As banks around the world struggle to find the right balance between flexibility and authority over their workforces, the CEO of British digital bank Atom has a simpler solution: eliminating the fifth working day.
Speaking to the Financial times, Atom CEO Mark Mullen said the bank’s four-day working week, introduced in 2021, has been “significantly less challenging” than the clunky hybrid policy affecting many of the world’s largest companies.
To prove his point, Mullen points to lower turnover and good health among his staff, in addition to the bank’s newly acquired profits.
Atom’s four-day week
In 2021, Atom introduced a four-day work week for its then 430 employees. The contract hours had to be reduced by 3.5 hours to 34 hours per week, while the employees’ wages remained the same.
In addition to the four-day working week, Atom’s now 547-strong workforce is free to work from anywhere as part of the bank’s flexible policy, with no mandatory days in the office.
Mullen says this incredibly loose structure has been a boon to day-to-day operations.
“With four-day work, we planned the shifts, we planned the changes, we discussed the changes in employee contracts… [Y]You have a resourcing model that…[T]That is not what happened with flexible working,” Mullen told the newspaper FT.
These benefits are in stark contrast to the mandatory days in the office under a hybrid structure, which Mullen said managers “might be afraid to ask their employees to come back to the office,” while sparking a “rebellion” among employees would promote.
The introduction of the four-day work week in 2021, Mullen said, “proved that work practices that may have seemed years away can be implemented quickly.”
Since then, Mullen says, turnover and absenteeism at the bank have fallen, echoing the findings of the world’s largest four-day working week pilot, which was carried out in Britain in 2022.
Founded in 2013, Atom posted its first-ever profit last year, raking in £7 million ($8.9 million).
Banks vary
Banks around the world are restricting flexible working policies introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
New US regulatory policies have forced banks in the United States to bring their staff back to the office five days a week. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has said that employees who do not want to return to the office should find other work.
Other banks are fighting to implement new hybrid policies, often with inconvenient outcomes.
In February, Deutsche Bank introduced a restrictive remote working policy, banning staff from working remotely on Fridays and then on a subsequent Monday. Most Deutsche employees have to work three days in the office, while directors have to be on site four days a week.
However, DBV union president Stephan Szukalski told Bloomberg that the policy was met with “enormous resistance among staff,” justifying Atom CEO Mullen’s fear of rebellion.
The case of Atom is the latest example of a number of European banks moving in the opposite direction of their US counterparts.
Mike Regnier, the CEO of Santander UK, took on his $4.2 million role at Britain’s fifth-largest bank only on the condition that he did not have to work five days a week from its London headquarters.
This allowed Regnier to continue living in Harrogate, some 200 miles from Santander’s UK headquarters.
“I wouldn’t want to be away from home five days a week in London. That would not have been good for the family or for me,” Regnier said the guard.