing seven staff.
READ MORE
The response to his post, it is fair to say, was large.
[
Four-day week easier than hybrid working, Atom Bank chief says
Opens in new window
]
Nearly 1,000 people commented on an idea that many said sounded 'epic', 'brilliant' and 'stunning'. Several asked if Nelmes was hiring. (He plans to).
And some asked the question that first came to my mind: how on earth can something like this work? How do people know who is working when? Do staff feel compelled to be contactable 24/7? How does the business stay responsive to its clients' needs?
Nelmes admits the effort takes discipline. He uses a software platform to delegate tasks to staff each Monday, depending on how many hours each job is expected to take. A messaging tool lets everyone know whether people are available or not. A lot of preparation is done for meetings, to avoid wasting time.
Everyone has to work at the same time for at least two or three hours a week but Nelmes thinks that in general, the corporate working world is too industrialised for a digital age. So it pays to let people shape their working hours as much as possible.
'I would argue that, because staff members have more time outside of focused, regimented, structured work, they tend to come into the office with more ideas,' he says.
So far, Lumen seems to be an outlier.
The UK's 4 Day Week Foundation has been encouraging a 32-hour, four-day week for years but its campaign director, Joe Ryle, says most firms adopting the idea work four weekdays.
[
Which of these four types of leader are you and why will it help you to know?
Opens in new window
]
A minority of organisations have tried 32 hours over five weekdays, he said. But he didn't know of any trying Lumen's full-fat version of 32 hours over seven days.
I can see why some might try, if they are in a white collar sector and have a business like Lumen, whose staff do a lot of work individually, on tasks such as writing material for company websites.
They would also need a boss like Nelmes, who likes to travel and winters on the Canary Islands for weeks at a time. ('You meet lots of interesting people and it's just healthier.') And I'm sure it would help if a business was small.
Still, Lumen's trial fits with the pandemic-fuelled shift to more flexible working, which has persisted at a greater scale for longer than many expected, including me.
The conventional four-day week itself has proven more tenacious than critics had predicted, though perhaps not as successful as some campaigners hoped.
The Indeed job site says the share of postings mentioning a four-day week has risen noticeably since 2020 in the US, Germany, France, Canada and the UK. But it's still below 1 per cent, even in the UK, which has the largest share of the five nations.
In 2022, Belgium gave workers the right to ask for a four-day week but only by condensing existing hours, not cutting them. Other regions have trialled the idea, as have many companies.
Of the 61 organisations that took part in a big six-month UK trial in 2022, 56 decided to continue with the model, says the 4 Day Week Foundation, which has now accredited more than 230 four-day organisations. Most have 10 to 50 employees. The largest is
Atom
, the app-based bank, which has around 470 staff.
A lot are in sectors such as tech and marketing. But a number are doubtless run by bosses like Nelmes who are convinced this is the way of the future and are, crucially, young. Their ideas might stick around for a lot longer than you think. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Companies have abandoned London for ‘false promise' of New York, says stock exchange group chief
Companies have abandoned London for ‘false promise' of New York, says stock exchange group chief

Business Post

time7 hours ago

  • Business Post

Companies have abandoned London for ‘false promise' of New York, says stock exchange group chief

Business Post subscribers can read: • What 'false narrative' surrounds New York listings • Why the perceived benefits of such a move are not borne out by the evidence • Why London has, according to the group, experienced a resurgence in fortunes of late The chief executive of the company behind the London stock exchange has hit out at the "false narrative" that has lured major UK-listed companies to ...

US says trade talks with China ‘going well' as sides reconvene
US says trade talks with China ‘going well' as sides reconvene

Irish Times

time12 hours ago

  • Irish Times

US says trade talks with China ‘going well' as sides reconvene

The US said talks with China were 'going well' as the two sides resumed efforts in London to end a trade war between the world's largest economies. The delegations arrived at Lancaster House, a UK government building in the centre of the city, just after 10.30am, on Tuesday with US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick saying that the discussions would go deep into the day. 'We've been [talking] all day yesterday and we expect to go all day today. The talks are going well, we're spending lots of time together,' he told reporters. The talks between Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng and US officials, including Treasury secretary Scott Bessent , followed a call last week between US President Donald Trump and China's president Xi Jinping . READ MORE The meeting marked the first face-to-face talks between Mr He and Mr Bessent since a 90-day truce brokered on May 12th in Geneva, when they agreed to slash their nations' respective tariffs on the other by 115 percentage points. Since then, the truce has been tested by Chinese foot-dragging over approvals of rare-earth shipments that are critical to the defence, car and tech industries, in a move that has affected manufacturing supply chains in both the US and Europe. [ How a man described as 'dumber than a sack of bricks' came to dominate global trade policy Opens in new window ] Beijing has in turn accused Washington of 'seriously violating' the Geneva agreement by issuing new warnings on using Huawei chips globally, halting sales of chip design software to Chinese companies and cancelling visas for Chinese students. Ahead of this week's talks, senior White House officials indicated Trump could ease restrictions on selling chips to China if Beijing agreed to speed up the export of rare earths. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025

M&S resumes some online orders - but Irish customers will have to wait
M&S resumes some online orders - but Irish customers will have to wait

Irish Times

time13 hours ago

  • Irish Times

M&S resumes some online orders - but Irish customers will have to wait

Retailer Marks & Spencer resumed taking some online orders for clothing lines for customers in England, Scotland and Wales on Tuesday after a 46-day hiatus following a cyberattack. But Irish customers will have to wait, with online ordering still paused for customers in the Republic and Northern Ireland. M&S said delivery to Northern Ireland will resume in the 'coming weeks', as will click and collect services, next-day delivery, nominated-day delivery and international ordering. 'It's not the full range at the moment. We've focused on best sellers and newness,' an M&S spokesperson said. READ MORE 'We'll be bringing product online everyday so customers will see that grow over the coming days.' The 141-year-old M&S stopped taking clothing and home orders through its website and app on April 25th following problems with contactless pay and click and collect services over the Easter holiday weekend. It first disclosed it had been managing a 'cyber incident' on April 22nd. M&S said last month it expected online disruption to continue into July and forecast the attack would cost it about £300 million (€354.5 million) in lost operating profit in its 2025/26 financial year, though it hopes to halve the impact through insurance and cost control. The disruption to systems also affected M&S' ability to get food and clothing into stores, which meant it lost out on demand boosted by warm and sunny weather. Analysts have predicted the end of season clothing sale will be larger than normal and with deeper discounts. Taking account of Tuesday's rise, M&S shares are down 9.5% since it disclosed the attack. M&S said hackers broke into its systems by tricking employees at a third-party contractor, skirting its digital defences to launch a cyberattack. The group has said it will use the crisis to accelerate improvements to its technology. In recent weeks, several other major retailers across the globe have disclosed cyber incidents, including UK grocer the Co-op Group, German sportswear group Adidas, luxury jeweller Cartier and U.S. lingerie company Victoria's Secret. - Reuters (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store