'The goal is for no one to have to work five days a week again' - Reseller Highgate IT to trial four-day working week

‘Any company of any size could make this work if they wanted to’, says sales director Bob Sahota

Highgate IT Solutions is trialling a four-day working week, believing itself to be the first UK channel business to make the move.

Speaking to CRN, Highgate IT sales director Bob Sahota said the trial will run for three months starting this April, with the aim of moving to a four-day working week permanently if it proves a success.

The reseller will implement a "buddy system" in which staff pair up and work on alternating days to cover each other when they are off.

Highgate IT employed 12 staff as of the end of last year but has hired six new members this year who will join over the next three months, said Sahota.

The Cisco, Lenovo, Dell, Microsoft, HP and Smoothwall partner has operated through a 100 per cent remote working model since it was founded in 2010.

The trial will be split into three "phases", with each phases lasting one month. In phase one, staff will take an extra day off on either Tuesdays or Thursdays, while phase two will trial a "long weekend" model in which staff are on leave either Fridays or Mondays.

The company will adopt a variation of whichever model of the two worked best for the third month of the trial, Sahota said.

Sahota stressed that, while everyone in the business opted into the move to a four-day working week, it is entirely voluntary and staff can continue to work five days a week if they wish to.

The move will not have any impact on salaries for any staff, Sahota said, and all employees will still be entitled to their full 28 days of holiday allowance each year.

The sales director said that he believes Highgate IT's staff will be just as, if not more, productive working a four-day week than five days.

"Through better time management and better use of our actual time, making sure we're prioritising certain tasks ahead of other things, we could make sure we're doing the same amount of work, if not more, and better, high quality work in the same or less time. So the idea and the thinking behind it is, can we find ways to allow people to maintain their level of productivity or improve it in less time? And I 100 per cent believe that we can," he said.

"The goal is, no one within the organisation will ever have to work five days a week again," he added.

"Our philosophy is we've got to do two things: enable the sales teams and all of the employees to do their job well and then to just look after them and be nice to them; be good human beings and put their wellbeing first. If we can find ways to do those things, then the business automatically happens," he said.

Sahota joined Highgate IT last year from Total Computers. He said that he had floated the idea of a four-day week to Highgate IT's managing director, Stuart Marginson, before he started the role.

"He thought it sounded wild but said he was open to anything, so I said ‘look, I think there's legs in it so let's try and make it work over the coming months'," he said.

Highgate IT has worked closely with a volunteer-led group called The Four Day Week Campaign which is helping to coordinate its own six-month trial of a four-day working week in the UK starting in June.

Moving to a four-day week is the second workday reduction initiative Highgate IT has introduced so far this year.

As of March, all staff's contracted working hours were reduced by half an hour, to a 9am-5:00pm working day instead of 9am-5:30pm.

When asked whether he thinks adopting a four-day working week will have an impact on Highgate IT's competitiveness in the market, or its service levels to customers, Sahota said that he believes the positive gains from the initiative far outweigh the negatives.

"Right now with the model that we're looking to move to in having a buddy system, it's the same that we'd do when someone's on holiday. When people have 28 days a year off and the cover is there, there's never any fall out from that," he said.

"We think if we can get customers used to knowing that their particular contact is off on a certain day, then they'll get used to either not contacting them on that day, or only contacting their buddy in the case of emergency.

"So I think there will be zero or very little fallout. But if, for example, we lose someone's business as a result, the positive gains from having very happy employees will far outweigh that."

Focusing on employee wellbeing and a move to a four-day week will have added benefits such as helping Highgate IT attract the best talent in the industry, said Sahota, as well as retaining its existing staff.

Other industry figures have singled out staff retention and recruitment as the biggest threat to any channel business in 2022, exacerbated by wage inflation and an abundance of vacancies in the channel job market.

"We're only as good as the people in the company. And if we start losing the good people, then what are we? From a perspective of retaining employees, I 100 per cent think it's going to play a big part," he said.

"I would want to go somewhere where the message is that we value you as an employee, that we're going to look after you, that we're going to put your health and mental health ahead of everything else. And that we will be doing four working days rather than five and we're going to pay you top dollar to do it."

Is there a chance that Highgate IT will revert back to a five-day week if the trial proves to be unsuccessful?

Sahota said the reseller will track sales KPIs throughout the trial period and beyond to see how the reduced workday has any impact on how the business performs, but said it's unlikely staff will want to go back to a traditional working week.

"I honestly think once everyone gets a taste of it, they're not going to want to go back [to a five-day working week]," he said.

"What we basically said to everyone is: ‘you are in complete control over whether or not we stick with this… it's going to come down to what you do'. If you make this successful, and you can prove that it's successful, then we'll stick with it. And if you can prove that it doesn't work, then we don't have to [continue with it]."

Is a four-day working week a luxury that only smaller companies can afford to pursue? Sahota doesn't think so.

"I think any company of any size could make this work if they wanted to," he said.

"It all comes down to their philosophies and whether they believe that the relationships with their employees are built on mutual trust.

"A lot of companies, I think, could hide behind different reasons why they can't do it. But the actual underlying reason is just a trust thing, which also applies to, for example, remote working.

"Could other companies make work? 100 per cent they could. All it requires is someone at the top to say ‘we're going to find a way to make this work.' And if they want it enough, they'll definitely find a way."