The Changing Face of the Workplace

Howard Bentham Hello there and welcome to the sixth and final OxTalks of the current series. OxTalks is powered by OxLEP, the local enterprise partnership for Oxfordshire, and throughout these podcasts we're highlighting the great work that OxLEP does and how they could potentially help your business in the future. I'm Howard Bentham and I have the pleasure of introducing you to some quite brilliant and inspirational and incredibly influential leaders in the county, all of them keen to stress the critical support that's available from OxLEP and how it could be crucial in helping your company or organisation prosper. Although we are concentrating on Oxfordshire's businesses and issues in these podcasts, you may well be listening to us elsewhere. Many of the issues we experience here will be very similar to the ones that you're potentially facing where you are. Please do share any thoughts or observations with us and join in the conversation. Head to our social media where we can pick up your comments and questions. We are @OxfordshireLEP on Twitter and Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership on LinkedIn. It will be good to hear from you. In this edition, our focus is the changing face of the workplace, with a particular emphasis on the new 4-day week working pattern that many organisations are adopting. If we take a long look back over our shoulders to the days of the Industrial Revolution, the typical Victorian mill owner had folk working six long days a week, with Sunday as a day of rest, with a chance to replenish one's soul in church. In 1922 it was the Ford Motor Company that experimented with taking the six-day week down to five, something that became permanent in 1926. Today, post-global pandemic, our working world is changing shape. The overriding mantra of those championing this new way of working is don't think about hours, think about productivity and outcome. But is a four-day week the silver bullet? Is it affordable for businesses to pay for five days and only get workers' time for four? Is it really practical for some of our major employers like the health service and industries where the lights have to be kept on 24/7? What indeed is in it for the bosses and the owners of these companies when, on the face of it, the deal heavily favours the employees and will the four-day week actually create further inequalities in our society? Our OxTalks guest can bring to the conversation lots of first-hand experience of the four-day week. Her company has been working this way since 2018. Indeed, sustainability is at the core of everything she is involved with, as we will discover. I'm delighted to welcome to OxTalks, the founder and MD of Legacy, an award-winning sustainable events agency, Abena Fairweather. Abena, welcome. Before we get into the fascinating chat around the four-day week, I really want to find out about this. Let's learn a bit more about you and your sustainability-inspired career because it's taken you on a path from the US to Fiji to Croydon and then here to Oxfordshire. Tell us more. Abena Fairweather Of course. Thank you for having me on the podcast. So my name is Abena Fairweather and I really graduated from university, I trained in physics and earth sciences, determined to go out there and do something about the planet, always been really passionate about the environment through the stories and the issues that had popped up whilst I'd been in school. So without wanting to talk about how old exactly I am, this is when environmental issues were coming to the forefront. So we were starting to hear about the hole in the ozone layer, about acid rain, about the destruction of the rainforest and that really touched me as a kid. So I really wanted to go and try and do what I could. So I was also quite passionate about space as well and I thought I know, I'm going to go study the atmosphere and some of the issues around satellites and weather and that kind of thing and see if maybe I can work out how to make a mark that way. So I was lucky enough to be able to get an internship in Colorado with the National Center for Atmospheric Research as a visiting scientist which as you can imagine as a young, I don't know, 19 or something year old then, found it fantastic. So I went off to Boulder and worked with them for a bit learning all about the Sun-Earth connection. So working a bit on the upper atmosphere, on how the Sun affects weathers and it sounds very kind of vague and far-fetched from normal life, but this kind of thing is useful for satellites for example. So often when there's a solar storm, the satellite is affected and doesn't function and that might knock out Wi-Fi and telecoms for a large part of the world so there are human-related issues as well. So I did that for a bit and thought oh maybe I could be an academic and maybe I could work in in this full-time but I soon realised that being an academic space scientist whilst it sounds fantastic in theory it's a lot of looking at screens, working by yourself, looking at a lot of data and I felt I like to talk to people, I like to be out there so I thought this isn't really for me. So I came back home from America thinking, well, what should I do next? And it seems amazing now, but at the time, Google really wasn't as vast as it was. So I literally typed renewable energy into Google, because that felt like an area I could I could apply myself to and a company came up called Renewable Energy Systems Limited, I thought great! So I just emailed them and said, just got back from America, can have a job, please. That's basically the email and because things are very different back then they said, Oh, come and come and have a chat and I got on very well there with their head of engineering and so I joined renewable energy systems, RES, for five years and that was amazing because it meant I learnt how to design wind farms, solar systems and all about the practicalities of renewable energy. So that's how I ended up from the US back in this country and then I thought I'm still really passionate about the world and the planet and what I can do and I feel I'm getting a bit niche here, I'm very focused on wind energy and whilst it's a massive part of the answer I don't feel it's the full answer, I want to learn more. So I decided I'm going to take myself off travelling to see what everyone else is doing to see if they've got any answers. So again, back in the days when the internet was much less fast and you're able to do this, I think I put into Google renewable energy in the Caribbean and Fiji because I thought well if I'm going to learn about this I might as well go off somewhere nice to do it and an engineering company in Fiji got back to me and said oh actually we could do with some help. So I went off to Fiji to work with an engineering company and that was the complete opposite to RES where RES was an engineering consultancy and much more corporate, whereas Fiji, it was basically one man, he set up an engineering firm in Fiji to go and install renewables. But for me, it was great. It gave me really hands-on experience as opposed to talking about the theory and that's, I think, I've taken through in my career trying to get hands-on experience as well as matching that to the theory. So I worked in Fiji for a bit, came back and thought, "Okay, I'm going to take my renewable energy knowledge that I've learned about now and I feel I can advise people on this now to work as a consultant in renewable energy and also sustainability as an extension for that from that for many years and then thought, I still don't feel like I'm making a difference here. I feel like I'm doing a lot of talking and nothing really is happening and I could see because as part of my role, which had again become much more corporate, I had to organise lots of events and I really loved it and it was quite a dichotomy for me because I was doing a very, very important job advising very important people, governments and ministers and very big companies on sustainability and renewables. But the bit I loved was the event organising, the organising of conferences and that kind of thing, which wasn't part of my job. It's just something I happened to do and I thought, well, maybe I can maybe this is it, maybe the events industry needs some of the knowledge that I have. So I decided to set up Legacy back in 2016. I was living in Croydon at the time, which is where I grew up, and it's all snowballed from there. So Legacy is a sustainable events company. I try and advise the events industry on how to be more sustainable. People always say, "Well, that's a crazy end point from starting as a space scientist, as an atmospheric scientist." But for me, it doesn't feel like that because a lot of the issues are still applicable. So when you're talking about festivals, for example, empowering festivals, my renewables knowledge is really applicable there and when we're talking about the built environment and energy use and carbon emissions and waste, the experience I've had working sustainability is also very relevant. So to me it doesn't feel a complete change of direction, it feels a natural extension from where I started, which is really about understanding as much as I can about how to solve some of these environmental issues and then applying them in the best way that I can. Howard Bentham We're talking obviously about the changing face of the workplace from your 20-plus year working experience up until the pandemic. Would I be right in assuming that obviously things have changed technology-wise, but really that it hasn't been a great world of change over those two decades? Abena Fairweather I think there has been a world of change, but it feels like the world has caught up to what a lot of people were doing anyway, in various industries. I think some of the buzzwords around today around flexible working, hybrid working, video calling. All of these terms perhaps didn't exist in the same way, but a lot of multinational companies or smaller companies have been doing this already just without calling it those names. So to me, it feels like the rest of the world has caught up and so it feels like a big change. But actually, it's just an actual progression of what's been happening gradually over 20 years. Howard Bentham So the pandemic in your mind, then is not the great red line that's where things have changed since the pandemic. It's just a bit of a catch-up game. Abena Fairweather It's just become more mainstream, exactly. Howard Bentham Interesting, because as you've touched on there, there are many variations, hybrid, flexible working. How important is flexibility for businesses to survive in the current climate? And are these variations sort of working for everyone? Abena Fairweather Again, it's not a new thing. Flexible working has been enshrined in UK law for a long, long time. So this shouldn't be a new topic for any business, but perhaps now they're starting to grapple with what that actually means for a large proportion of their workforce and so I think it is difficult, but it feels inevitable to me, it's back and the pandemic has accelerated that. Flexible working seems a natural way of responding to the modern world, which is now 24-hour, the workforce is made up of different types of people and we've seen all those kind of demographic changes coming through and so it is a difficult conversation, I think, for businesses to have, but it's inevitable that it's had and it really should have started that conversation should have been happening for the last 10 years really. Howard Bentham Maybe because they haven't been happening,, if you like the implications for businesses are a little more stark technology and the expense around that perhaps and just general costs of how these things are going to be managed, conversations that needs to be had, should we say about the management, might not have been happening in the past. Abena Fairweather Absolutely and I feel this touches on lots of issues pertinent to the workforce. For example, perhaps the people making the decisions, the businesses now of a different generation to the people coming into the business who think completely differently and so those conversations were going to happen as the workforce age changed anyway and so it might feel like a significant investment now as I said it feels inevitable the workplace has always changed as the new generation comes in and so it's about being aware of that and planning for that. Howard Bentham Tell us a bit about Legacy then and how you operate as a business as I mentioned earlier Legacy has been operating a four-day working weak pretty much from you when you started wasn't it? Abena Fairweather That's right so it was part of me trying to understand about trying to solve some of the world's issues and that includes social issues. It felt very hypocritical for me to talk about sustainability and the need to reduce carbon emissions and a lot of that without really understanding what a work-life balance really meant for well-being purposes for example and so I wanted legacy from the start to really try and live those values and have a true work-life balance which it seems obvious to me that means a week that's more balanced in terms of how much time you spend at work and how much time you spend at your leisure. Howard Bentham Right, a lot of people listening to this podcast will go okay, then I mean, are there some basic rules generic rules around a four-day week, I get that you work for days, but is it full pay that for your four, four days, the hours that you work, I mean, the days off that you have, how does it work? Abena Fairweather So there are lots of different ways that you can implement a four-day week. There are some rules though that all the studies really show that in order to get the benefits you need to apply. So the first, and this is probably the most, I suppose, controversial, is that to work a four-day week, the idea is that you give your employees 100% of their pay for working reduced hours. So it's not that you reduce their salaries by an amount commensurate with the four days, it's that you give them the same salary but require them to work less hours. So it's not about condensing a week into four longer days. So that I think would be the fundamental rule of a four-day week. After that, it really depends on what your company's goals are and who your audience is. So for example, at Legacy, we're a sustainable events company, so we try and organise events considering the environment and social issues in their design. And for us, Monday tends to be a quieter day in terms of organising events. So we all do not work on Mondays. For us, it's just an extension of the weekend and we all work Tuesday to Friday. But if you're in a different type of business, it might be that each employee chooses the day of the week, but they do, therefore, they take off during the week or it might be another model I've seen is to, on each of the five days a week, to work a shorter day. So to make up your day off by working two hours less, perhaps, a day. So there are different ways that it can be applied. It depends on the industry that you're in. Howard Bentham And talking sort of more generally again here, we'll focus on your business in a bit. What's in it for the employee? We get the perk, if you like of same money for fewer hours, what else is in it for, for those that work for the company? Abena Fairweather I feel like there's quite a lot of benefits for the employee and they range from apparently quite trivial to quite fundamental. So one is that at the moment, I think a lot of people find it quite difficult to organise doctor's appointments, lots of life admin, I suppose, tasks, because everything is closed on a weekend and so it gives people a day of the week to be able to organize that kind of thing and that means they don't have to do it in the rest of their working week. So I suppose that's a benefit for both the employee and the employer, that all of that stuff is contained within one day. Another huge benefit is just the time to be able to focus on other things outside the workplace, as well as manage your family or caring obligations. So a lot of people I speak to who do a four-day week, they use that day to go and visit museums or to volunteer, or just to spend some time walking around or just reading or relaxing. It's like I see another day that can be just your day to really just catch up on what you like to do and linked to that are the benefits for reducing burnout as well, for just greater well-being, greater potential for being in nature, all of those things which are very good for productivity, so they benefit the business are also very good for for the employee. Howard Bentham Okay, that's a good sell for the employee, perhaps a tougher sell is what's in it for the employer because the deal seems stacked against the bosses on the face of it. Abena Fairweather It does. But to answer that question, I'm not quite sure what we convince the employer if the data already does not convince. All the studies show that a full day week is beneficial for an employer because it results in greater productivity, fewer sick days, less burnout, less stress, better relationships between the employer and the employee, and that's good for business. All the studies show that regardless of whether they've been done in this country or the other studies that we've done in Iceland, in Belgium. So I think fundamentally it just seems to make good business sense. If that's what all the data is showing you, then it seems a no-brainer to me to not do this. I think the big hurdle is changing over, and that's what the recent study showed that ran from June to December last year. There is obviously going to be some investment needed to change over to a full day a week, just in terms of communicating that and thinking about the risks for your business. But once it's happened, very few businesses seem to go back to the old model because they can see it works for them. Howard Bentham What about the affordability of it? I'm thinking for the employer here, five days' pay for four days’ work from the studies. I've read a number that you've referenced there. Productivity would need to rise by 15% to pay for it. So you're asking people to work harder than in those four days. Abena Fairweather No, I mean, again, referring back to the studies, and I'm referring again to my experience in the workplace, I'm pretty sure there's 15% of work time fact to be trimmed in a lot of people's working days, just because a lot of the time people are burned out. So they take that time back during the working week. So it's a well-known stat that in this country, we are probably not the most productive in terms of so all the full day week is doing is just increasing that productivity time whilst giving the employee benefits. Howard Bentham What about increasing inequalities in our society? They tried this for about the last 20 years or so in France, and it's shown that the lowest paid have ended up with lower pay because of it. So it's if you like exacerbated the inequalities in society, that's often cited as a reason why this is a bad idea. Abena Fairweather I thought there's there are many, many studies that show that flexible working actually is better for addressing inequalities. But in this particular case, I think that's why the fundamental point about a four-day week is it has to be 100% of the pay for 80% of the time, if you reduce the pay as well, then obviously that will lead to the inequalities that you've been talking about as employees try and gain that salary that they feel they've lost and so that's why that is such a fundamental role of Implementing a successful four-day week. Howard Bentham Hmm, but do you take the point that it could if it's not done properly Exacerbates an inequality and obviously that's not what we're trying to achieve here in an already unequal society. Abena Fairweather I don't feel, I can't see how it would personally, and none of the data shows that it was exacerbating inequality. As I said, flexible working is seen as something that massively addresses some of the issues around inequality and like I said, if you do it the way as advised by the four-day-a-week organization, so you do not reduce your team's pay, then I can't see how that would then lead to the inequalities that you're talking about purely because of the four-day-a-week. Obviously, if you're in a business where you've got other issues that you're addressing around to hours, contracts and that kind of thing. That might be something to work on in terms of inequality, but I can't personally see how a four-day week would exacerbate those issues. Howard Bentham Really interesting. One question I really wanted to ask from a very personal point of view is that you're an events company. I work in events as well and some of the days in events are Victorian mill length, 17, 18 hour days. It's crazy sometimes, but you have to do it. That's an event. So how does that square in the four-day world you inhabit? Abena Fairweather Yeah, of course, and I get that a lot. And my answer is that to me and to my team, a Monday is just like a weekend. So as you say, there are some times in the lead-up to an event where we are working all hours to get that event done. And as you know, if you do work in events, your deadline is your deadline. There's no missing it because the show must go on and so my team is used to working long hours in the run-up to that event as am I, that standard for an events company. However, in the same way as if I asked my team to work on Sundays or Saturdays, they can then claim time back if they work on a Monday. So it's exactly the same as to me as working on a weekend day out of hours in any other context. Howard Bentham So how does your team operate now? Then are they expected to be in the office? Do they work from home around this flexibility is it's really fascinating this insight into your world, because again, there'll be a lot of managers and employers listening thinking about how can we make that work for us because this does sound like a great idea. But will it work for me? Abena Fairweather Again, so setting up Legacy, carbon emissions was top of mind in terms of what are some of these societal issues? I really want to address especially in the events world and so traveling is a massive issue there. So we've also been a remote-first company since the beginning. So we do have an office in Oxford, but my team are remotes all over the place and that's worked for us since the beginning and continues to do so. So for us, the pandemic obviously was difficult as it was for everyone in the events industry. But we were already used to working remotely, we had a four-day week and also because of our sustainability goals, we've been talking to clients about virtual events and running some events virtually for years, absolutely years and so when the pandemic happened, it wasn't such a huge shift for us, we switched quite quickly into running virtual events all the time, because we saw it as a necessary part of any event strategy, any company that wants to be more sustainable. Howard Bentham And in a creative company like yours, I'm assuming then legacy doesn't have a water cooler because you won't have any water cooler moments. So if you're doing this, how do you be creative when you don't see people face to face? Abena Fairweather So we do meet sometimes I think it's very important to get together face to face. So we do meet face to face. We obviously work on events together and we just create those water cooler moments online as well. So we use online calls, we have lots of team chats, we Slack, we use that a lot to stay in touch. So we use the standard set of tools to try and try and stay in touch. But again, this is not something new to any company that's multinational will have been working on some of these issues for 20 years. This won't be new to them. So it just feels like the world has finally woken up to the fact that this is a new way of working. Howard Bentham Yeah, I'm just sort of trying to think like a, like a boss hearing this for the first time. Okay, yeah, I can see how this might work. So do you think flexible working then is reliant on building trust with your employees? Because you've sort of touched on this, what's the stop me on my day off going to work at the local factory or whatever I want to do and that sort of defeats the object of my day of rest? Abena Fairweather I think successful working is important is reliant on building trust and I think successful companies are those that have the trust and manage their teams appropriately and so if you have the kind of employees who you don't trust to focus on your work specifically, then that's a management issue or if you already have company policies in place to restrict your staff working elsewhere, if that's appropriate for you, then again, that shouldn't, a four-day week isn't really contingent on that. But as I said, flexible working has been enshrined in UK legislation at least for a long, long time and so if companies don't trust those who have applied for flexible working for whatever issues in the past, then this isn't new in that sense. Howard Bentham That leads nicely into about staff retention, productivity, happiness. I mean, talk about some of these tangible successes that you've seen from this way of work. Abena Fairweather It's quite difficult for me to answer that question, because Legacy has always worked a four-day week. So from a legacy point of view, it's difficult for me to give you stats on it was this way before and now it's this way after. But I can say that I have a very engaged team. I have no issues with retaining staff at all. I suppose my issues might be that I find it quite difficult to get my staff to take longer leave because they don't feel burned out. They don't feel they need to take two or three weeks at a time. So I actually have to manage them to take longer, longer holidays. So that I suppose could be seen as a downside. We seem attractive as an employer. I think like many people in the events industry at the moment we are struggling to recruit, but I think that those are issues linked to the pandemic as opposed to I think lots of companies are struggling with that. I'd love to be able to give you stats on saying we implemented a four-day week and my business is now 16% more successful, but I can't because I don't have a before situation to compare to. But we seem to be successful, viable, we have a range of clients. So as far as I can see it, there would be no reason to change it. I can't see any downsides that would lead me to say a four-day week at Legacy is not working, therefore let's go to a five-day week that would seem to be massively harmful. Howard Bentham More, I mean you talk about your staff not wanting to take their leave because they love you so much they want to be at work with you, but more generally then, any other negatives that have been thrown up in this cards on the table. Abena Fairweather I genuinely can't think of any I really did back my brain so one is definitely asked my staff don't seem as willing to take longer periods of leave and I think it's important that they do, especially in the events world as well. I think it's managed when they do. I don't want them all taking leave at the time of, well, Christmas actually is the classic one. Everyone gets to Christmas, they haven't taken their leave, and then everyone wants to take all their leave at Christmas because as a legacy, I want staff to take their leave. So I don't really want them to carry it over to the next year. So I suppose that might be a downside, managing staff leave. I really, really am struggling to think of any others. I suppose sometimes in the events world, it feels like the week is too short, that you can't get as much done in a week. But that's, I think, just a factor of working in events when a deadline's approaching and it doesn't feel like there's enough hours in the day. So I don't think that's unique to a four-day week. So honestly, I've racked my brains. I genuinely cannot think of any downsides to doing one once you already do one. Howard Bentham A study that I've read recently, because a lot of the studies you see around really do highlight the merits of this new way of working. But perhaps you're not hearing both sides of the story. this research I saw was from a leading recruitment firm of about 3,000 employees. They said that just on the headlines from it, overall working hours only reduced by about four hours. Just over a quarter said they were working more hours or had no change to their five-day a week. About a fifth reported an increase in burnout and interestingly, nearly three-quarters would give up work socials to have the chance of working a four-day week means that they would be happy to give up that work culture. What are your thoughts on that? Abena Fairweather So again, that study, I would really need to understand if they did a true four-day week, did they give their staff 100% of their pay or did they reduce their salary accordingly? So I feel that it's not comparable unless we know that. But to answer the point about some employees still working the five days, again, I think that that's a management issue as I've already alluded to in working in events, having a four-day week policy, it's not magical. Some staff will still work overtime, they will still work extra hours, there are still pressures in the workforce, difficult clients, pressure to overwork, all of that still applies. It's just that as a business, your standard operating procedure is to work four days instead of five. So if your company is having those issues, they're not going to magically go away just by implementing a four-day week, they still need to be managed. Howard Bentham And again, employers like the NHS, for example, would a four-day week model work for them, especially in the current climate, or industries where the lights have to be kept on 24/7? Abena Fairweather Well industries where the lights have to be kept on 24/7 are already used to shift working. So for them, it should be a natural transition to just having shorter shifts or however that might work. But I believe there are some public sector organisations who've already embraced a four-day week. I seem to remember reading about a council quite close to here who for their refuge collection staff have implemented a four-day week and to me, that seems the ultimate test because obviously, there are specific days when that activity takes place. So if that organisation can do it successfully, I can't really think of any use cases why any other organisation might not because as I've said, a flexible working environment has been enshrined in law for a long, long time. So companies should already have been to having staff that work different numbers of hours in the week. So it's just about doing that at a larger scale. It shouldn't be a completely new process to think through for any organisation. Howard Bentham That's really interesting, Abena. Thank you for that for the moment. Let's bring into the conversation OxLEP's Corporate Operations and Compliance Manager, Sadie Patamia. Sadie, you're the sort of brains behind getting this four-day week trial. I should stress it's a trial at OxLEP. Tell us how that's going because it's only been in place for a couple of months. Sadie Patamia That's right. So we started in April on our four-day week trial and we are operating 100-80-100 model. So we're working from Mondays to Thursday. So OxLEP is closed on Friday and we are having 100% of the productivity, 80% of the time for 100% of the wages and the way we've sort of made sure we have 100% productivity is, you know, again to echo what Abena said earlier, is by trimming that work fat. So we're looking at the way that meetings take place, can they be shorter, the amount of time people spend answering emails and all that sort of thing. So there is, you know, work to be trimmed out of the day. So that's how we're working at the moment. So we're working 30 hours a week for our full-time staff and our part-time staff have obviously had their hours reduced as well by and large by about the 20%. Howard Bentham And what are the sort of key objectives then? Are you setting out to achieve what? Sadie Patamia So what we want to achieve is to increase the well-being of our staff, to improve their work-life balance. We want them to come back to work on a Monday feeling rejuvenated and rested, relaxed and ready to go again. Howard Bentham And you're working with 4 Day Week Global on the project. Worth just explaining who they are and what they do. Sadie Patamia So, 4 Day Week Global are a, as the name suggests, a global not-for-profit and what they are doing is they are helping businesses all around the world get on board this, you know, 4 Day Week movement to actually, you know, change the way work works globally by they are organising trials all over the world. I think they're just starting one in Australia, but they are they're doing that this all over the world type trials and they provide mentoring there are platforms that will help you with training your staff and how to, you know be as productive and they supply mentors there are you know forums and all that sort of thing so you can sort of have discussions with other people so it's like a support system. Howard Bentham And what about you personally how you you finding it how's it changed your world how's that how's your admin, I love how you describe that, your admin day from your life? Sadie Patamia It's great, I mean it's really good because it's given me the opportunity to do some volunteering as a trustee with a local charity, so I'm doing that sometimes on a Friday which is really great, helps me feel like I'm giving back and also at the moment it's helping me support my teenage daughter as she navigates the worlds of university applications. But you know that's really useful because it means we can go to the University Open Days which are often on a Friday without me actually having to use my annual leave to do that. Howard Bentham And how does this change in the way of working aligned with or indeed impact upon the recruitment process at OxLEP? Sadie Patamia So what we're hoping is that it will really help us become an employer of choice. We know that the job market is really difficult at the moment and it's difficult to attract talent and what we hope is that by doing this sort of thing, we work flexibly as well we're a hundred remote business and we're hoping it'll help us stand out when you have the opportunity to work flexibly and potentially to be doing four days a week. Howard Bentham Yeah, Abena the conversation around recruitment and retention is a really interesting one when you factor in the four-day week. I mean businesses I guess looking to try and stay relevant in terms of workplace changes what would your advice be here? Abena Fairweather Oh gosh that's a that's a huge question but I suppose for For me, it would be to really try and embrace the new ways of working based on the evidence that's available to do that. So as I said, there are many studies that show that a full day week is better for business productivity. For example, there are many studies that show that having a diverse workforce is better for the business. For example, there are many studies that show that considering sustainability right through your business practices are better for your workforce. So even though it might seem a difficult decision to have, especially at the moment with the cost of living crisis, to make those kinds of investment decisions, all the evidence shows that it will pay off. So that's one I suppose, be brave and consider the studies that are available and perhaps the second tip might be, this doesn't all need to be implemented in one chunk. I think it's just about being strategic about how you might do that and the order you might work on things. So we've talked today about being remote first. We talked about being a four-day week and flexible working that doesn't all have to happen in one day you can be managed and strategic about how that's done. Howard Bentham Is the four-day week symptomatic to the workplace now it is a buyer's market for job hunters. So I see is four-day week advertiser I'll have a bit of that perhaps going on. Abena Fairweather Absolutely. I can't see how it wouldn't benefit your recruitment process. It would definitely be seen as a perk and it would definitely be seen as a perk I think for the younger generation as well, who are much more interested in working for companies that fit with their values and also allow them to perhaps expand on their interests or be more purposeful in their lives. So it's definitely a recruitment benefit. Howard Bentham Would you back that up? Sadie Patamia I agree entirely. We talk about it being a perk. At the moment it's a perk, but in the future it would be great if it was just the norm. But the other thing to remember in all of this that we haven't mentioned is that we're all working for longer in our lives. of the days where one retired at 60 or 65, you know, goodness knows how long, you know, people are in their 20s are going to have to work to. So to be able to do it for four days a week is… Howard Bentham That’s very good point, actually. I mean, what factors are potential employees seeking when it comes to looking for a new job? You talked about how difficult it is to find the right people in the world of events? What are they asking for? Abena Fairweather They're asking for flexible working, absolutely and remote working as well. So to be able to work from different locations and they're asking for an office often for the younger generations, they do want an office and they want they want an attractive working environment and that I think is a difficult thing to manage. If you have a large proportion of your staff who want to work remotely, how do you then create the kind of vibrant office that especially the younger generation wants to work in. So they're asking for that. They're not so much asking for what you see in lots of articles about businesses. So they're not really asking for free dry cleaning or ping pong tables, or any of that kind of thing. I've not seen that. Howard Bentham So it's a ping-pong free zone? Abena Fairweather We are a ping-pong free zone at the moment, but those kind of perks don't seem to be really significant to that. Pay obviously is, you know, an important factor with recruiting as well. But I'd say pay, working for a business that has some kind of values or speaks the same kind of language, that share the values of the person and flexible working, I think are the main three. Howard Bentham And what are you seeing at Oxford, Sadie? Sadie Patamia I agree. I think it's, you know, employers need to show and prove that they genuinely care about their staff in terms of their mental health and their well-being. Having a poster up in the break room isn't enough. You know, you need to actually, you know, walk the walk and show that you care about mental health and wellbeing and a four-day week and flexible working they're living proof that we are invested in you as our staff. We're empowering you. We trust you. We're here for you. Howard Bentham Sadie and Abena, thank you both for the moment. We'll chat again shortly. It's good to have you along for OxTalks, the brand-new podcast series powered by the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership. If you want to get in touch with the team at OxLEP to comment on what you've been hearing, find us on social media. We're on Twitter @OxfordshireLEP or via LinkedIn. Search for Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership. Perhaps you run a company or organisation that's looking for some specific help, or simply need a steer to the most appropriate business advice available. Why not try the OxLEP Business Support Tool? OxLEP Business Support Tool OxLEP's Business Support Tool is here to help your company. Whether you're just starting out, growing or ready to take on a new business challenge, if you're looking for the latest advice and support, complete our Business Support tool today and get set to receive a bespoke action plan for your organization. Head to OxfordshireLEP.com to find out more. Howard Bentham Let's chat more to Abena Fairweather. This is so, so interesting getting inside your head and we talked right at the start of this podcast about your sustainability goals. Let's focus on three words that have become so important to businesses of late environmental, social, and governance. Why has ESG become such a thing? The gospel of ESG. Abena Fairweather Yeah, it feels a little bit like sustainability has been rebranded, but I feel like ESG is something slightly different to sustainability. So ESG, I suppose, environmental, social, governments to me is about responding as a business to those issues. So it's almost a risk management issues. If you're a company that is very concerned about your supply chain, for example, how might weather changes in Asia affect your business? That to me is a core ESG-type issue. Whereas sustainability is really more about how can your business contribute towards resolving some of those environmental and social issues. So it's more outward facing. So I suppose for me the difference is that ESG is looking at the world, how it affects you, so inward-looking, and sustainability is about how your place in the world, and your business affects the world. I agree that it's huge at the moment. I think ESG, because it is so closely linked to risk management, really originated in the financial sector and that is why at the moment it is huge because the financial sector is facing all kinds of challenges. I probably don't need to go into what those are and so that's why ESG combined with climate change and some of those other issues does seem so important. Howard Bentham What would your advice for businesses looking to integrate ESG policies be and where is a good place to start? Abena Fairweather So I feel like a business can't really avoid looking at ESG now. It stands for environmental and social governments, especially if you're a larger business and you are buffeted by what is happening in the world supply chains. You cannot afford to just ignore what is happening environmentally, especially as climate change now is visibly having an impact on the weather systems of various parts of the world and so you can't ignore that and socially as well, I think we've seen all kinds of issues come to the forefront in the last five years socially as well and that can have a massive impact on your business. Governance again, there's been, I think, a lot of companies have fallen foul of perhaps not having stringent governance. To me, it's just about managing risks outside of, say, legal and commercial risks, all those other risks which impact on your business. You can't afford as a business to just ignore those. Howard Bentham Could they be viewed as a distraction? I mean, away from what you do as a business and seen as a, I guess, another layer of admin that you've got to deal with and stopping us being a profitable company. Abena Fairweather I'm sure you could see risk management as a distraction and you could see legal issues as a distraction as well. And all governance issues as a distraction, but I think they're fairly fundamental to a successful business working and again, the studies show that considering some of these lead to better business, they lead to more productive businesses, to more successful businesses. So if you really want to stand out and to really transform your business for this next phase of work that we're in, it really is not something that you can afford to ignore. Sadie Patamia I agree entirely. I was actually at a conference quite recently that took in a lot of ESG topic and the other thing, you can bring it back around to your employees. Statistics show that at a certain age group, so say the 20s to 30s, won't even consider working for a company that doesn't have strong ESG policies and governance in place. Howard Bentham If you're setting sustainability goals, if this is something as a business you're looking to do, how would you do that and what's a good way of measuring them? Abena Fairweather Two fantastic questions. So speaking from the point of view of legacy as a sustainable events company, we have nine themes that we adhere to with all our event design processes and they cover issues such as transport and travel, energy and carbon emissions, waste, water, social issues. So we try and embed those nine themes in everything that we're doing and that keeps us structured in terms of what we're doing and allows us to set targets. In terms of measurement, we are not perfect by any means and that's because it's often really difficult to measure some of these issues. For example, if you're running an event and you feel you've done a lot in terms of making that event more positive in terms of social change, how do you capture that in metrics? It's really difficult and I don't have the answer to that, but we try and we try and use other companies and data out there to try and measure that. But I think first would be trying to set some kind of strategy or goals around what sustainability means to you as a business and that might vary from being supply chain focused to environmentally focused to governance focused, whatever that means for your business and then starting from there and then thinking perhaps longer term and working back to if you've set goals for 2040 for example or 2030 as a business what does that mean for your actions in the here and now? Howard Bentham Sadie you've got a couple of questions from our social channels what are what are people asking? Sadie Patamia So we're being asked do employers working for a four-day week ever put restrictions on what staff can do on this extra day off which we touched on earlier. Certainly at OxLEP we don't, it's an extension of the weekend and you know we have I say we have no interest in what people are doing that's not true we're very interested in what people are doing because it's exciting you know we've hearing all sorts of tales of horse riding, volunteering and all that sort of thing but I think that most companies shouldn't do that because you know it is a day off it is not an extension of the work and all that sort of thing so it's you know it's important to actually respect people's time so… Howard Bentham But equally, it is my time and if I fancy going working freelance for somebody, should I be able to? Abena Fairweather I think that depends on your individual company policies. If you allow staff to have a Saturday job, for example, then the same might apply if you go to a four-day week. If you don't allow your employees to take on other work, then the same applies. It shouldn't be any different for a four-day week. Howard Bentham So you put no restrictions on yours at all. Abena Fairweather At Legacy, we don't put any restrictions at all on the same way I don't restrict what people can do on their weekend. I don't put any restrictions on what people can do on their Monday, which is the day that we have off in the week and I agree with Sadie in that I think employers should be careful about encroaching on that time, because that relationship of trust we talked about earlier was that I will be more productive in my work hours in return for that time off. That's what the100-80-100 model is that the final hundred of that is that it's a kind of a statement, a pledge to be more productive. And so to respect that bargain, the employee does need to be hands-off on the time that they've given back. Howard Bentham That's really interesting. What else have you got for us? Sadie Patamia We've been asked how the four-day working week affects employees' mental well-being and does the model contribute to increased social isolation where colleagues have less time to connect with each other. So I can speak from our point of view, we've undertaken quite a lot of training before embarking on our four-day week to help people understand productivity and a lot about themselves and the thing that we've always made it really clear is those chats, those conversations are still really important. Yes we're trying to make meetings more efficient but not at the expense of “what did you do at the weekend then” type conversations. We also have an employee-led social committee at OxLEP so it's the employees making decisions about when is the right time to do something social, what should it be and how can this work for the majority of staff. As a remote business, it's really important to us to maintain those relationships with each other. I think we're doing a pretty good job of that. Howard Bentham That social isolation thing is really important, though, isn't it? Because you can still feel isolated even in a busy room on a busy zoom call. How do you deal with that? Abena Fairweather It's a really good question. And I don't think that we've dealt with it really satisfactorily, actually, because I feel that there's a it's a completely valid point, but especially the younger generations are perhaps missing out on some of that social activity that old people like me just took for granted when I entered the workforce. So at Legacy, we have various weeks that we organise. We have a well-being week, for example, that we all take part on. That's really good fun. So we try really hard to just have social activities as part of what we do. Another example might be that if we're all working on an event, we'll reserve a day perhaps after the event to get together as a team socially. But it's a really valid question. I don't think it's necessarily a question about the four-day week as such. I feel it's a question about the changing nature of work and online versus offline and how connected we all are and AI and all of those other issues. So I don't know the answer, but I don't think it's specifically about a four day week. Sadie Patamia I would agree with that. And the other thing to bear in mind with this new way of working is that one has to be much more intentional. When you say to somebody on a Zoom call or if you are in an office or at a meeting, how are you? It's the classic actually, you know, ask again because everybody is programmed to go and find thanks without thinking about it and working remotely, it's really important to be really intentional about your interactions and make sure you're, you know, really paying attention. Somebody that's always had their camera on on that team Zoom call, why is their camera off? And, you know, it's worth having a you know maybe just keeping an eye on that sort of thing it really helps. Abena Fairweather I think so and also just having the space for non-work-related chat I suppose the unproductive parts of the day where some of that is important for business so and it's often difficult to do that on a zoom call to ask what somebody watched on TV or night before or whatever it might be so just making space for non-work time really. Howard Bentham Yeah and that's especially in the world of events the decompression factor is really important isn't it just you do need to come down from the highs on that. But some final thoughts from you, if we can. What would be your top three tips for businesses looking to implement a four-day working week based on your experience? Abena Fairweather My experience is that we've always worked for four-day working week. So for me, I'm advising businesses, you might be transitioning from an existing work setting to this new way of working. So I appreciate that it's a really difficult concept for lots of businesses to grasp that this could work, that they reduce their working day but still somehow become more successful as a business. It doesn't seem intuitive, I appreciate that. So I think my first tip would be to do the research. There's lots of research out there, there are lots of studies on this, so you don't have to trust what people say, you can go into the numbers yourself and look at that. So do the research and that's also helpful because if you do decide this is something you want to try and need to explain it to people, you're going to get all kinds of questions about it and it's good to be armed in advance with answers to that. So do the research, understand the data. The second tip probably would be if you're considering it, the reason it works is because you really need to adopt the fundamental kind of principles of a four-day week. So as Sadie and I have been saying, the 100-80-100 model. If you try and adopt parts of that, you're probably not going to get the success that the studies have shown. So to try and be wholehearted about this and so you can embrace the entire concept, not just the parts of it you think might work for your business and again, I accept it feels like a huge thing to implement for any business. So to do a trial. Summer actually is a great time to do a trial because I think a lot of staff really like I'm sure to Fridays, for example, to take advantage of the longer daylight hours. So do a short trial to see what happens and then if that works, that perhaps makes it easier to transition into a fully working four-day week model. Howard Bentham Huge thanks to Abena Fairweather and a big thank you also to Sadie Patamia from OxLEP as well and thank you for listening to OxTalks. As I mentioned right at the start, this is the final edition in the first series and we hope you'll tune into more when we're back later in the year. Please spread the word, tell your friends or colleagues about us and if you feel so inclined, leave us a review. free to share your thoughts and suggestions on our social channels. It's always good to hear from you. Remember, business support in Oxfordshire is just an email or a phone call away. The OxLEP Business Support Tool can signpost you to expert help in just a matter of minutes. It's definitely worth taking a look. Find it on our website oxfordshirelep.com and if you didn't catch any of the first five editions of OxTalks, do find time to listen to the CEO of Blenheim Palace, Dominic Hare on the vital role of the visitor economy, Chas Bountra from Oxford University with his vision to retain world-class talent here at Oxfordshire and Emma Gibson on the importance of SMEs. The whole series is available from where you normally get your podcasts and all episodes are definitely well worth a listen. But for now, from the whole OxLEP team and from me, Howard Bentham, it's goodbye.