The CEO of a U.K. bank whose employees work a four-day week and have full autonomy over where they do their job isn’t considering following competitors in calling staff back in. Instead, he’s planning for a future where employees may not need to work at all.
Atom Bank, which employs 547 people, announced earlier this week that it was moving its headquarters from Durham to Newcastle.
It marks the latest workplace move from a challenger financial institution after Wise relocated to the London area of Shoreditch and Revolut unveiled a new global HQ in Canary Wharf.
Atom’s new office space, located beside Newcastle’s railway station, was built in 1880 when it was formerly used by the locomotive designer Robert Stephenson. After an update, it hasn't been set up like a traditional office space.
However, that won’t be a problem for Mark Mullen, the CEO of Atom Bank, given he doesn’t expect employees (whom he makes a point to call his “colleagues”) to spend much time in the new HQ.
Atom introduced a four-day workweek in 2021, which saw contracted staffers reduce their hours by 3.5 per week to 34 hours without taking a pay cut.
On top of that, Atom has no fixed policy for office attendance and is happy for its employees to work from anywhere, with occasional in-office days highlighted well in advance.
Mullen says the bank picked its new headquarters with the company’s flexible structure front of mind. The ground floor, representing about a third of the space, has no offices and feels more like a restaurant than a workspace, which Mullen calls deliberate.
“If you're going to get off your backside and come to a building in this day and age, then you're not coming to sit on your own. You can do that in your bedroom. If you're coming to a building, we want you to come because you're interacting physically with colleagues and with visitors and with other human beings,” Mullen told Fortune.
The move is the latest sign that Atom shows no signs of reneging on its flexible practices. Instead, it feels like the latest milestone on the path to continued freedoms for workers.
Worker flexibility
Atom’s flexible working practices feel like a much bigger anomaly in 2025 than when the bank introduced its four-day week in 2021.
JPMorgan Chase set its CEO Jamie Dimon on a warpath with employees in February after the bank ordered staffers back to the office full-time from March. In September last year, Santander walked back its liberal working policy to dictate that employees should be in the office at least 12 days a month.
Mullen says he understands there are “undoubtedly” benefits to working in person multiple times a week.
“The disadvantage is that it's bloody inefficient when it comes to consumption of resources to get to and from the working environment, and it's bloody inefficient when it comes to managing the transition between personal life and working life,” Mullen told Fortune.
Instead, Mullen says that in order to attract the best talent, he has found staying flexible to be the best approach.
“My attitude to my colleagues is that they sell their talent for hire to me,” said Mullen.
“Therefore the onus is on me to make sure that I provide a brand, a culture, a reward proposition, and a working experience that is attractive to them.
“The best people get to choose. That's always been the case. And they don't have to choose Atom.”
Atom’s four-day week
Atom turned its first annual profit in 2024 and recorded a £100 million net interest income. The digital bank was last valued at £362 million ($469 million) in November 2023 after raising £100 million from long-standing shareholders, including the Spanish bank BBVA.
The company has been able to expand its headcount and loan book while operating a highly flexible working structure. One group Mullen accepts could be left behind, though, is younger employees. The CEO says he expects new starters and managers to plan days to spend face-to-face and hopes Atom’s central Newcastle location will make that more possible.
Regardless, though, Mullen is keen to find solutions to the obstacles presented by flexible working, given he thinks the trend is only going in one direction.
Mullen believes that the advent of generative AI and mass levels of investment in the technology will begin to impact the labor market to the point that reduced working hours are a necessity, not a perk.
The bank CEO indicated he believes it is much more likely AI would make his job obsolete than, for example, a hairdresser. The revolution means working five days won’t be logical.
“I think a four-day week isn't progressive, it's bloody logical,” said Mullen.
“And I expect that before I shuffle off my mortal coil, there'll be organizations offering a three-day week, because why wouldn't you when the alternative is essentially a no-day week? I just don't understand how people can say a five-day week, which is a pre-Victorian invention, still works in the digital age.
“Project forward and ask yourself whether people are going to be working more hours or less hours. Project forward, and ask yourself whether the world of work that we grew up in over the last 40 years is going to be radically different over the next 40 years.”
