As banks worldwide grapple to find the right balance between flexibility and authority over their staff, the CEO of U.K. digital bank Atom has a simpler solution: eliminate the fifth day of work.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Atom CEO Mark Mullen said the bank’s landmark four-day workweek, introduced in 2021, has been “considerably less challenging” than the clunky hybrid policies that are sweeping across many of the world’s biggest companies.
To prove he’s right, Mullen points to lower attrition and a clean bill of health among his staff, in addition to the bank’s freshly secured profits.
Atom’s four-day week
In 2021, Atom introduced a four-day week for its then-430 staffers. Contracted hours were to be reduced by 3.5 hours to 34 hours per week while employees’ wages remained the same.
In addition to the four-day 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 for day-to-day operations.
“With four-day working, we planned the shift patterns, we planned the changes, we consulted on the changes of employee contracts… [Y]ou’ve got a resourcing model that delivers your business… [T]hat’s not what happened with flexible working,” Mullen told the FT.
Those benefits contrast with mandated days back in the office under a hybrid structure, which Mullen said could make managers “afraid to ask their employees to come back to the office” while fostering a “rebelliousness” among workers.
Introducing the four-day week in 2021, Mullen said, “proved that working practices that may have seemed years away can be introduced rapidly.”
Since then, Mullen says, attrition and sickness rates at the bank have fallen, echoing findings from the world’s largest four-day workweek pilot, carried out in the U.K. in 2022.
Atom, founded in 2013, recorded its first-ever profit last year, raking in £7 million ($8.9 million).
Banks diverge
Banks across the globe are clamping down on flexible working policies introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
New U.S. regulatory policies have forced banks in the States to bring their staff back into the office five days a week. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has said staff who don’t want to return to the office should seek alternative employment.
Other banks are fighting to implement a new hybrid policy, often with clunky outcomes.
In February, Deutsche Bank introduced a restrictive remote-work policy, banning staff from working remotely on a Friday followed by a consecutive Monday. Most Deutsche employees are required to work three days in the office, while managing directors need to be in situ four days a week.
However, DBV union president Stephan Szukalski told Bloomberg that the policy has faced “enormous resistance among staff,” vindicating Atom CEO Mullen’s fears of rebellion.
Atom’s case is the latest example of some European banks going the opposite way to their U.S. counterparts.
Mike Regnier, the CEO of Santander UK, only took his $4.2 million role at the U.K.’s fifth-largest bank on the condition that he wasn’t required to work from the company’s London head office five days a week.
This allowed Regnier to continue living in Harrogate, some 200 miles from Santander’s U.K. headquarters.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be away from home five days a week in London. That wouldn’t have been good for the family or for me,” Regnier told the Guardian.
