The four-day work week has been a subject contemplated by many companies across the nation and Evolution Money has recently announced that it is now involved in the government-sponsored four-day working week trial, with employees across its two biggest customer-facing departments taking part.
This comes after more than 3,300 employees at 70 UK companies have started working four days a week with no reduction in pay. This initiative is based on the 100-80 model: 100% pay for 80% of the time in exchange for a commitment to maintaining 100% productivity.
Spanning across a six-month period, Evolution employees in its mortgage adviser and collections department team will only be required to work four days a week, and as the pilot project is set up, there will be no impact on pay or holiday entitlement, with full commitment to maintaining 100% productivity over the same period.
Steve Brilus, chief executive officer of Evolution Money, commented: “We’re all very pleased to be taking part in this four-day working week trial and have put a considerable amount of thought and effort into how this might work in practice, what we wanted to achieve, and included a great deal of staff and stakeholder feedback in order to get this right.
“This is phase one of the trial, with our two largest customer-facing departments taking part, and we aim to quantify and evaluate its success – or otherwise – at the three- and six-month point to ascertain whether we include more departments and whether we broaden this out to the whole business.
“I’m very proud of the Evolution team who have made this a reality, and I know that everyone involved is embracing this as a massive step forward for our organisational culture and support for ‘Team Evo’.
He also states that their priorities remain focused on continuing to deliver excellent consumer outcomes and support to their extensive introducer network, and this will be front of mind at all points during this trial.
Brilus concluded: “This initiative supports our vision to be an employer of choice, which when combined with our wider purpose and focus on ESG, will help us to deliver a high-quality and ethical business that is attractive to both employees and all those who work with us.”
Take an extra day
The way they will implement the trial is that staff will receive a different day off each week – decided by rota – and Evolution has, in the same breath, stressed to all stakeholders that it will be business as usual across all departments.
Evolution disclosed that with a keen focus on service levels and a continuation of KPIs being hit, it will review the performance of the trial regularly, along with formally reviewing at three months mark.
If deemed successful, it intends to add its case management team to the trial.
Once the six-month pilot is completed at the end of 2022, Evolution stated it would weigh up the introduction of the four-day working week across the entire business.
For more details on the four-day working week trial, visit www.4dayweek.com/ukpilot
