By Sebastian Kanally, Times Chronicle
To enhance employee recruitment, retention, and to address inefficiencies, the Regional District of the Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS) has agreed to trial a four day work week.
Starting July 1, 2024 the RDOS will begin a six month pilot project that will see all full time regular staff, including emergency management, water and waste operators move to the new operational change.
During the trial, there will be no reduction in hours of operation at RDOS offices or facilities. If all goes according to plan there should be no drop in productivity, and they may even see an increase in productivity by addressing the inefficiencies in the way RDOS work is conducted.
The RDOS hired Four Day Week Global to help institute the program. Debbie Bailey, head of growth for the company and Karmen Morgan, senior manager of human resources for the RDOS provided an overview to the board of directors on June 13 before they approved going forward with the project.
Morgan began by explaining that the RDOS started looking at this option because “early discussions have centered on staff retention, as retention rates have been identified as a risk to our organizational success.”
Four Day Week Global, who has experience piloting programs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, helped the RDOS construct a viable pilot program.
This included figuring out the following tasks:
- Defining and communicating trial measurements for use in an interactive dashboard;
- Identifying and addressing barriers and critical features of what success will look like and when to act when measurements present a warning;
- Supporting work week redesign (time and scheduling);
- Shifting mindsets from focusing solely on hours to that of output/productivity measurements;
- Supplying survey tools to gauge effectiveness and address gaps
- Providing resources, templates, timelines and lived experience support of a reduced work week schedule.
Bailey explained that the number one rule for the four day work week pilot is the 100/80/100 rule. This means that in a four day work week, the standard is 100 percent of the pay is received for 80 per cent of the hours worked on the basis that 100 per cent of the outputs are maintained.She continued to explain further that the number one priority is the business, and the business cannot be compromised.
“If we approach a project from the productivity perspective, the other benefits will flow, if you take the focus that this is all about the staff and well-being, then we take our eye off the main part which is the business, and if we don’t run the business well and sustainably, we don’t have a five day week let alone a four day week.”
According to the Four Day Week Global’s philosophy, retaining productivity, while reducing hours to four days a week can be achieved by focusing on greater efficiency and having a tighter focus on priorities.
Their position is that reducing work hours forces you to embrace strategic focus and ensure there is no loss in productivity.
“Once you identify those inefficiencies, you give your staff the opportunity to focus and really use that time on the most important projects.”
There is also the potential for financial benefits she explained. The cost savings, based on rough numbers pulled from one of their UK pilot programs, points to potential savings of $300,000 on staff recruitment, onboarding, absenteeism and burnout.
Some changes that will happen are staff will have shorter lunch breaks, and their overtime hours will go into a “flex bank” in an effort to “reduce organizational costs to support the initiative.”
Here in the South Okanagan, a central question accompanying this discussion was the emergency operations, particularly in the summer when wildfire season is in full swing and there are active Emergency Operations Centers (EOC).
Jim Zaffino, Chief Administrative Officer explained that if there is an EOC call out and the employee comes in on their own time, they will still be paid by the RDOS and reimbursed by the province.
Morgan explained further that they have been discussing the EOC a lot. They have built in some redundancies amongst the team and operations to prepare for this. She mentioned the fact that there are now two EOC’s in the Okanagan-Similkameen.
There is also a possibility that in some positions it may not be possible to go down to a four day work week Morgan commented.
“We are doing a lot of things behind the scenes that are not obvious, preparing staff for what this change could be and the true test is pulling the trigger on it.”
The RDOS employs 123 employees, and because of these considerations, it is still to be determined exactly how many will be transitioned to this new operational standard. Morgan noted that some managers will be given the choice.
Some of the board members had some initial hesitations about the project. Director of Area “B” Cawston, George Bush, commented that “there are a lot of variables here, and a six month trial is a long time. So I support the principle of looking at the position but I am a little hesitant to say yes to the motion as presented.”
Morgan responded that “a lot of today has been a pretty high level overview, I can assure you there is a lot of information in the background that we haven’t put on the table.”
A through line of Bailey’s presentation, which she noted again in response to some hesitancies, was that this is an experiment and it is important to have a “trial mindset” because an operational change of this sort needs to be created and it doesn’t just happen.
There are a lot of common challenges especially when it comes to government agencies such as limited budget and resources, staff burnout, attracting employees and a high level of scrutiny from the public.
Zaffino noted that if it is an imminent failure it would be visible and “we would not wait six months”.
