One of the legacies of the pandemic has been a new mindset towards work. For employees, quality of life has become as important as salary. For employers, flexibility, initially borne of necessity has, in some cases, led to transformative new approaches.
Work-from-home incentives have been adopted across the islands, with some firms shucking off the hard shell of the office completely.
This month, accounting firm Grant Thornton went a step further, adopting a four-day working week.
The project is just a two-month trial in slow season, but it is also the first experiment of its kind in the Cayman Islands, mirroring a global movement towards fewer working hours and better work/life balance.
First shots fired in ‘war for talent’
On a recent Friday afternoon, Giannie McLaughlin pulled up a chair on Smith Cove, sat her dog on her lap, and watched the waves roll in on the almost empty beach.
The Issue Explained: How 4-day-week trials work
It was a moment of bliss after a busy week and a chance to enjoy a few hours to herself before the weekend arrived, with the pleasant but hectic clutter of errands and social commitments.
One of the beneficiaries of Grant Thornton’s new four-day work week experiment, the marketing executive is already enamoured with the new policy.
With the benefit of the three-day weekend comes the responsibility and the incentive of a leaner, more focussed four-day work week.
McLaughlin says she feels extra motivated to get everything done by Thursday, so she can relax into the weekend.
Around the world, businesses are experimenting with new working structures and a growing four-day-week movement is gathering momentum and giving some companies an edge in a post-COVID ‘war for talent’.
Grant Thornton, one of the big five accountancy firms, is believed to be the first Cayman company to try out the policy.
Dara Keogh, managing partner at the firm based in Cricket Square, said the company had success in other jurisdictions with a similar initiative, rewarding employees during the summer with the perk of a three-day weekend. He said Grant Thornton was proud to be leading the way locally on an initiative that may soon become commonplace – particularly in the white-collar world.
Keogh said successful trials in Belgium, Iceland and the United Arab Emirates, as well as an ongoing initiative in the UK, had shown that less time in the office did not necessarily lead to lower productivity. And he believes it actually serves as a powerful incentive for good staff to stay loyal to the company and put in the extra effort when required.
“Particularly in a post-pandemic world, many people now see flexibility as a deal breaker for their careers. We’re facing a global talent shortage, and we need to ensure we remain the firm that people want to work with. As we see more success stories from around the globe, I do feel that companies in the Cayman Islands may look to adopt similar protocols.”
The accounting industry in particular has seasonal workflow patterns that lend themselves to a lighter load in the summer that helps make up for a heavier work burden in the early part of the year.
Era of innovation
Grant Thornton’s experiment is currently for the months of July and August only. But a company analysis of the trial will serve to inform future policy.
Steve McIntosh, founder of CareerPoint and a Cayman-based recruitment expert, said the four-day week is a fascinating experiment that is taking place globally. He believes the legacy of COVID lockdowns has been a new willingness to innovate and move beyond the structure of the five-day, 9-to-5 office-based life.
McIntosh believes many firms will be watching the UK trial, which involves more than 70 companies, very closely.
Though he believes Cayman will be slower to adopt such innovation – in part because of the lack of any discount in the work permit fees for lower hours – he welcomed the move by Grant Thornton as a step forward.
He believes it will give the firm an edge in attracting and retaining the best employees, something that could spur others to follow suit.
“Much will depend upon whether the employment market continues running hot, returns to normal, or cools down in a recession,” he said.
“If competition for talent remains fierce, and these trials show a benefit to employers, as well as the obvious benefits for employees, expect to see more companies in the knowledge economy adopting the policy, or at least offering it as an option with somewhat reduced pay.”
UK experiments with four-day week
More than 3,000 workers across 70 different companies in the UK are currently in the midst of the country’s biggest ever four-day work week trial, receiving full pay for 80% of the hours.
The pilot is running for six months and is being organised by 4 Day Week Global in partnership with the thinktank Autonomy, the 4 Day Week Campaign, and researchers at Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College.
The trial spans all kinds of industries from financial firms to a robotics company, an education business, and a fish-and-chip shop.
While some industries are clearly more suited to that kind of flexibility, Joe O’Connor, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, told the Compass it can work for any business.
“It is much less straightforward for retail, hospitality and manufacturing, but it can be done,” he said.
It’s not simply a case of everyone taking Friday off. Flexible shift patterns, adaptations of technology and a reduction in ‘make-work’ tasks can make the model fit, even in businesses that are open 24/7, he insists.
It it clear, however, that the easiest transition and the leading edge of the current shift in approach is in the ‘knowledge economy’, with tech, IT, financial and professional services firms being the biggest early adopters.
Pandemic changed the game
O’Connor said the experience of the pandemic had made managers more open-minded and transformed the priorities of employees.
As a non-profit pushing for better work life balance, 4 Day Week Global was established in 2019. But momentum snowballed after COVID lockdowns.
Now the group helps run pilot trials involving more than 10,000 workers at 180 companies across the world.
It is not a simple matter of turning out the lights and shutting the doors on a Thursday, he insists.
The mantra of the movement is ‘100-80-100’ – 100% pay, 80% of the time, 100% productivity.
While that sounds too good to be true, O’Connor insists it is absolutely possible.
In many cases, he said, there is a surprising amount of wasted time in an office worker’s day – between two and three hours on average.
Better meeting discipline, reducing distractions and interruptions, and using technology to increase efficiency rather than create needless tasks, can ensure the same amount of work gets done in four days, he insists.
The non-profit runs a mentoring programme for managers to help them navigate this change. He doesn’t believe it would be achievable, however, without total buy-in from employees. The ‘transformative benefit’ of a three-day weekend is the perk that makes the productivity gains possible.
A new mindset
On a philosophical level, O’Connor says the movement taps into a changing mindset towards work. Technology was supposed to make people’s lives easier. In 1930, the renowned economist John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay titled ‘Economic possibilities for our grandchildren’, which predicted that the advent of machines would enable people to work as little as 15 hours a week. A 2015 report on NPR radio in the US checked in with his actual descendants and found they were each working more than 50 hours a week – a common scenario in the western world.
Keynes’ assumption that technology would improve productivity was correct, said O’Connor, but the benefits of technical innovation have not yet translated into significantly less work for the average person.
This is starting to change, he believes, with the pandemic pushing a mindset shift towards judging people on what they produce rather than the amount of time they spend in the building.
“The new war for talent may be defined more around quality of life than salary,” he said.
Cayman can embrace the trend
For McIntosh, this is something Cayman should embrace.
“There’s no question we all need to work less,” he said.
“We all get on this treadmill at the start of our careers, focussed on some point in the future where our lives will be better. By the time the something better arrives, working continuously has become a way of life.”
One potential black mark on this Utopian horizon, he fears, could be an increase in the divide between the haves and the have-nots.
“There is a risk that it exacerbates the growing divide between ‘knowledge workers’ and everyone else,” he said. “There are many jobs that require physical presence and time that can’t be made remote and don’t lend themselves to four-day weeks.”
Keogh, at Grant Thornton, acknowledges that a shorter week is easier in the quieter summer period. But he said the project reflected a desire to reward employees in a different way.
“Giving our staff time back to do the things they enjoy, demonstrates our respect for work-life balance. We wholly believe it is feasible for our people to maintain – if not exceed – quality work while working a four-day working week this summer. Agility is a mind-set based on trust and flexibility,” he said.
McLaughlin acknowledges that the summer perk may not last forever. But she said she and her fellow employees are determined to make the best of it, repaying the firm’s trust with a productive working week and enjoying their moment in the sun at the end of it.
Related Videos
If one can do all one’s work in 4 days then one’s workload is too light.