We don’t take ourselves too seriously at Vault City brewing and we’re usually the first ones to point the finger and laugh at ourselves (c’mon, that coconut shake’em was pretty funny, and just wait till you see what’s in store for the birthday, hope you like sparkles).
However, we are serious about making delicious tasting Modern Sour Beer, and treating our people right. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably fairly familiar with the first point, so we wanted to shine a little light on the second.
In a little over a year since hiring our first member of staff we’ve grown to a team of 8 incredible full timers and believe that getting the best out of people means treating them the best we can.
The biggest step we are making as a company to look after our staff is moving towards a 4 day work week, promoting a work / life balance.
I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t admit it feels a bit like standing at the bottom of a mountain. Beer doesn’t like being told what to do – if a fermentation wants to take an extra few days to start or finish there really isn’t much we can do. Especially working in the weird world of mixed-culture fermentation. However, with Andy Wilkie, Ops Manager, at the helm of production we’ve already made great strides to get there.
In the second calendar quarter (April till June) we’re delighted to have trialled the four day working week one day a month – it worked! We managed to work smart, plan ahead and get a Friday off at least once a month. In June we actually managed to get ahead of ourselves and get two Fridays off – it did manage to coincide with some of the worst June weather we’ve seen but you can’t win them all, especially in Scotland.
July – September will see us ramp it up; we’ll be committing to every other Friday off. The last three months of the year we’ll only be working one Friday a month.
2022 is where we become a full 4-day-working-week brewery. The first in the UK?
If we continue to grow this will present headaches, we may have to move to a model where production staff bookend the week, some on a Monday-Thursday, others on Tuesday-Friday. Whatever happens we know we’re doing this for the right reason, we’ve got an exceptional team and want them to be the happiest they can be and as much as we enjoy working here, we’d still all rather be somewhere else.
We’ll update this as we go, but as it stands we have a challenge to make this a reality; one that we’re ready for and committed to.