The latest OxTalks podcast – the new series powered by OxLEP – is now available to watch or listen.
In this episode, which is the sixth and final in this first series, OxTalks looks into the topic of the ‘changing face of the workplace’.
With a tight labour market – not only in Oxfordshire but across the UK, coupled with many businesses looking into different ways of working following the pandemic – workplaces have needed to embrace transformational working like never before. This episode looks into the four-day working week in particular, an approach to business being considered by more and more organisational leaders.
If we take a long look back to the industrial revolution, the typical Victorian mill owner had workers operating six long days per week, with Sunday as a day of rest. In 1922, it was the Ford Motor Company that experimented with the five-day week, something that became permanent in 1926.
WATCH: OxTalks – series one, episode six: 'The changing face of the workplace'
Today, post-Covid 19, our working world is changing shape with an overriding mantra of those championing this new way of working being: 'Don't think about the hours, think about productivity and outcome'. What does it mean for recruitment and retention too?
In this edition of OxTalks, host Howard Bentham is joined by Abena Fairweather – the founder and MD of Legacy – an award-winning, sustainable events agency that has been operating with a four-day week since 2018.
OxLEP’s Sadie Patamia also features in this episode, discussing the company’s recent transition to a four-day working week trial period, which was launched in April this year.
OxTalks and is recorded at the Oxford studios of Story Ninety-Four.
