Raphael John-Lall

FORM Ar­chi­tects Ltd is one of T&T’s first com­pa­nies to suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment a four-day work­week and its man­age­ment is now en­cour­ag­ing oth­er lo­cal com­pa­nies to fol­low their in­no­v­a­tive path.

The de­bate on the four-day work­week is cur­rent­ly at an all-time high. Just last month, US Sen­a­tor and for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Bernie Sanders an­nounced his in­ten­tion to bring a Bill to leg­is­late a 32-hour work­week that would not de­crease salaries in the US. If suc­cess­ful that leg­is­la­tion can have glob­al im­pli­ca­tions.

Fol­low­ing the grow­ing trend glob­al­ly, in Feb­ru­ary, Ger­many, Eu­rope’s largest econ­o­my start­ed a tri­al where em­ploy­ees from se­lect com­pa­nies worked for four days with the same salary,

In Feb­ru­ary, Sun­day Busi­ness pub­lished an ar­ti­cle in which the Em­ploy­ers’ Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA), T&T’s largest em­ploy­er-um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion said in a state­ment that it is not sure that the do­mes­tic econ­o­my is ready for the four-day work week con­cept.

FORM Ar­chi­tects Ltd, a Caribbean de­sign firm lo­cat­ed in St Clair, Port-of-Spain, is one lo­cal com­pa­ny that has put the mod­ern work­week on tri­al and is weigh­ing in on the con­ver­sa­tion.

The con­struc­tion in­dus­try’s rigid Mon­day-to-Fri­day sched­ule did not de­ter FORM, but in­spired a clever workaround.

While it was ini­tial­ly a pre-pan­dem­ic ex­per­i­ment, FORM has just com­plet­ed a five-year tri­al of the short­er work­week, and it be­lieves that every lo­cal com­pa­ny should con­sid­er the same.

At the heart of this trans­for­ma­tive jour­ney is FORM’s di­rec­tor and prin­ci­pal ar­chi­tect, Ja­son Scar­lett who en­vi­sioned this mod­el as a per­fect match for FORM’s sus­tain­able ethos in 2019.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Scar­lett shared this vi­sion.

“We were in­spired by a com­pa­ny do­ing the same in one of the Nordic coun­tries and we weighed the pros and cons and un­der­stood that it would align with our over­all ethos of sus­tain­abil­i­ty. From the po­si­tion of lifestyle sus­tain­abil­i­ty, it of­fered a bet­ter work-life bal­ance with po­ten­tial pos­i­tives in men­tal health. But al­so it of­fered the ben­e­fit of en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty in terms of re­duced en­er­gy us­age in of­fice and less time in tran­sit for our team which would al­so low­er car­bon emis­sions. Over­all, it aligned with our con­scious­ness of sus­tain­abil­i­ty.”

Scar­lett high­light­ed that the mod­el stood firm de­spite the pan­dem­ic, en­hanc­ing team mo­ti­va­tion and ef­fi­cien­cy. With a clear fifth day, the com­pa­ny al­so utilis­es it for con­tin­u­ing pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment to stay ahead of the curve.

He added that the move al­so al­lows team mem­bers to get to ap­point­ments or to run er­rands such as bank­ing that can on­ly be fa­cil­i­tat­ed dur­ing the week with­out hav­ing to re­quest a day off. And oc­ca­sion­al­ly, there are team-build­ing events as well, all of which add to a greater qual­i­ty of life for the FORM team.

Scar­lett said, “In essence, our abil­i­ty to ser­vice clients is un­af­fect­ed. In fact, most clients do not re­alise that we are off on the fifth day. If there is a rea­son for them to con­tact us or vice ver­sa, we still tend to it, but gen­er­al­ly the fifth day is a day that our team mem­bers can use as need­ed. If there is a ma­jor rea­son for us to work on that day in a giv­en week, we agree to it and work as usu­al.”

The com­pa­ny al­so us­es the fifth day/Fri­day in weeks where pub­lic hol­i­days oc­cur.

Scar­lett and his team are con­vinced that the se­cret to repli­cat­ing their suc­cess lies in clear rules, stream­lined process­es and in­tel­li­gent use of tech­nol­o­gy.

“The beau­ty of the four-day work­week lies in its scal­a­bil­i­ty and uni­ver­sal ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty. It’s a win-win, re­duc­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal foot­prints through de­creased traf­fic and en­er­gy con­sump­tion while of­fer­ing em­ploy­ees in­valu­able per­son­al time. But first, you must un­der­stand your in­dus­try and ap­proach it with clear rules and process­es.”

Speak­ing to Sun­day Busi­ness, Van­dana Per­sad, FORM’s stu­dio man­ag­er, at­tests to the life-chang­ing im­pact of the three-day week­ends, high­light­ing the pro­found im­prove­ment in work-life bal­ance this mod­el of­fers.

“The op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage in hob­bies, spend time with fam­i­ly or friends, pur­sue ex­tra class­es with­out hav­ing it con­sume one of the two week­end days is ab­solute­ly in­valu­able,” she not­ed. “Every team mem­ber treats their ap­proach to the fifth day dif­fer­ent­ly, but they all un­equiv­o­cal­ly be­lieve that every T&T com­pa­ny should ex­plore the four-day work­week as an op­tion.”

FORM’s as­so­ciate di­rec­tor and se­nior ar­chi­tect, Rygelle Dowd­ing, who al­so spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian, out­lined that the fifth work­ing day is not a “hard stop” but is cur­rent­ly treat­ed as a ca­su­al day.

“First­ly, we en­sure that our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is op­ti­mised when we are in the of­fice so we are al­ways ahead of dead­lines and client re­quests. We are mo­ti­vat­ed to en­sure that all work is ser­viced with­in four days, which will al­low us the Fri­day off,” she ex­plained.

Dowd­ing al­so in­formed that en­er­gy com­pa­nies in T&T al­ready do a ro­tat­ing 9/80 sys­tem, an­oth­er ap­proach that can be con­sid­ered.

The 9/80 work sched­ule is where em­ploy­ees work 80 hours over nine days dur­ing a two-week work pe­ri­od. It is a fixed work sched­ule that lets busi­ness­es give their em­ploy­ees a four-day work week every oth­er week, while still work­ing 80 hours over the two-week pe­ri­od.

Suc­cess­ful tri­al

The ques­tion that aris­es is whether the tri­al has worked and Scar­lett re­mains con­vinced that they made the right de­ci­sion.

“The team is at least 20 per cent more pro­duc­tive since this im­ple­men­ta­tion,” Scar­lett high­light­ed. “The team’s bet­ter men­tal health re­sults from a three-day week­end, al­low­ing every­one to rest, re­cov­er and re­turn ful­ly charged, mo­ti­vat­ed and ready for the new week.”

He al­so ad­dressed po­ten­tial con­cerns about main­tain­ing cre­ativ­i­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion in a con­densed work week and as­sured that the re­mote and in-per­son work blend catal­y­ses in­no­va­tion and team co­he­sion.

“The bal­ance we’ve struck fos­ters a dy­nam­ic en­vi­ron­ment where cre­ativ­i­ty flour­ish­es, ben­e­fit­ing our projects and, ul­ti­mate­ly, our clients,” he added.

Scar­lett re­ferred to U.S. Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders who is push­ing for the US to adopt the new work­week.

In a state­ment, Sanders high­light­ed that mov­ing to a 32-hour work­week with no loss of pay is not a rad­i­cal idea and Amer­i­can work­ers are over 400 per cent more pro­duc­tive than in the 1940s.

He added that the 1938 U.S. Fair La­bor Stan­dards Act set many mod­ern work­week rules that are ac­cept­ed glob­al­ly to­day, in­clud­ing min­i­mum wage and the 40-hour work­week. How­ev­er, in an age of 24/7 al­ways-on con­nec­tiv­i­ty and tech­nol­o­gy and with changes to the typ­i­cal fam­i­ly home in terms of both par­ents now hav­ing to work with ris­ing liv­ing costs, the idea could soft­en the mount­ing burnout lev­els seen in many or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Scar­lett con­clud­ed by say­ing that FORM’s pi­o­neer­ing adop­tion of the four-day work­week marks a sig­nif­i­cant stride to­wards cul­ti­vat­ing a for­ward-think­ing work­place cul­ture.

“This ap­proach en­hances em­ploy­ee sat­is­fac­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and sets an in­flu­en­tial ex­am­ple for com­pa­nies across the Caribbean and be­yond. In em­brac­ing this in­no­v­a­tive mod­el, FORM demon­strates how busi­ness­es can thrive by pri­ori­tis­ing their peo­ple’s and the plan­et’s well-be­ing.”