District council extends trial of four-day week after initial success

South Cambridgeshire District Council is to extend a three-month trial of a four-day working week until March 2024, after judging it a success in helping with staff recruitment and retention.

Reports to its employment and staffing committee found productivity had been "broadly maintained" and said the four-day week for all desk-based staff should continue and be extended to those in facilities management.

A report said in the three quarters to December 2022, the proportion of vacancies successfully filled had been less than 60%.

It noted: “Recruitment costs are not limited to advertising and going through the recruitment process.

“When taking into account the time spent inducting/training new employees to reach a level of full productivity in the role, estimates by Oxford Economics are that filling a role costs on average £30,6144 - making the case for addressing the recruitment challenge very clearly.”

By August 2022, there were 23 agency staff employed to cover vacancies at an annual cost of £2.1m when the wage bill for permanent employees in the same roles would be expected to be around half as much, “resulting in potential savings of close to £1.0m if the 4-day week improved recruitment to the extent that these roles could be replaced by permanent employees”.

Among staff surveyed about the experiment, 88.5% of respondents said they would like to move permanently to a four-day week, 10% were neutral and 1.5% opposed.

Working a four-day week did though create difficulties for workers aged under 25 and those new to the council.

“Both groups of colleagues show a decrease in ‘confidence with difficulties’…this may be related to reduced opportunities for on-the-job training, informal interaction and the transfer of tacit knowledge and it will be important to build in mitigations for this concern should the trial be extended”, a report said.

The reports concluded improved recruitment because of the four-day week would deliver savings by reducing reliance on agency staff.

Mark Smulian