UK's Atom Bank Introduces 4-Day Working Week Without Pay Cut

The online bank Atom Bank has introduced a four-day workweek for its 430 staff without cutting their pay, Daniel Thomas reported for BBC News.

Photo Insert: Atom Bank founder Mark Mullen

Employees now work 34 hours over four days and get Monday or Friday off, when previously they clocked up 37.5 hours across the whole week.

Boss Mark Mullen told the BBC it was inspired by the pandemic and would help improve wellbeing and retain staff. However, employees will have to work longer hours on the days that they are in.

Working patterns have changed over time. In the 19th century, most British workers worked six-day weeks, but in the 1930s, Henry Ford in the US and pharmacy chain Boots in the UK popularized the two-day weekend as a way of boosting wellbeing and productivity.

"Before COVID, the conventional wisdom was you had to commute in, sit at a desk all day and repeat that process when you commuted home," said Mullen, who has led the Durham-based bank since 2014.

"COVID showed us that it wasn't necessary…I think doing 9-5, Monday to Friday is a pretty old-fashioned way of working." He added: “I can't see myself going back to a five-day week.”

Atom was one of the UK's first digital challenger banks and had £2.7bn of loans on its books in the last financial year. Its new working arrangements kicked in on November 1 after a review found they would not affect customer service or productivity.

However, some employers believe it's not the right thing to do. In 2019, UK science research foundation the Wellcome Trust scrapped plans to trial a four-day week for its 800 head office staff, saying it would be "too operationally complex."

The decision followed a three-month study which found compressing work into a Monday to Thursday window could negatively affect the wellbeing of some workers and harm productivity.

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