5in4: HAT Projects /// on flexible working

We are delighted to introduce our first guest post, by HAT Projects. 

Intrigued by their tweet in response to us announcing our 3-months trial of a 5in4 working week, we contacted Hana Loftus, co-director of HAT Projects, interested in knowing more about their experience of flexible working.

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The HAT Projects team!

                                                                      The HAT Projects team!

We were intrigued by Bauman Lyons’ recent announcement that the whole office was trialling a 5-in-4 day week, as a way to allow their team more time for family and other interests.  As a smaller practice, we’ve taken a flexible approach to our work patterns from the start – and would hope never to enforce a conventional working week.

The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, my co-director Tom and myself started a family at the same time as our practice. We were committed to real equality in childcare without having a nanny, so this meant a big change in the way we worked. From when our first child was three weeks old we split childcare 50/50, which was a tough mental shift for two naturally hard workers, but has paid huge dividends. We now work a more conventional week, but each of us still has a half-day off to spend with the girls. We never told our clients or collaborators how we managed – we did everything we could to maintain the quality and intensity of our work, and if this meant Tom getting up crazily early so that he could still pick up the girls from nursery at 5.15, so be it.

The second reason derives from our experience as employers. We started working with freelancers and part-time assistants as a way to limit our financial outlay while filling our needs. We realised that we would rather have several people working for us part-time, than packing those hours into full time roles. Partly this has been about using people’s skills appropriately – we need admin and architectural support but one person is unlikely to cover both. But also, as a small practice, the office dynamic is much healthier with more people coming in and out each week, and an early experience having a full-time employee also made us uncomfortable that she spent more time in the office than our 4.5 days a week. We made a decision that our employees should not work longer, or less flexible, hours than us.

We like having a team who have other projects on the go, bringing varied experiences to us – whether it’s running markets, studying, teaching or work for other practices. For the same reason, Tom and I also volunteer time as trustees to charities. We currently have a graduate working with us and although she would (naturally) like to be paid for five rather than the four days we employ her for, when we asked her about this for the piece, she commented that her ideal would be the 5-in-4 that Bauman Lyons are doing – full pay and Fridays off. Our other employed team member has just come back from maternity leave for a day and half a week, and will increase her hours over the next year. We have a wonderful freelancer who works with us when we need his skills in model-making or prototyping.

Of course Tom and I work far more than a ‘conventional’ work week when you include the evenings working late from home or in the office, but that’s no different from anyone else who owns their own business. I will confess to spending far too much time on my Blackberry. But we are both proud of the equality in our family and interested to see whether, as our practice continues to develop, we can keep having a team who work unusual hours. For us, it’s about getting the job done well, not watching the clock: trying not to set unreasonable expectations for what can be achieved in a certain number of hours, but also hoping our team takes seriously the responsibilities we give them. We’re ambitious and want hard workers, but we want people to have a life outside the practice too – and we hope that we lead by example.

                                          Jerwood Gallery by HAT Projects. ©HATProjects

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Thanks again Hana for your contribution, a great insight into how flexible working can be a viable model for architecture practice. 

If you want to find out more about HAT Projects and their work, we highly recommend their website and blog. You can also follow them on Twitter.

5in4: 5in4 Initial thoughts – M Lyons, founding partner

As with everyone in the Architectural design industry, I have noted the inexorable rise in the number of hours that individuals in offices are required to work in order to meet deadlines. These deadlines are very often set very unreasonably, to say:

  • Fit into a funding bodies’ end of financial year time scale, to suit their own bureaucracy and funding deadlines;

Or

  • Developers requiring redesigns because the “market” has run counter to their cost consultants’ estimates of schemes’ construction costs.

Or

  • Clients’ changes to designs required on site and the necessity to deal with the fall out, with increased contract administration not to mention redesign time. 

These time pressures are similar in many associated building consultancies such as engineering, but it is far worse, I feel, in architectural practice. Needles to say that this culture is not compensated for with increased fees, reflecting the extra hours worked as fees continue to drop rather than increase.

This ‘extreme hours’ culture eventually takes its toll on individuals’ lives both private and professional, with many dropping out of the profession.

Therefore our 5in4 trial period, is BLA’s attempt to start looking at this phenomenon in a way that – whilst working the hours of a full week – makes the extra hours often required from staff members to be either paid for separately or negotiated with a client, to then be added onto the programme of a commission.

I, of course, have worries about what we are embarking on :

  • Loss of 20% visibility during the week.
  • Inability to meet urgent deadlines as staff will be unavailable for that 5th day of working if needed.
  • Negative perceptions within the client group of part time working.
  • Disproportionate effort by certain individuals to maintain “the safety net” of being available on the Fridays for emergency issues. 

However on the positive side:

  •  BLA will still work a 38hr week, it will just be compressed into 4 days.
  • Individual staff members will have a reduced commute to and from work.
  • There will be an extra day for staff members’ private lives, potentially making family life less pressured.
  • We should be able to manage the expectations of clients and contractors that meetings and queries are arranged in the first four days of the week. 

Going forward:

  • For the 5in4 to truly work we will have to work much smarter. There will have to be less repetition; less pondering re design; less bespoke unique solutions.
  • There will have to be much faster initial solutions, with modelled presentations leading to faster and firmer sign offs of frozen design stages.
  • We are going to have to gauge our clients needs in how bespoke they wish to be in design, or in fact how they want to simply have a standard solution.
  • We are going to monitor and possibly scale back the “service” we provide to inexperienced and under-resourced contractors and clients.

5in4: Wk03 – LC

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What makes life richer? Friends, be challenged, be part of your community, live the city and be surprised by it [through my lens]

End of Wk03

As I’m about to begin Wk04, I’m starting to realise that even my 4in3 is proving tougher than I thought. Perhaps I was being too optimistic?

With the 4in3 format I’m working in the office two days a week with one day then worked from home.

I actually really miss that office interaction over three days.

Another thing I realised is that with the 10hrs day, which means I don’t return home till very late, I’ve been missing simple but important things in life like friends’ birthdays. In this month alone I missed two dinners because while the others met after work, which for them meant 7pm, I couldn’t make it anytime before 9pm. One may say that missing a birthday dinner is not the end of the world, but life is made special by small things and friends’ birthdays (especially those who are more like family than just friends) are one of those important ‘little’ things that enrich life.

I am also so tired by the time I get home that those two days (10 hours plus commute time) worked in the office, on a private/personal level they don’t exist as I simply.just.’work’.*

I’m starting to appreciate and value even more than before the reasons why a working day has been set as 7.5hours. There is something vital about being able to balance life and work everyday not just on the day ‘off’.

Could the 8am-3pm day (over a ‘normal’ week) that Cedric Price advocated (already implemented in other countries) work better? Or even the good old 9till5 where you are able to truly clock off at 5pm (which has never happened in all my career life so far, due to the nature of the profession).

When I was very young, still a student, I had a classic interview where I was told that ‘you can’t practice architecture part time’. I begged to differ and I’m glad that 10+ years on the conversation is including and extending to the value of part time, yes even in architecture. But at this moment in time I’m not sure the right balance lies in the 4in3 model.

I’m learning that the 4in3 and even more so the 5in4 may render ‘flexibility’ even harder if not impossible to achieve. Because once you’ve worked 10 hours, there’s little flexibility left in the day to ‘play with’.

I may change my mind again as we progress with our trial. And this is what this trial is about, challenging ourselves to find a better life-balance that the current set up may or may not offer us.

*I am aware that this is unique to my situation as I’m the only one of BLA that lives the furthest from the office.

Notes:
– two days in office only also makes it hard to cross with directors, as they have the busiest schedule. This makes it harder for project and design reviews to take place in good time for meeting deadlines.
– the two-days only spent in the office, make time feel very rushed.

5in4: Hopes & Worries

Overview

  • An early start hasn’t been a problem – I generally feel more productive in a morning but I do start to feel less productive when it gets to about 5 o’clock.
  • Breaking off for lunch and getting some fresh air actually makes a difference and is really important when working longer hours – before I didn’t really leave the office for lunch.

Hopes

  • I think it should start to get a bit easier after a couple of weeks so the last few hours of the day don’t feel unproductive.
  • Having Fridays off means planning to do something valuable with my time so that it doesn’t feel wasted. Hope to start doing more artwork and explore Leeds a bit more on my bike as I haven’t really had the chance to do so since moving here.

Worries

  • Being unproductive towards the end of the day / making mistakes due to tiredness could lead to more time being spent rectifying them.

5in4: Experiences & Expectations

My experiences so far:

  • Shifting my sleeping pattern by an hour and a half made the first morning a little tough, but since then I’ve felt much livelier again as the new working hours are becoming routine.
  • The additional working hours of each day have so far remained productive and haven’t yet given me that ‘it’s been a long day’ feeling. Neither do I feel that my evenings have been significantly shortened; there’s still plenty of time for me to relax and refresh for the following day.
  • Starting work at 7:30am has encouraged me to be more efficient with my time in the mornings before I leave for work and I’ve so far managed to cut down my morning routine by roughly 20-25 minutes!
  • The most frequent question I’ve been asked regarding the 5 in 4 experiment has to be ‘won’t people just work on the Friday anyway when a deadline is approaching’… At this stage we can only wait and see what the answer will be.
  • It doesn’t seem like the local newsagent is too happy about us buying one less paper each week!

My experiences so far:

  • I’m hoping that this long weekend will be one of my most productive weekends to date due to the extra time that I will be able to spend on my personal projects and studies outside of the workplace. I believe that more can be achieved in the one Friday than in the five evenings of the previous working hours.
  • As I’m not living with family here in Leeds I won’t experience many of the effects that the new hours have on family life, but I’m certainly interested to see how those living with partners and children find the change in routine.
  • Although the first weekend is yet to come, I feel that there will be a positive impact on work/life balance
  • I wonder if tea and coffee consumption will increase with the longer working hours, I’ll keep an eye on it!

5in4: Adjusting

The 2nd week is nearly over already. At this pace, before we know it, the first month of this trial period will pass us by in a flash!

So far (but these are still very early days), I’m finding this new set up positive overall.

Because I get up quite early anyway, the earlier alarm clock hasn’t bothered me at all. I am actually finding that getting up at 5.30 is much easier than 6.30am. I enjoy the quietness before the hustle & bustle of the day commences.

On the other hand getting home much later than ‘normal’ is not being very easy nor pleasant. BUT it is compensated with the days that I don’t travel, because as mentioned previously, I work part time.

One thing that makes the longer days/condensed week harder for me is travelling in bad, winter weather! Today for example, Leeds has been covered by few cm of snow. You can imagine the chaos! I am writing this post on my slow train home. Tonight I won’t get home till long gone dinner time. But at least, I hope, these are rare occasions, so it’s important not to dwell on it too much.

I am picking up good vibes from my colleagues. Certainly there seems to be a general good mood in the office. I haven’t yet asked whether this is because of the longer weekend.

Amongst the projects I am working on, one is an invited competition with a very interesting brief, but I expect the next few weeks to test and challenge our 5in4 format quite a lot. Will we manage our time effectively within a ‘shorter’ week? Will the tight deadline be just too tight?

Will our Fridays be truly off? In all honesty, I don’t know. But at least we are trying and we are not sticking our heads in the sand pretending the current culture in our profession is ‘just fine’. The architectural profession has a serious, latent problem with unhealthily long hours, which must be challenged (a global problem, not just for British architects). Similarly with another latent issue which is still pervading the profession.

Crunching those numbers!

My 4in3 means I now travel to work one day less than ‘normal’ and I found that:

  • I save 4 hours a week in train travelling
  • I commute 80 miles less a week
  • I save approximately 7kg of CO2 from travelling, a week (calculator used and its assumptions);
  • I save approximately £80 a month in train fares!

Onwards & upwards!

5in4: Links & articles /// Wk01/02

These are some of the articles, debates and papers that have caught our eye lately:

Britain’s happiest places to live:


5in4: Wk02 – Adjusting [LC]

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This week has consisted of more snow (!), teaching at Sheffield School of Architecture and good, productive meetings (a nice change).

2nd week is nearly over already. At this pace, before we know it, the first month of this trial period will pass us by in a flash!

So far (but these are still very early days), I’m finding this new set up positive overall.

Because I get up quite early anyway, the earlier alarm clock hasn’t bothered me at all. I am actually finding that getting up at 5.30 is much easier than 6.30am. I enjoy the quietness  before the hustle & bustle of the day commences.

On the other hand getting home much later than ‘normal’ is not being very easy nor pleasant. BUT it is compensated with the days that I don’t travel, because as mentioned previously, I work part time.

One thing that makes the longer days/condensed week harder for me is travelling in bad, winter weather! Today for example, Leeds has been covered by few cm of snow. You can imagine the chaos! I am writing this post on my slow train home. Tonight I won’t get home till long gone dinner time. But at least, I hope, these are rare occasions, so it’s important not to dwell on it too much.

I am picking up good vibes from my colleagues. Certainly there seems to be a general good mood in the office. I haven’t yet asked whether this is because of the longer week end.

Amongst the projects I am working on, one is an invited competition with a very interesting brief, but I expect the next few weeks to test and challenge our 5in4 format quite a lot. Will we manage our time effectively within a ‘shorter’ week? Will the tight deadline be just too tight?

Will our Fridays be truly off? In all honesty, I don’t know. But at least we are trying and we are not sticking our heads in the sand pretending the current culture in our profession is ‘just fine’. The architectural profession has a serious, latent problem with unhealthy long hours, which must be challenged (a global problem, not just for British architects). Similarly with another latent issue which is still pervading the profession.

Onwards & upwards!

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Crunching those numbers!
My 4in3 means I now travel to work one day less than ‘normal’ and I found that:
– I save 4 hours a week in train travelling;
– I commute 80 miles less a week;
– I save approximately 7kg of CO2 from travelling, a week (calculator used and its assumptions);
And… (wait for it…)
– I save approximately £80 a month in train fares!

Designs on the Future NOW

The inaugural lecture series ‘Designs On The Future NOW’ is now available to watch online via the Sheffield School of Architecture website.

Irena Bauman’s lecture was entitled ‘Architecture of Consequence’ and took place on the 27th November.

5in4: Wk00/01 – RJ

Experiences so far:

– Shifting my sleeping pattern by an hour and a half made the first morning a little tough, but since then I’ve felt much livelier again as the new working hours are becoming routine.
– The additional working hours of each day have so far remained productive and haven’t yet given me that ‘it’s been a long day’ feeling. Neither do I feel that my evenings have been significantly shortened; there’s still plenty of time for me to relax and refresh for the following day.
– Starting work at 7:30am has encouraged me to be more efficient with my time in the mornings before I leave for work and I’ve so far managed to cut down my morning routine by roughly 20-25 minutes!
– The most frequent question I’ve been asked regarding the 5 in 4 experiment has to be ‘won’t people just work on the Friday anyway when a deadline is approaching?’… At this stage we can only wait and see what the answer will be.
– It doesn’t seem like the local newsagent is too happy about us buying one less paper each week!

Expectations/Thoughts:

– I’m hoping that this long weekend will be one of my most productive weekends to date due to the extra time that I will be able to spend on my personal projects and studies outside of the workplace. I believe that more can be achieved in the one Friday than in the five evenings of the previous working hours.
– As I’m not living with family here in Leeds I won’t experience many of the effects that the new hours have on family life, but I’m certainly interested to see how those living with partners and children find the change in routine.
– Although the first weekend is yet to come, I feel that there will be a positive impact on work/life balance
– I wonder if tea and coffee consumption will increase with the longer working hours, I’ll keep an eye on it!

5in4: Wk00/01 – ED

Overview:

– An early start hasn’t been a problem – I generally feel more productive in a morning but I do start to feel less productive when it gets to about 5 o’clock.

– Breaking off for lunch and getting some fresh air actually makes a difference and is really important when working longer hours – before I didn’t really leave the office for lunch.

Hopes:

– I think it should start to get a bit easier after a couple of weeks so the last few hours of the day don’t feel unproductive.

– Having Fridays off means planning to do something valuable with my time so that it doesn’t feel wasted. Hope to start doing more artwork and explore Leeds a bit more on my bike as I haven’t really had the chance to do so since moving here.

Worries:

– Being unproductive towards the end of the day / making mistakes due to tiredness could lead to more time being spent time rectifying them.

5in4: Wk00/01 – MM

I’m Matt, associate at Bauman Lyons, aged 33 and living with my fiancée in our own home in Huddersfield with our 10 month old baby boy & our new au-pair Lucy.

For me the scenario will be slightly different to the rest of the office as I have already been working a reduced week (4 days in 3 long ones to be roughly accurate) for about a year now and as such have begun to realise just how significant a difference this can make in both obvious and unexpected ways. However, what is most surprising now is that it’s things that were completely unexpected that have become amongst the most valued to us.

Less working time means less income but that hasn’t necessarily meant less money. We obviously have been saving on travel costs, childcare and so on, but it’s the small things that have really contributed to us actually having more money in the end, rather than less. Or at least that’s how it feels! One thing’s for sure though: we are certainly living richer lives for it.

The small things that have made the difference weren’t quite so obvious at first and have generally come about through our change in circumstances. The first one we recognised (which came about through me giving my fiancée a lift to work, already +£1.50 in our pockets, saved from the bus fare) was just how good the local weekday market is. I can’t believe how awful the fruit & veggies have become at big supermarkets and how much we’re shelling out for them. We’re now paying a lot less for a lot tastier produce, eating healthier and generally behaving more sustainably – supporting local business and even beginning to realise what’s in season, not because we’re reading up on it but because it’s reflected in the prices! I’m sure this is stuff my Grandma used to know! Who’d have thought??!!

I should also say that the reason I can give my fiancée a lift is because we work slightly more flexible hours (a 9.30 start instead of 9am for me), which has literally revolutionised our mornings, especially since having a baby. Such a small change as this, has meant less time sat on the motorway – as I now miss the worst of the rush hour traffic – therefore enabling me not only to drop-off my fiancée at her workplace on my way to mine, but above all it has enabled us, as a family, to have breakfast all together. I can’t quantify how important this is to us – not least because this is the only time I would get to see my son on a work day, as I wouldn’t normally get home before he was in bed. How about that??!!

5in4: Wk00/01 – VB

As I now work 29 hours in 4 days (increased from 26 hours) this change doesn’t affect me too much – however, I have noticed that the week has gone so much quicker – on Wednesday I thought it was Tuesday eek!

From a personal point of view, I like mornings and enjoy my job so getting up nearly an hour earlier hasn’t had too much of a major impact although the queue for the bathroom takes some getting used to. When I used to come in the office it was quiet and I had time to set out my stall and get ready for the day – now when I come (as all staff have been in an hour already) the office is busy and straight away staff are needing me (a small point but noticeable).

To work with the rest of the team I changed my day off from a Thursday to Friday – you may think that’s not much of change but it took me a long time to find a great Yoga class on a Thursday and now cant go :o( – also when I’m not at work I’m am carer for my elderly parents and the day change has impacted on them. This may seem a negative thought but I am confident the 5in4 can work for the office – with a little outside understanding and good communication within the office!!

5in4: Wk00/01 – SW

Thoughts:

• Part of working efficiently is to know when to abstain from things which are a waste of time.
• Reduced hours places a greater impetus on effective working and as such a regular (and dynamic, changing) assessment of personal work-planning, team resource-planning, what actions to take/not take; becomes very important.
• Which means lots of sleep and coffee!! (Or vitamin B…)
• In the first week however, it seems to have made us cheerful and motivated.
• A question in my mind: how will it work if/when Clients demand a presence on Fridays? Occasional will be OK, but do we make a stand and say that we don’t work Fridays if pushed? Or can we negotiate and reason our free time when challenged?

SOME CONTEXT:

In June 2011:
• There were 31million workforce jobs in the UK, shared by 29million people.
• 21million people were working full-time (of them 4million were self-employed).
• 8million people were working part-time & 1.5million people were working on a temporary basis.
• Of those 21million people who work full-time posts flexitime is an available feature (eg for Civil Servants, Public Servants, Self-employed and a range of other Private Sector jobs).
• What would happen if all the rest of the full-time employed workers changed hours to 5in4…? Would it change expectations of availability??

5in4: Wk00/01 – LC

What my commute usually looks like

What my commute usually look like!

Thoughts:

I’m LC, I joined Bauman Lyons as an Architect a year ago and since starting I have worked part time.

I live in Manchester and commute to Leeds by a combination of train and bike. I’m married and I’m not a parent, yet. Why am I sharing this? Because I know very well that if I was a mum, my needs/responsibilities towards family would be quite different from my current situation.

Nonetheless “5in4” (4in3 for me as part time) is a step up, in working hours, than what I was on before we began this interesting trial.

In the last 3 years I have actively been searching for a slower, lower-carbon lifestyle. I have had the possibility of taking a year off work-in-practice to study at the Centre for Alternative Technology for an inspiring MSc. This opportunity not only enabled me to learn new knowledge and skills, but actively instilled in me an understanding and appreciation that a very fulfilling life can be lived with less.

This has brought me to value working part time in an effort to find a better life-work balance. My week is full but richer because of it; I am able to give voluntary work just as much value as paid work and I feel I am a better Architect for it!

Hopes & Worries:

  • I am excited to be part of an architecture practice which is not scared to challenge the profession status-quo, by giving the “5in4” a try while still understanding the need and value of flexibility…
  • …Although part-time, I do think these new hours are probably going to push me very hard. I will need to leave the house at approximately 6.20am and I will not be back till 9.15pm (I am quite accurate with my timings as I am now a veteran in my train+bike commute!)
  • Being able to work one of my days from home will enable me to cut down on commuting hours and also overall tiredness. It will also help me to concentrate and be very efficient without the disturbance of phone-calls etc.
  • The isolation of working by myself will be balanced, hopefully, by the days spent in the office.
  • The set up of the 5in4 (4in3 for me as part-time) will enable me to continue being involved in the various environmental and community projects I have help set up and run in Manchester over the past 5 years.
  • A worry, which I am hoping will be unfounded, is that the level of tiredness will be too much to bear. A 10hr in the office, will mean a 14.5hr day for me, over two days alone I will clock up 30 hours approximately.
  • Having to give up on vital and engaging personal activities. For example with the new working hours, I will now not be able to attend the monthly get together(s) of Manchester graduates from the Centre of Alternative Technology held on last Thursday of the month. I find this monthly event a burst of energy with regard to renewed knowledge and enthusiasm to live sustainably and support others in doing so.
  • Hoping that if tired I will not take it out on my husband.

5in4: Wk00/01 – GS

Going into week one

Concerns or Apprehensions:

  • Yet to be seen if we can detach ourselves from the immediacy that modern society seems to demand. Even though we are all contactable on Fridays not all tasks are as efficiently dealt with remotely.
  • Not sure yet whether 5in4 will mean we can save money by taking the pressure off the need to make rapid purchases due to lack of time or whether it might mean spending more on another day of activities.

Opportunities & Enthusiasms

  • 2 days away from work never seems to be enough to sort out all the jobs that need doing around the house, spend time with my 2 year old son, time with my wife and time for myself.

Usually this means that everything is compromised.

I hope an extra day at home will lead to better quality time with and for all.

Thoughts…

  • The night before the start of the 4 day week….. I am nervous – will this work? Will daddy sleep through his early alarm call (highly likely!), will Daddy stay awake while reading bedtime stories, will Daddy really be at home on Friday or will the occasional meetings start to be arranged on this day? With all this in mind we are however very excited about this new way of working. What a great idea! Thursdays are the new Friday, more quality family time and a happier Daddy!

Kathryn and Harrison

  • Just worked out I will save 30kg of Carbon per year in not driving in one day . I wonder how much carbon as well as time is spent in saving at least 30% of the usual community time. Less inefficient engine idling in traffic and stop starts. Commuting reduced by 110 hours per year.Great..but less time for Radio 4!

5in4: #5in4 the first week – IB

Gambia just announced that the whole country will work a 4 day week as if to confirm that #5in4′ plugs into the Zeitgeist. The excitement of starting a shorter woke me up so that here I am at 4 am.

I am thinking about what I will do with my Fridays. A day of’ taking in’ rather then’ churning out’. I am imagining getting up only to make food and cups of coffee. I am imagining reading 6 Degrees by Mark Lynas, ‘Engaging with Climate Change‘ by Sally Weintrope and ‘The Craftsman’ by Richard Sennett all at the same time , all in one day.and remembering what I read. I am imagining watching the backlog of Ted Talks , browsing through my Flipboard app , reading Building Design, the Guardian and last week’s Observer. I imagine tweeting about it as I go along and finally learning what LinkedIn is all about.

Meanwhile a letter has arrived to confirm that we have been shortlisted for a very nice (paid) competition and that the briefing session is on…………..FRIDAY !

Tuesday

Spirits are high at 7.30 in the morning- most of us chose early start over a late finish.

We are also beginning to clamp down on unnecessary meetings. We have saved 16 hours of work just yesterday by not attending meetings where we could not add real value- we sorted what needed to be sorted on the phone instead. We also calculated a saving of £8 per week on Friday coffee/milk and Yorkshire Post!