Being part of Desigual is the perfect balance between working and enjoying life

Seven months after implementing a four-day workweek for close to 500 employees based at Desigual’s Home Office, we conducted an internal survey to find out what our team think about this new work model.

Here are some of the results:

90% believe that this policy increases people’s happiness and 80% believe that it has improved their work-life balance and cannot imagine going back to working on Fridays.

We took a step forward in our search for new disruptive working and work-life balance models and became the first fashion brand in Spain to give its employees the opportunity to reduce their workweek to 4 days with the option of working from home on one of them.

“We are developing a bold proposal for our employees to allow them to have a better work-life balance. We see the results from the survey as very positive, since they show that the management and the people who are part of Desigual are aligned and share the same vision. This support and acceptance encourage us to continue seeking new flexibility solutions for the rest of our collaborators who, given the type of work they do, could not be included in this policy.” – Coral Alcaraz, People Director at Desigual

Moreover, around 70% of participants say that the four-day workweek will help to attract talent, which was one of the goals of this proposal.

 “85% of employees stated in the survey that the 3+1 workweek is a good reason to recommend working at Desigual. Launching this initiative was also a response to our determination to offer work models that will allow us to maintain the motivation of our employees and attract the best talent, and the response from our teams confirms that we are headed in the right direction. We are immersed in a new stage of growth and we want our innovative and bold culture to be shared by the whole team.” – Alberto Ojinaga, General Director at Desigual

Flexibility, work-life balance and innovation are basic elements in our employment offers. Our current employees are adapting and improving their way of working with the new workweek. According to the data from the survey, almost 70% of employees believe that the team organise themselves efficiently.

The support from the staff was one of many aspects that meant this initiative was chosen as one of the 100 Best Ideas of 2021 by Actualidad Económica in the “Training and employment” category.

This measure is part of a wider plan that also aims to offer disruptive work and work-life balance models at the points of sale. Currently, a plan is being put in place internationally for Store Managers. Other initiatives are being considered for the stores, like having more than one weekend off every month, planning holidays further in advance or improving shifts.