As Scoro moves to a 4-day work week, we’re bringing seven key focus areas to the fore and doing all we can to optimize our existing processes in these areas. In this post, we’re looking at Operations.
The four-day work week will have several underlying implications that we need to address to make sure the transition goes as smoothly as possible – but also for the roll-out to succeed in the long term. Switching from 40 hours to 32 hours a week will mean a change in holidays as well as our financial and legal operations. We need to make sure we’re being as fair as possible to employees, and also that we’re complying with regulations – taking into account that we are doing it simultaneously in different regions.
Streamlining operations for a smooth roll-out
To ensure a smooth transition, we want to make sure we’ve ironed out any legal and operational issues that might affect our future success. It’s key that we develop permanent schedules for our team and consider the possibilities of rotation and new hires – especially in peak business periods – as well as policies around time off and general workloads.
Outlining our objectives
We’ve drawn up a set of Operations objectives – in consultation with our team – that will help pave the way forward and enable us to start taking the necessary steps to achieve our goals. These will include:
- Compiling an appropriate legal framework for implementing the 4-day work week
- Reviewing and adjusting holiday policies to correspond with a 4-day work week set-up
- Reviewing payment processes (i.e., what dates staff will get paid each month)
- Agreeing on office management practices on Fridays for employees who decide to work in rotation (i.e., no urgent communications with non-working team members)
- Identifying critical positions and roles that need coverage from Monday to Friday and coming to an appropriate solution
- Assessing the need for additional hires and outsourced services
Our roadmap to success
To help us meet our objectives, we’ve developed a roadmap to success. This includes:
- Work by our operations and legal team to ensure we are being as fair as possible to employees and adhering to all legal and financial regulations (i.e., policies, and holidays).
- Communicating with our team: Remaining transparent and open with our team about any changes made and taking on board their feedback and concerns.
- Creating a company-wide 4-day work week policy: Developing a policy that highlights how Scoro’s 4-day work week operates and gives employees insight into what they can expect out of their holiday pay and policies once the transition has been made.
Monitoring our operations
We will keep a close eye on our Operations roadmap as we move to a 4-day work week, regularly assessing our company-wide policies and updating them if necessary.
Nothing is set in stone – we understand the need for flexibility and will make sure to allow for the fact that more adjustments might be needed further down the line.
We will also make sure that our two policies – company-wide 4-day work week policy and time off policy – are fully completed, and that stakeholders’ opinions are implemented, at least 1.5 months before our rollout. This will ensure that we can tackle challenges head-on and stick to our goal of a permanent transition.
Preparing for challenges
Ultimately, the company-wide success of our 4-day work week hinges on the success of our Operations initiatives, which is why, as a team, we’re so focused on aligning all payments, holidays, policies etc with a 4-day work week setup from the outset. We anticipate a few challenges ahead, namely the fact that we operate a global workforce with different time zones and schedules. This just means we’ll need to be careful when drawing up our time off policies to ensure fairness across the company. We believe that being mindful of these challenges will enable us to improve our Operations initiatives even further and maximize our chances of success.
As with all the initiatives and policies our teams are introducing this summer, the aim is to ensure we’re building a robust, equitable foundation for all before we begin.
We will continue to share updates on the progress of our operations squad as we transition into a 4-day work week.