Fuel Joins The 4 Day Work Week Revolution

Could a 4 day work week be the future? Well, we’re excited to share that things might well be heading that way for us at Fuel. With the aim of improving efficiency and promoting a better work-life balance for our team, we’ll be trialling a 4 day work week for 6 months starting from October. Our team of 14 will continue to work from our offices in The Crescent in Plymouth and Birmingham City University’s Steamhouse, as well as from home, in keeping with our approach to hybrid working. The team will be working slightly reduced hours per week, with no changes to salary levels, and with an increase in our opening hours from 08.00 to 17.00.

Why Are We Trialling A 4 Day Work Week? 

As with any growth decision we make within the company, our primary aim is to enhance the service that we can deliver to our clients, and this starts with ensuring our team is in the best position possible to provide this. Ongoing national trials have demonstrated the benefits of a 4 day work week for employee wellbeing, but also for productivity levels. Providing employees with an extra day to rest, see loved ones and complete the life admin that they don’t usually have a chance to complete in a 5 day work week, significantly improves the work-life balance. This helps to reduce stress levels, improve happiness and generally place employees in the optimum mindset for working productively. By trialling the 4 day work week at Fuel, we’re prioritising the wellbeing of our team in order to ensure that we’re as prepared as possible to maximise the efficiency and quality of our work.  

The change in working patterns continues our approach to hybrid working which we started to introduce as a marketing agency in 2019. Since then we’ve seen our revenue increase by a whopping 107% following the acquisition of immersive company One Polygon and merger with digital agency The Ruckus. Throughout the time we’ve adopted a hybrid working approach, we’ve welcomed significant growth across our marketing, immersive, Ecommerce and affiliate services. We’re proud to have worked with a range of clients during this period, including GA Solicitors, Illy, Mark Holt & Co Group, Peninsula Dental, Red Paddle Co, Saltrock, Smile Together and The i-Outlet. 

As our managing director, Martyn King comments: 

“We really see this move as an extension to the hybrid working environment that our team has thrived in pre, during and post pandemic. They’ve really embraced that freedom and have consistently delivered exceptional performance. This move is aimed at ensuring an even better work-life balance and ensuring they are as mentally sharp as possible to fuel further growth for our clients throughout the UK.”

What Will Happen At The End Of The Trial?

There’s an important emphasis on this being a 4 day work week trial. It’s taken months of research, which we’ll discuss in more detail in just a second, in order to make the decision to start the trial. In other words, it’s definitely not something we’re jumping into blindly! Based on thorough research and consultations both externally and within the team, we’re confident that the trial will provide invaluable benefits for both our team and our clients. However, we will be consistently monitoring the trial throughout the 6 month period to ensure it is working successfully, and asking the team for regular feedback. If for any reason at the end of the 6 month trial period, we feel the 4 day work week has not added significant benefits to the service we provide, we will review the process and look at reverting back to a 5 day week . Ultimately, we’ll need to see that we’re working smarter by hitting our 2022/23 targets, and meeting our client and team satisfaction measures.

How Have We Prepared For The Trial?

As we mentioned a second ago, we haven’t stepped into a 4 day work week without thorough consideration. We’ve spent 3 months consulting with our team, clients and referrers, and analysing our performance data in detail. We’ve also spent a lot of time researching ongoing national trials, looking at the success of a 4 day work week for other companies, and the strategies that they’ve used to implement a new working model without disruption. Particular thanks goes out to Trevor Worth at Portcullis Legals, who have recently pioneered a 4 day work week, for his invaluable advice during our research and consultation period.

Our team at Fuel have received additional skills development in project and time management alongside mental health awareness training. We’ve also invested in additional IT and workstation equipment, central to which is a dynamic unified communications system provided by Agile Comms. This enables all members of the team to seamlessly take calls, messages and initiate video conferencing wherever they are working.

We’ll be discussing our 4 day week trial in the ‘Fuelling Growth’ podcast and so keep your ears peeled for that. We’ve also put together a handy Q&A guide to answer the questions that we’ve already received as well as some that we know will be front-of-mind for our clients. If you have any further questions about the trial, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.