A company boss has introduced a four-day week for his staff without cutting their pay.
The shift in working hours is part of a trial for employees at marketing firm Fuel, based in Plymouth, Devon.
The only trade-off is staff now have to start work at 8am, working until the usual 5pm.
This is a longer day compared to their previous hours, but still marks a loss of three hours per week.
The company still operates five days a week, thanks to a new scheduling system.
Fuel provides market insights into major businesses such as Google and Meta ( Facebook ).
Martyn King, managing director of Fuel, said the trial started in early October - meaning they are three weeks in - and will run until March 2023.
It follows three months of consultations between the business and its workforce and clients.
Fuel has been working with Portcullis Legals which became the first business in the country to adopt a four day week.
The legal firm became the first in the country to receive a Gold Standard four-day week employer accreditation from the 4 Day Week Campaign after the switch in May 2019.
Mr King said: "It's certainly boosted morale in the office, we're now in our third week of it.
"There definitely was a period of adjustment though, we prepared well for it - but people are starting to adjust from working a five day working pattern to four.
"It's going well, but of course it is a big adaptation from the five day model people have worked their entire careers.
"We've increased our opening hours across the week for our clients, because we provide a lot of ecommerce work it's quite important to have people on hand all the time.
"But also, we effectively have two teams. On a Wednesday 50% of people have their rest day, and on a friday the other 50% have theirs.
"We have a close buddying system to match staff together, so that the skillset we have on at any one time is always complimentary so we always have the same range of skills available to our clients.
"It's a trial and it's aimed at making sure people are more relaxed and more productive, so we'll need to run the trial through fully.
"We're a busy agency though, so we'll need to adapt and then see if we'll maintain it in six months."
