Culture Over Hours
Building an extraordinary culture means doing things differently.
That’s a perspective Mike Haley embraced soon after being named CEO of Cifas — which provides data and intelligence-driven fraud prevention services to roughly 750 UK-based organizations — nearly eight years ago.
The company, which was founded in 1988, was on a rapid growth trajectory, and Haley wanted to build on that winning culture as the company evolved. “We believe that people perform at their best when they're treated well,” he explains.
COO Richard Freedman, who was hired soon after, adds that they “wanted to be — and have been — really intentional about guarding and improving that culture.”
Like many businesses at the time Cifas made the switch to remote work during the pandemic, and the two leaders say the added flexibility had a noticeable, positive impact on their workers’ wellbeing. That inspired them to look for other ways to further that effort, which eventually led them to consider a four-day workweek.
“In business we tend to always state that we follow the data, we follow the evidence, until it came to this issue,” Haley explains. “As we looked into the data, it showed that there would be a return in terms of staff wellbeing and productivity.”
Securing buy-in
Before making the switch to a nine-day fortnight on the way to an eventual four-day workweek, however, Haley and Freedman had to first secure buy-in from their board, their staff and their clients (or as they call them, “members”).
“First we did some research into the pilots of other organizations who've done this and took that to the board,” Haley says. “We engaged with Joe and Work Time Revolution quite early on, we spoke to some people who had gone through the four-day workweek themselves, and I got the CEO of a similar-sized UK-based business, Tyler Grange, to come and speak to my board and answer their questions.”
Once the board agreed to move forward Haley and Freedman asked Joe and his team to conduct an assessment of the organization’s strengths and opportunities for improvement before assisting in the design of a pilot program.
“Our members don’t pay for us on an hourly rate, they pay for the services, and we had to design the pilot in a way that makes sure we're still serving our members up to that standard,” Haley explains. “We created metrics and dashboards before we launched the pilot so we could closely monitor how those numbers would change,” adds Freedman.
Settings goals and red lines
Cifas launched their nine-day fortnight pilot at the start of 2025 with five specific goals in mind. Top of the list was improving employee culture and wellbeing. The organization also sought to become more competitive as an employer.
“As a not-for-profit we are in competition with organizations that can pay much more than us, like banks and financial services organizations,” Haley explains. “We pay market rates, not top dollar, but we can give back in terms of the culture and benefits.”
Cifas also hoped the shorter workweek would enable the company to better adopt new technologies, including AI.
“Upon personal reflection on my own working career, every time a technology came in, it sped up work, but there wasn’t any sharing of the benefits with employees,” Haley says. “AI is one of those technologies which could threaten people's jobs, but by sharing the benefits we could adopt it and improve productivity and efficiency without harming employee wellbeing.”
Cifas also hoped the reduced schedule would inspire staff to find novel ways to accomplish more in less time.
“Lastly, I foresaw — and still foresee, particularly in knowledge industries — the four-day workweek becoming so commonplace that we would not get any advantages by adopting it in five or ten years,” Haley says. “Being ahead of the curve gives us an opportunity to take control of our culture, attract people who want to be part of an innovative and forward-looking organization, and it's a differentiator.”
While they were excited about the opportunities the leadership team also set out a series of performance “red lines” that, if crossed, triggered a temporary reversal of the shortened schedule.
“There were times where a red line was crossed, but usually afterwards teams get together to iron out what they could have done differently, and how they could use the data to better predict issues in the future,” Haley says. “That drove efficiencies in terms of helping teams anticipate things better.”
Empowering staff to deliver results
Haley and Freedman also acknowledge that leaders and managers can’t come up with every solution for doing more in less time on their own, inspiring them to create more opportunities for staff to share best practices. They even created an innovation award for those who come up with the best solutions. “It’s been a big, shared experience of self-reflection and personal development,” Haley says.
Since Haley joined Cifas the company has doubled its headcount, which now numbers 130. Today the organization generates about £17 million of revenue while savings customers —
which include many of the UK’s largest financial institutions and telecom providers — over £2 billion in fraud related losses annually.
“We achieved two-star status in the ‘Best Companies’ list, and there’s only three stars to get, which means we’re among the best, and we have a new target of being amongst the very best,” he says. “Our Net Promoter Score is in world class territory of 70-plus, so our members are saying the service that we provide them is very good, and our staff say it's amongst the best places to work.”
When it comes to the shorter workweek Haley says his only regret is not making the switch sooner.
“We could have kept putting it off, like ‘Are we ready?’ ‘Have we done enough?’ ‘Have we got everything in place?’” he says. “You’ll never have everything in place; you just have to make the leap.”
