From Viral Post to Global Movement: Bring on the 5-hour Workday!

In this episode of The Company Road Podcast, Chris Hudson and Amy Grilli, co-founder of the Five Hour Club, dive deep into why the traditional 9-to-5 workday is fundamentally broken for parents and families.

Amy shares the incredible personal story behind her viral LinkedIn post that reached 14 million people and proved this wasn’t just a personal struggle, but a global crisis for working parents. The conversation explores the radical, effective solution: the Five Hour Workday. This model is championed not just as reduced hours, but as a system built on hyper-focused, high-performance that eliminates time-wasting and prioritises results.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• The raw, personal story behind Amy’s viral LinkedIn post that sparked a global movement.
• The definition of the Five Hour Workday and how it guarantees hyper-focused, high performance that benefits both the employee and the business.
• The shocking truth about the Motherhood Penalty and why it often proves to be worse than the Gender Pay Gap.
• How employers can redesign roles to attract high-caliber, talented parents who simply “don’t have time to faff around.”
• Practical advice for professionals who want to advocate for flexible work within their current role.
• The role of the Five Hour Club in driving diversity and closing the gender pay gap through radical flexibility.

Key links

Five Hour Club Job Board: www.fivehourclub.com

Amy Grilli’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/amygrilli

Five Hour Club Community (Instagram): www.instagram.com/fivehourclub

About our guest

Amy Grilli is the co-founder of Five Hour Club, a global job board championing the concept of the Five Hour Workday to help parents maintain their careers within school hours. After stepping back from her own career to care for her two young boys, Amy experienced firsthand the challenges many parents face in balancing work and family. Determined to create change, she is now partnering with employers worldwide to redesign the working day in a way that truly works for parents.

Five Hour Club was born after Amy’s personal story went viral on LinkedIn, reaching 14 million impressions in just 14 days. Amy is also a speaker and advocate for flexible working and parental leave, passionate about increasing diversity, reducing the gender pay gap and shaping the future of work.

Transcript

Chris Hudson: 0:07
All right. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Company Road Podcast where we help you navigate your career with confidence and purpose. And today we’re gonna be taking on one of the biggest challenges really facing modern professionals. And it’s around the traditional nine to five work day. And it’s really a model that, for many of us doesn’t really, just doesn’t work. It feels like a lot of parents trying out, trying to balance things a little bit. There are many, many demanding careers out there, and obviously the demands of family life as well. And our next guest is really at the forefront of that movement. To really pioneer and change that, and it’s one five hour day at a time. As we’ll come on to talk about, but I’m really thrilled to introduce Amy Grilli, who’s the co-founder of The Five Hour Club. And after experiencing firsthand the struggle of reentering the workforce as a parent, Amy’s got a really interesting personal story that we’re gonna get into, which is something that went viral, it sparked a global conversation, and, and it led her to create this job board. That champions flexible work, in the uk. So today Amy’s a speaker and a passionate advocate working with employers worldwide to really redefine the working day and increase diversity and close the gender pay gap. And Amy, thanks so much for joining us on the show today.

Amy Grilli: 1:16
Thanks so much for having me, Chris.

Chris Hudson: 1:18
Great. Great. Um, so yeah, just before we dive in, I just wanna mention for other listeners of the show, if you’re enjoying these sort of conversations and you’re finding them helpful, please consider supporting the show in some sort of way. Any kind of pledge will help us keep bringing some of these incredible guests and, uh, valuable career insights to you. So thanks so much for being part of the community and yeah, for less than price of coffee each month, feel free to hit the support link in the show notes and support the show in some sort of way if you feel like you want to. All right, Amy, we’re gonna jump in. So thanks so much. And yeah, I wanna start with that LinkedIn post. It feels like it’s the one that changed your life and maybe you can share the story and just tell us what it, what it felt like to have that kind of personal struggle resonate with 14 million people in some sort of way. What, what happened there?

Amy Grilli: 1:59
It was a shock, honestly, Chris. And it is a funny that you sort of say that as the post, that changed my life. It did in lots of ways, but I think, having the two kids before that was a main changer. But yeah ultimately I had had an idea for the five hour club. I had, taken a five year career gap and to care for my children and was looking to go back into work once my eldest started school and. I had sort of these hours in between the school day and then I was like, well, if I had a job that I could, work in, I could do, good solid five hours working in that time when I looked, there were just wasn’t anything there. You look up part-time jobs and it came up with Amazon delivery driver or clean or like that, and I was a qualified teacher, heading into educational psychology, wanted to do my doctorate, so that was not what I was looking for. Mm-hmm. So I was sort of really struggling with this. I had pretty much an identity crisis at the school gates, honestly. So, somebody asked me, oh, what do you do? I was like, well. I’m a mum, but I’m also all of these other things. And yeah. And because I wasn’t working, it was really, it was a really hard thing. So I had this idea for sort of being able to work between the school hours and honestly the, the LinkedIn post was just kind of a, well, at some point in the future, possibly, maybe only take this idea to employers and maybe I need to be on LinkedIn to do that. And now I, as a teacher had never really been on LinkedIn and as a parent definitely hadn’t in the last five years. And so I just wrote my story. I just, I don’t really go on LinkedIn myself, still don’t really do, and I just shared, how difficult it had been for me to return to work. And it seemed that, that story is what so many other people were facing. So, uh, once I shared that post, after a few hours, it was sort of 50,000 impressions and went up to a million in day one and sort of hit a million. Oh, wow. Every day for 14 days. Which yeah, was not quite what I was expecting, but I just guess it showed the magnitude of the problem and the global magnitude of the problem. It wasn’t just other parents in the uk, it was in Australia and in America. In the smallest remotest places. Every parent seemed to feel this in some way. And we also had C-suite members who would comment and say, well, actually my wife has felt this. She’s been outta the workplace for 20 years. She hasn’t been able to go back, all of these things. So people were resonating with it for all different sorts of stories. And what was great about it was that, quite, uh, surprisingly, we had companies come to us and say, yeah, I can offer this type of working. I already do, we hire parents in this way, so let me help you. So off the back of that, within two months, we’re able to create our global job board, five hour careers and sort of share these roles and with, you know what we are now calling the five hour workday. Essentially sort of professional roles up to 25 hours a week where parents can work between school hours and they can be flexible and they’re with generally really family friendly employers. Yeah, that was about a year ago now, just over a year ago. We’ve been sharing, I think we’ve had over 200 jobs on the board since then. So it’s been a year.

Chris Hudson: 4:57
Yeah. So that’s one year. One year.

Amy Grilli: 4:59
One year. Yeah. Last May, uh, May, 2024.

Chris Hudson: 5:02
Wow. Amazing. All right. I bet you remember that day. Well, have you got the LinkedIn post in a frame somewhere on the wall in your house?

Amy Grilli: 5:08
Someone said that to me. I know my, it’s funny because I wrote the, and I initially wrote it on, I wrote the paper when I. What my boys are watching. I think it was Sonic movie for the 20th time on the sofa then. Oh, you’re good. And I sort of written it on, onto LinkedIn and then I said to them, I’ve shared this story and they were quite interested about this and my son still refers to it. I was Oh, your story that you shared. He said, yeah, it was story. But yeah, it’s pretty bizarre.

Chris Hudson: 5:29
Yeah. Well, I mean that, that’s some momentum that you just build up in that time. But, but obviously I think, you know what, what struck at the heartstrings of so many people was, was, the point is that that something there needs to be fixed. So what do you think it was that was. What was it telling you about the state of the modern workplace? And the situation that parents were feeling at the time that you felt particularly strongly about that, that made you post in that way?

Amy Grilli: 5:52
I guess it’s just that feeling where so many parents feel so stuck in their careers. Often, they have their children and they feel like, there’s, they can have it all, they can, have the career, they can have the children. But actually the reality of it is the way that our, our workplaces are, our systems are at the moment just are so restrictive to, being able to be flexible around your family. And, they, the nine to five was cemented up. Nearly a hundred years ago now by Henry Ford, and we have not moved on from that. We’re not working in a different way. So you’re sort of restricted this nine to five, yet the school day is nine to three. You kind of, and then we’ve got unaffordable childcare or wraparound care around that. They’re just not systems in place that support parents to be able to go back to work, particularly for mothers, for women. And we know that, there’s lots of research out there that has shown that. 75% of women don’t go back to full-time me five years after having children. Well, that’s because it’s really difficult for them to do that. Yet there’s such a lack of part-time roles for them to be able to step back into the, the workplace even just a little bit. So I think that just struck a chord that so many people felt like that, but they didn’t necessarily know how to articulate it. Yeah, I think that’s maybe what it was that just, I said something that maybe hasn’t been or wasn’t being said at the time.

Chris Hudson: 7:05
Yeah, yeah. No, no, totally right. And yeah, I mean it’s, it was great timing. It feels like. That, that question around the eight, eight hour workday, which is like, you rightly pointed out, and I was looking at this before we press record on the show, but Henry Ford 1926, it was influenced by some US labor unions and some various things. It felt like, prior to that everyone was working 10 to 12 hour days. Right. And it was just, off the back of Industrial Revolution. A lot of other, a lot of other kind of precursors to to that being the case. So it was standardised in the US first, I believe, and then it went. Into other countries because they were seeing that kind of wave of, progress in a sense. And then obviously it, it stayed like that for, for a long, long time. And nine to five became the kind of buzzword.

Amy Grilli: 7:51
This is it. And it’s funny’cause if you look into Henry Ford, he actually said that, actually I expect that the, the working week or the working day will get even shorter than that. And that’s what he predicted, as grew and as it advance. And you think of where we are now with tech and AI and all of those things. And we’ve had the pandemic and we know what remote work can look like. We are seemingly sort of stuck in this sort of industrial revolution of you go in, you do your time and you get out. But yeah, I mean the research tells us that knowledge workers, five hours is their sort of maximum productivity level, and you get to five hours and you pretty much spent, so what are you doing for the rest of Yeah, yeah,

Chris Hudson: 8:25
yeah. I mean that, that, that’s gotta be so true. I mean, they, the. The productivity tools and Pomodoro and all the things that people are using now, it just feels like, people haven’t got the, the capacity to, to work in those sorts of stretches anymore. So I think, what you’ve done to chunk it down into, yeah, more buy sized, manageable pieces is probably good. Provided it’s obviously, a reliable source of income and all the things that people would need from it as well. So, yeah. How did you go about setting it up? Was it, was it quite tricky to figure out? Like, how’d you, how’d you set it up?

Amy Grilli: 8:55
The job board. And that was, so that was, I mean, we had a few jobs. We had some companies who were willing to share them. So it was just about, creating some, a platform to do that. So we got some SaaS software and we went to share those jobs, which has been really great. Uh, the difficulty is now sort of keeping jobs on the board and, getting, um, more five hour work days out there because although it’s not a new thing, getting companies to understand that actually. Just thinking about part-time work in a different way, or flexible work in a different way. Four day week is a thing, but you know, the five hour workday isn’t a thing so much here. So, thinking about the workday differently, that’s what’s tricky. The sort of the back end of it isn’t necessarily the hard bit. Um, yeah, and I was fortunate the time that my, I’ve got a co-founder who was working full time at the time and she just jumped on two feet and sort of. Joined force with me and she’s in sort of data and analytics and things, so she does a lot of that sort of thing. So that helps. Um, yeah. Handy. Yeah. The job board itself is, is, is, it was the easy bit, making sure that we’ve got jobs on there for the, all the thousand of parents that we’ve got on the board globally. That’s the hard bit.

Chris Hudson: 10:02
Yeah, right. So it’s across lots of countries as well.

Amy Grilli: 10:04
Yeah, yeah. We’ve got, I mean, we’ve got a job from Australia actually. At the moment, um, we’ve had US jobs, Australian jobs, we’ve got parents from all these different remote places around the world. It is just finding these, these. Roles that suit them. Like I said, sort of we looking for particular, we have a criteria where we sort of try to make sure that their high quality roles, that their proper career roles, that people can step back into their career, not just something they can do just as a man and to keep them busy. It’s, proper opportunities for them.

Chris Hudson: 10:34
Yeah. Nice, nice. Yeah, I remember, um, I mean I set up my business over here Company Road about three years ago now, and I was thinking about that opportunity for the gig economy and it felt like everyone would want to, particularly after COVID and all the things that went happening around that time, everyone would want to kind of take fuller control of their working lives and their hours and, working a little bit more flexibly. So. If you can give people the, the opportunities, they’re exciting. There’s some level of support, there’s maybe some, training or learning and development, some of, some of the things that you would get from being a full-time employee. Then as long as the work was there, then that should be the perfect situation, right? Everyone can work from, a spare room or, or their shed or whatever, and then they can, they can do what they like and, and obviously ch chop and change between little, little projects or careers. It can be more of a portfolio career. Which, which I think reflects the kind of, the, people wanna be redesigning their, their way of work in a way that is, is, puts them more in control and it’s less down to, 10 round interviews and, big, big roles that you have to go for. And, you spend, I know people here, over here, it’s probably the same in the uk, but they’ve been trying to find the right role for, 12 to 18 months. Yeah. And they’re, they’re just going through several rounds of interviews. They’re in a current role at the minute. They, they’re just always in that state of trying to line up the, the next best thing. So I feel like it’s a decent alternative. Have you had any stories, have you got any successes or anything around that that you wanna wanna share that, that you feel kind of brings it to life in a way that works?

Amy Grilli: 12:03
Yeah, absolutely. I actually just got. Somebody messaged me yesterday about how she’d been out of work for nine months and has just secured a role with one of our companies, which is really great to hear. But we’ve had a whole team hired to work in this way. So we had an employer straight at the beginning. She was like, yeah, I wanna, hire my team. She was growing company and she’s, I think she’s got five to six parents who now work with her all over the world that are working a five hour work day, and they weren’t flexibly around it. Because they work in different areas, they work slightly different times of the day, but they have court hours where they get together, they have meetings, and it’s very understood. And I’ll just go back to your point around sort of autonomy that you sort of mentioned. I think that’s the point, isn’t it? Is that I think people nowadays know how they work best. There’s, tools out there to help them work best. And although we call it a five hour workday, we do that because, to create boundaries to help. The employer and the parents of have these core hours that they’re working and they know when they’re working. But the point is about output, isn’t it? It’s like, as long as you’re getting your job done, does it really matter how you’re doing it? As long as you are. And I think that’s where we are seeing some of the best employers come through, is that they recognise that and they recognise, particularly parents, they, they’ve only got limited time. They’re gonna work really hard during that time. So, whether it’s during the school day or a bit in the evening or whatever works for them, they’re gonna get the job done. So yeah, we’ve had some really great examples of a lot of senior leadership positions actually come through. Uh, we’ve had a head of legal on our podcast who shared how she got hired as a five hour workday and she got, she 25 hours a week head of, um, legal. And then they hired a head of HR as well because they saw how it worked so well. So these types of roles can be done not just at that sort of entry level position. That’s sort of what we kind of wanted to avoid, but actually those senior level positions too, because as long as you sort of prioritise, you’re gonna get the work done and it’s about communication at the end of the day. We talk a lot about transparency and being very clear of what. The person is doing on the other side, it’s about communicating two sides of the coin, isn’t it?

Chris Hudson: 14:02
Mm, yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, the, the pre, I guess the preconception would be that you would have to fill your time with like bits and pieces of things that you may not wanna do. Right. So it sounds like from what you’re describing, these can be like really legitimate. Career building moves that you are putting place, you’re, you’re doing 22 hours a week as a head of somewhere. You’re not having to be a forklift truck driver or an Uber driver or whatever it is. Uh, you’re cutting the grass for the neighbour. You’re doing whatever you can to make ends meet. It. It feels like it’s, it’s a legitimate career building step. So, so I think that’s really encouraging.

Amy Grilli: 14:35
Yeah, we, I just, uh, we also, um, we’ve just done our, our five hour workday pilot. So we’ve got an NHS Trust over here who has hired a couple of other parents to work as a five hour workday. We’re measuring the impact of their sort of sense of belonging, that productivity piece as well, because I think often when you are part-time worker, that centre of belonging or it’s quite tricky. So we’re so far so good. That’s working really well. And like you say, in the sort of senior leadership side of things, we’ve heard of really good stories of job shares where it’s not just, one job doing 40 hours a week. We’ve got two parents who are working 20 hours a week and they sort of have that crossover time too. So that’s another sort of way that this can be worked.

Chris Hudson: 15:13
Nice. Nice. I mean, I, I was gonna ask you about that. So the, the perspective from an employer or from a leadership, somebody in a position of leadership, they’re thinking about some of the, the, looking to understand the model a little bit. What do you see as characterising the types of leaders or the types of companies that will get on board with this? Like, who, who are the, who are the people and, how are they, how are they behaving and how are they responding to, to the model as you, when you pitch it to them, what, what’s happening?

Amy Grilli: 15:40
So we’ve seen over the last year, like there’s few groups of people that are, respond really well to this. So your female founded companies, obviously.

Chris Hudson: 15:48
Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Grilli: 15:49
Have your like, impact driven companies or, they really, and charity organisations, they seem to get on board with this because they can see, the productivity that they can get out of a parent. But we’ve also had those sort of. We are talking to some big companies where, they’ve got lots of layers. A DEI person is really involved. They want to make a change in the system. It’s just about trying to get them to rethink some of their hiring processes. So some of the positive things that we’ve come back, like I said, is sort of just thinking about what roles have they got now? Can they be broken down into two different roles that they can be part-time or, as a job share or as a slight, reduced our week. It’s sort of thinking about. Things in that way when it’s a slightly large company that actually they’ve got the money to hire people. That sort of side isn’t a problem. It’s how they then redesign a team in a way that works and that’s doable. We know of a whole company in the US where the whole company works five hour workday and their KPIs went up as soon as they did that, and they did that since 2016. So it can be done. It’s just, I think having that thought around just thinking it’s not just about bums in seats, but you know the output that you’re getting out of people.

Chris Hudson: 17:00
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, so what do you think it takes to bring about the change? I mean, is it, like this shows often we we’re talking to entrepreneurs and a lot of people out there listening be in that sort of space where they’re trying to make change and positive change within their organisations in some sort of way. So do you think it’s one person, do you think, like one person can take to the leadership? Like how, how easy is it to do, do you think, to, to get that change going?

Amy Grilli: 17:22
I think it depends on the size of the company. I think if it’s a, a smaller company, obviously it’s a lot easier, especially if it’s the, the founder or the CEO coming from the top who really understands it. Maybe they’re a parent, they’re a female, they understand. But for the large companies, often we’ve had, somebody who gets it within. So like a DEI person, as I sort of said. But the way I’ve seen some really positive changes where somebody at the top. Is doing this. So they might be working in a slightly different way. And we often encourage them to do a case study of that person and showcase that they do work flexibly, that they do work around their family, that they, don’t work at weekends, they don’t work in the evenings, and that the company’s not gonna fall apart. It’s still gonna work around. And I think having that ethos coming from the top makes a huge difference. So whether it’s a small company or a large company, I think. Having that sort of culture around flexible, working around sort of that reduced hours or being productive from the the top really makes a difference in how it goes through, because I think that’s where we often fall is that. We’ll get somebody you know from the sort of middle layer and they’ll say, yeah, yeah, I get it. But you get to a hiring manager who just wants to hire somebody and they don’t care. If it’s somebody full-time with a lot less experience than a parent who can maybe do part-time and reduce hours. They’ll take somebody just because it’s easier because they don’t have to think about it. So we are sort of. That’s the work that we are doing to try and to help companies understand how they can do it, and actually that they’re gonna get better talent because of it. There’s like a huge untapped talent pool out there. Parents who are desperate to work, they’ve got years of experience. They might just need a few less hours a week, but actually they’ll probably get more done in that time anyway. So it’s just thinking about, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Hudson: 19:05
The

Amy Grilli: 19:06
positive there.

Chris Hudson: 19:07
The school bell’s about to ring and they’ll get it done before then, so,

Amy Grilli: 19:10
yeah,

Chris Hudson: 19:12
yeah, yeah. No, no, it’s interesting, isn’t it? I mean, I think, yeah, interesting from the, the leadership point of view. You’re right. If they’re demonstrating some of these behaviours, then that’s gonna be helpful as a starting point. Uh, I just feel though there are people out there that might want to do it, but they might be in sort of middle, more junior management positions and then, they, they kind of wanna make the case for it, but it might be harder. So, yeah. Have you got any advice for those types of people?

Amy Grilli: 19:34
Yeah, so we often say actually does often fall to a line manager, and the best thing you can do is just be a good example of that, even if it’s within your team. Even if you only hire two to three people, if you can make it work in your team and you can try it out. Then take that as a business case to the rest of the company and say, look, my team, three of them work a five hour work day, two of them work four day week. We work compressed hours or whatever it is. We work flexibly and look at our KPIs, look at our output, and I think it’s showing that to the wider organisation because I think. You’re right, it’s, it is really hard when you wanna work in a certain way, whether it’s for your own personal reasons or somebody within your team. I think trying it out and seeing that it works often helps. And we often say to our parents on the flip side of that, if say you’re going back after maternity leave or you are looking for a new role, is put a business case forward and say, this is why I want to work this many hours and this is what I can get done and say, this is the benefits that we’ll have. For you as my employer, I’ll be able to work, wasting all that time commuting. I can put that into my work day and I can do an extra four hours a week work for you. How’s that sound? So it’s just sort of, yeah. Putting that business case forward of actually they’re going to get more bang for their buck. Just kind of proving that it works. That’s part of the reason we’re doing our pilot, is to prove that actually the benefits that a business can get from it would be great to then yeah, the potential cost that they’re worried about.

Chris Hudson: 20:54
Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. And when you set it up, I mean, I know this seems like the number five was the magic number because you’d, you’d had the five year break and then it became the five hour club. Were you thinking about other models as well, or was it gonna be a nine, I mean, I guess nine day fortnight doesn’t have the same ring to it. Were you, you’re thinking like, what, what’s kind of most effective for people when they’re gonna be most efficient, most focused? I think it, it probably does sit kind of squarely in between when you would drop kids off and when you’d need to pick them up. But yeah. Did, did you look at other options and is there any other kind of comparison around other things that are working well too?

Amy Grilli: 21:29
Yeah, absolutely. Of course. For me it was a, it was a selfish reason. I realised I had five hours in the day and I said five hours and not six hours, because yeah, school hour day is six hours often, but, need time to, yeah, drop them off, pick them up, and then actually have some lunch break maybe in the middle. So it’s sort of that. Solid time that I have. Um, and I looked at the four day week, and there was a lot of talk about there still is over here. And although I know that is a real positive change for thinking about how you can work in a different way. My only drawback to that is, well, the school day is still finishes at three o’clock and we still have such a lack of affordable wraparound childcare. So what do I do between three and six? Because I’m trying to cook the dinner, finish my emails, do a call that somebody wants me at five o’clock. I can’t in within the school day when, I’ve got my younger one. Yes, I can work a four day week and do longer days. That makes more sense when they’re slightly smaller one, as soon as they hit school, you’re sort of stuck and then you’re having to either do that juggle or quickly run and pick them up on all of those things. So it was sort of a more of a. This is what would work for me. And then, yeah, I guess the response showed that it could work for other people too. And it’s, we say it’s not even just for parents. Like we’ve had a lot of response from other people who maybe have health conditions or disabilities, or they’re getting slightly older and want to work a reduced day. Like it’s not, it’s just. Thinking about the day slightly and thinking, when do you work best? Is it that you work best? Yeah, yeah. At the beginning. And you can do eight till 12 or eight till one. It’s, it’s thinking about that. So yeah, there are plenty, and I think that’s the positive thing I’ve seen is that there are moves towards more flexible working, but it’s sort of defining what that. Looks like is the hard bit. Yeah. And so we often say to an employer, well, if you can offer a four day week, can you not offer a five hour workday too?’cause actually for your business, a four day week means you stop potentially on a Thursday. What happens when your clients want you on a Friday? If you do a five hour workday, you’ve got somebody there potentially on a Friday too. So it gives, yeah. More options we hope to employers, uh, and I’m not adverse, adverse to any of them. I think like we went back to is like, how can you work best for you, your situation? And this doesn’t necessarily need to be forever. This could be for five years while your kids are at school or you are caring for your elderly member of your family. Something like that. So it’s not forever, it’s just being flexible around thinking about that nine to five.

Chris Hudson: 23:46
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, that’s really, really helpful. I think. Um. There’s a lot of debates, so I don’t, it might be the same in the uk It probably is, many things to say about remote working, obviously through, through the COVID times 2020 around there. And yeah, the, the debate around returns of work is still going on quite, quite strongly. So. Here are there, there are different discussions going on there, there might be some kind of mandates put in place around the fact that people shouldn’t have to go into the office full time, but are you seeing the five day, uh, sort of the five hour workday kind of play out in, is it, has it having a, any kind of impact on whether people are spending more or less time in the office?

Amy Grilli: 24:22
Again, this is something that we recommend, but it’s not. We only, we recommend that, if you can have minimum hybrid requirements, that’s great because what we’re seeing is that this, these return to office mandates being put in place, and then it’s again, closing the doors on a lot of parents who are previously working from home and working around their family, and now can’t do so because they now have to commute into office three days a week for the sake of. Policy. So that’s where we see sort of, we recommend that as much remote working or as minimum high frequent climates are being really intentional around remote working is important. So you know, if you are going to the office do when everybody’s going into the office. So it’s a real team collaboration day as opposed to you. A waste of commute time and, and money. But yeah, we are seeing that as a barrier that’s starting to come into place again, which is a real shame.’cause I think we’ve seen the benefits, but I think it goes back to that point where flexibility, I think people often get confused about what that is and what that means. And flexibility is not just whether you work from home or not, remote work is one aspect of what makes up a good flexible working arrangement. It’s also to put it on, meeting times and core hours and all of those things as well. So it’s not just about remote work. And I think that’s what employers need to think is, how can I be the most accessible for as many people as possible?’cause if they do that, then they really open up their talent pool. And that is one thing we are quite clear about. When we do job descriptions, so on our job board we have a set of criteria to sort of help protect parents and sort of take those barriers down. So we recommend that, think about your remote hybrid requirements, if they don’t have to be that way, do something, do something about that. And don’t just be open to full-time and. With flexible working, what does that actually mean? You’re not going to open up the talent pool to more people by doing that. What you’ll actually do is close the doors for people who don’t know when to ask for that flexibility, because as soon as you’re going up against a full-time person. You think, well, as soon as I ask for that reduced hours that I need, then there’s gonna be a bias against it. Rightly or wrongly. Yeah. You’re gonna have to fight for your place even if you’re more experienced. So that’s why we like to recommend that. Um, employers really transparent in their job descriptions. If it’s part-time, how many hours a week is it going to be? What are your requirements? What is the actual salary for those hours? Not just sort of pro R to FTE. What is this person going to get paid? And that will widen your talent pool, not just saying full-time or part-time.

Chris Hudson: 26:46
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Nice. I mean, I think, um, I mean it touches on a, maybe it links to a bigger topic around parental leave and how people feel reentering into the workplace after that, and, and obviously. Uh, work workplaces are a hugely competitive environment in, in many cases. So you’re thinking, okay, well if I’m off for that time, then I’m on the backseat when I come back. And it, it’s hard to take your foot off the gas because you don’t wanna lose your, your position status and everything else. So it, there, there’s a lot of kind of, um, psychological safety that, that kind of is undone through that period it feels like. And then you’re back and, and all of a sudden you’re competing. To come out with something that’s a credible alternative, I think is really valuable. And, and it just feels like you’re, you’re able to kind of position something that that doesn’t, it doesn’t mean you have to go for a, like, for like comparison. That person’s full-time, they can do that. This is another alternative and it’s, it’s productive in different ways, is that, is that how you are defining it and seeing it yourselves?

Amy Grilli: 27:43
Absolutely. It’s about, like you said, it can be really competitive out there for both the employer and the employee. And there’s not many jobs and the companies want to be the most, have the best talent. So the way that they can do that Yeah. Is by being really clear with what they don’t and open as many doors as possible. So like you say, with the parental leave situation, if that can be, if you can offer enhanced parent, uh, paternity leave, for example, that’s a really good way to open the doors for more men who, yes, they might want to take a little bit longer off with their children, but they’ll come back and they’re gonna be ready to work and they’re gonna, do everything they can to be there for your company, because they’d be really grateful for that actually. So it is really about thinking about the type of person that you want to hire. So you know, you want the best output, you want the most productive, you want somebody who is happy. Well, how do you create a happy employee? Well, you give them. What they need to support them outside of work as well as inside of work and whether that’s, to support them with their families, then, do that and offer that as a benefit. So yeah, I think it is sort of that all encompassing thing of normalising what it means to be an employee nowadays is somebody who needs to work around their outside lives as well. And if you do that, then you’re gonna be better when you into work. And so, yeah, so the leave thing is huge. We’ve got a parental leave reform happening over here in UK and that’s gonna take 18 months. But what we are fighting for here is to normalise that shared responsibility that men can have too by being at home with their children longer. If you start to share the load for domestic load and parental responsibility from the very beginning, then that will enable more women to go back into work. Earlier because yeah, women are, they’re not having to take on so much that they can then, start to work just as men work with families. So we are really hoping to normalise that over here. It, it’s hard because at the moment we’ve only got two weeks at, less than minimum wage for dads and not even self-employed dads. So we are trying to Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, it’s really pretty bad over here in the UK at the moment, so it can’t get much worse, but hopefully. By doing that, that will then make men feel that they can take that time out with their families. I mean, even go back to my own situation, my husband, he’s worked half the last five years and I said to him about, if you had the opportunity to take more parental leave when the boys are young, would you have done it? He said, well, the trouble with that is, there probably be a bias against me if I’d taken that time out, I would’ve missed that promotion cycle or, and because it’s not normalised, he didn’t feel like he could. If more people are doing that, we look at some of the European comp, um, countries like Iceland where men get six months, women get six months, they get six weeks to share between them. The uptake men taking that is 98%. It’s non-transferable. They have to take it, so then it normalises it, and then the, so it’s massive. So we’ve gotta take, look at, other countries who are doing this well and see the benefits that then the company gets from. Having happy employees who, can work productively around their families.

Chris Hudson: 30:36
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s a difficult one, isn’t it? Because if you’re in a, if you’re in a big corporate, or if you’re in a, if you’re in a company where, you might, you might be able to read the tea leaves a little bit. You might be able to say, okay, well, I’ve, I’ve got these objectives, I’ve got these KPIs. I might have a promotion when it’s reviewed next in, 10 months time or whatever, whatever the window is. So you might have a, an inkling as to when it might be a good time, but it’s a bit like, taking holiday or annual leave, it’s never a good time, as some people say. You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t choose, you can’t always choose when you’re gonna have kids and stuff. I feel like that, that window is, if it’s more accepted, the more people did it, then it would be more of a, it’s an easier pill to swallow than, than one person doing it once in five years in that company. And then that becoming the exception really. So I feel like it does need to be normalised more as you were saying.

Amy Grilli: 31:23
Absolutely. Yeah. Like you say, and actually if you think about your employees, it probably only happened once, twice, three, three times at the most. If they stay with you during that time, so it’s not a big time out. And they will definitely come back happier, different perspective. So. It’s working. Yeah, for sure.

Chris Hudson: 31:40
Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah, I think the, the other one is maybe thinking about it from the point of view of, re you know, coming back into work and, if you’ve taken time off to care for your kids, then, how are you, how are you going back in with confidence and, and how do you go back in with that, that sense of it being the right next step at that point for you. And, and it feels like by not necessarily. Back to like a full-time role, but, but doing like a, a five day, something that’s a little bit more specific and focused, then you could, you can probably, you can probably be quite deliberate about how you build up that confidence and re into the workforce. Is that what you’re seeing?

Amy Grilli: 32:18
Absolutely. So we do a lot of work as well as with our employers. We do a lot of work with our parent community around that piece about. Return to work, keeping their foot in their door, their career so that they can keep their confidence when they do go back, which is a, you have a huge identity shift. Your perspective changes about your career and everything you were doing before you’ve had kids. And if you’ve had kids, you would know that feeling. And it’s like, well, what you’re doing before might not fit you anymore because of either it’s not flexible enough or even just, it doesn’t, bring you as much joy as it did before. All of these things. So we work with a lot of coaches and experts to sort of master classes to help them build back that confidence. And often they’ll come to us with, it’s about starting with you as a person, looking at what you’re good at, what your skills are, and you build so many more skills as a parent. You learn a lot more in negotiations and skills. Time management skills, all of these things. So you’re adding that to your arsenal of, professional skills or qualifications that you had pre-children. So you’re coming in with a lot more to offer a company. So you should feel confident with those things. When you go to a job interview or you’re, putting your CV down, be confident in the fact that actually you’ve got a lot more to give than maybe you did have before. And then once you start with your yourself, then it’s looking at, okay, well what do I wanna do now? What do I love? What you know. Sings to me what, skills have I got that really works in that way and makes sense to my family. And then you can go from there. But I think it all does start with you as a person. So we do, yeah, do a lot of that. Also trying to, we also really try and encourage parents to advocate for themselves. So when they do go to the company, to the interview, knowing how to present themselves and knowing how to put that business case forward for why they can work, reduce hours, but still give all the output. Yeah, there’s a lot of work to be done there because I think often, and that’s what I felt this. Bias around, I took five years out that I was a conscious decision. I chosen to take five years outta my career. In hindsight, in all honestly, I wish I had kept my toe back in a little bit more than I did. Yeah. Because not only just for my confidence levels, but just, to keep my head in the game and to, keep my skills building. There’s a lot of courses and things that I could have been doing maybe during that time within maternity leave. In actual fact, I was planning to do my doctorate during my maternity leave, which I. Didn’t end up doing for many reasons, been too far on the other side, but just to keep it in and even financially like my financial stability and my long-term financial health is, took a huge hit. There are long-term pension goals and all of that that. Is a huge problem that a lot of women face, particularly because, as soon as they step out that force, I think it, they say after six months of taking time out, that’s when you get impacted in terms of your career and your long-term earning potential and your pension goals and all of those things. So you have to think about that and that is not something I did and that’s something I’m help trying to help parents do a little bit more. Just be a bit more intentional about taking that time. Like even if you wanna take that time out of your career, be thoughtful of the things that you can do. From your home with your baby there as well during that time, all of those things, because that would just help. Your confidence again when you do go back to wanting to go back to work?

Chris Hudson: 35:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, um, yeah, I mean, the preparation I think is really key there. So, uh, a lot of people kind of go introspective and, they’re, they’re looking to, to soul search a little bit to try and find out, what their, what their life path is and where you know, where they should be going because these are big life changes that happen around this time. So, based on your experience or maybe from what you’ve heard from anybody else. What are some of the things to consider and, when should people be thinking about this, do you think?

Amy Grilli: 35:53
I think, you know when you feel ready to go back to work. And, uh, I’ll give you an example. My co-founder, she was a teacher previously as well, and when she went to go back to work, she, went back between her two boys. And being a teacher with a family is a really difficult job. It is, unfortunately, and the education system is not set up to have a family particularly well of here. One of the most inflexible jobs there are, so she. Intentionally looked at how she could then change her career and she looked for courses. She looked at things where she could up skill and she did a course Code First Girls, and she now is a data analyst and a consultancy business. So she completely changed that and she was doing that during the evening. She was doing it, during, after bedtime, and she was taking control of that herself. She really thought about what she wanted to do, but the basis for that was that she wanted something that was, that was more flexible than, teaching. So that was sort of the underlying thing that where she wanted to change her career and she was able to do that. And that was one other reason that we wanted to set this up was to showcase these sort of opportunities that there are out there for people to be able to change career if and when they want to because it is hard to know or it is hard to know what’s out there and what is doable at the moment. So, but there are opportunities to be able to change. It’s just a case of. You have to be thoughtful about it. And then just even things like taking, on LinkedIn and using your network and, watching webinars and courses and there’s lots of things out there. Um, do it on the sofa, feeding. It’s doable. Yeah. Just if it’s something where you wanna be going back into your career at some point, it’s worth doing. And that’s only from my experience where I just went, no, I’m not thinking about it. And in hindsight, that probably wasn’t the, the smartest move.

Chris Hudson: 37:39
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think. It is probably thinking about your, maybe your longer term goals, but, but also, how do you, you take a side step rather than a, a full step in a way, uh, or a step away. So, um, yeah, often people are saying you should run, run some of these things in parallel a little bit. So like you’re saying, train up. Uh, I think part of, part of what we’re talking about here is that the person that takes on, uh, the five hour. Day is, is, gotta be quite self committed, quite driven themselves to, to kind of take this responsibility on, to get, get the work done in that time. And so part of that is also taking accountability for your own learning, for your own training. Like you say, attend a webinar, try out a few different things in a way that’s low risk and, and you just. You’re just watching it instead of the news or Netflix or whatever. You’re just trying to consume some things and then you, you can use that and, and judge what you feel is right. And there are probably safer ways to start than just throwing in the towel and, and leaving your job tomorrow because you could, you could be planning these things, uh, and looking at some options. And now even, I’ve heard of this being done as well, like even if you had annual leave and you wanted to just try something out for a week. You could do that. Um, so I think just breaking it down could help. Is that, is that something that you’re seeing as well?

Amy Grilli: 38:56
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s why we sort of, the five hour workday can work really well for people because it gives them the opportunity to keep their toe in. And even if they’re doing two, two days a week, three days a week, that’s why I had five hour, I had one day a week when my youngest was small, that’s when I wanted to work. And that’s where we are getting to. If there are more these sort of part-time flexible roles out there, then that helps in the time that they, at the moment there isn’t many, so you have to take it on yourself to be able to do that. I use that five hours a day to up skill myself a little bit more in different areas and look at what I could do without having any paid work. So yeah, it is just. Using the time you have as effectively as possible all the time. Whilst, the workplace isn’t quite set up for, part-time work. I, I actually have heard that in Australia there are more part-time roles open out there. Like a lot of women can return to the workplace in these sort of part-time positions. The only, the downside of that is that these part-time roles are sort of seen in this negative light. So we say there’s a huge problem with part-time work is that, it’s not seen as a position where you can then have progression or you’re getting paid well enough and then you also have to take all the domestic responsibility as well, so actually you are still restricted. So it’s about looking at yourself, if you are wanting to do part-time work, but how can you do it in a manageable way so that when you can take on more work that you know, your partner also takes up some of the domestic load they do, do some of the school pickups. It’s not just all on you because that can be a problem that a lot of women particularly face. Where they, they feel like they have to do it all, but they haven’t got much time to do it in.

Chris Hudson: 40:33
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that’s a really valid point. I mean, it sounds like the movement is very much underway. Uh, there, there are gonna be a lot of things that still need to happen and, the d needs to share if there’s a reform that’s going on in the UK from, from what it sounds like. But yeah, there, there needs to be some change. I feel like there’s still some, like if you look way down the path, what do you see as being like the next frontier with this? Like what. In terms of just, beyond just hours, location time, is there anything else that you’re seeing that you think that’s gonna be where it’s going? It’s really exciting.

Amy Grilli: 41:01
That’s a good question. I guess it’s that sort of normalisation of this way of working, not just for. Say women, but for men too, so that it, yeah, men can work part-time or they can work reduced hours and they can take on that shared responsibility. Yeah, I think that’s the sort of, and that companies become more fluid in terms of how they work as well, in terms of their flexibility and the, that they are, there are startups in the US that hire from here, there, and everywhere, and they’re, growing businesses. So it can be done. I think it’s just for. Those large companies to realise that and to start making change. Um, I think that’s where, because we know how much. People want it. On the other side, we know how much the employees need to be working in a slightly different way. Now it’s for the employers to trust that they will get as much out of their employees or probably will get more out of their employers if they then also start to work in a more fluid way. That’s how they’re gonna get the best talent. So yeah, I guess in the long term it’s normalising that it doesn’t matter how, where, when. Work, it can be done and you’re going to do better for it. But there’s a lot of things, systemic changes that need to be made, unfortunately, for us to get to that point, I guess because companies need to be supported as well to be able to do that.

Chris Hudson: 42:23
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s, it’s, it’s a long, it’s, it’s a long list of things, right? There’s, there’s the leadership challenges, there’s the management styles. There are all sorts of policies that sit around it. The, the normalisation will come from a number of factors being addressed. It feels like domestic, domestic responsibility and that’s another huge one to solve. How how’s that gonna get cracked? And it’ll get cracked through, people trying it out over time and, and through some of the normalisation of things that we talked about. Yeah. School holidays, that’s the other one. Can you fix that too?

Amy Grilli: 42:52
I would love to. Yeah, we were talking about that the only, the other day and we were like, why is it six weeks? It must have been some who’s not had to look after their children for that length of time. Uh, who’s made it six weeks holiday, it seems, uh, yeah. Bisarre, isn’t it? Yeah. No, I mean, all of those things, it’s the thing if we can just sort of sink all of these. Things so that it works for everybody, yeah. The children don’t need that much time out. Parents don’t have that much holiday, or at least make those two things match would be a great thing. We talk about the maths not making sense a lot over here, annually versus the amount of school holiday days that Yeah. Children have. So either matching those would be good. And then yeah, childcare around that, making it more affordable so that that matches up too, if there’s so many great examples of it in some of the European countries about how it can be done. So it’s like, well, why can’t we just copy what they do because their economies are thriving and their parents are happy, their kids are happy. Why can’t it be done, in other places. Yeah.

Chris Hudson: 43:50
Yeah. Could be simple, but it isn’t. Could be, but you know, you like simple things apparently.

Chris Hudson: 43:55
Well, um, thanks so much Amy. I really enjoyed the chat and yeah, I think it’s. It’s a fascinating topic. I think so many companies are in and should be getting more involved with this kind of approach to, to the working week and the working days. So hopefully there’ll be more flexibility, more normalisation, people find it easier, and some of those other things we talked about might start to get balanced out. So really appreciate you taking the time to talk and thanks for coming onto the show.

Amy Grilli: 44:22
No, thank you so much for having me, Chris.

Chris Hudson: 44:24
And if anyone wants to have a look at the board ask you a question, where would they go?

Amy Grilli: 44:27
So our job board is five hour club.com and that is a global job board. And then you can find us, uh, a lot of our parent community work is on Instagram at Five Hour Club. We have a strong, uh, LinkedIn following too, about over 50,000 now I think where we’ve got our newsletter, you can find us, which is Five Hour Club, or you can follow me, Amy Grilli, on LinkedIn as well. So yeah, just five Hour Club anywhere hopefully. And that’s an. Word five as opposed to the number, if that helps.

Chris Hudson: 44:56
All right. Thanks so much, Amy. We’ll leave it there. Thank you.

Amy Grilli: 44:58
All right. Thanks so much.

Okay, so that’s it for this episode. If you’re hearing this message, you’ve listened all the way to the end. So thank you very much. We hope you enjoyed the show. We’d love to hear your feedback. So please leave us a review and share this episode with your friends, team members, leaders if you think it’ll make a difference.

After all, we’re trying to help you, the intrapreneurs kick more goals within your organisations. If you have any questions about the things we covered in the show, please email me directly at chris@companyroad.co. I answer all messages so please don’t hesitate to reach out and to hear about the latest episodes and updates.

Please head to companyroad.co to subscribe. Tune in next Wednesday for another new episode.