Brighton company gets ready to trial nine-day fortnight

A Brighton-based IT company is preparing to trial an interesting version of the four-day work week, which they’re calling the nine-day fortnight.
Carlene Jackson is the CEO of digital transformation consultancy Cloud9 Insight, which she founded in 2010 and has 35 staff.

She said, “Our employee engagement surveys were telling us our colleagues were interested in compressing their hours into a four-day week, so they could spend more time with their families. But we were concerned this could lead to the opposite of the intended outcome – with staff working much longer hours on work days and not being able to have dinner with their partners or to put their children to bed in the evening.

“So we came up with what you might call a Third Way – the nine-day fortnight. Under this scheme, empl  oyees would have every other Friday off, while only being asked to add 30 minutes to their normal working day. We are also consulting on implementing an additional twist on this so that the other Friday in the fortnight becomes a ‘strategy, innovation and learning day’ to maximise team working, entrepreneurial thinking and to accelerate career progression.”

Staff would increase their hours from seven-and-a-half to eight hours each day for nine days and then have a day off on the tenth day without their remuneration changing.

Technically, the net loss to the business is three hours per person per fortnight, though this is not being viewed as a loss in reality.
“Procrastination is a significant issue in any business and we believe the nine-day fortnight will lead to less procrastination, easily making up for the loss of those three hours,” said Jackson, who advises Parliament on apprenticeships and training and is a board member of the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) on diversity and inclusion.

The company is consulting employees and taking professional advice on this proposal, with the intention being to implement the trial at some point over the summer.

Read more:

• How Seatfrog are helping to pioneer the four-day week
• Four-day week trials hailed a success

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