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Looking for comments on four-day working week

Journalist: Lana Clements, The Sun

ended 08. June 2022

Hello 

I am writing about the four-day working week and how this would work in the mortgage industry….  story for Mortgage Solutions

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61570021

To be clear, this is packing 5 days of work into 4 through smarter processes / higher efficiency as oppose to taking off one day a week and doing less work as a result.  

With that in mind, looking for thoughts on whether this is a good idea / can it work / how would it work. Is there anyone doing this?

Also interested on any thoughts on productivity / efficiency that tie in…

thanks

 

Lana

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Rob Peters
Principal at Simple Fast Mortgage
Instead of dictating a 4 day week, or a 5 day week, why not just allow people the flexibility to choose their working patterns, depending on the needs of the business, and their personal preferences. 4 days packed into 5 days might work well for one person, but not necessarily all people. It's about time we had a more sensible approach to working practices, agreed by real workers and businesses, instead of dictating pre-conceived ideas dreamt up by academics in Oxford and Cambridge who may never have done a real weeks work.
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Rhys Schofield
Brand Director at Peak Mortgages and Protection
Being a complete industry maverick and disruptor, in theory I'm always keen on doing things differently if it means a better result. The research seems to show that this is the case. The only problem is when a case goes Pete Tong but the advisor is off and the client can't get hold of anyone, it has complaint written all over it. The only way I see it working is with a wider team supporting each other so someone can respond to queries if someone is off. Saying that I don't know a single broker packing 5 days work into a 5 day week at the moment so I'm not sure how feasible it is!
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Graham Cox
Director at Bridging Hub
It's a great idea, and trust me I'd love it to work. But the mortgage industry needs a radical overhaul for a 4 day work week to work for advisors. There's too much legacy technology still being used, not enough open banking, poorly designed and worded forms and so on, all of which makes the mortgage advisor's job much harder than it ought to be. No doubt, it will improve over time though.