Flexibility in Focus

Ever wondered how a tech company can navigate the transition to a fully remote setup and yet maintain productivity? Imagine cutting down working days without compromising output, and at the same time improving employee satisfaction. In our latest episode, we're joined by Darren Stewart, co-founder, and COO of Tech Company Insureflow, who enlightens us on how they achieved this and more.

From aspiring trumpet player to tech founder, Darren's entrepreneurial journey is filled with lessons waiting to be discovered. He opens up about the challenges he and his co-founder Adam faced in their early days, sharing insights on finding clients and establishing a strong brand. Beyond just business acumen, he emphasises the importance of people skills in the entrepreneurial landscape. The conversation takes a fascinating turn as we explore the concept of a nine-day fortnight, its impact on productivity, and the intricate balance of employee motivation and work-life harmony.

We delve into the specifics of implementing a nine-day fortnight, the tangible benefits, and the unforeseen circumstances that can accompany such a policy. Darren provides a nuanced understanding of how this change can impact a company's culture, client relationships, and the overall work-life balance of its employees. Wrapping up the episode, we discuss the importance of flexibility in today's corporate world and the potential repercussions for businesses that fail to adapt. This episode is a must-listen for leaders seeking to remodel their work environment while maintaining productivity and employee satisfaction. Tune in for insights, experiences, and valuable lessons from a successful tech founder.

The Insureflow website can be found here https://www.insureflow.co.uk/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Flexibility in Focus
• 11:23 Tech Startup Challenges and Growth
• 20:34 Remote Work Challenges and Solutions
• 30:22 Implementing a Four-Day Work Week
• 39:40 Flexible Work
• 49:18 Hybrid and Remote Work
• 57:44 Improving Communication and Work-Life Balance
• 1:03:54 Work-Life Balance and Company Culture
• 1:12:42 People Skills in Business
• 1:15:54 Mum's Question

Transcript

John Hawker: 0:00

Jobs Worth season 1, episode 7, flexibility in focus. Welcome to episode 7 of Jobs Worth. This week, I'm speaking with Darren Stewart, co-founder and COO of Tech Company in Shore Flow. I've worked with Darren and the in Shore Flow team for over four years now and have seen them transcending through the scary oh shit where's the money coming from World of Tech startup to land firmly in scaling business territory. Like many business leaders during the pandemic, darren, along with his co-founder, adam, had to learn how to manage a fully remote team almost overnight. As you'll hear, whilst they certainly had the tools to ensure the transition to working from home went smoothly, making sure their people remained happy, healthy and engaged was an altogether different challenge. In 2021, as a way of giving back to his team for the incredible work they put in during the darker months of lockdown, darren and the in Shore Flow team embarked upon a trial of the nine day fortnight. In this episode, we talk about how it was rolled out in the business, how the changes were communicated to customers, the practicalities of implementing processes to ensure productivity remained at the right level and the importance of leading by example. We also discussed the impact the trial had on the company and their customers, the feedback from in Shore Flow's employees, and whether the nine day fortnight is now a permanent fixture.

John Hawker: 1:26

The nine day fortnight isn't for everyone. It's a point that Darren is clear to make, as are his views on the growing tribe of people banging the drum for a one size fits all approach to flexible working. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to a tech founder that is leading by example when it comes to providing flexible working opportunities for their people, darren Stewart. Okay, I'm going to be honest with you. I forgot to hit record on Darren's mic when he answered this question. So Darren very kindly accepted my invitation to come back on to Jobsworth, being the sticker for tradition that I am to answer the opening question, this time online. So I can only apologize to both Darren and the listeners for this segue, and we'll go into his answer now. So, darren, I'm going to ask the question again. When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Darren Stewart: 2:20

So yeah, I wanted to be a professional trumpet player.

John Hawker: 2:26

I don't know why Now, because I know that's the answer. It's funnier than when you initially said it, and I don't know why. But talk us through that. What was the inspiration behind that goal?

Darren Stewart: 2:39

Well, obviously, you know, trumpet's the sexiest of all the instruments. We all know that, so that was a big part of it. I don't know if I told you this last time, actually, so maybe this is new, but I joined a marching band when I was about six years old.

John Hawker: 2:57

You did not mention this in the first time.

Darren Stewart: 2:59

Already regretting this. I was in a field, at Fireworks, when it was Colt. That time of year. I remember seeing a marching band when I was really young and there was a bunch of people playing instruments and I said that's what I want to do. So we got lessons and joined the band and that was it. I was quite focused on that. Actually, I really did want to do that and I got what I thought was pretty good. So that was what I wanted to do, until a little bit later in life, which I'm sure you better ask me why I'm not a professional trumpet player.

John Hawker: 3:36

Why are you not a trumpet player? I mean, we'll go on in the episode that we'll segue smoothly into. I'm sure that was recorded in the office as well. But for a six-year-old to be stood in a field and see a marching band and think that that's what I want to be when I'm older, I think is a big aspiration. You still own trumpets, darren, as well, don't you? I think I'm sure you mentioned that last time. You've got some trumpets in the house.

Darren Stewart: 4:00

I do. I have three. You try and have three. Okay, I haven't used any of them for many years now, so I don't think they work anymore, but I do have three, so this is the thing.

John Hawker: 4:13

I know you're recording this from your office, but if you were at home right now I'd be tempted to come on. Do you take requests? But obviously that's not something you can do. Maybe next time. Maybe soon Maybe soon We'll do a special.

John Hawker: 4:27

I'll give you an intro? Good shout, actually. Okay, we'll consider that. I'll talk to the producer. Okay, darren, thank you so much for coming back on and recording that. I really appreciate it, mate. Thank you, cheers. Right, enough of that waffle, let's dive back in. So you've gone through that experience up to the point. You decide then to start a tech business. So you're saying there as well that the technical aspects are fine, but not necessarily setting the world on fire. So you've found a business which, at the time, is called Gavia. How are you pronouncing the name?

Darren Stewart: 5:01

Well, we were Gavaia, gavaia. We were the only people that pronounced it, gavaia.

John Hawker: 5:05

Probably because I was doing the recruitment for you in the early days and telling everyone what's going on with you as well. So that might have been my fault, but so you start this business, gavaia, at the time, what comes into your head? Do you want to start a business, but you know that maybe the technical expertise that you have isn't going to set the world on light. So how did you go about making that decision and jumping into that next step?

Darren Stewart: 5:28

Well, it wasn't me and Adam, the co-founder, developing the system. So what we had done over the last well, over my career, the last 20 years, is obviously work with a lot of very, very good technical people and some of those people came with me to various different businesses. So after plus one, I probably moved on four or five times to different different businesses and some of those, some of those people came with me and some of those guys were really fantastic from a technical point of view. So when we were looking to set the business up, you know very confident around, you know there being a need for the product around our connections and our insurance knowledge and all those kind of areas and generally what the technology would need to deliver. But there's no way we could have done that just on ourselves. It wouldn't have happened. So we, you know we we talked to one of the lead people that I've worked with, a guy called Ben, and he agreed at the time looking back probably quite madly, but agreed.

John Hawker: 6:28

It's all worked out now To join us.

Darren Stewart: 6:32

And so he led the technical development of the whole platform, and still does in fact, and which allowed me and Adam to really focus on we obviously were involved in that, but on the wider stuff essentially yeah.

John Hawker: 6:46

Okay, because there's skills that you need within a business, because you could always argue that if someone's got all of that technical prowess and ability to build something, they're not necessarily going to have the business acumen to be able to grow it, expand it, get the clients as well. There are a lot of plates that you need to spin in setting up. So I think you're probably being modest about your technical ability. Maybe, who knows, you could have built it, but you had someone that you'd met along the years, that you identified as a great person, to bring in.

Darren Stewart: 7:13

Yeah, absolutely, and I think it's really important as well. I mean, it was a very small team, it was three of us. It expanded to maybe four shortly afterwards. But you also need some pushback. You know, just because I think an idea is a good idea doesn't necessarily mean it is, and so having someone that can take a different angle from it whether that be Adam at the time or whether that be Ben is really, really important in the early days so you don't go down a rabbit hole. So that input and so on is very important. I think if we hadn't had Ben, we would have had to find a way to bring someone else in or use a third party I wasn't overly keen on that but maybe in the early days too, to have someone that really could lead that and push back, certainly from a technical point.

John Hawker: 7:53

I think that's a really good point, and a key piece of insight for people that don't know much about founding or starting tech businesses as well is that you can have the idea, but not necessarily any ability. I mean, you've got more ability than most, but any ability, so you go and find an outsourcing provider that will build the product or build the solution for you.

Darren Stewart: 8:12

Yeah, definitely, and I know a whole number of companies and it seems to be happening increasingly at the moment in that approach and I think it can work very well. You just have to be really careful with it for lots of reasons around, everything from IP to what happens next.

John Hawker: 8:26

Ownership of that idea as well, yeah absolutely so.

Darren Stewart: 8:29

You do have to be careful, but there's lots of room for that and there's some good companies out there for doing sort of what's called minimum viable products. Get something out there or prove something out. Keep the cost low, keep the requirements basic.

John Hawker: 8:41

And then iterate on it, innovate as you go. Yeah, interesting, okay. So how much earlier than setting up Gavaia, had you made the decision? One day, I'm going to start a tech business.

Darren Stewart: 8:54

Pretty early. I've always been keen, I'll say always. Probably from when I started my first job I was really keen actually on running a business one day Can.

John Hawker: 9:02

I ask who you are. Did you have inspiration as in? Were there figures, were there other businesses or did you just know innately it was something you wanted to do.

Darren Stewart: 9:10

Part of it is I don't know, maybe I'm a bit controlling, I don't know but part of it is I've? Just had a desire to do it. But yeah, absolutely throughout my career there's been some people that I guess both ways it goes, actually Some that I've been inspired by. I think you know this is good, I can learn from this. I'd like to replicate that and put my spin on it, and others that have been quite terrible and you think okay.

John Hawker: 9:36

I guess it's a case of cherry picking what works, what doesn't, and then you take that and go for your own process with it.

Darren Stewart: 9:42

Yeah, absolutely. But I'm in a shout out to they're now called Hood Group in Southend. They were fantastic for that and there were a few key people in there that were real inspiration and I think that, particularly at the time I was there, they were just brilliant, forgiving opportunities and I'm really thankful for that. I mean, I took those opportunities and I think that's important to do and push yourself, but some of it was right time and certainly the right place at Hood, but yeah, yeah, cool.

John Hawker: 10:08

Okay, it's a different time. We're in now sort of 20 years after that first position and.

John Hawker: 10:13

I know we referenced Hood. That came up a little bit later in your journey as well. There's a lot more inspiration, I think. Or people can name tech founders, whereas two decades ago I mean other than the Steve Jobs and the Bill Gates and the people growing companies then even then I think it's much more in hindsight. We've just learned so much more about them, but at that time to find figureheads that you could really be inspired by was more difficult. Is that just my opinion, or maybe it's definitely more commonplace now that we're seeing it more?

Darren Stewart: 10:44

I think you're absolutely right. I mean, to be honest, it's never really occurred to me, but you are quite right. Back then there wasn't those people to aspire to, and if they were, or if they were, they would tend to be still really quite technical people. They've got it right, they build a really good team around them, but they went sort of technical first.

Darren Stewart: 11:02

Facebook would be a really good example of that, I guess. But now it is changing and to your point, there's a lot more technology entrepreneurs that don't do technology themselves, but they know there's a place in the market for it, they know they can make it work and then they build a team around that idea.

John Hawker: 11:19

And I think that can be quite inspiring for anyone that might be listening to this.

John Hawker: 11:23

I definitely had the preconception that you needed to be technically gifted to start a technology company, and I'm not doubling down on the fact that you just said that you would say the core ability is okay, but I think for people that want to start a tech business, they don't have to feel like the barrier to entry is so incredibly high. You need the business and you need the right people. It's not easy by any stretch in imagination, but it's more accessible, probably, than people from the outside looking in find it to be 100%, I think.

Darren Stewart: 11:53

if you know your area and you know it really really well and probably, I think, have some good contacts around it, and you've got a plan, I think that's the most important thing now. The technology there's so many good solutions, you bring in so many good people, so much stuff, that you can get pretty much off the shelf as a good starting position. It's less important than it used to be. It is much more about the business and about knowing your industry, knowing what you're targeting and how to achieve that.

John Hawker: 12:18

So yeah, that's it. It's like a subject matter expertise, absolutely.

Darren Stewart: 12:21

And then you can build it up from there.

John Hawker: 12:23

I'm going to go back to the Gavea point, because that was your name it was. It's now in Shoreflow. Yes, what inspired the name Gavea? And then why did you change it to in Shoreflow? Just touch upon that lightly, because it was just saying I was interested in doing the prep for this.

Darren Stewart: 12:38

So, gavea, we couldn't think of a name that. We didn't want a technical name, we wanted something that was short, and easy to remember, but we couldn't think of one. So this is pretty much Adam's next door neighbor's house name. When you say pretty much is it, it is which actually his wife Louise found for us when she was going for a run, so that's where she didn't have to look far. She wasn't running far no comment, which turns out to be an affluent town in Brazil somewhere as well, which also makes things quite confusing.

John Hawker: 13:15

So yeah, slightly, if you're trying to Google it, I guess. Well, yes, precisely.

Darren Stewart: 13:19

Why did we change? Because it was confusing, because everyone pronounced it a different way and it really didn't mean anything. So that's where we just we come up with it in the office one day, just something.

John Hawker: 13:29

that kind of is what it says it is, and that was part of a rebrand, wasn't it as well at the time? So that shows as well, because I've never changed the company name but four years in, I did a bit of a brand rephrase a couple of years ago now. I think you just develop and evolve, don't you as well? Your services develop and, as you say, you trial something and then you start to think about I'm sure, things like even like SEO, like how people are finding you online in short flow is much more relevant and accessible for what it is you actually do A hundred percent.

Darren Stewart: 13:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was the right thing to do, and I think it is. One should become a bit more comfortable in your own skin. You kind of know what you're about. Yeah, then it is worth changing A lot of people will be stuck on that, though.

John Hawker: 14:08

They'll come up with a company name and just be like no, I can't. I can't change it so early on. But actually sometimes early on is the perfect time to change it, because it may just spark the next step in your growth. Or it's better to change when you are small than when you get 10 years down the line. Yeah, absolutely.

Darren Stewart: 14:23

I think it's yeah, quite possibly yeah.

Darren Stewart: 14:25

I mean it was all linked into a whole load of stuff for us, because we were. It was tough at that time. You know, we've had some initial success, which was great, but then starting to try to get to the next level with the business was difficult. So the branding was one, because we wanted a new brand and something that made sense, but also it's quite a nice refresher for us as well, which is like okay, we've got to hear yeah, we're pleased with that, we feel like we're slowing down a little bit, let's get some energy back in this, and that was part of that drive. Actually, it's amazing what that can do, isn't it?

John Hawker: 14:53

From a mindset, perspective as well for you to just kick on from that point, definitely Because I've been aware of you guys since you started and to see your growth from the point that both you and I do. I don't know Ben particularly well, but I know he's been a sort of founding member along with you guys as well, and in it from the start. What were the challenges early days? Because, infamously, we all know about sort of famous stories with tech startups about the challenges that you find where's the money coming from? Who's going to take your products on as well? And then what, under two years, in the pandemic hit or maybe just over two years yeah.

John Hawker: 15:30

And so talk to me about some of the earlier challenges you had in building what was Gavao. We'll keep calling it in short flow, though.

Darren Stewart: 15:42

So I mean the number one was finding clients. I mean you can have the best solution, technology, whatever it might be product in the world, but you got to get the clients in. So that was always going to be a challenge, and it was a challenge early days. There was a way of approaching that which was getting a very strong price point to get in a room and then having to sort of do some things that potentially you wouldn't want to do in terms of where you might develop the application or so on, which wasn't part of the plan but you kind of have to do to start getting some headway.

John Hawker: 16:18

So I'm going to ask two questions on the back of that.

Darren Stewart: 16:21

When you say strong price point.

John Hawker: 16:23

We don't have to put this bit out there. But do you mean competitive? I mean cheap, I mean really cheap.

Darren Stewart: 16:31

I think I did the same thing when I started as well, so okay.

John Hawker: 16:34

So strong price point, I mean cheap. And then with the development of the application as well, you just mean, rather than have a complete product, it was more tailored, there was more configuration to make it fit for your client.

Darren Stewart: 16:46

Yeah, so the tailoring is. I mean, you nailed it on that and the idea from the start but all of this is was to create a single application that then you just on board clients to and you configure them for everything, but you're not changing the heart of the system. And and long and short of it is we had to early on to get the business in because people would say, yeah, that's fine, but we got to. We need to do this this way, otherwise we can't take you. So. So that was that was difficult, and you know that made actually the next couple of years very difficult, because probably the first five, six clients that we took on we had to go down that route.

Darren Stewart: 17:18

And then where you don't want to be as a technical business is with lots of different versions of the same application and but sometimes commercial realities and so on are that you kind of have to make decisions that you're not particularly comfortable with, but you got to do so. We then had to spend a good amount of time putting all that back together again. So now you know, a few years later everyone's on the same core version, we've got everything through the configuration layer and so on. But so there was. That was difficult Getting clients, you know. Once we got going with that became a bit easier. The funding we were very, very lucky with, really, we had a had a contact with a bit of an angel investor called Chris, who has been the most supportive person we could ever have ever have hoped for.

Darren Stewart: 18:01

So, you know we were, we were lucky around that, so that wasn't such an issue. But you know, in later life you still have to. We went through a couple of other funding rounds. You have to be aware of that and I think, yeah, you know, the pandemic did not help.

John Hawker: 18:20

I don't know many businesses. It did. No, my experience is very like that cliche of being on a roller coaster really there was highs and lows.

Darren Stewart: 18:28

Yeah, it was, and and yeah, those that got through the pandemic, they have come out stronger. So simple as that. So you know. So there is some positives around that as well. And I think your point about the roller coaster I think the biggest challenge we faced is we went in with it with our eyes open, but we didn't know how much work it was going to be, and I think that you know genuinely, it was probably two or three years with pretty much no day off, and that's fine, and I never mown about that, because we decided to start this business and do what we're doing. So you have to subscribe to those sort of things but but we weren't prepared for quite how difficult it was and also the highs and lows. You know you win a client or do something, great, it's fantastic day. And then the next day you know, okay, where's the next one coming from and how do I deal with this.

John Hawker: 19:14

It's showing the knee caps by something else that's completely unforeseen. Yeah, absolutely so you know loads of challenges.

Darren Stewart: 19:23

And probably the other one is it's all very well being an expert in the area that you are. It does get you going. But then you realize, okay, you don't know how to manage your finances correctly, you don't know how to deal with HR, you're not a marketing expert. You haven't got all of these different things as a larger company, which I've been in parts you know, a part of for many years there are a team of people you know, or you got someone guiding you through processes or you can chat to it.

Darren Stewart: 19:46

You just don't have that as a small business.

John Hawker: 19:48

So yeah, it's a really good point For me. Outside, looking in, it's an inspiring story. But when you really start to dig through the the gloss, you start to realize actually the day to day of it is that rollercoaster. It's an awful cliche, but I think it's the best one. There's ups and downs and loop the loops and sometimes you're going back on yourself as well. That's what it feels like.

John Hawker: 20:08

Talk to me a little bit more about the pandemic, because you had lead teams but you hadn't founded a business before the pandemic comes around. What was your headcount at that point Putting?

Darren Stewart: 20:19

you on the spot, but do you remember? I think it was about eight, something like that. It's fairly small, but still but office based. Yeah.

John Hawker: 20:26

Five days a week.

Darren Stewart: 20:27

Yeah, Because at that point who was asking questions around it, that's what it was.

John Hawker: 20:31

Yeah, ok, so the pandemic happens. What was your biggest challenge as a leader of people at that point? What did you have to do? What did you have to sort of focus on?

Darren Stewart: 20:43

Early days was actually pretty easy. Ok, because we're a tech business, we can work remotely, it's not a problem, and it's not things like we have things physically in the office that we had to access or anything like that, and so transitioning to people just working from home was really easy, and actually it was almost a little bit fun. People got to work in a different way. We were able to see if we could work that way. So I'd say the first couple of months actually for us was very, very easy, in a way that it would have probably been the opposite for many other businesses. That couldn't just make that jump.

Darren Stewart: 21:17

Where it started getting really difficult is you start one realizing how much or how much you can get done in a very short time space by just having a face-to-face conversation, and no matter how good it is working online with Teams or Zoom or whatever it is, there is something that is just easier face-to-face, and we started hitting some issues where something that might be a five-minute conversation suddenly that's a half an hour chat or an hour chat or whatever it may be, and so coordinating people started becoming a bit more challenging as well.

Darren Stewart: 21:49

We had to put a lot more time into making sure everyone really knew what they were doing day in, day out, because you don't have to just turn around in your chair touchpoint of I've got a question or I'm a bit stuck on this, can I do something else, or whatever it might be, and then further into it was then really seeing people struggling just with life, not going out, not being able to see their friends, and actually the only time they were really talking to anyone that was outside their family, immediate family was for work, and we really started I think, probably the second lockdown or whatever it was.

Darren Stewart: 22:26

That was where I think we saw a real change to we had to really try and put time into helping people as well and making sure people were OK, and it's really easy to not do that, but you can just start telling with people that they're just getting down and it's natural. I was the same, everyone was the same, I think. So that was probably the biggest challenge overall was keeping people motivated, not just for work, which was one thing, but so that they're not just utterly depressed in life.

John Hawker: 23:00

I think taking responsibility for how you as a boss and you as a company are impacting people's life outside of work is really important as well. It's not just a case of, ok, you log off at 5, half 5, and then you're someone else's problem, because most people are working more than they're at home and with their families, and, especially at that time, the immediacy of turning off a laptop and then just turning around and your kids are there, or speaking to people that worked for two years from a laptop on their knees, sat on their bed that's not a way that people can work long term.

Darren Stewart: 23:31

It's not and it was a total shock to the system. It wasn't something that people gradually went into, it was bang it was there. Immersed Straight away, absolutely.

Darren Stewart: 23:38

And a fair portion of our business are younger people who tend to be in smaller places, so flats and perhaps without gardens and bits and pieces as well. So really we're genuinely stuck there, and it also became really easy to just carry on working. So the 5.30 stop or whatever you might have had, I'll just do an extra hour, or I might as well do this because I've got nothing else to do and then work really started just merging completely with home time and personal space. And that was tough. I found I was exactly the same and it was just so easy just to carry on working, and it's a challenge that I don't think anyone's really ever had before.

John Hawker: 24:19

Definitely not. So as a founder, then you subscribed to the fact that you said earlier, probably when you started the business, it was more work than you realized it was going to be, or you initially thought it was going to be Two to three years without a day off. You subscribed to that because you're a founder of the business. How do you then start putting in boundaries? Did you start to implement boundaries for your people? So they started to realize there was a start time and an end time and we all want people working for us.

John Hawker: 24:47

I'm fortunate I don't manage anyone, which I completely by design, but we want people, I would imagine, working for us that care. So we want the business and the job and the work to be in their brain at some point, because it just shows they've got maybe more of a buy-in than just that on the job mentality of log on, log off. But we also want people to have a life and we want people to be mentally healthy and we want their well-being to be good. So did you put anything in place to try and help that divide? This is when work starts. This is when it stops.

Darren Stewart: 25:19

We did. We've always actually within the business. As you say, adam and I subscribed to this because that's what we chose to do. We've always been, really, I hope we have always been strong and always given the message which is do you know what, whilst you're at work, it's quite a demanding bit of work that people are doing, there's a lot of stuff going on and a high velocity, but we only want you to do that in the hours that you're employed. To do that. You must switch off and go and do the other things in life, because as soon as you don't do that, ok, you might get more out of people for a couple of months, but that's all that lasts, because suddenly people get bored, people get stressed, and that's not the way we want to work. So I think we were quite lucky in that we grounded that in way before the pandemic and that's just a way of working, and I honestly don't think we've ever asked anyone to work extra hours than they're scheduled to do, which I think in the tech industry is pretty rare.

John Hawker: 26:23

I would say so from some of the clients I work with. I'd like to think I align myself with clients that do have a better balance and they try and ensure that their people have a better balance as well. And, funny enough, I wrote an advert for you guys for a role you recruited for the other day and I said about that the business had the right mentality to work life balance well before everyone started to catch up really with the pandemic. So it's been lovely to see and makes my job a hell of a lot easier when I'm recruiting for you as well.

Darren Stewart: 26:52

Which is great. It's easy to lose it and there's been times where it's been very, very tempting. You've got to say and sometimes people just do it. But we've always said, if you do it, we're not asking to, but if you do and you can't stop, you make sure you take that time back. So the next way of doing it is make sure you take it back. So we were quite well placed with that. The pandemic. It became quite difficult to control because I think people actually it was something to do, A bit of escapism probably as well from being in your own four walls and just immerse yourself into something else.

Darren Stewart: 27:21

Yeah, absolutely. But that's why we introduced or started playing around with giving some people a bit of extra time off.

John Hawker: 27:31

Yeah, so we're going to go into this in a lot of detail now. If that's all right, Derek, Because it's so, we might as well say it. So you implemented a nine day fortnight, which I was calling it something weird and wonderful at a time when I was advertising for some of your roles, but the best way to describe it is a nine day fortnight. So this is I still don't see this being very common at all within bigger organisations, let alone a scaling tech business. What led you to even explore different ways of setting up a working week or a working fortnight? What did you explore before you sort of fell on a nine day?

Darren Stewart: 28:09

fortnight. Well, it was all driven by the pandemic, ok, and as we've been talking about, you know a lot of people spending a lot of time at home with not much to do, and even if they were taking days off, you couldn't really do anything with it. And we were conscious, coming out of that, that it had also been a demanding period of time when we were working for the amount of work that we were asking people to do, and so on. So, as we were coming out of the pandemic, we thought, yeah, is there a way we can give back for a few months, really, to try and give some of these people a bit of time back that they have lost over that period of time because of the pandemic, that they can get out and, you know, see family or go on a little holiday or whatever it might be?

Darren Stewart: 28:48

Yeah, so we came up with this idea, which was just to give everyone we initially looked at could we give everyone an extra day off every week or a small business with a lot to live up? It just wasn't. We couldn't do that. So the next best thing we could think of is well, what if it was every other week? And then we could essentially split the team 50-50s and one takes one or one half takes one Friday off, one half takes another Friday off. So it was all driven from pandemic and wanting to just be able to give something back and say thanks really.

John Hawker: 29:20

Yeah, can I ask as well did anything inspire you? Because the four-day working week is a conversation that's been happening, I think, much more loudly now but behind the scenes. For a little while it was almost like there was an underground cult starting to form about these whispers of a four-day working week.

John Hawker: 29:36

So, had you seen anyone else trial the nine-day fortnight, or was it? No, it doesn't sound too much of a stretch to go. Well, we can't do the four-day working week, let's do every other week. Yeah, but I'd not heard of any business trialling that specifically.

Darren Stewart: 29:49

It's not got the catchiest name either, is it? Well, look I think no it hasn't, if I'm really honest with you and it's quite hard.

John Hawker: 29:56

It doesn't have the kind of panache of a four-day working week, yeah, but it's a huge offering for a lot of people and in conversations with people, when you say the best way to describe it is every other Friday off, people would like really, that's really impactful. But a nine-day fortnight is different. So you'd not seen any business do that before. No, you kind of groundbreaking and not maybe you didn't know it at the time, but you were breaking new ground by doing that.

Darren Stewart: 30:19

But yeah, no, we hadn't seen it anywhere before. And one of the things we were quite passionate about around this whole four-day working week thing is that most I've seen not all, but most I've seen you have to make up those hours in the rest of the week. So okay, so your seven-and-a-half hour day becomes an eight hour day for four days a week and then you take that day off, right, yep At the end. We don't want to do that because the work that people do is tough, you know, and adding an extra hour and a half two hours on each day, you just it's not good for the people doing it and it's not good for us. You're not going to get the same return as people being fresh. So that whole sort of that approach to getting people time off, just we're really, really not keen on.

John Hawker: 31:08

And to offer just the standard four-day working week. Keeping your daily hours would have meant that something you had to give, in terms of productivity, the service you're offering to your customers, and your clients as well.

Darren Stewart: 31:18

Yeah, just realistically, a commercial level, losing essentially 20% of time for nothing is a bit too much of a step. It's not to say we'll never look at that, but certainly where we are and where we were then wasn't right. But what we could do is with that sort of 10% we could kind of manage that. So the ongoing projects that were there and the way that we're working, we could just about deal with that. Any more, yeah, would have been problems for any projects that had already been in progress or promises that we made and so on, and probably a bit too much for us to take as a small business. But the one day every two weeks sort of resolved that problem.

John Hawker: 31:55

Yeah, okay, the inspiration behind it was the pandemic. Yeah, who says it out loud for the first time? Are you sat in the pub? Are you sat in the office? Are you on a team's call with Adam, your co-founder? How does it even get into the world? Yeah, I remember these at that moment.

Darren Stewart: 32:10

Actually, we were, adam and I were travelling back from a meeting in London and I think the meeting had gone well and we were just saying, sort of, we're in a pretty good position here. People had done a magnificent job over the last few months. What can we do? And I don't know. It kind of came out of nowhere really. We had a chat around in the car and by the end of the journey we were like right, let's give it a try. And I think we were conscious that what we couldn't do is go straight away. This is what we're going to do now. So we did frame it. This is what we're going to do for a few months to say thanks to everyone, which, realistically, I think, was from August to end of December that year.

John Hawker: 32:48

Yeah, what year was that that you started that? I think it was 2021, it must have been Okay. That seems to align with my memory of it as well. Yeah.

Darren Stewart: 32:54

Okay, so that's how it came about, and it was actually a very easy decision. In all honesty, we probably should have put a bit more thought into it, but there we go.

John Hawker: 33:05

Well if it's easy. Okay, easy decision and easy conversation to have in the car and then to frame it as a thank you, I think is a really nice way to do it. Tell me a bit more about the implementation of it and then what was the initial reaction from the team as well? I can only imagine positive. I can't imagine anyone's kicking off about having an extra day off every two weeks, but how do you even implement that?

Darren Stewart: 33:27

It was pretty easy to implement, frankly. I mean, we started it a couple of weeks later, so we had a chat with everyone said this is what we want to do. We had to spend a little bit of time just putting some ground rules in place.

John Hawker: 33:37

Headcount at this point was roughly 11 something.

Darren Stewart: 33:41

Okay, thank you, yeah, so, yeah. So it took a couple of weeks just to figure out, okay, how we realized that you're gonna do this. And, as I say that, the ground rules and they were along the lines of you know, it's a Friday, has to be a Friday and it's every other Friday. You can't swap that with other people. We could have a bit of structure around it and, for some of the more senior people, if we really need to get hold of you, we need to be able to get hold of you on a phone.

John Hawker: 34:10

Okay, so it's more about a bit of an accessibility thing.

Darren Stewart: 34:13

Yeah, just because we hadn't done it before and you know we didn't want to cause ourselves a major problem and there was a big fat caveat in there which was, if it went terribly for any reason, then then we'd have to stop it, yeah, which obviously would never have wanted to do, but we had to be careful around it. Everyone subscribe to that, obviously immediately. As you say, it was very positive.

John Hawker: 34:34

Someone banging on your door or trying to call you, saying no way is this happening.

Darren Stewart: 34:38

I can't.

John Hawker: 34:39

I can't imagine a world where that would happen.

Darren Stewart: 34:41

Okay, yeah, what was? It might be one of your questions coming up, but what was interesting and the challenges around it that came were One trying to get people to do it was much more difficult than you would think. Some people straight away very comfortable.

John Hawker: 34:58

Which was brilliant, and you can't knock him off and he's exactly what we wanted.

Darren Stewart: 35:04

Yeah, other people. There was that guilt factor and and just are. Well, I'm just gonna finish something off, so I would pop on for an hour in the morning and, you know, easily becomes three hours and all that kind of stuff. And what was interesting is that Adam and I, whilst we genuinely did Wants to do that, we did have too much going on. There was too much going on for us to be able to take that time off at that time. Yeah so, but that didn't help the situation could. People knew that we were working and they felt a little bit of the guilt thing, which is that well, and should I be doing this or not? So, even though we've been very explicit saying you, you must do this, we actually had to genuinely enforce it in the end.

John Hawker: 35:45

It's a. It's a. It's a big question that often comes up in bigger organizations as well, about leaders leading by example. Yeah, because there's always gonna be an argument that, okay, well, look, we're rolling it out to everyone else. It doesn't necessarily mean we have to do it, but if people are seeing the examples yet with saying it, yeah, it's, maybe we're a cynical bunch, so maybe the Brits especially are a cynical and we'll sit there and go wait a minute, how serious are they being? Or? So for you, you had to enforce it, but you enforce that for others, not yourself. Yeah, well, I'm getting it first off.

Darren Stewart: 36:14

I do, yeah and we had to. I can talk about this now because we're fine, but but you know, we, to be honest, we then acted as if we weren't working. So we would go offline and so on. I mean, we'd still be working, but we wanted the perception to be at least that we're not. Yeah, you know, isn't isn't great. We would prefer to have take the time off, but you know, we had to get people comfortable with it. Yeah, if that meant that Adam and I would just meet up face to face or whatever it might be. So, but that did sort of get that working and then in time, adam and I have started actually being able to take that time Brilliant as well.

John Hawker: 36:45

All that says to me that, even if you're doing it under the illusion of not being online, it shows that you give a shit enough yeah about your people to yeah because? Because ultimately I would love I start my Business to have a better work-life balance, but often I have exactly the opposite. But at least it's my own stress that I'm putting on. It's not something that's being passed down to me and I'm having to shoulder that burden, but I do think it's important. If you have people working for you, they need to be able to see an example of that. The fact that you kind of done it under the illusion, as I said, of not being online, I think is a inspiring thing. As opposed to being met with, you weren't hurting anyone other than yourself as well. You really might have to work that much more.

Darren Stewart: 37:29

No exactly, but it is really interesting and it is. It is a bit of an insight and it makes you think a little bit differently, because you are absolutely right about leading by example around that and you know, if you, if I was in one of the other guys, whatever I sit in there thinking, well, can I get a head slightly if I did work that Friday? Is there actually an expectation or a thanks?

John Hawker: 37:46

if you do and I had to really kill that dead and make sure that's Really not what we want, that's a really good point for anyone that let's just say, someone did jump on for three hours an hour when, above and beyond yeah, they Given kudos for that. Were they given positive feedback? Was that enforced?

Darren Stewart: 38:06

No, we were, we had to not give. That's a really good point to make, because very easy to go.

John Hawker: 38:11

Thanks so much for jumping on and doing that, and you're enforcing exactly the opposite and if you say those words yeah, you've set a precedent.

Darren Stewart: 38:17

Yeah, I'm sense, we had to be really careful. It's a really good point, join and so yeah, and it's a bit of a weird situation because you don't want to say or tell someone off, yeah, but you kind of had to. Yeah, bizarre situation, but there we go.

John Hawker: 38:30

Yeah, that's a really good point. Okay, I'm gonna ask a question now. There's more around the nine-day fort like I want to ask but for any big business that listening to this saying it's easy for you as a Founder and a leader of a small business, a smaller business so a head count of 11 at that time that you're rolling it out and saying, yeah, it's fine for you from a practicality perspective to roll out a nine-day fortnight we're too big to do that yeah, what would you say to anyone that's listening to this, thinking maybe cynically about that, and thinking, yeah, you're a small business, it's fine, but for us we could never do it first of all, I totally understand, because I would immediately think the same thing.

John Hawker: 39:08

I think, it's.

Darren Stewart: 39:09

I think it's double-edged shawld. First of all, being a small business because, yes, it is much easier to just come up with a scheme and put it into place Without a doubt, and also the type of technology company we are, or company we are, it is easier to to work in that manner. But being a smaller business, we've got a lot of roles that are being covered and so on. Being off Potentially has a far larger impact on the delivery of a project or a conversation that needs to happen with the client or whatever it may be. So it is double-edged shawld, that one. I would say that for a big business, we'll talk a little bit about the positives that come out of this. Yes, it's gonna be tougher to look at it, but the scale that's there should enable some of those issues to be a non-issue and the positivity that can come out of that I think he's is huge.

Darren Stewart: 40:00

I think that, again, there'll be different businesses. That is easier than than others. You know if you're, if you're, running a call center against you know Very strict SLAs that have got five-year contracts in places with clients to try and make a change like that. It's very difficult. That's gonna have to be where do you want to be as a business in five years time and how do you start getting towards that and start planning and being in that position and then bringing staff along that journey? But you can't just go and do it. That's a matter of fact.

Darren Stewart: 40:28

There are other businesses that are much larger that I think genuinely can, and I know what I would say is the best way of doing it is give it a trial. Do it under whatever reason you want to try it, whether that is giving back a little bit or whatever. You don't have to introduce it, as this is what we're doing now. Trial it, trial it in one part of the team, whatever you might want to do and see how it goes.

Darren Stewart: 40:48

Yeah, and I think you know change doesn't happen unless you make it happen with things like this. And the other thing I would say around it for this bit big businesses is there are more and more businesses that are starting to do Things like this now, whatever it may be, and if you haven't got something, potentially restraining people over time is going to become a problem yeah, so, even if you're not doing it right now, learning about it and starting to understand how potentially you could do it. Even if that transition is going to take a while, it's worth thinking and it's worth starting to plan for those kind of things.

John Hawker: 41:21

Yeah it's a really good point, and we we're having this conversation during a time where I I'd say wholesale, within certain size of organizations, there is this demand to get people back in the office four or five days a week, and it's and it's starting to, it's a devolution, I think, of everything we learned about during the pandemic about how we should be Offering balance and flexibility and looking after our people.

John Hawker: 41:44

Yeah, and anyone that's doing it, anyone that's listening to this, that's that's saying yeah, four days a week in the office is going to lead to more productivity, and and and, citing statistics that say that it's better for their people's well-being, I just I'm gonna say, as bluntly as I think that's absolute bollocks and and if you stick to that, ultimately, in six months time, you will start to see this exodus of people leaving your business and flocking to those that have still got this people first mentality of allowing them autonomy and flexibility. Yeah, it has to work for your business. A point you made before we started recording Darren as well, is that it's very easy to just judge people that are offering, that are offering, let's say, more traditional ways of working. Yeah, but it has to work for the business that you're operating in, so maybe we can just touch upon that, because I don't want to. I mean, I'm a little more one side of the fence than you are on this, but it works for insure flow than I do fortnight.

Darren Stewart: 42:41

It does. I'm quite passionate about this, actually, and, funny enough, it's not the opposite what you're saying at all. But I, yeah, for insure flow. We do afford a lot of flexibility, you know, work from home, work for everyone, wherever you like you can work in your office full time if you want, etc.

Darren Stewart: 42:57

But that's just the kind of business that we are. But I think I touched upon it earlier One of the things that does annoy me a little when I see posts on LinkedIn and so on from recruiters not always recruiters can be anywhere, but which is? You know, if you don't have work from home or total flexibility, your business is dead. And I just I don't. I don't agree with that. I think there's a lot of change that's going to happen over the next couple of years, and I think that change is going to be people finding the right businesses for them. And I think you're right. I think there is going to be an exodus from businesses that don't offer some of the flexibility, but I don't necessarily think that that's a bad thing for those businesses.

Darren Stewart: 43:40

In some ways, I think you're an idiot if you're running a business or you're a manager and you haven't properly thought about it and think can we offer this? If we're not going to offer this, why? And have good, strong reasoning as to what route you decide to go down. But if you have really thought about it and let's say that your senior business team have all worked in the city for the last 40 years and the team below that have as well, and that's the way that you operate and that's how you get the most out of people. Putting a completely new way of working in, I think potentially could be more dangerous for that business than kind of sticking to their guns. In some ways, bear with me on this, because what you're asking people to do is completely change, particularly from a management point of view. You know, trying to change the way that people manage people is difficult and if you're a business that the way you operate is face to face and always have, it's a really, really difficult change to make Because you're actually looking at having to go. Do I have to replace my entire senior management team and my management team and all the people in there? Because people that work at home have got certain values and work in a certain way. People that work in the office and really want to have certain values and work in a certain way, and they're not always compatible.

Darren Stewart: 44:58

So my worry is that there are some businesses that are being forced to change, which might actually kill them, funny enough, and I think that what it should be is there will be this change. There will be businesses finding their feet. What are they going to offer? What do they want to offer? What is the way that they feel that they can work best with people, particularly with the people they've already got? And then you've got the people that are looking for jobs at the moment or are going to on the market, who are able to go. What do I want? And I think some people will go.

Darren Stewart: 45:32

Do you know what? I really miss the face to face. I want to be in an office five days a week, and then you have a whole load of people who go I love working from home and that's what I want to do and then probably much more in terms of people that want to be in the middle somewhere. Exactly that. And I think that we're going to go through a process now of people finding their right match and businesses finding their right match, and I think it'll be a whole carve up and lots of people moving roles to find those right places. So I do think that it's I do think it's a little one sided to say you know, if you don't offer the full work from home piece, you're dead. I just don't think that's the case.

John Hawker: 46:07

I would agree with that as well. I think that narrative is. It's a bit alarmist and it tends to get a lot of likes on LinkedIn.

Darren Stewart: 46:14

Yeah, I mean yeah, 100%, Absolutely. But, and I think that what will happen is for the businesses that do want people in five days a week and we're not one of those, you know, but people that do they will have a much smaller group of people to select from in terms of people going for those jobs, but the people that are going for those jobs are ones that actually really want to work.

John Hawker: 46:35

It's not necessarily a bad thing? Is it to filter out?

Darren Stewart: 46:37

Yeah.

John Hawker: 46:38

So I am a big proponent for hybrid working, as I don't want to give it a percentage, but I would say the majority of people that are looking for work want some form of balance.

John Hawker: 46:49

What they want more than anything and this is based on thousands of hours of conversations over the last four years running my agency is autonomy to choose how they work, and that's bloody hard for businesses to try and give people.

John Hawker: 47:04

It's an unenviable task for large organizations, any size organization, to give someone the flexibility they want, because it's subjective and you can't set precedent whereby you tailor what flexibility means on a person by person basis. Yeah, it is impossible to do it. So you're going to alienate some people and you're going to really make some people feel special. But, as you said, if it's five days on site per week, you're going to alienate the people that want the flexibility to work from home and you're going to be left with the pool of people you put your stake in the ground to say this is how we operate. Yeah, I think it's still quite short-sighted and unfortunately, the pool of people you're going to be left with to look at a smaller than you possibly like. But at least you know then this is how we work, but the difference is the leaders that give it the thought and say could we make this work?

Darren Stewart: 47:54

100%. Yeah, and what I do see, and I talk to people often who are business leaders who haven't given it, that thought, and that I think is just naive You're really causing a whole load of problems for yourselves. I think if you can prove and if you've genuinely thought around it and come up with this is the model that works best for this business, I think great. Whatever's best for you, I do think, and I actually completely agree, the hybrid working model, I think, is probably the best for the vast majority of people. It gives you the face-to-face time in the office and getting out of the house, which is good mentally as well, even if it's just the travelling that does it.

John Hawker: 48:32

I think the problem for a lot of businesses now and this is a question that's posed on LinkedIn constantly what does hybrid mean as well?

John Hawker: 48:39

Because, again, hybrid is subjective. Hybrid can mean fully remote is you do not need to be required to go into an office at all. Hybrid is that you need to be in an office for a period of time. Right, Hybrid could be a day or quarter, as it is with one of my clients, but it's another really hard one to define. I think we'll get better at it as this becomes. No one says new normal anymore, do they? It used to be a thing, Everyone was talking about the new normal, but as it becomes more of the new normal, we'll get better at defining what hybrid is, I think. But for now it's going to fluctuate and differentiate depending on the organization.

Darren Stewart: 49:18

Just from what we've seen, we operate a for one of a better word, do what you like mode. If you want to work at home entirely, that's fine. If you want to be in your office full time, that's fine. If you want to do something in between, that's fine. We are seeing, just naturally, because we have office space, we've seen naturally, I would say probably 80% of the people will be in once, maybe twice a week.

Darren Stewart: 49:41

That's where it's leveling out is where we are, I think, and there's been a noticeable uplift in just the way people are feeling and working together by getting that sort of ratio about right.

John Hawker: 49:56

Yeah, I definitely think the most common thread that I speak to people that want to go back into an office is working with a team being engaged. Again, loads of studies and loads of anecdotal evidence to suggest that being in the office with a team is actually going to make you less productive as well, because you're tapping people. Those moments where you can tap someone on the shoulder, you hope it's going to be a conversation around. Can you help me with this? But it's usually about did you see the football at the weekend? Or let's go for a drink.

John Hawker: 50:24

These are all things that are part and parcel of what work used to look like before everyone buggered off and started working from home for months at a time.

Darren Stewart: 50:33

Absolutely. But those conversations, yeah, they may detract from doing the work, but actually I think they had an awful lot into a lot of other things. I agree. The bit that I worry most about, I think, is the learning by proximity. So the conversations you overhear in the background. You might not be part of this happens a lot, even if you're a developer, whatever it might be. You might be working so completely different, but you hear two people in the background how they're approaching a problem or, from an IT point of view, an incident, or just a general chat and that sort of knowledge that builds up in the background without you even potentially even realizing.

Darren Stewart: 51:15

I think that is the biggest challenge we have right now if we're going to have home working, essentially Because no matter how hard you try, you're just not going to get that. And now there's things you can do to put learning processes in place and all that kind of stuff, but it is the accidental conversations or the stuff going on in the background. I know that personally myself in my career I've learned a lot in those ways and learning how people react to things and the way that one person might talk to another and all that kind of stuff, just figuring out people. So next time I go and talk to whoever it might be in that corner I know that the way he likes being talked to is a joke first, or actually no, just no shit. Let's just go and have that conversation. Stuff like that is really difficult to pick up if you're not with people. I'm not saying you have to be, but I think as a for businesses that's a big, big challenge to try and figure out. How do we enable that kind of learning?

John Hawker: 52:11

And that's where I think as well that the whole hybrid working or fully remote roles for people that are happy to offer it, there isn't a one size fits all and in an ideal world as well and maybe people listening to this the early one in their career do believe that they can pick up all the skills they need to working from home. But for people that are really just starting out, I do see the benefit of immersing yourself in offices, with whatever offices look like now, but with people in those locations. Again, I call it learning by osmosis. So exactly the same thing You're there in amongst it and you're hearing things and not necessarily involved in those conversations Stakeholder engagement, analytical skills, an ability to just that emotional intelligence and how that, how that manifests itself in a working environment. You pick it all up by being in a working environment. So it's not easy and I'm not. I'm not banging the drum about hybrid working, remote working, without also identifying simultaneously it's fucking tough to do it, but a huge opportunity.

Darren Stewart: 53:18

Get it right, yes, and you know, and you can employ really good people. Those people will love working those places, and I, you know. So there's a huge opportunity for businesses here as well, not just a challenge, and that's kind of how we've looked at it as well.

John Hawker: 53:32

Okay, going back to the nine day fortnight, then the conversation came up in the car with Adam you rolled it out. Let's say that we've convinced these bigger businesses that are listening to this, saying they've rolled it out. It's a smaller business, it's more practical to do, yeah. And then they're sitting there going, okay, yeah, I can, I can try this. Did you start out with a way to measure whether this was going to work? Because there has to be a balance between if it, if it fucks up and we lose out and productivity is down and our customers aren't happy, we have to stop it. Yeah, how do you? How do you go about measuring the success?

Darren Stewart: 54:02

Well, for us it's relatively simple. Which is our work is either project work, where we, you know, we know how much time it generally, we know how much time something is going to take to complete, or we have support and professional services stuff, where there are SLAs associated to it, so agreements in how, how quickly we need to turn things around, and all that kind of stuff. So we've got a lot of metrics around how we performed as a business in in the normal times, so it was actually pretty easy to see, okay, what is the impact to put in this in place, and and also what's the unintended consequences of either good or bad of that being in place. So I think most businesses, though, have got metrics of one kind of another, and if you haven't, that's probably something you need to look at. Yeah, that's good to, even if they're not really specific. You know, you should know whether you are getting people that are performing or not, and if they are, what does that mean?

Darren Stewart: 54:56

So, once you've got that baseline, I think you can. You got somewhere to go, and I think your point, though, is very interesting or very spot on. You have to have a think about that before you do it. So what is my baseline, where am I starting from and what would be success and what's not? You know, are we happy if things take 5% longer? For what will, in theory, be the benefits, are we not? Do we still need to try and achieve the same things and if so, how on earth are we going to achieve that?

Darren Stewart: 55:22

So I think understanding where we are and where you're going to go and how you're going to measure that is important, and every, every business will have their own ways of doing it. I think probably some of it is. As long as the job still gets done, then that's a success. That's a very high level version of it. But you know, if you're working in a call centre, it's all about stats, so you'll be very, very easily to see the impact of those kind of things. It's probably the roles somewhere in the middle of the I don't know in our world, the sort of project management, business analysis side of things, which is more difficult to put a very clear metric around, and they're more about, you know, have we still delivered this on time or within the project plan and is the client still happy? That kind of stuff.

John Hawker: 56:06

Yeah, okay, and how? Two questions on the back of that. Then you started this trial. Did you have to communicate anything to your customers to say that this is now the way you were working?

Darren Stewart: 56:16

No, we didn't For various various reasons, but no, we didn't. What did come out of it is people would be involved in meetings that they wouldn't normally be involved with. So clients did sort of see that there was some change going on, because they may have a project manager that's on their account Monday through Friday normally, and then suddenly someone else pops up, right. So I think naturally it did come out in some conversation that we're trialling it, but we didn't sort of make a big thing of it.

John Hawker: 56:43

Not met with any resistance from clients or any negativity at all. No, a quizzical eyebrow raise.

Darren Stewart: 56:48

There's certainly some eyebrows raised, yeah, and a lot of people going oh, I'm going to go and have a chat with my manager.

John Hawker: 56:55

I like this idea.

Darren Stewart: 56:56

But to be honest it was no, everyone was well, as long as we get our stuff delivered, whatever, okay. So there was no issue around that and actually was received quite positively, I would say.

John Hawker: 57:08

Yeah, good. So you're then looking at this trial, which you said I think started in August and then the goal was to kind of roll it out until December, at the end of that year. What did you see in terms of the differences both positive and potentially negative that came from that nine-day fortnight?

Darren Stewart: 57:26

So let's be British, let's be negative first, yeah start with a bad news.

Darren Stewart: 57:32

Yeah, there weren't too many things. Most of it was around communication. What this was really useful is it exposed some areas that we clearly needed to pay attention to anyway. So communication was one of those things where we had to be just better so that people knew if someone wasn't in that Friday and you're just used to being able to talk to someone and it's not planned like a holiday is kind of thing, but you need to be able to go. Okay, where can I find that information? And that person that's taken that day off needs to make sure that information is either being sent beforehand or is publicly available.

Darren Stewart: 58:06

There were some silos where people were working on one specific thing and weren't paying attention to other areas or weren't informed about other areas, which were exposed quite quickly. And same thing around some very specific client knowledge and so on. And you know that, whilst was a negative in terms of we really needed to get that sorted pretty quickly so that it didn't impact our clients and some of the meetings that were taking place on Friday and all that kind of stuff, what it meant is that we pretty quickly turned that around and so the communication across the business improved as an output, I guess it affects a lot of internal processes as well, doesn't it about again, how you communicate that information?

Darren Stewart: 58:44

Yeah, and you don't realise how much until someone's just suddenly not there. So there was that. There was the problem about actually educating people to take that time off, which we talked about a bit, and I think in the early days there was an impact on output. Now we run both internal projects and external projects, so client-led ones and internal. So we made sure that didn't impact client ones because we just we could not have that happen. But it did impact some internal ones and slowed down some of the progress there and we had to get look at different ways of working and be more sensible about what we could achieve. So there was a bit of I say a little naivety on our side of things about how much it may or may not impact, but actually over time I would say at the start that maybe had something like a 10-15% impact and where we are now is overall less than 5%.

John Hawker: 59:37

Okay, and that less than 5% is obviously collateral damage. That you're you're willing to say actually for the loss, nominal loss, then we're happy to soak that out.

Darren Stewart: 59:48

And it is nominal and the impact it has, the returns are way, way higher than the 5%.

John Hawker: 59:54

Talk about the positives, then yeah. So how do you measure?

Darren Stewart: 59:57

those. A lot of it's anecdotal, although we are now we've been running it for a while. We're getting some additional feedback, so I mean the obvious one is retention. Well, both retention and getting people in Attraction yeah, definitely.

Darren Stewart: 1:00:12

So we've had staff leave, don't they? That's part of the process of running a business. But we've had one or two people now who haven't been looking to leave but have been approached and have been very clear in their feedback, which is, you know, they enjoy working with a business and also the nine-day working fortnight is a huge attraction and have been quite open around. It would take really quite something quite special to peel them away from that, because it's become part of how they run their lives now and people kind of use those Fridays, it seems most commonly for kind of getting their life admin done and then leaving the weekend for, you know, enjoying stuff, actually enjoying it. Yeah, so, because it's become part and parcel of the way that people run their weeks or their months. It's quite difficult to move away from that. So the retention piece is great and certainly attracting people. I think it is something that well, you probably know more than me.

John Hawker: 1:01:02

Yeah, I mean I can say I can say from experience of going out to to market for you guys is that a nine-day fortnight is a huge game changer and I think for I do a lot of work now around employee value proposition for a company that is only still relatively young and growing to have that as an offering really differentiates you as well from some of the much larger organizations out there and you will attract people from more established businesses because it's very clear that already at such an early stage of growth you're putting your people first. So definitely makes a difference.

Darren Stewart: 1:01:37

Oh, it's a cracking point now and we're just having someone join us at the moment who's coming from a much larger organization, and that's one of the key reasons, which is great. So those elements, without a doubt. The anecdotal side of it is just talking to people around how they view work has changed. It's only a day every two weeks, but essentially that sort of bank holiday feeling every two weeks and that getting their life have been done sort of situation has given people more freedom and they're just more energized. It's as simple as that. You know, you can. You can visibly see it and feel it within the business. People are more energized than they ever have been and when you're looking at it, it's not all down to that.

Darren Stewart: 1:02:26

There's been other changes in the business as well, but a lot of it is down to the fact that we do really try to look after people. We do make sure that people don't work more than hours they're meant to, and by doing this stuff, it's just giving people more headspace. So, without a doubt, that's a huge positive. Our clients and and, funny enough, this is not a reason we ever did it, but when we go out there and we talk to prospective customers and they, you know, the larger the organization we deal with, the more they are interested in some of these things. You know what is.

Darren Stewart: 1:02:54

How are we looking after our employees and that is becoming a much, much larger topic and and actually when we talk about some of these things, it's it's met with real positivity. They're not saying we've won contracts off the back of it yet, I don't know, but it certainly. It certainly ticks a number of boxes and we're not doing it because of that, but it is having an impact. Out there, people are talking about us a little bit more because there's not that many businesses that do this, and I think the bottom line is we couldn't do this if it was really impacting our output, if it was really really hurting us. We just couldn't do it. But it's not, and we are now in a position where I would say we haven't looked at the stats for for now a couple of months, but I would say that if we compare our output now to before we started this, it would be the same or better, even though we're losing a day every 10 days.

John Hawker: 1:03:45

Yeah, incredible, yeah, and I think that's what so many businesses need to hear, and some are going to be reluctant to even trial it, and that's that's going to be the biggest challenge. And it's a change, and I know from working with change managers people are resistant to change, especially when it's change around something that's been in place those kind of traditional working hours and environments for decades and decades and decades so it's a big shift, absolutely but it's quite a nice sort of somewhere in the middle, you know, is the business.

Darren Stewart: 1:04:15

You're not. You're not having to transition into or being forced into this four-day piece, which does suit some businesses, but that is really tough. You're not asking people to work more hours to achieve this, which I think that you just don't get the gains from that. I agree, so you're sort of sitting somewhere in the middle, which is you're doing things for the staff, but you're also not having to give up too much to achieve that, because it has to be a balance.

John Hawker: 1:04:38

Absolutely. You can't manage or lead a business completely altruistically because you you still have customers to satisfy, so you can still have employees and money to pay them.

Darren Stewart: 1:04:48

We've got to run a business at the end of the day so 100% and yeah, there's been a lot of stuff in linked on LinkedIn and various other press. At the moment around is pushed towards a four-day week and I think that I think the way it's being pushed at the moment is going to put businesses off more and more actually.

John Hawker: 1:05:06

Yeah, I mean, it's getting to the point where it's essentially people posting on LinkedIn with placards holding it and going on marches and look.

John Hawker: 1:05:14

Being subjective and understanding that it's not going to work for all businesses is really important, and if you're someone that wants a four-day working week, you have to be understanding of the fact that you're not going to get that wholesale ever. I don't think, I don't ever think the four-day working week is going to come in like the five-day working week did. I just don't think that can be a thing. But there will be businesses that adopt it. Yep, gunnar, what's the biggest as a step change? What is the difference between a nine-day fortnight, not in terms of hours, but logistically and practically? What stops you going from a nine-day fortnight to a four-day week?

Darren Stewart: 1:05:51

For us. We're a small team. It's probably one of the bigger issues actually. Okay, so we can split our team and we do basically 50%. Yeah, so on one Friday we've got 50% of the team in and then the opposite, the one after you wouldn't be able to do that in a four-day week.

John Hawker: 1:06:06

It would essentially be a shutdown of your business on a Friday, wouldn't it yeah?

Darren Stewart: 1:06:10

essentially it's that, or you'd have to go okay, it's not Friday, so you're going to start instead that day off will be one of the other days in there and you split it that way, which might work. But I think the Friday works really really well because it's just, you know, obviously it's next to the weekend, it gives you three days off. I'm not entirely sure you get as much benefit if you just have a Wednesday off, for example, but for us it's just too much at the moment. Certainly the size that we are Funny enough for larger businesses that may actually be easier, certainly than for us. Many other things attached to this that you have to think about, but for us it's that and I think the the output.

Darren Stewart: 1:06:50

There's no way around the fact that there would just be a fairly significant step down then, I think in the output. It's not something we're saying we'll never do. I think we need to be in a different place as a business to do that and I think we'd have to look at our skill sets and all those kind of things to enable something like that. So we are a minimum a few years away from being able to have that conversation, I think at least. I think it's important to have that conversation and always look at what you can do. But yeah, that's where we are.

John Hawker: 1:07:18

Yeah, I mean, I ask it just because I think it's an interesting insight to see what that difference is, to go from what sounds on the face of it like quite a small step to just go. Why don't we just do it four days a week? But I get completely. It's team size and ultimately you have customers that need servicing five days a week as well. So I understand it, and you're so far ahead of so many other businesses out there for even doing the nine day fortnight as well, so it's commendable that you've rolled that out and stuck to it, not just on the trial to use as a bit of a marketing ploy, but actually stuck with it as well, so it's really good.

John Hawker: 1:07:59

What do you think? Next, I think, the culture of your business. I'm biased because I recruit for you guys, but again, hopefully you know and anyone listening to this might already have the idea that I'd align myself with businesses that I genuinely believe people should be working for and not offering a really good employee value proposition to their people as well. How else can you evolve the culture of the company, moving forward and ways of working? Do you feel like right now you're at your comfort level is, or do you have other things coming in and coming up that you're exploring to add more?

Darren Stewart: 1:08:32

We definitely have. We are starting to explore these areas. I mean, there's lots that we want to do and I think you know the package that we have at the moment is pretty standard, apart from that area, as you know, and we're looking to expand that. But looking at where we can deliver most value, I think now, I think from a work-home life balance. I think we're pretty much there.

John Hawker: 1:08:56

Yeah, I'd agree with that completely.

Darren Stewart: 1:08:59

So now it is around how we can care for people. There's the obvious things around, obviously, the pension side of things and healthcare and all those kind of bits and pieces, but also we're looking at trying to do our bit a little bit again for trying to encourage people to go on to public transport coming in instead. So something we're looking at next year is potentially funding people if they go to the park and ride rather than driving themselves.

Darren Stewart: 1:09:23

So little bits, and I think the other bit is that we really want to look at is just how can we work really closely as a team and sort of create a community where everyone's really comfortable with putting ideas in and that they'll get taken forwards and giving time to people to feed into the future of the business, and what, in short, though, should look like.

John Hawker: 1:09:46

It's a really good point, I think, both around the park and ride element that you mentioned, there sort of links into the CSRPs, corporate social responsibility, and then giving people a platform or a table to be able to go to have ideas and see them implemented is all around meaningful work, and that, for me, is one of the pillars of building an employee value proposition allowing people to feel like their input is valued. That's a critical thing for me, I think, to get buy-in and retention.

Darren Stewart: 1:10:16

It's a huge topic and actually we don't know that it sounds. We do the nine-day thing, but we don't know that much about that area. So we're really keen to engage and understand more. So, funnily enough, I'm sure we will have a conversation about these things, because we want to attract good people. We want to keep good people. It's as simple as that. That's what it comes down to, and you've got to treat people right, and what that looks like is changing all the time, so we need to try and keep as much as possible with that piece around it which, at the end of the day, we're a business and we've got to make money. No way round about that.

John Hawker: 1:10:48

Yeah, exactly, can't get round that.

Darren Stewart: 1:10:51

But, yeah, and engaging people to understand what good looks like for them is different, potentially, to what we think good looks like, and I think that's a really important conversation that we need to have with the team.

John Hawker: 1:11:05

Like I said, it's not an easy thing to be able to do, but I think just being open to having that conversation and understanding it needs to be had is really important. Okay, darren, I'm conscious this is. The office is turning into a sweat box and we are nearly at a close now.

John Hawker: 1:11:18

So I've got one more question to ask you which might put you on the spot slightly, and then I've got the closing tradition on the podcast, which will definitely put you on the spot. People will be listening to this and hearing about the journey you went on. The fact that you're now running a successful tech company Yep, how does it make you feel? When I say it's a successful tech company on a personal level, I know you want everyone working with you to understand that, but you are running a successful tech company. How does that make you feel?

Darren Stewart: 1:11:42

I'll get weirdly shy about it. It's such a weird thing. I mean, I'm delighted I really am what we're doing and what we've achieved. I'm genuinely so excited about the future and delighted about what we've done, but it also is quite weird. This is actually a thing.

John Hawker: 1:12:00

Maybe I think it's again a thing for most Brits. That kind of humility just will not let you go. Yeah, no, I'm going to embrace that fully, but yeah from seeing your growth and the journey that it's all been on, and then again through the pandemic. Most of the clients I still work with now I was recruiting for during that pandemic and they supported me as much as I supported them.

John Hawker: 1:12:19

I was six months in when the pandemic hit as well and recruitment at that time was not a good place to be, so it's been lovely to kind of go on that journey with companies like in Shoreflow as well, ditto as well. Yeah, absolutely, it's been really good and okay, this is the question for you Any tips or one tip you could give to anyone that is aspiring to be a leader in the tech space on the spot?

Darren Stewart: 1:12:42

People skills. There's no way around it. Being able to get in a room with people confidently and talk about your proposition, be passionate about it and be be be confident and comfortable with it is huge. When people are in a room and they look into your eyes and they figure out that yeah, this is a real thing, this person means business and they know what they're talking about is the most powerful tool we have had. Without any shadow of a doubt, your technology can be the best technology on the planet. You can have the best team on the planet. It doesn't matter. You've got to get people that are going to buy the thing off of you, that believe in you, and so it's difficult, but being comfortable with being under pressure like that and being comfortable with getting a room and talking to people about it, I would say, is the most important thing, or it has been for us.

John Hawker: 1:13:31

Yeah, it's a brilliant point and one that I didn't necessarily think we were going to revisit again. Okay, how do you develop that If you don't have that innately in you? Can you develop it? I think you can.

Darren Stewart: 1:13:42

I'm not overly, I certainly wasn't that way. I think you kind of have to make it a thing. I think you have to kind of go right. I need to put myself in a position which I'm not going to be particularly comfortable in and it's a horrible process, frankly. But as soon as you do, actually, you find it comes quite naturally and actually, if you do believe in your product or whatever it is that you're doing, it all kind of comes very easily. So I think the point is you have to put yourself in that position, and the younger age you can start doing that, the more it's going to get you in the right place for later. So you know, go and get involved in those conversations, ask questions that you might not, might not ask Probably as a young, when I was younger, I forced myself to do presentations to people, not that they really wanted me to do one, but I've now got images of you going right.

John Hawker: 1:14:42

If one sit down like here's a powerpoint that I've created. No one's asked you. Were invited you to do it.

Darren Stewart: 1:14:47

I'm not sure if it was far off. That, john, to be honest, but actually for two reasons one, it gets you used to presenting to a crowd and putting yourself in an uncomfortable position, and two, because people don't really do it. So you know, if you're exposing yourself to perhaps a management team that you know you have an idea and you want to get that across. You know, maybe put it in a couple of slides and say can I grab everyone for 10 minutes? I just want to run this this past you. Very few people do that and I don't know any time for anyone that's ever done that for me or I've done to other people. That's been found negatively, yeah, it's. So I think trying to get that that focus, being comfortable in your own skin for me is is the number one thing.

John Hawker: 1:15:35

It's brilliant advice there. Thank you for that, right. The closing tradition on the podcast. Do you know anything about this at all? I'm not. You won't hurt my feelings if you don't know what the tradition is.

Darren Stewart: 1:15:46

I'm going to say I specifically didn't because I wanted to surprise myself.

John Hawker: 1:15:48

Okay right, brilliant. Well, to be fair the first episode hasn't even aired yet. It's out on Wednesday. So the closing tradition is that, if you've listened, there is one big podcast out there where there's a closing tradition where someone asks a question. If you've ever heard it I don't wanna name it, but on this podcast, on the one I was talking about it's the previous guest. On this podcast it's my mum that asks a question. So fantastic I have.

John Hawker: 1:16:15

So, basically, my mum sends me a voice note. She knows who I'm speaking to and that's pretty much it. She sends me a voice note. I don't listen to it before the podcast starts, I'll just play it down the mic. I'm excited. Okay. And really it's just pot luck as to what she's speaking about. Love you, mum.

Lisa Hawker: 1:16:32

Hi, Darren. As someone who works for themselves, could you tell me how you even stopped to think about bringing somebody else in to share your business with? Thanks very much.

John Hawker: 1:16:47

It sounds like mum is feeding ducks with my nephew because I know she has him on a Friday. So they were ducks in the background like bless her for doing that whilst she's feeding the ducks. So the question was how do you start? So mum works for herself, I work for myself, my brother works for herself. We don't have people working for us, so how do you decide to bring someone else into the business?

Darren Stewart: 1:17:10

That's a really good question. I think for me it was fairly obvious that I would need to find someone, because there are areas that I haven't been exposed to, I'm less comfortable with and I need. This isn't an easy business to get off the ground. This one. I'm not saying any are, but it's a. There's a lot of competition out there, big, proper system stuff and a lot of processes that you have to go through, and I knew that I probably couldn't do that myself, just from purely getting the business off the ground to point of view. So I had to have someone that I could find, that I could trust and filled some of those gaps and knowledge that I don't have Now.

Darren Stewart: 1:17:54

I've mentioned earlier on, I've wanted to run a business for a long time and had this idea of launching this business many years before we did, and the reason I didn't do that is because I knew I probably couldn't do it on my own, which for me is horrible, because I love doing stuff on my own and I'm very confident about what I can achieve on my own. But actually you have to be, you have to sit back sometimes and go. Can I get to the level I want to or need to be able to get realistically on my own. So how do you choose someone? It's got to be someone. I think that you can trust him, someone that probably has knowledge that you don't.

Darren Stewart: 1:18:31

But I think the most important thing is you need someone that's going to challenge you. Finding someone that's going to come in and work with you if they say yes to you all the time, or you always agree with them is never in a million years going to work. So Adam and I you know I guarantee this business wouldn't be a success or certainly anywhere it is if Adam wasn't involved in this, and I'm not going to say this, it's the same vice versa as well, and we regularly debate stuff. You know we have arguments. It's in the right way, but having that healthy debate is really important. So I think I'm answering this question, which is how do you bring in someone? I think you have to potentially admit that you can't do everything yourself, not for every business, but certainly you've got to think about it. You've got to think about what skills are missing and you've got to find someone that certainly you trust in and that will challenge you.

John Hawker: 1:19:20

Yeah, Darren, that's brilliant advice. Yeah, I mean, it still doesn't make me want to ever do that myself, but I think it's. There are three really critical points if you're going to make that decision to start something with someone as well. Thank you so much for your time, mate. I've really, really enjoyed that and I think for anyone any businesses listening to this that aren't inspired to at least have the conversation about a nine day fortnight or a four day week are short-sighted. Let's just put it that way.

John Hawker: 1:19:49

So I hope this inspires people and also I hope it inspires people to know that there are businesses of any size and scale offering different ways of working than the traditional nine to five in an office, and you should be seeking those out if you're unhappy where you are at the moment. Thank you so much, darren, really appreciate your time.

Darren Stewart: 1:20:06

Oh, I've really enjoyed it. So yeah, thanks for your time, lovely stuff.

John Hawker: 1:20:10

Thanks for listening to Jobs Worth. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to like and subscribe. You can stay connected by following me on LinkedIn for more insights on the world of work behind the scenes, content and updates on upcoming episodes. We're really thinking about guests for season two, so if there is a particular topic you'd like us to discuss, then please send in your suggestions to hello at jobsworthcom.