Skip to the main content
Menu

The climate bonus of a four-day week

Working less probably isn’t the first thing you think of when it comes to tackling climate change.

But one of many benefits of a four-day working week, including healthier staff, is a smaller carbon footprint.

This is exactly what Klyne Rodgers, commercial director at Glasgow-based Alba Facilities Services (AFS), found out last year.

“Climate action was an unintended consequence. It was something that we wanted to do, but we hadn’t considered that [a four-day week] could be a path to it,” she says.

Employee wellbeing

AFS employs a team of 20 office staff and 45 engineers who install, repair and maintain gas, electrical, lighting, heating and ventilation systems – among other things – in commercial buildings across Scotland and northern England.

Working in the industry can be stressful, with engineers sometimes sitting in rush hour traffic for hours and helpdesk staff juggling competing demands from customers. They operate 24/7, every day of the year.

So, in 2024, managing director Ian McCall decided to trial a four-day week, with the intention to improve employee well-being.

He was supported by researchers at the University of Strathclyde, through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership. After a nine-month trial period, Ian made it a company policy.

Staff are paid for a 40-hour week but are only required to work 34 hours, or 4 days.

Productivity goals

To qualify for the extra day off, employees must meet productivity targets. This has created a powerful incentive to find ways to work more efficiently, explains Klyne.

For example, the helpdesk staff plan out the jobs and driving routes for engineers to minimise the distance they need to travel and avoid peak times and traffic.

If everybody incrementally does a little bit every day it adds up. Klyne Rodgers, Alba Facilities Services

Meanwhile, engineers have started setting aside time at the end of the day to review the following day’s jobs, to ensure they arrive on site with any materials and tools they might need.

“If everybody incrementally does a little bit every day it adds up. If the engineers pre-plan the night before, they’re not doing double visits to customers. If the route planning is better, we shrink the travel time down per job,” says Klyne, “the reduced travel time reduces cost to the job and increases margins.”

To help achieve this, AFS decided to empower their staff to make decisions more independently. Rather than needing to always wait for managers, engineers now make calls on how best to use their own time and respond to sudden changes.

“The culture change has been huge,” Klyne says.

They have also made use of Microsoft Power BI to give staff data on their week-to-week performance.

Climate bonus

Thanks to the productivity boost since introducing a four-day week, Alba Facilities Services has seen a 17% drop in overall mileage – even more than the 15% reduction in working hours.

This has meant £17,500 less spent on fuel each year. For a company with a fleet of 49 vehicles, this represents a meaningful drop in carbon emissions and air pollutants.

Fleet electrification is next on the agenda.

Since joining Climate Springboard in late 2024, the managing director Ian has been investigating what that switch might look like. They found that 90% of their remaining diesel and petrol fleet drive 190 miles or less a day – a highly feasible range for modern EVs.

Top tips from Alba Facilities Services

  1. Look for key influencers in your company. But know that this might not be someone obvious, like a supervisor or manager – it could be the fun character on the front desk who has a good rapport with the wider team.
  2. Culture change initiatives need data too. We went into our four-day week trial thinking people were going to be the main challenge. But having good data for monitoring and evaluating the effect of changes is just as important.

Learn more: