Would you work 32 hours Monday to Sunday?

Unlock the editor’s digest in free

FT editor Raula Khalaf selected his favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

A few weeks ago, a 29-year-old boss of a small technical start-up in Wales went to LinkedIn that he said he was trying new ways to work.

“We’re leaving the four -day work week,” D Alad Nelmes, whose staff spent about 32 hours a week from Monday to Thursday, has not paid any salary from the previous five days.

It has increased the output and the staff, he said. So he was going one step further with a three-month-old three-month trial of 32-hour week. Employees can work at any time anytime from Monday to Sunday to any time they like.

The idea was to create Lumen SEO, he was as attractive to the Cardiff search engine optimization agency, parents, new joins and its existing seven existing employees founded in 2021.

In response to his post, it was right that was big.

About a thousand people commented on an idea that many said “epic”, “bright” and “stunning”. Several people asked if Nelmes was hiring. (He has planned). And the question that someone first came to mind was asking: How can something like this doing on earth? How do people know when is working? Are the staff for 24/7 forced to be communicable? How is the business reactionary for its clients to needs?

Nelmes admits that the attempt takes discipline. He uses a software platform to offer tasks for staff every Monday, depending on how many hours each task will take. A messenger equipment lets everyone know if people are available. A lot of preparations are made for meetings to avoid wasting time.

Everyone has to work at least two or three hours a week at the same time, but Nelmes thinks that in general, corporate working is very industrialized for the World Digital Age. So it is that people pay for their work time as possible to make as much size as possible.

“I would argue that since the members of the staff are more frequent, regular, structural work, they tend to come to the office with more ideas,” he said.

So far, Lumen seems to be an outlet.

The 4 -day Foundation in the UK has been encouraging 32 hours, four -day weeks for years, but its campaign director Joe Rill says most companies accept the idea of ​​four weeks.

The minority company has tried 32 hours a day in five weeks, he said. However he does not know about the full fat version of the lumen 32 hours in seven days.

I can see why anyone can try, if they are in a white collar sector and have a business like lumen, whose staff works a lot of work on the work such as writing material for company websites.

They will also need a boss like Nelmes who like to travel and winter in the Canary Islands for several weeks. (“You meet a lot of interesting people and it’s just healthy” “) and I’m sure it will help if any business is small.

Nevertheless, the lumen trial fits with the epidemic-festive shift for more flexible tasks, which continues to make a larger scale for much more expectation, Including meThe

The conventional four -day week itself has proved to be more strict than the forecast for itself, though most likely Not succeed Some preacher hoped.

In fact, the work site says that the posting part of the four -day week has increased significantly in the United States, Germany, France, Canada and the United Kingdom since 2021. But it is still below 1 percent, even in the UK, where there are the largest part of the five countries.

In 2022, Belgium gave workers the right to ask workers for four days, but only the existing hours concentrated, not cut them. Other regions have tested the concept, as there are many companies.

Among the 619 companies that participated in the UK’s larger six -month trial in 2022 56 The model has decided to continue, the 4 -day week foundation says, which has now recognized more than 230s for more than four days. Most have 10 to 50 employees. The largest is the Eptom, the app-based bank, which has about 470 employees. There are many sectors like technology and marketing. However, a number is undoubtedly guided by the authorities like Nelmes that is the path of the future and it is important, young. Their ideas may last a lot more than you think.