A reseller with a 100% remote, four-day-week working model claims it’s proving the doubters wrong after swelling revenues by nearly 50% in its latest financial year.
Having never had an office since it launched in 2010, Highgate IT Solutions saw revenues hike from £15.2m to £22.5m in its year to 31 October 2024.
As well as allowing its 38 staff to work anywhere in the world, Highgate in November 2022 permanently adopted a four-day week following a successful six-month trial.
Highgate’s results fly in the face of recent return-to-office mandates and claims this week from former M&S CEO Stuart Rose that those working from home aren’t doing “proper work”.
“It does seem that the world is fixated on office working, and we’re proud to be different,” Jenny Latimer, Operations Director at Highgate, told IT Channel Oxygen.
“We’re obviously proving people wrong.
“Because we have always been remote, we make more of an effort to communicate with our employees to make sure everyone’s working together and collaborating.
“When you’ve got a hybrid model, it may actually prove more difficult to manage, because you might see more of the people who work from the office than those who work from home. Whereas here, everyone is on the same level and has the same opportunities.”
“I get asked this a lot”
It’s nearly three years since Highgate introduced a four-day-week policy designed to give employees 100% pay for 80% of their time, while maintaining 100% output.
“Based on our numbers, you can see we’re getting 100% productivity out of employees over four days,” Latimer said.
“Something we get asked a lot is ‘what day do you close’? The business remains operational five days a week. Everyone gets a day off and mine tends to be Monday. I will spend time with my horse and do life admin, and I get to do the school run and then spend time with my daughter.”
Would a four-day week work for a larger reseller or MSP with hundreds of staff?
“I get asked this a lot,” Latimer responded.
“There are always people who want to tell me it won’t work, but I believe it would.
“We spent six months in a trial, and the focus was on employee wellbeing. But then obviously [we had to make sure] it worked for the business as well. New things were always coming up – for instance, if a person’s had a day off sick but they’ve also had their four-day week day, what do you do? So initially, it can be more difficult. But we’ve gone from 16 to 38 employees and haven’t had to change anything, and are now in a position where it’s scalable.”
Highgate will deepen its ESG focus this year and has just become accredited as a Living Wage Employer, Latimer said.
The reseller has set its sights on hitting £30m revenue this year, with three new people set to join the business this quarter.
“I think we’re definitely bucking the trend. Everyone was saying everything was flat at Canalys, but we’ve only been seeing growth year on year over the entire 13 years. And this one has been considerably our best year,” Latimer concluded.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
