Sainsbury’s Trialing Four-Day Working Week

Namnews, 23rd February 2023

Sainsbury’s has become the latest company to allow its staff to work a four-day week as part of experiments to assess the impact on productivity and people’s well-being.

According to The Times, staff at the supermarket’s offices in Holborn, Coventry and Milton Keynes, as well as its warehouse employees and store managers, are all taking part in the trial, which is due to last three months.

Under the scheme, which aims to improve flexibility, employees have the option to work their 37.5-hour contracts in a seven-day week. It means some head-office workers could work on a Saturday and take a day off in the week, or could work longer weekday hours, should they choose. However, they are not allowed to take a string of Fridays off.

The future of the scheme will be subject to employee feedback. A head office worker told The Times that the changes are likely to be kept in place as the results so far had been “pretty good, in terms of the financials”.

There have been many such experiments in the past two years as Covid, rising energy bills and labour shortages led employers to re-examine the working week for reasons ranging from employee well-being to cost savings.

The results of a wider study released this week showed that allowing workers to drop to a four-day week with no loss of pay leads to happier staff and a boost in revenue for employers. Those in the trial reported lower levels of stress and took fewer sick days, while employers noted improvements in both revenue and staff retention with no loss of productivity.

A spokesperson for Sainsbury’s is quoted as saying: “We are always looking to evolve our ways of working to ensure we can do the best possible job for customers while continuing to be a brilliant place to work for our colleagues. We are currently testing new ways to be more efficient and offer improved flexibility.”

NAM Implications:

• Retailing is about real-time testing of ideas…
• So interpretation of the ‘working week’ is not a big step.
• So if works, roll it out…
• A pointer for others?