The pandemic changed everything: our working structures, our clients’ working structures, global business norms; and for me, it became clear that 2020 was also an opportunity to be brave and make some ballsy decisions.

Taking inspiration from the Law of Polarity which is based on the principle that everything has two ‘poles’ - where there’s bad, there’s also good – last year, we focused on the good.

A long-held ambition was to strengthen the agency from being a comms agency that values its people first, to really push this further and truly demonstrate my commitment in delivering on this brand value at RNN Comms. A four-day week was the holy grail, but I had no clarity on how we could achieve this, and prior to 2020, I simply wasn’t brave enough to go for it.

This changed. In late summer 2020, I made the decision that everyone in the team will trial a four-day week, with no salary sacrifice. In a nutshell, being paid for five days, but working four, therefore increasing our personal ‘happiness’ but with the commitment to maintain agency performance and profitability.

The team and I had the will to make this happen and now six months on, it’s here to stay.

We didn’t tell anyone…no clients (in fact some of them will be hearing of this first by reading this article today!). And do you know why? Because the team and I were sure that our four-day week would have NO impact on our client delivery or results. And this has worked.

How we do it….

• We had the will to make it work and changed our mindset
• Every client always has an RNN team member who works on their account available five days of the week
• We operate our working week by rotation, so the office is open every day and we are all contactable - if required – five days of the week
• We’re seriously efficient. We reduced team calls, time block and tightly schedule our meets
• Our days are slightly longer – not by design but by the team’s willingness to always deliver, and continue to work a four-day week (aka have our cake and eat it I guess… 😊)
• We’re respectful of our colleagues’ diaries and are meticulous in our forward-planning
• There’s an agreed structure but we approach this with flexibility, and on the odd occasion, we’re happy to work on our ‘day off’ for the greater good of the team and clients

Challenges

• The biggest challenge was for me personally. The change in my mindset has been the most difficult to shift however I totally LOVE my work and have shifted my perception. On my ‘off day’, I generally get out for a walk, catch up on podcasts, tick off the bookmarked articles, work on my other business interests and often I work ‘on’ RNN business instead of ‘in’ the business.
• It’s not my day for client calls, for team catch ups, or to action activities that can wait until the following day. However – it’s my business - so I’m on call if there’s something that crops up – same as with weekends. This comes as part and parcel of owning a business as any business owner will testify
• Things don’t always work out. Sometimes a client can only do a call on one of our days off, or a meeting can only take place on that day. Or there’s training we wish to attend, other team members on holiday etc. This is where flexibility is essential; and it’s because of this flexible approach by everyone, that we’ve been able to adopt our four-day week as the new norm

Has it worked?

• Our income has increased with no additional team members
• Our productivity has increased by 20%. We have created a seriously effective and efficient working culture
• We are laser focused on results – working smarter to get to the goals
• We make decisions quickly
• The team and I seriously value our new work life
• We have decided to offer this package to everyone who joins RNN

And understanding the laws… this seemed like such a big decision for years, now it’s the new normal for us at RNN. Law of relativity.

Our incredible working culture is matched by our ambition. If you’re interested in joining us at RNN Comms, we’re currently recruiting and have a number of additional positions coming onstream later in the year – see RNNCommunications.com for more info.

If you’re a business owner who is also thinking about how you can introduce a four-day week, feel free to get in touch and I’ll share our learnings.

Lastly, thanks must go to my team for making this work. To Rich Leigh from Radioactive PR who already does this (more on that here) and installed belief that it could be done; and to Jonathan McKeown from Crash Services and JMK Solicitors (view here) who is seriously forward-thinking, having already implemented this across his businesses and who generously gave me his time and invaluable insights before we put the wheels in motion.

Onwards!