Travel chiefs have argued a four-day week would be unlikely to work for many businesses in the sector, with one HR professional suggesting it would be a “nightmare”.
Xian Mayes, chief of people at The Advantage Travel Partnership, made the claim during a panel session at C&M Recruitment’s ‘ABC Live’ event in London this week.
“Personally I would love a four-day working week, but professionally it feels like a nightmare,” she said.
She added that larger organisations would have a better chance of being able to introduce the model, but small and medium-sized companies would most likely struggle.
Similar concerns were voiced by Resort Marketing International managing director Colin Pegler, as well as by USAirtours founder and chief executive Guy Novik.
Novik said: “Four days is part-time and if you can do five days’ work in four days, you’re not working hard enough over the five days.
“There is no way you should be doing compressed hours – that’s too many hours over four days and will be bad for quality.”
He added: “Let’s see how productive the people who switch to four-day weeks are in a few years’ time when we’ve got proper data.”
Jude Harvey, an equity, diversity and inclusion specialist at RealiseHR, said there were a number of different approaches to the four-day week, with some companies aiming to achieve it by maximising efficiency – for instance, by setting a strict time cap for meetings.
Photo: Guy Novik, Xian Mayes and Colin Pegler at C&M Recruitment’s ABC Live event in London on September 24, 2024