A business owner in Cardiff has flipped the nine-to-five norm on its head in favour of a completely flexible working week. Aled Nelmes, who owns marketing agency Lumen SEO, lets his staff work whenever and wherever they want in an effort to “harmonise work and life”.
Aled has questioned many of the everyday routines most of us follow without thinking twice about. He’s now consciously gone against the norm in search of a more efficient, staff-friendly way of working. Aled’s employees have paid breaks, can work from wherever they want, and partake in a variety of team bonding activities.
After a successful switch to a four-day working week two years ago Aled decided to go one step further and ditch certain days and times completely. At Lumen SEO they now have a completely flexible 32-hour working week to help fit around hobbies, childcare, traffic, holidays, and hormones.
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When they went down to four days a week, initially as a three-month trial, they cut the week by four hours overall so they worked four nine-hour days, either eight until five or nine till six. Aled said in those two years the “had our best growth years”.
“The four-day week was so successful for its increase in flexibility, autonomy, and trust that I wanted to see how we could get more flexibility out of it. I decided to take it to a new extreme where people can plan their weeks how they like them.”
Aled said it was his “inherent curiosity into human performance” which sparked his interest in what the best way for people to work is.
The nine-to-five working norm became widespread after Henry Ford introduced the eight-hour day and five-day work week across his factories in the 1920s. At the time it signified a reduction in work hours. Aled reflected: “The nine-to-five became popular in the industrial age yet now in the digital age and the AI age we still have the same working pattern.”
Aled said the more he looked into working patterns the more he realised it didn’t make sense. He said: “I think we’re trying to shoehorn women into leadership roles and we’re getting it a bit wrong. We’re trying to get women to work more like men rather than looking at their unique biological and neurological capabilities and playing to those strengths.
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“There are times in a women’s cycle when they have more energy but we aren’t giving them the autonomy of placing their hardest work in that phase.”
The further Aled looked the more he realised the current system don’t work for men either. “Men are way more focused and driven in the early hours of the morning so when you wake up guys get a shot of testosterone and that testosterone drops throughout the day.
“Because you’ve got emails and all that we’re not really doing any focused creative work until about 11 - and that’s if you don’t have meetings you don’t need to have.”
Something else Aled believes is especially important is ensuring people take breaks, because it improves focus and reduces employees error counts, so employees have paid breaks. It’s these small changes Aled has implemented which he credits with his 100% employee retention rate.
“I want to create a world that suits me as hopefully a father one day and I’d love to have a life where I work from seven till three and then go pick up the kids and kick a football or rugby ball around.”
Three weeks into the trial Aled has already seen both benefits and challenges. “The only challenge we’ve had is with training sessions. They are really important to our work and a lot of preparation goes into them so although we do record them it can be deflating when no-one turns up because they’re out doing something else.”
In terms of benefits Aled said he’s seen several. He said one of his account assistants worked the Easter bank holiday weekend and instead took some days off after. “She had a great time - it was silent and there was no traffic. It means that on Sunday she gets totally focused, total peace and quiet, very little messaging needed or communication needed. She can just focus down.”
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He said another employee finishes early on a Monday to make it to her football practice early and another is able to make room for a therapy session and they will pick up the hours missed later in the week.
Some people will shift their days to make a four-day weekend and another person was able to see their partner the day they got back from a four-week stint working in France despite it being a Monday.
“My favourite thing a team member has done is one of the girls does three hours of yoga on a Monday morning. I love that because whilst everyone else is like waking up and racing to work she’s doing three hours of bending around and deep breathing.”
Aled, who was born in Abergavenny and grew up in Pembrokeshire, conceded he was a bit of a hypocrite and didn’t stick to the 32 hours himself but explained he thought there would always be a difference between business owner and employee.
“Although I don’t do the 32-hour week I do work flexibly and I spent pretty much the entire winter out of the 海角视频 which is nice.
“I think there’s definitely a range in terms of some staff members are more experimental with it and some actually still quite like that Monday to Thursday structure that we had before.”
Aled is keen to continue after the trial but acknowledged he may need to make some soft rules and make sure meetings are scheduled when people are most likely to be working.