Joel James MS held a virtual meeting on Monday (15th May) with the CEO and Founder of ‘Find Your Flex’ – Cheney Hamilton, to discuss the prospects of a 4-day working week.
Find Your Flex is an organisation that believes in a better future of work for everyone. Brexit and COVID-19 have completely changed the world of work and people’s priorities. Find Your Flex believes that work needs to be truly flexible and assess people on the value they can bring to roles, rather than their background.
Last year, Cheney spoke to the petition’s committee regarding the 4-day working week. After listening to her contributions, Joel was keen to organise a 1-1 meeting with Cheney to discuss her thoughts further as they both share concerns about this proposal.
During their meeting, Cheney was keen to express how the idea of a 4-day week sounds incredibly appealing to many but in reality, does not go far enough in providing employees with the flexibility they need. She believes that there are better proposals than to reduce the working week such as not having standardised hours and employers providing more flexibility throughout the day to accommodate the needs of their workers. Joel shared her sentiments and fully supports the idea of increasing flexibility, before trying to implement such a difficult and divisive approach.
After the meeting, Joel said:
“It was lovely to speak to Cheney today and discuss the prospect of a 4-day week further. We both share concerns about this proposal and fear that it does not provide the flexibility that it portrays.
My main concern is that if this plan was implemented, we run the risk of creating a two-tier society. A 4-day week is not something that can be rolled out across all sectors such as hospitality, education, and construction therefore, a separation is created between the affluent and the ones who are struggling.”
