Because business is about people - CIPD

Whydid debt becomea dirtyword?

Rush Limbaugh, Fox Newsand the day Obama tried to

cancel Christmas

Five fundamental questionsfor the HR profession

From the seven dwarves toBeyoncé – a history of the

workplace in song

Because business is about peopleWork.

Spring 2021

03

Work.When the prime minister recently predicted commuterswould return to offices in “a few short months”, his dismissalof a permanent shift to remote working would have chimedwith many. Among them, no doubt, was David Solomon, CEOof Goldman Sachs, who has controversially described it asan aberration for a company that has an “innovative,collaborative apprenticeship culture”. Others, however,would have taken an entirely different view, notably thosewith long commutes and an impressive home office set-up.Such different attitudes to remote work, and indeed thewider issue of personal choice over how, when and where wework, is just one of the issues HR teams will have to navigateas we start to think about what the working world might looklike after the pandemic. In our special feature starting onpage 44, we take a look at some of the questions that theprofession needs to consider, from whether employers areready to embrace more flexible working patterns, to theimpact of the pandemic on the rise of the machines.

Claire Warren, [email protected]

Because business is about people

Features in detail p4

Perspectives: distilled management thinking p6

15 minutes with… Rajarshi Banerjee p12

Debt: how much is too much? p14

A history of work in song p26

Matt Atkinson on the power of purpose p28

Media and the advent of fake news p32

Interview: Unicef UK’s Claire Fox p40

Five essential questions for HR p44

Debrief: business research, reports and insight p62

Further reading p72

The off-piste guide to acronyms p74

Such is the profligacywith which the UKgovernment has loaded upon debt since the outset ofthe coronavirus crisis, itborrowed £1bn a day in2020. It’s a huge sum thatbegs the question: justwhat is debt, andwheredoes it come from? In fact,the concept of credit is soancient, says AndrewSaunders, it may pre-datethe introduction ofphysical money itself.Monarchies borrowedfrom bankers to financewars; by the 1960s,consumers were beingencouraged to use creditcards to own new-fangledhousehold appliances. Thebuy-now-pay-later modelspopularised today byKlarna and co are justthrowbacks tomedievalmodels of lending. But atleast, unlike in ancientMesopotamia, your familywon’t be sold into slaveryif you cannotmeet yourfinancial obligations.

Andrew Saunders is abusiness journalist whosework also appears inTheTimes andTheTelegraph

Does debtreally matter?

Q&A:MattAtkinson

Matt Atkinson has adream: that one day,businesses will be judgedas much on what they dofor society as on theirprofits. The chiefcustomer officer at theCo-op, which is ownedby its members, believesthat “trust, ethics andtransparency willbecome increasinglyimportant currencies inbusiness success”. Thegroup is performing well– growing its share of theBritish grocery market –while still doing good(by, for example, backingfootballer MarcusRashford’s free schoolmeals campaign). Aformer ad man and TescoCMO, Atkinson says theCo-operative name isreflected in the way itdoes business: “Thereis much more desire tocooperate and much lesstension about owningand controllingeverything here,” hetells Andrew Saunders.“The driving principleis one of mutual gain.”

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FEATURES IN DETAIL

‘I was looking for a job,and then I found a job,and heaven knows I’mmiserable now’ croonedMorrissey dolefully on asong that captures theprevailing presentationof work in popular music.Occasionally the gloomlifts – Disney’s sevendwarfs sound chirpyenough as they sing ‘heighho’ – but such buoyancyis,Work. discovers,exceptional. More typicalis BobDylan’sMaggie’sFarm, an angry, eloquentindictment of workingconditions in the USservice sector. DollyParton’s 9 to 5, anothereloquent statement aboutthemodernworkplace, isinfusedwith just enoughoptimism to suggest thesinger will keep pouringherself a cup of ambitionin the hope that herdreamwill come true.Well, we’ve all been there,haven’t we?

Ahistory ofwork in songp26p14

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One thingwe can allagree on is that these daysit’s harder for us to agreeon anything. The partisandivide in thewest is nolonger an argument aboutopinions, it’s about facts– is climate change ascientific reality or aglobal conspiracy, forinstance. One of thefiercest debates is whetherthemediamerely reflectsthis growing divide, orhas helped to engineer it.Talking to authors PeterPomerantsev and SimonKuper, Paul Simpsonexplores the role playedby right-wing broadcasterRush Limbaugh, FoxNews and – back in itsheyday – The Sunnewspaper in promoting aparticular worldview, theconsequence of theincreasingly blurreddistinction betweenentertainment and news,and the implications forsociety if we retreat intoour individual echochambers.

Paul Simpson is a journalistand author. His latest book,TheColour Code, willbe published this autumnby Profile Books

Media: factsand faux newsp32

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As theworld’s largestvaccine buyer, Unicef willplay a central role in thedistribution of Covidvaccines and is currentlypreparing to deliver twobillion of them to low andmiddle-income countries.Unicef UK staffwon’tdirectly deliver them buttheir fundraising effortsare vital. Helping staffunderstand their piece inthis jigsaw is all in a day’swork for the UK’s chiefoperating officer, ClaireFox, as is ensuring thatwork doesn’t negativelyimpact their wellbeing.That means identifyingwhich tasks are not apriority has been asimportant a part ofher pandemic capacityplanning as decidingwhatreally must be done. “In away, the pandemic hasprovided quite a goodlesson,” she tells JoFaragher. “Organisationshaven’t been good enoughat prioritising andstopping things.”

Jo Faragher is a freelancewriter and editorspecialising inHRand employment

Unicef UK’sClaire Fox Corporate ethics

Business leaders may havetaken a pay cut during thepandemic, but few have agreedto lose their bonus.

ManagementSupervisors who displayemotional intelligence helpcreate an environment whereemployees learn new skills.

InclusionWomen in the boardroom maylead to inaccurate perceptionsabout workplace equality.

HealthcareThe National Health Serviceneeds a governance overhaul.

Mental healthBurnout has a much greaterimpact on work stress than theother way around.

CybersecurityWhen staff assume companymeasures to combat phishingattacks are effective they maybecome less vigilant.

AppreciationIn the age of the email, handwritten thank you notes aresurprisingly well received.

PerformanceCEOs at companies thatconsistently perform maypay a high price for failure.

PlanningBefore another crisis hits weshould discuss how workerswould be supported.

SkillsRemote workers who displayfive special skills have a greaterchance of being successful.

Evidence-based HRWe need to be clear about whatemployee engagement means.

Executive representationThe impact of female leadersmay depend on cultural norms.

Workplace technologySmartphone usage is not agood predictor of anxiety,stress or depression.

Financial transparencyCompanies that are open andhonest about their financeshave better relationshipsbetween managers and staff.

Debrief p62-71

p40 p44

On 23March last year when Boris Johnson announcedthe country was going into the first national lockdown,few of us could have anticipated quite how long thepandemic would bewith us for, or the lasting impact itwould have onworkplaces across the country. After ayear in which a significant chunk of the population hasbeen able to work from home, while others haveworkedon the frontlines, faced furlough or lost their jobs,Work.looks at the essential questionsHR professionals mustaddress as we consider what working life will be likeafter we emerge from the coronavirus crisis.

What’s next?Five questions forHR

Will we be able to say goodbye to the 9-5?A year is a long time out of the office for habit-loving humans.The question is whether it will be long enough to encourageemployers to embrace more flexible working practices.

Are the robots coming faster now?Automation and digitisation appear to have accelerated asemployers rush to respond to the pandemic. What we don’t knowyet is what impact that will ultimately have on jobs.

Has the pandemic set equality back?There’s evidence revealing the negative effects of the crisis onspecific groups of staff, but the good news is many businesseshave recognised the issue and seem willing to tackle it.

Is now the time to split HR?It’s not a new question, but with HR’s growing remit is now thetime to revisit it? We asked two experts for their thoughts.

Havewe relied on staff goodwill for too long?Many employees have been called upon to go above and beyondover the last year, but they won’t be prepared to do it forever.

THEREAREANUMBERofneurological conditions that leavea person convinced something istruewhen it is not. Anton syndrome,where sufferers believe they can seedespite clear evidence they are blind,is one such example.Fortunately, few people ever

experience it but, as AdamGrant,author ofThink Again, told theUS’sSunday Today programme, itcaptures something all of us haveexperienced –momentswhenweare unaware of where our abilitiesfall short: “I like to think of it as the‘I’m not biased bias’, which is thetendency to recognise flaws in otherpeople’s thinking, but assume thatwe ourselves are immune to them.”Themost successful people, from

entrepreneurs to politicians, thinklike a scientist, questioning theirown beliefs and embracing beingwrong, says Grant. Trouble is,research shows that the smarteryou are themore youmight struggleto update your thinking. “I see fartoomany people in the world wholisten to opinions that make themfeel good, instead of ideas thatmake them think hard,” he says,adding that we all need to get intothe habit of reconsidering. Thatdoesn’t mean we always have tochange our minds, but if“knowledge is power, knowingwhat you don’t know is wisdom”.

PERSPECTIVES

Whywe need tothink like a scientist

MANAGEMENT THINKING DISTILLED

Q&A SARAH JAFFE

Adam Grant is a professor at the WhartonSchool of the University of Pennsylvania

MOREANDMORE of us aremaking sacrifices in the name ofa job we enjoy but, says Sarah Jaffe,author ofWorkWon’t Love YouBack, it’s all one big con.We’ve beentricked into believing that certainwork isn’t really work at all.

Whywon’t work love you back?Ultimately, we work because weneed to pay the bills, and we havethese jobs not because bosses arebenevolent ‘job creators’, butbecause they are profiting fromour work. Even the nicest boss,the most fulfilling job, exists sopeople canmakemoney, not tomake us happy.

Who ismost affected by themythof the labour of love?In the book I follow two threads,caring work and creative work, tosee how the narrative of lovingyour work spread from a narrowexpectation to one that affectsmany, many workers. The otherday I drove by a billboard forAmazon warehouse jobs that saidsomething along the lines of ‘finda job delivering smiles’. So I

would say that almost any workercan be affected by this myth, butthat it is inculcated most stronglyin feminised caring professionsand creative professions.

How did we get to this point?The short answer is that the shiftfrom an industrial economy toan economy driven by servicesmeans there is more work thatrequires you to smile on the job,to like it or at least to performhappiness for the customer. Thedestruction of labour unions andother institutions of working-class solidarity has produced aneconomy full of individualisedworkers seeking fulfilment, whoare told the way to achieve that isto work hard and compete withothers to get to the top. At the top,presumably, our reward is better,more lovable work, which stilltranslates into ‘more work’.

Is there a way out of this?This is a political problem, nota personal one. More peoplehaving discussions about howwe’d like the workplace to lookand what wemight do to getthere is going to be necessary.The workers I profiled have alltaken action on the job, changedtheir working conditions and, insome cases, the laws, to improvetheir situation. The pandemichas reminded us that we canchange a lot about the workplaceincredibly quickly – maybe wecan figure out how to do thatintentionally, rather than onlyin response to a crisis.

Even the best job isabout makingmoney

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BUSINESS, says Judy Samuelson,is themost influential institution ofour day. If we are tomake progresson intractable problems, fromclimate change to inequality,we need the talent, investment,problem-solving skills and globalreach of the business community.“Our vision of business is crowdedwith stories of greed lacedwithshort-term thinking,” she says. “Yetaswe step into the ecosystem ofbusiness today, we experienceprofound change in attitudes anda new kind of business vision.”Despite this, old norms, fromhow

finance is taught in the classroomto the incentives and rewards thatfocus theminds of executives on theshare price, are holding us back andneed to be broken down.InThe SixNewRules of Business,

Samuelson outlines the shifts inattitudes andmindsets that shebelieves are already in play againsta backdrop of internet-poweredtransparency, amore powerfulworker voice, the decline in theimportance of capital and thecomplexity of global supply chains.These include: intangibles drivevalue, not the balance sheet (butcan’t bemeasured in traditionalways); purpose over profits; andculture is king (competition fortalent and a focus on innovation takeprecedence over capital markets).

PERSPECTIVES

Old norms holdbusiness back

Judy Samuelson is founder of The AspenInstitute’s Business and Society Program

Before the pandemic, the global economy wasalready in the midst of the longest period of

declining people productivity in recordedeconomic history. A key factor in this has been

the rise of ‘presenteeism’ which, researchshows, leads to suboptimal mental health,lack of sleep and poor financial wellbeing.

Data shows that presenteeism hastransferred to the home office.

Employers may be permitted by law to useemployee monitoring and tracking software

to check up on workers, but just because theycan does not mean they should. This forcedhome working should be an opportunity to

break the cycle of increasing presenteeism bygiving people more flexibility and autonomy

on when and how work gets done. Recentstudies reveal giving people more autonomygreatly reduces stress levels and improveswellbeing. People should be measured onoutput, not on time tied to the PC screen.

One emerging area of employee tracking thatcould be a trend for the better is measuring

stress levels at work. Several organisations areexperimenting with wearables that measureand detect rising cortisone on the skin. The

devices can predict harmful stress levels up toan hour before they occur and allow an

employee to step back from the brink byparticipating in stress decelerating activities

such as mindfulness and meditation.

It would be wrong to dismiss monitoring asa tactic that is only used by unscrupulous

organisations to chain people to their desks, orto try and catch them out and build a case

against them. It can be a legitimate businesspractice and, in some industries, like financial

services, it is required by the regulator.

Now that more people are working remotely,it’s natural for businesses to want to use someform of monitoring to measure performanceand productivity. It could also be used as anindicator of wellbeing – to ensure people are

not suffering, for example, from a lack ofengagement with their job, perhaps as a result

of mental health issues. Likewise, if anemployer can see that someone is consistentlyworking late, this could be a red flag. Employeemonitoring could indicate where more clarity

or support from the employer is needed.

Employment and data protection laws mustbe considered. There’s an implied legal duty

on businesses to maintain staff trust andconfidence. Firms must act in a proportionate

and justified manner; inform employees oftheir intention to monitor; be mindful of

discrimination; and use safeguards to preventabuse or over-monitoring. A thorough data

protection impact assessment is alsorecommended to help identify any potentialissues, and is mandatory under the GDPR if

the processing of data is high risk.

Surveillance has come under the spotlight since the start of thepandemic-induced shift to remote working. Research showsone in five organisations are using or planning to introduce

software tools to monitor the work of home-based employees.But is it a good idea, and does it improve productivity?

JONATHANRENNIEPartner,

TLT

Should employers usesoftware to monitor staff?

TALKING POINT

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EXPERTS’ VIEW

TIMRINGOAuthor,

Solving the Productivity Puzzle

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TechpatsWho are they?

Before the pandemic they were the digitalnomads – people who operated on the

premise that ‘wherever I lay my laptop, that’smy home office’. Thanks to Covid, many of

them have become techpats, settling down,possibly permanently, in sunnier climes withlaid-back lifestyles, lower taxes and relaxed

residency rules. Cyprus is a leading haven forthe British: an English-speaking country, with2,700-3,500 hours of sun a year (comparedto around 1,460 in London) and a top income

tax rate of 35 per cent where, after just 60days, you can become a resident.

Is this a trend, or a fad?It’s not just Cyprus, countries such as Antiguaand Barbuda, Barbados, Croatia, Estonia andGeorgia have all made it easier for foreigners

to work remotely. There has always beena section of the workforce inspired more byBeat Generation writer Jack Kerouac than

Jack Welch – in one 2018 survey, 22.7 millionAmericans were either digital nomads or

aspired to be. But the pandemic has provedthat billions of people can work efficiently

from home and, if you have enough money,a certain mindset and the right job, your home

office can be anywhere (or it can be oncetravel restrictions and the partial or complete

closure of borders are lifted).

We’re talking about a particulardemographic though, right?

Yes and no – this will not be an option forwidget makers, but it is a realistic aspiration

for the self-employed, entrepreneurs andknowledge workers, particularly millennials

and Gen Zs. In the US, the flight from bigcities has accelerated during the pandemic:

location analytics firm Unacast estimatesthat there was a net loss of 70,000 people in

the New York metropolitan area in 2020,which amounts to a $34bn drop in the

region’s economy. In the UK, PwC ispredicting a further shift away from city

living in 2021.

What does this mean for employers?If nothing else, techpats provide further

proof that finding the right mix in the newblended workplace will be far from

straightforward. The rigid, restrictive modelwhere almost everyone was on the premisesalmost all of the time had one cardinal virtue:

it was simple. Techpats are one of manypieces that organisations – and HR in

particular – will have to fit together in a jigsawof post-pandemic employment practices.

PERSPECTIVES

INCOMING

WHETHERWE LIKE IT or not,work has a direct impact on ourhappiness, says Bea Boccalandro,citing a Gallup study that shows ifwe’re dissatisfied with work, it’slikely (68 per cent) that we’re nothighly satisfied with life. Notall of us can have meaningful jobs,concedes the author of Do GoodAt Work, but everyone, even thosewho have little authority, canfind work more fulfilling if theyadjust how they work to engagein social purpose.Boccalandro, who dubs this ‘job

purposing’, cites an administrativeassistant who noticed that cleaningstaff at her company were throwinghalf-used toilet paper away. Ratherthan see it go to landfill, she nowtakes it to a homeless shelter,reducing their overheads andhelping the planet in the process.Such acts, no matter howmodest,

make individuals feel more fulfilledbut, she says, there’s also lots ofevidence to suggest social purposemakes people physically andmentally healthier, as well as moreproductive. One study, for example,compared workers whowere toldtheir work helped charitable causeswith workers in identical jobs whoweren’t. Those who believed theywere pursuing social purpose were24 per cent faster and had 43 percent less downtime.

WHENMARKZUCKERBERGfounded Facebook he didn’t planfor “third-party abuse and politicalinterference to run rampant on theplatform”. Yet, write Nitin Nohriaand co-author Hemant Taneja, MDof General Catalyst, in theHarvardBusiness Review, a platformmeantto make the world more connected“ended up having devastatingunintended consequences, such asthe recent storming of the Capitol”.Unintended consequences are, by

their very nature, hard to envision,but entrepreneurs and investorsmust step up, say the authors. Inthe past this was challenging givenbusinesses had to rely on humanforesight or closelymonitor theimpact of their technologies, butwenowhave a new tool that could help:artificial intelligence. AImodels, forinstance, are already able to searchfor fake news before it reaches amass audience. “Deep learning AIcan help identify patterns thathumansmay not readily discernand gives us new-found predictiveability,” the authors say. “Unleashingalgorithmic canaries into ourtechnologies is the first stepwemust take to anticipate andmitigateunintended consequences.”

Social purpose is keyto fulfillingwork

AI canaries: a newtool for business

Bea Boccalandro is founder of VeraWorksand teaches corporate social purpose

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Nitin Nohria is former dean of HarvardBusiness School

THEMOST ENDURINGfeature of the pandemic will be toaccelerate existing trends, and that,says Scott Galloway, will includethe trend that “encapsulates thegreatest reshuffling of stakeholdervalue in recent history”.Similar to previousmacro trends,

like globalisation and digitisation,the ‘great dispersion’ offersenormous financial opportunities.“Amazon dispersed retail to desktop,tomobile, to voice. Netflix dispersedDVDs to ourmailbox, then to everyscreen,” Gallowaywrites on his blog.“The pandemic is causing dispersionin even larger industries.”But while some businesses, such

as home exercise company Peloton,Zoom and, of course, Amazon, havehad a good pandemic, we live ina “winner-takes-all economy” andthe restaurant, travel, hospitalityand live entertainment industries,for instance, have “scrambled toescape obliteration”, he says.Previous paradigm shifts have

“catalysedmassive prosperity, butlittle progress”. This time wemustbe more conscious of the potentialdownsides, including weakeningties of community and cooperation.“The pandemic has given us apreview of our dispersed future,”says Galloway. “Today we havesocial distancing – tomorrow thedistancing will be structural.”

PERSPECTIVES

The great dispersionwon’t be good for all

09

Scott Galloway is professor of marketing atNYU Stern and author of Post Corona

OUR INDUSTRYHAS spent thelast decade obsessing over employeeengagement scores, resulting in thestigmatisation of the unmotivatedworker. Before the Covid crisis,a primary concern for knowledgeworkerswaswhether they couldfindmeaning and purpose at work,a demoralising experience leadingto feelings of guilt and existentialanxiety in thosewho could findneither spiritual fulfilment norpsychological attachment.While it’s certainly preferable for

managers to have engagedteams, the sciencesuggests this is a far fromstraightforward issue.The correlation betweenengagement andperformance, for instance, rarelyexceeds 0.40,meaning there is justa 16 per cent overlap betweenemployees’ levels of enthusiasm andtheir productivity. In otherwords,performance is driven bymanyother factors, including talent,expertise and, of course, extrinsicincentives (both carrots and sticks).At least half of the variance in

engagement scores is explained byemployees’ personalities. If I’mnaturally grumpy and negative, mybaseline engagement scoremay befive (out of 10), but if I tend to beoptimistic and easy going it willlikely bemore like eight. Theimplications are clear: whenwe

compare different groups on overallscoreswe aremeasuring not justhow they feel today, but how theyfeel in general, and the easiest way toinflate your scoreswould be to hirehappy and easy-to-please employees,whichwould sadly not result in anyperformance gains.This would likely not result in the

innovation, change and progressthat are so badly needed byorganisations either, given theseare usually fuelled by high doses ofdissatisfaction. Indeed, it is often

contrarian, difficultand non-conformistpersonalities thatbecome change agents,precisely because theyare not satisfied

with the status quo. Everyimportant accomplishment in ourhistory is the result of profoundlydissatisfied humans, whowouldprobably have scored quite low onemployee engagement.Contrary to popular belief, and

the populist positive psychologyrevolution, organisations are notin the business ofmaking peoplehappy. Nor should they be. Despitethe focus on engagement over thelast decade, levels have remaineddismally low. Perhaps if we stopincreasing people’s expectationsaboutwhat they can get fromwork,wemay start to see an increase intheir satisfaction – and performance.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a psychologist, author and entrepreneur

“Despite the focusonengagementover thelastdecade, levelshaveremained low”

TOMAS CHAMORRO-PREMUZICENGAGEMENT DOESN’T GUARANTEE SUCCESS

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PERSPECTIVES

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BEST OF

The troublewithbeing viewed as ‘nice’

Daniel Goleman is a psychologist, authorand former science journalist

MIKE O’SULLIVANEconomist

The end of globalisation (and thebeginning of something new)

Inequality and record levels of indebtednessshow us that the advantages of globalisationhave been misdirected. The big question is

‘what’s next?’ The future, suggests MikeO’Sullivan, will be about shared values ratherthan geography: “The era we’re leaving was

characterised by a connected world trying toshrink and come together on the basis ofeconomic goals and geography. The new

world order will be defined by rival, distinctand different ways of doing things, and

ultimately collaboration based on values.”

JULIA GILLARDFormer prime minister of Australia

NGOZI OKONJO-IWEALAFormer finance minister of Nigeria

Essential lessons for women leadersThere’s no right way to be a woman leader, sayJulia Gillard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Instead,

you must be true to yourself. Among theirother lessons are the importance of sitting

down with your mentors, sponsors,supporters and friends to discuss how you are

going to deal with stereotyping and sexism,and not shying away from taking up space inthe world. “Don’t assume you’re too junior or

people are too busy,” they say, advocatingreaching out and networking.

DAME VIVIAN HUNTSenior partner at McKinsey

How businesses can serve everyone,not just shareholders

Just as appointing a chief diversity officerwon’t make a company’s culture more

inclusive, hiring a chief stakeholder officerwon’t ensure business models shift to onethat values more than just shareholders.Instead, companies need to get everyone

involved – and that starts in the boardroom.“We’ve been ticking boxes on ethnicity, age

and gender, says Dame Vivian Hunt. “We don’tneed tokens. We need people who truly

understand the experience and represent thediversity of our stakeholders.”

Fresh thinking from the world-famous incubator of ideas

REFERTOA COLLEAGUE asnice and the likelihood is youmaynot necessarily be being that niceyourself. In aworkplace setting,especially a competitive one, sayspsychologist Daniel Goleman, thetermmay be associatedwith beingpleasant toworkwith but alsowitha tendency to be easilymanipulatedand to avoid confrontations.In the 25 years since Goleman’s

book,Emotional Intelligence, waspublished, one of themost commonmisperceptions has been thatemotional intelligence (EI) equatesto niceness – in theworst sense oftheword – and that can play intostereotypes surroundingmale andfemale leaders, resulting ina reluctance from both genders todevelop their ownEI and that oftheir teams. “Somemenmay beresistant because they think itmeans being too passive,” he says.“Womenmay resist it because theyfeel it will feed into the negativestereotype that they’re too nice;they’re too easy goingwith people.”Being nice is part of EI, but it’s

about being nice appropriately:“Leaders need to understand thatEImeans being assertive, not beingpassive, not being a patsy but, on the

other hand, you don’t want to bea jerk. You don’t want to be someonewho doesn’t tune in to other people,who doesn’t listen andwho says ordoes things that people resent.Emotional intelligence lies betweenthose two extremes,” says Goleman.There are four components of EI:

self-awareness, self-management,social awareness and relationshipmanagement. Together, explainsGoleman, they create an effectiveframework for leadership, withresearch emphatically showing thatpeople give their best performancefor leaderswho have high EI.“There is a lot of free-floating

toxicity in organisations,” saysGoleman. “Orders come from the topthat don’t necessarilymake sense tothe frontline. That’s the nature ofthe organisation. Howwell thosethings are done is determined byemotional intelligence.”ForHR teams thatwant to bring

more EI into performance reviewsand training and development, thechallenge, he concludes, will be toclear up themisperceptions to getpeople on board.

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Michael Costello is a business psychologist. He is director of Workplace Evolution and records its podcast

HEWAS THE all-in employee:married to the desk, laptop andmobile phone 24/7. Never switchingoff, he enjoyed a fast-paced lifestyleleading to declining mental healthand ultimately breakdown. Yetbefore this he exceeded hissuperior’s wildest dreams. In thiscase, that high performer is formernumber 10 Downing Street presssecretary Alastair Campbell, but it’sa familiar story across Britain’sbusinesses – brilliant staffrepeatedly promoted but at the costof family relationships and theirmental health.Inmy slightly sweary conversation

with Campbell (him, notme) for arecent podcast, he described howheexhibitedmood swings, crashes andsigns of burnout at work for years.Yet decades later, colleaguesexpressed surprise at just how badhismental health had become –“Iwould never have known” (thisfromEdMiliband) or “Was it reallythat bad?” (Tony Blair).Perhaps these leaders sawwhat

was convenient to them at the time,playing alongwith the performance.Or perhaps it was just too hard forthem to go there, to address theelephant in the room. Today, leaderswho pledge allegiance to theirorganisational values have to ‘gothere’ but the reality is, while theymay bemorewilling to address theissue, often they do not knowhow.

Sowhat dowe need in place toprotect thewellbeing of our highperformers, especially against thebackdrop of an ongoing global crisis?BirkbeckUniversity suggests wetune in for shifts in behaviour andemotions, as well as physical signsof burnout, such as anxiety, negativeattitudes, tiredness, feeling hungryand headaches. Not easy, of course,givenmany high performers concealtheir true thoughts and feelings.Alongside observing these shifts inbehaviour, perhapswe also need to

paymore attention towhatwe donot hear. If employees rarely discussinterests outside of work,mentionlittle about their social or supportnetwork, and rarely bring upanything about home life, it mightwell be a good time to check in.Bupa recently reported that six

in 10 business leaders are turning tounhealthy copingmechanisms. Yet,evenwhen high performers dorecognise they are experiencingwellbeing challenges, they canstruggle to help themselves.Mycoaching experience in SiliconValley confirmed tome that theyare certainly not promoted on their

ability to engagewith ‘self care’.Blinded by a huge financial carrotandworking 80-hourweeks, manysuffered fromFOMO, unable torecharge and invest timewith lovedones because of the all-in culture.One coachee even toldme: “Thesleep goals we set haveworked. I cannow sleep for five hours instead ofsix and completemorework!” That’scertainly notwhat I advocated!Such behaviour can often be

driven by unwritten expectation ofperfection from senior leaders. Someof the directors I’ve spoken to haveexperienced ‘imposter syndrome’following a promotion, butwouldnever dream of openly sharing theiranxietieswith their team for fearof lookingweak. For real culturechange to take place, leaders likethis need to speak openly abouttheir fears and ensurewellbeing isan integral part of performancemanagement andmentoringdiscussions (learning how to switchoff themselveswould also help).There’s nothingwrongwith

promoting people for hardwork,loyalty and dedication, but greateremphasis needs to be placed onworking smart, recharging thebatteries andmanagingworkingboundaries – skills that do not comeautomatically to employees. It’s timeto embrace collective organisationalwellbeing and shatter the image ofthe solitaryworkplace superhero.

“One coachee told me:‘The sleep goals haveworked. I can sleep forfive hours instead of six

and complete more work’”

MICHAEL COSTELLOPOOR MENTAL HEALTH MAY BE THE PRICE HIGH PERFORMERS PAY FOR SUCCESS

15minuteswith...

On... the value of outsidersI’m the only child of immigrantparentswho came here to study.My dad studied engineering, andmymumwas groundbreaking asan Asianwoman studyingcomputer science in the early 1970s.When Iwent tomedical school Iwas a bit of an outsider. I loved itandmade some lifelong friends, butit was a culture shock. It was supercompetitive and everyonewantedto follow the same track, but do itfaster. Thereweren’t many of thethings I liked to do for fun, liketaking a bottle of Fanta to the parkand just kicking a ball about. Butthe kind of kidwho desperatelywants to get into the first team atcricket probably isn’t going to bethe personwho invents basketball.It’s a differentmindset.

On... being an entrepreneurI didn’t actually want to be anentrepreneur. After 10 years’ hardwork as anNHS hospital doctor Iwanted to get a consultant’s job,which usually means you have todo a PhD. I chose to study cardiacimaging because it seemed fairlyeasy, but it turned out I was good atit.We built a really strong researchteam and got some patents. Thenovelty was that we applied thesame technologywewere using onthe heart to other organs like theliver and pancreas: instead ofneeding an invasive needle biopsy,we could useMRI scans and AIsoftware to assess their condition.

I founded Perspectum largelybecause I wanted to get ourtechnology into the healthcaresystem. If I had stayed in academia,that wouldn’t have happened –there wouldn’t have been thefunding or the right culture. NowPerspectum is applying that techto run theworld’s largest studyinto long Covid, and the test weuse (COVERSCAN) has justbeen granted exceptional useauthorisation by theMHRAin the UK.

On… life as aCEOIt can be quite scary because youare responsible for the peoplewhowork for you. Some of them are intheir first jobs outside academiaand they’ve come here from abroad.Right now theymay not even beable to go back to theirmothercountry [because of the pandemic].But, on the other hand, when theydo cool stuff there is reflected pride–whenCOVERSCANgotauthorisation tears of joywereshed. Look at the firms that havegot exceptional use authorisationrecently – Pfizer, AstraZeneca,Moderna – and then little oldPerspectumwith only 180 people.

On… following the scienceFrom the start of the pandemic thegovernment has said it would‘follow the science’. And yet herewe are, fourth or fifth largesteconomy in theworld, and ourhealth service has faced being

Rajarshi BanerjeeThemedical entrepreneur on followingthe science, investor diversity and theworld’s largest long Covid study

overwhelmed. ‘Scio’ [the Latin rootof the Englishword science]means‘I know’. Butwe don’t knowmuchabout this virus, so youwant topredict before you know– shutyour borders, for example, beforethere is evidence of inboundtransmission. Following the sciencejustmeans you can never be aheadof the pandemic.

On... investorsI believe in diversity in the investorpool. Yes youwant a couple ofruthless capitalists to keep youfocused andmake sure there isa return. But you also need somenurturing types to help youmanage growth, especially ina company that has a youngmanagement team and a first-timeCEO. And youwant some peoplewho believe firmly in societal good– there’s this idea that only publiccompanies need to think about it,but the boards of private firmsshould focus on it too.

On…ambitions for the futureI want this company to beself-sustaining and Iwant ourtechnology to be delivered in aregular pipeline. The fieldwe are inis ever growing. Thatmeans in 20years’ timewewill have gone fromsaying ‘isn’t it sad thatwe don’thave scans for pancreatic cancer’to being able to detect a tumour ofany kind before it is symptomatic.Therewill bemuch less fiddlingaboutwith needles and guesswork. In

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Rajarshi BanerjeeRajarshi Banerjeefounded his medicalimaging technologybusiness PerspectumDiagnostics in 2012. Thecompany’s first product,LiverMultiScan, usesinnovative patentedtechnology to diagnoseliver disease vianon-invasive MRI scans.Based in Oxford, itemploys around 180people and in April lastyear closed a $36mfunding round led by theBlue Venture Fund andHealthQuest Capital.

22

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•

Nigerian military leader Sani Abacha ruledwith an iron grip and presided over a regimeaccused of gross human rights abuses.During his presidency, from 1993 until hisdeath in 1998, Abacha is believed to havestolen and laundered up to $5 billion. In FrankBayh and Steff Rosenberger-Ochs’s What IfThe Were Unicorns series, the artists offer avisual representation of the world’s tyrants ascrying innocents and question what mighthave been.

18

How much debt is too much? This peren-nial question has been pondered bymonarchs, ministers and monetaristsdown the ages, and has been thrown once

again into razor-sharp relief in the last year by theextraordinary – and extraordinarily rapid – economicresponse to coronavirus around the world.

Where once prudence, even a degree of austerity,were the watchwords of treasuries across the globe,since March last year (when the pandemic wasdeclared) unprecedented largesse has suddenlybecome the order of the day. Restraint seems to havegone out of the window, replaced by the urgentattempt if not to spend our way out of the crisis, thenat least to use huge piles of cash to cushion theassociated social and economic blows.

In the UK this has turned politics upside down,with a Conservative government borrowing sumsthat even Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party would havetrembled to imagine – around £1bn a day lastyear, accruing a total deficit for 2020 of £355bn, or17 per cent of GDP, the highest since the end ofWorld War II.

Around the world there is a similar picture – debthas been the number one weapon of choice to meetthe crisis. According to the International MonetaryFund (IMF), an astounding $12trn was added to theglobal burden of public debt in the first nine months ofthe pandemic alone. That’s $12trn. Think about thatnumber for a moment. A 12 with 12 noughts after it.Equivalent to the entire GDP of all 19 Eurozonecountries, or 14.3 per cent of the economic output ofthe entire globe, if you prefer. Enough to buy Apple –the world’s most valuable company – six times over.Or every house in the UK, plus every business in theFTSE 100, and still leave a couple of trillion in thebank for emergencies.

It all amounts to a hasty and comprehensiverewrite of the economic ‘rules’ on debt. Twenty oddyears ago, remember, then Labour chancellor GordonBrown set a 40 per cent ‘debt to GDP limit’ that wasconsidered pretty racy by many. When the Eurozonewas established around the same time, one of thejoining requirements was a debt to GDP ratio of nomore than 60 per cent.

But the latest ONS figures show the public sector’snet debt amounts to £2.1trn, equivalent to 100.8 percent of GDP – a level not seen since the early 1960s.The international average ratio is about the same,although the most indebted nations have much higherfigures. According to IMF projections for 2020, Japan

leads the pack at 266 per cent of GDP, followed byGreece at 205 per cent and Italy a few places behind at162 per cent. The genie is out of the bottle and, for nowat least, the last thing anyone is thinking about is howto get it back in.

“There is a magic money tree, whether you like itor not,” says Vicky Pryce, board member at economicthink tank the Centre for Economics and BusinessResearch. “And for me the most fascinating thing isthat it exists for as long as people continue to believein it. The moment you start to think ‘we need to cutback’ that mood can change very quickly.”

But howworried should we be – are those numbersreally as scary as they seem? “The right way to framethat question is to ask ‘what’s the alternative?’ Wherewould we be if we had not borrowed?” says ErikBritton, founder of Fathom Consulting and formerBank of England macroeconomist. He believesthat without calling on that additional debt, thingswould have become very bad, very quickly. “What isalready the biggest recession of all time would haveturned into the biggest depression of all time. UKunemployment would be at the seven or eight millionmark and rising, and GDP would be down by 20 percent and falling. That cycle would continue until itended in revolution.

“So what we’re really asking is, is it worthincreasing the government debt ratio by say 30 percent of GDP to avoid that situation? Absolutely it is – ifthe alternative is revolution or even world war, theneveryone is better off as a result.”

It’s all rather ironic – or, more optimistically,a measure of human progress – given that the nationaldebt arose in the first place not to stave off thepossibility of war, but rather to pay for several thatdid happen. The idea dates back to the reign ofWilliam III, who offered the first ever formal saleof sovereign (national) debt, borrowing about£1m from a syndicate of city merchants to pay fora new navy following defeat by the French in theNine Years’ War. Monarchs had borrowed frombankers and wealthy aristocrats before of course,but such arrangements could be tricky to negotiateand/or politically inconvenient. There was no needfor the king to worry about treading on the toes ofmere merchants and traders, or – God forbid –bumping into any of them. The new idea turned outto be one of the great financial innovations of alltime, culminating in the foundation of the Bankof England in 1694, which helped finance theNapoleonic Wars.

The coronavirus pandemic has prompted many governments to rewrite the fiscal rules tosupport their beleaguered populations. But, as Andrew Saunders discovers, debt has beenhelping make the world go round for centuries – and a little bit can have a positive impact

19

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Easy access to debt proved so fantasticallyconvenient that other rulers quickly followedWilliam’sexample. Four hundred years later we have the $100trnglobal bond market, trading everything from nationaldebt and corporate loans to credit card and mortgagebooks. Central banks operating a vast programme ofquantitative easing (the introduction of new moneyinto themoney supply) have also helped to keep interestrates at record lows in recent years, making debt lookeven more attractive by keeping the repaymentscorrespondingly affordable.

“The curiosity is that we have record levels ofgovernment borrowing in almost every economy but, atthe same time, ridiculously low yields [interestrates] on government bonds,” says DavidSmith, veteran economics editor of The Times.“That’s a reflection of the fact that themarketsdon’t expect short-term interest rates to go upany time soon. But the central banks have alsobeen doing an enormous amount ofquantitative easing. That’s a hugemarket distortion and essentially freemoney for the government.”

It’s also instructive that for 100 yearsor so from the 1760s to the 1860s – a periodthat includes the economic explosion ofthe industrial revolution – the UK’snational debt remained well above the100 per cent of GDP that is sparking somuch concern today, peaking at morethan 235 per cent in the 1820s. In fact, therehave only been two half-century periodswhere it has remained consistently below 100per cent of GDP: the years beforeWorldWar Iand those from the early 1960s to the modern,pre-pandemic era.

Where kings and princes first tread, commonerseventually follow. Since the dawn of the credit card(the US BankAmericard was first introduced in 1958,followed in the UK by the Barclaycard in 1966 andAccess in 1972) debt has become increasinglydemocratised. Now in the smartphone era, with aplethora of apps offering multiple forms of credit withjust a few swipes, it’s easier than ever for the averageperson to get into debt.

The fastest growing sector is currently ‘buy nowpay later’. Providers such as Klarna and Clearpay havedrawn criticism from MPs and regulators alike foroffering ‘lifestyle’ debt to the social media generation.But, says Philip Belamant, founder and CEO of fast-growing buy-now-pay-later start-up Zilch, justbecause the model is novel, doesn’t mean it’s all bad:“The traditional credit card model is based onoverlending – lending you money that you can’t affordto repay all at once, but that you can afford to repayover a period of time. Because otherwise there is nointerest or fees for the provider.”

Zilch, he says, makes its money from a pertransaction fee to the retailer – there’s no interestcharged to the customer and people use it because itoffers a better deal than a credit card. It’s the first UKbuy-now-pay-later provider to be fully regulated bythe FCA, and closed a $30m series B funding roundlate last year. “Our model is completely the opposite[of credit cards],” says Belamant. “We want you torepay on time, every time. We never want to over lend.Sixty-five per cent of our customers don’t have a creditcard, because they are tired of being ripped off.”

So for nation states and consumers alike, theprevailing consensus on debt seems to be that it’sa vital lubricant that keeps the commercial machinery

moving and smooths the otherwise lumpy courseof progress. So long as you can afford the

payments, it’s all good. “An economy ismovement and flow, it’s transactions,things happening. What we worry aboutis keeping that flow going, becauseanything that stops it kills the economy,”says Britton.

But this simple transactional viewpapers over the deep-rooted anxietyabout debt that lurks beneath. Formuch of human history, a debt hasbeen an unwelcome or even dangerousobligation, with the potential to grantcreditors absolute power over thosewho owe them something. Failure to

pay a debt in Sumer in 3,000BC, forexample, could result in a life of slavery not

only for the debtor, but his family andservants too. Unpaid debts could even be

inherited, condemning multiple generations tothe same fate.The Romans went one better – meting out violent

and sometimes mortal punishments for unpaid debts.Those who wished to avoid such a grisly end and didnot have friends in high places could ‘volunteer’ fordebt bondage instead. This was just debt slavery byanother name but, according to the bloodthirstymores of the times, was seen as a relatively progressiveand lenient alternative.

Morality has also always been closely, if somewhatuneasily, linked to debt. Paying what one owes iswidely regarded as a benchmark of character andtrustworthiness, even if many of us struggle to live upto it. Honouring debt is also baked into many of theworld’s major religions but, at the same time, thosewho profit unduly from the debts of others have beenreviled. Just think of Jesus turning over the tables ofthe moneylenders, and the malevolent Shylock whodemands a pound of flesh as security on a loan inShakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Or the dim viewtaken of usury – the charging of interest – stillforbidden in Islamic law.

20

Government debt around the world has reached levels not seen since the last world war

CREDITWHERE IT’SDUE

General government debt (% of GDP) 1901-2021

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF$12.04trn

The national debt of Japan,the country with the

highest pre-pandemic debtto GDP ratio at 234%

Source: SpendMeNot

1901

1904

1907

1910

1913

1916

1919

1922

1925

1928

1931

1934

1937

1940

1943

1946

1949

1952

1955

1958

1961

1964

1967

1970

1973

1976

1979

1914-18

World War I

1933

Hitler becomeschancellor of

Germany

1939-45

World War II

1952

US tests firsthydrogen bomb

over the MarshallIslands

1961

Berlin wallgoes up

1973

OPECembargotriggersworld oil

crisis

1976

UK bailedout by

$3.9bnIMF loan

ADVANCED ECONOMIES

EMERGING ECONOMIES

1936

Anti-fascist CableStreet riots in

London

0%

30%

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THE 10 MOST INDEBTED EUROPEAN COUNTRIESNational debt to GDP ratios (pre-pandemic figures)

Debt: GDP ratio $1 Greece 182% 231.2bn2 Italy 128% 2.3trn3 Portugal 118% 293.3bn4 Belgium 99% 484bn5 France 96% 2.5trn6 Spain 95% 1.1trn7 Cyprus 90% 20.2bn8 UK 86% 2.9trn9 Ukraine 77% 73.8bn10 Croatia 73% 44.7bn

THE INTERNATIONAL STORYChange in gross government debt (% of GDP)

UK USA

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83.2%108% 103.3%

131.2%

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228.7%

266.2%

34.4%

61.7% 67.7%89.3%

1982

1985

1988

1991

1994

1997

2000

2003

2006

2009

2012

2015

2018

2021

2020-21Coronavirus

pandemic

2017

Donald Trumpbecomes US

president

2007-08

Globalfinancial

crisis

2000

Nokia 3310 isthe world’sbestselling

mobile phone

1992

World’slargest

McDonald’sopens inBeijing

1989

Berlin Wallcomesdown

1982

E.T. released,the highest-

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COUNTING THE COST OF COVIDGovernment debt accrued as a result of pandemic response packages

(% of total GDP)

USA

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GERMANY

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UK

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CHINA

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23

debt

Debt, undertaker Amerigo Bonasera discovers in The Godfather,comes in all shapes and sizes. Pledging his loyalty to Vito, head of theCorleone family, in exchange for revenge for a violent assault on hisdaughter, Bonsera has nightmares about what he will be asked to doin return. When Corleone’s son Sonny is killed (pictured), Bonaseralearns the truth. Far from committing a heinous crime, his debt will befully repaid when he prepares the young man’s body for burial

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The overriding Christian principle when it comesto debt, says Martin Palmer, a theologian andsustainable investment adviser to faith groups, is thatof reciprocal obligation. “The Lord’s Prayer comeswith its own debt quota. You will only be forgiven forthe trespasses [sins, or debts] committed against youif you have forgiven those who trespassed againstyou. God is offering you a deal, but you have to clearyour debt to God first.”

But high-flown religious tenets, alas, are often notreflected down at ground level. English society in the1800s was much more formally religious than today’s,but that didn’t stop the courts routinely chucking10,000 people a year into debtors’ prisons for notpaying what they owed. In theory, it was possible tocough up and leave without a stain on one’s character,but in practice the stigma was life long, as one JohnDickens discovered when he was sent to Marshalseadebtors’ prison in 1824 for a debt of £40. The traumanever left him – or his 12-year-old son Charles, whowould later expose the injustice of his father’s harshtreatment in classic novels includingDavidCopperfieldand The Pickwick Papers. Only with the 1869 DebtorsAct did individual bankruptcy become morecommonplace, and the infamous debtors’ prisonsgradually faded into the past.

Such stern moral judgements are thankfullyunfashionable these days, but people still makea distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ debt, whichisn’t really borne out by the facts, says Britton. “Whatis the debt going to be used for? Will it be financingconsumption, which is ‘bad’, or financing investment,which is ‘good’? That doesn’t seem right to me – youneed some people to be borrowing for consumption,because if nobody is consuming then nobody ismaking any money.”

That’s not to say that there aren’t consequences ofexcessive government borrowing, as John Kay,former dean of Oxford’s Said Business School whohas also held chairs at the LSE and LBS, points out.“As long as people continue to believe in thegovernment’s credit, it could borrowmuch more thanit has at very low rates,” he says. “But it’s really aboutintergenerational equality – young people’s pensionsare being invested willy-nilly in these bonds, and thatmeans that in 50 years’ time their pensions will bepretty terrible.”

So where did the concept of debt come from in thefirst place, and how did we get hooked on the habit?This turns out to be a surprisingly controversialsubject. The conventional narrative starts with barteras the earliest form of human economic development,before proceeding to the invention of metal currency,with debt following on as a somewhat louche andsophisticated latecomer to the party. Loans, say theever-rational economists, were simply too difficult toquantify without currency because of the equivalence

24

IN THE REDSuccess is no guarantee against money

troubles – as these famous facesdiscovered the hard way

Wolfgang Amadeus MozartThroughout his life, Mozart producedhundreds of enduring compositions,but his tastes for gambling, drinkingand living well took their toll, and bythe time of his death, in 1791, he was

heavily in debt.

Thomas JeffersonThe third US President died in 1826with debts of more than $100,000(roughly $2m today). He may have

been rich in terms of land – and slaves– but his tobacco crops failed to meet

annual expenses and he had apenchant for the finer things.

Joe LouisBack in 1951, when his career in thering ended, Louis owed a whopping

$1.25m. He made millions as aheavyweight boxer but most of it went

to his handlers, as well as friends,relatives and bad investments. The

debt remained when he died in 1981.

Judy GarlandStar of The Wizard of Oz and mother ofLiza Minnelli, Garland was plagued by

financial difficulties throughout hercareer and racked up debts of $4m

during her lifetime.

Marvin GayeShot by his own father on April Fool’s

day 1984, the Heard it Through theGrapevine soul legend was $9.2m indebt when he died, thanks mainly todrug addiction and costly divorces.

Gary ColemanKnown for his role as a child actor in

Diff’rent Strokes, Coleman could onceclaim to be the highest-paid TV actor,but medical troubles and legal battleswith his adoptive parents left him withdebts of more than $70,000. He died

aged 42 in 2010.

debt

“As long as people continueto believe in the government’scredit, it could borrow much

more than it has”

For further reading, see page 72

problem: how do you value apples today that you willpay for in pears next autumn, or how many chickensare equivalent to one cow?

But more recent anthropological interpretationshave taken issue with this. Both the late DavidGraeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years and JosephHenrich’s The Secret of Our Success point out thatthere is good historical evidence that things happenedthe other way around – debt came first, and metal andpaper currency emerged later, at least partly asa means of facilitating more of the lending that wasalready taking place.

If you live in a barter economy, goes theirargument, and you reallywant one of your neighbour’scows today, you’re not going to wait for the inventionof money to do the deal. He wants 12 chickens inspring? Make it 10 and you’re on. Or perhaps hisson would like to marry your daughter? Thewise neighbour might even make a ‘gift’ of thecow, knowing that having you in his debt is bound tocome in handy.

The point is, in the absenceof cash, deals were done anddebts run up – the equivalencedoesn’t have to be as perfectand repeatable as the economicrationalists might like, it justhas to be acceptable to bothparties at the time. In fact, thepre-financial world ran onprecisely such local networks of reciprocal debt andobligation for centuries, says Dr Chris Briggs, seniorlecturer in medieval British social and economichistory at the University of Cambridge. “Manyhistorians used to presume that there wasn’t muchcredit in the pre-modern world and that the economywas constrained by an inability to lend or borrow,” heexplains. “But when we started to look more closely atthe records, we realised that credit and debt iseverywhere in medieval times.”

Much of Briggs’s work involves local records ofcourt proceedings over debts, highlighting an issuethat remains pertinent to this day: how creditors canprove a debt is owed and, conversely, how debtors canprove they have paid what is due. The solution was thetally stick, a simple device that could functionvariously as a record, receipt and proof of payment –the Excel spreadsheet of a pre-literate age.“Tallies tended to be used for bigger debts; youwould get a piece of hazel wood and inscribe it withnotches to mark the amount owed,” says Briggs.“This was split down the middle [hazel being usedbecause it splits cleanly] and each party wouldkeep one half.”

Tallies were hard to forge because no two hazelsticks split in exactly the same way; they were morereliable than an oral witness who might be persuaded

to favour one side or the other, and they werepermanent. In fact, debt in the Middle Ages was moremodern thanwe tend to assume; those aforementionedbuy-now-pay-later apps might seem like a new idea,but are they really? The technology is cutting edge butthe concept is as old as the hills, says Briggs: “Fromthe top of society to the bottom, hardly anyone everactually bought anything outright – it was almost allon a deferred-payment basis. These [buy nowpay later] apps like Klarna, that’s a very typicalmedieval arrangement.”

Which brings us neatly back to the present day andthe big question: what are the limits on borrowing? Atsome point don’t we have to start paying it back? Forconsumers, the only sensible answer is yes – andindeed many have been using the pandemic as anopportunity to do just that. The latest Bank of Englandfigures show that a record £16.6bn of credit card bills,personal loans and car finance deals were paid off lastyear. That’s the first net decline since 2011, and the

biggest since records began in1993. Savings ratios have alsobeen going up.

The situation is rather morenuanced for nation states.“Governments aren’t likehouseholds. The only constrainton government debt is at whatpoint is a government going todecide that the least of

all political evils is not to pay back their debt?” saysKay. “Countries like the US and the UK are many,many miles from that.”

But isn’t there a fundamental responsibility ongovernments to retrench once the worst of the crisisis past? “There’s a school of thought that says thatwhile interest rates are low, there’s no reason to stopborrowing,” says Britton. “My position is different –I think in a crisis like Covid, it’s essential for thegovernment to borrow a shedload to get through thecrisis as quickly as possible, but as soon as you canyou need to stop and think about tax rises andspending cuts. Otherwise you will pay the price inlower growth rates and interest rates forever.”

The lessons of history, however, suggest that debttends to only go one way because more tax and lessspending are rarely vote winners. “The trouble is thatretrenching requires political will, which we probablywon’t have,” says Britton. “Every time we get in acrisis, we just ratchet up the debt ratios permanently,and ratchet down interest rates. I think that’s thelikely outcome this time around too.”

So regardless of our individual prudence orprofligacy, we had probably better get used to livingwith a lot more debt for a long time to come.

25

26

A (LOOSE) HISTORY OFWORK IN 10 SONGS

You can learn a lot about how employment has changed over the decades thanks to theartists who have immortalised the world of work in their song lyrics

SONG OF THE VOLGA

BOATMEN, TRADITIONAL

RUSSIAN FOLK SONG

‘Yo, heave ho! Yo, heave ho!Once more, once again, still

once more’ – that is thetimeless sound of Russian

peasants (known as burlaks)singing to raise their spirits

while dragging barges upstreamon the Volga. In the 1800s,

before the invention ofsteam-powered vessels,600,000 burlaks were

performing this thankless task.The Russian folk song’s simple,

repetitive rhythm sounds likea precursor to Chain Gang,

written in 1960 by Sam Cookeafter encountering a prisonchain gang in Georgia. The

American constitutionspecifically permits slavery asa punishment for crime and,

although chain gangs have beendisbanded, prison labourremains a controversial

multibillion-dollar industry.

MY DADDY KNOWS BEST,

THE MARVELETTES, 1963

After his mother nagged him24/7 to find work, tenor Richard

Lewis wrote the lyrics to the1958 smash hit Get a Job. Five

years later, the refrain ‘Get a job,get a job’ was referenced in MyDaddy Knows Best, written by

Motown boss Berry Gordy Jr forthe Marvelettes, in which thesinger threatens to dump her

feckless boyfriend because, inher father’s words: ‘Romance

without finance can be anuisance.’ Both songs offer anamusing commentary on the

generation gap, while obliquelyalluding to a reality in which one

in 10 black Americans wereunemployed.

HEIGH-HO, THE DWARF CHORUS, 1937

The seven dwarfs in Disney’s groundbreaking animation – Bashful,Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy and Sneezy – celebrate the

fruits of their labour with the song Heigh-Ho. The expression ‘heighho’ is usually associated with weary resignation, but the dwarfs are

relentlessly upbeat, probably because ‘it ain’t no trick to get richquick’ if you are mining diamonds and rubies by the score.

(They also, conforming to the gender stereotypes of the day, hadSnow White to cook and clean for them.) In contrast, frustratedby their inability to even get rich slowly, many of Walt Disney’s

animators went on strike in 1941.

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working anthems

CUBICLES, MY CHEMICAL

ROMANCE, 2007

‘I’d photocopy all the things thatwe could be/If you took the time

to notice me.’ This song ofunrequited office romance

reveals how radically workplacemores have changed since

#MeToo. If the protagonist leftany of his love notes on his

colleague’s desk today he wouldlikely be reported to HR. Ina similar vein, Coldplay’spiano-driven ballad The

Scientist (2002) reflects ChrisMartin’s belief that ‘whateverelse is on your mind, whetherit’s global economics or theenvironment, the thing that

always gets you most is whenyou fancy someone’.

YOUR APPLICATION’S

FAILED, ROXY MUSIC, 1974

A neglected B-side, this largelyinstrumental track is interruptedby shouts of ‘Your application’sfailed!’ from Roxy’s drummer,Paul Thompson, who wrote it

after being turned down by theLondon Underground. The

jaunty, surreal melody perfectlycaptures the caprices of the

British job market as the 1960s’boom gave way to 1970s’ bust.

MAGGIE’S FARM,

BOB DYLAN, 1965

‘They say sing while you slave,and I just get bored.’ After a no-holds barred description of thepoor conditions endured in theUS service sector in the 1960s

– proof modern slavery isn’tthat modern – Dylan complains

about striving for originalitywhen ‘everyone wants you to be

like them’. The song was laterrecorded by The Specials in pro-test against Margaret Thatcher.

9 TO 5,

DOLLY PARTON, 1981

Only Dolly Parton couldcondemn the ‘greed is good’

ethos of 1980s capitalism witha song this catchy and pointed.Even though her boss uses her

mind and never gives her credit,Dolly’s secretarial heroine

suspects she will spend herworking life ‘puttin’ money in hiswallet’. The song helped Parton

break one glass ceiling – shebecame the first woman to topthe US pop and country chartssince Jeannie C Riley in 1968.

As entertaining as 9 to 5 is, thesocial criticism is as biting as in

John Lennon’s Imagine.

IN THE NAVY,

VILLAGE PEOPLE, 1979

Does this Village People numbercontain a hidden gay message?

After using In the Navy in itsrecruitment ads, the US Navyfretted about such innuendos

as ‘they’re signing up newseamen fast’ and reverted toAnchors Aweigh. Victor Willis,Village People’s frontman (he

was the faux policeman), deniessubversive intent. It certainlyflows better than the British

World War I recruitment songI’ll Make a Man of You, which

begins with the clunky couplet:‘The Army and the Navy need

attention/The outlook isn’thealthy you’ll admit.’

SHIPBUILDING,

ELVIS COSTELLO, 1983

In a town stricken byunemployment, rumours spreadthat the shipyards will start hiring

again. The unspoken irony inShipbuilding – a hit for Robert

Wyatt in 1982 – is that this is alldown to the Falklands conflict(the boy who tells his dad he’s

being ‘taken to task’ is joining theBritish Navy task force). Elvis

Costello’s version has the smoky,jazzy atmosphere of a working

men’s club. His lament for avanishing working class way of

life recalls Robert Palmer’s 1980track I Dream of Wires, narrated

by ‘the last electrician alive’whose job has been automated.

6 INCH, BEYONCÉ, 2016

‘She works for the money’ singsBeyoncé, introducing us toa prostitute who empowersherself by donning six-inchheels, going clubbing and

drinking Hennessy whiskey, butwho, it transpires, is a metaphor

for hard-working women ingeneral, including Hot, Butteredand Soul (sisters Pat and DianeLewis and Rose Williams) who

served as Isaac Hayes’s backingsingers. The lyrics’ emphasis onworking for the money echoes

the Donna Summer hit SheWorks Hard for the Money

(1983), a paean to blue-collarwomen inspired by Summer’s

encounter with exhaustedrestroom attendant Onetta

Johnson (who is namecheckedin the lyrics) at a Los Angeles

restaurant.

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interview

•

“A business’s contribution tosociety is as valuable as itsfinancial performance

”Co-op chief customer officerMatt Atkinson talks toAndrewSaundersabout how the pandemic has created amore community-focusedmindset – andwhy he believes ethical firms should get a tax break

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Are mutuals having a moment? Over theyears, organisations owned by theiremployees or customers have come in fortheir fair share of criticism from those atthe more hard-nosed shareholder value

end of the business spectrum. Too many cooks. Toolittle focus on the bottom line. Lacking the commercialkiller instinct. Old fashioned. But now, at least one ofthe UK’s oldest and best-loved mutuals, the Co-op, hasconfounded those critics by outperforming many moreostensibly ‘business like’ high street rivals and turningin its best figures for years – despite, or perhaps partlybecause of, the ongoing trials of the pandemic.

For chief customer officer Matt Atkinson – former adman and CMO for Tesco, where he spent several yearsrunning the Clubcard programme before joining the Co-op in 2017 – it’s been a rare opportunity to prove that pur-pose and profit are not mutually exclusive and that niceguys don’t always finish last. “Our purpose is to cooper-ate for a fairer world and everything we do comes back tothat. There’s definitely been a recognition that our inten-tions and our actions are different,” he says. “We’re seeingbigger baskets as people shop more locally and our brandmetrics have really strengthened as a result of us beingseen as generous, front footed and community spirited.”

It’s enlightened self-interest where if the customerwins and the community wins, then so does the Co-op,and it seems to be working. The Co-op Group (which

includes the funeral and legal businesses as well as the4,000-strong store chain) posted figures for the firsthalf of 2020 showing revenues up 7.6 per cent and pre-tax profits up 35 per cent to £27m. It added 1.7 millioncustomers through the depths of lockdown one, and inSeptember last year achieved its highest share of thegrocery market, at 7.1 per cent, for 20 years. At the sametime it has donated £15m to worthy causes, fundedadvertising that helped raise £650,000 for the FareSharefree schoolmeals campaign and given a pay rise to 35,000of its lowest-paidworkers,whowill nowall receive at leastthe real livingwage.

And far from being a distraction, the Co-op’s 4.6million active members, each of whom owns at least a £1stake in thebusiness, keep the interests of customers frontand centre in the boardroom as well as at the tills. Oneof Atkinson’s primary goals is to grow the membership,using technology to provide themwithmore personalisedand convenient shopping, and to help them domore goodin their communities.

He’s also been busy addressing theCo-op’s late arrivalat the home delivery party, taking a leaf out of the techstart-up playbook and partnering with delivery providersrather than trying to build capability exclusively in-house.Yes it means sharing the pie, but it’s fast and effective;same-day online ordering is now available in more than650 stores thanks to third-party tie-ins with the likesof Deliveroo, Pinga and Buymie, and online orders have

30

risen fourfold during the pandemic. “It’s a question ofwhere the value is,” he says. “Is it in hiring a deliveryworkforce and having a distribution centre and all that?Or is it in commercial cooperation? The partnershipmodel works really well – we’vemade our shops availableto that channel in away thatmeanswedon’t have to investan enormous amount of cash.”

The Co-op may not be the most obvious of careerchoices for someone who earned his stripes in the red-in-tooth-and-claw world of advertising. But Atkinson’supbringing and education gave him an appreciation of di-versity and the value of cooperation. Born in the UK, hemoved to Singaporewith his parents andwent to the localschool rather than the one provided for expat children. “Igrew up in a very ethnically diverse environment. Rightthewayuntil I left to go touniversity Iwas theonly gweilo[foreigner], as they used to call me. The only white guy inthe whole school. My mum would say that has made meinto quite an adaptable person.”

He talked to Work. from his home in Hertfordshireabout leadership in lockdown, thefutureofretail andwhatthe Co-op and footballer-turned-Twitter-campaigner parexcellenceMarcus Rashford have in common.

What are the biggest differences between theway amutual behaves and a conventional private company?

One of the things I have really noticed at the Co-opcompared to some of the businesses I haveworkedfor is that there ismuchmore desire to cooperate andmuch less tension about needing to own and controleverything. The driving principle is one ofmutualgain. That has really allowed us to develop a lot ofpartnerships, such aswith John Lewis [customers cannowpick up online orders from their local Co-op]. It’sless about ‘let’s beat the crap out of everybody so thatwe canwin’ andmuchmore about how to align yourvision and share the value.

Having 4.6million activemembers is importanttoo. Partly because they help us stay customer focused– ourmembers are like a super-engaged customerpanel and give us great feedback on stuff that reallymatters to them. But also because they each own ashare in the business so, instead of trying to returnvalue to the stockmarket, we are trying to return valueto ourmembers and their communities. It leads us tobemore participatory and come upwith things likeour Co-operate scheme [an online service that helpsmatch volunteerswith local groups and charities].

You’vemade big strides in the last year or so interms of going digital.What’s behind that?

We’re trying to grow themembership andmakethe Co-op as accessible as possible. Sowe’vemade iteasier to join – now you can do it all online, whereasbefore you had to fill in a form. Andwe’re usingdata tomake shoppingmore personalised, but in atransparentway. I think shoppers are looking for

brands to bemore honest about data and privacy, andour products have privacy built in by design ratherthan as an add-on afterwards. It creates a virtuouscircle: if the customer trusts your intentions, you gethigher levels of participation and engagement. Youalso get higher levels of forgiveness – in the complexmulti-channel world inevitably you don’t get thingsperfectly right all the time, but if customers trust youthey aremore likely to say: ‘That’s OK, I know it was amistake and you didn’tmean to do that.’

But doesn’tmoving into same-day delivery andpersonalisation put you into competitionwith giantslikeAmazon, aswell as the other supermarket chains?

The biggest issue for all of uswith Amazon is that itis really good. Everyone is talking digital transforma-tion; obviously the Co-op has nothing like Amazon’ssize and scale butwe are trying to do digital in awaythat benefits everyone and is additive not extractive.

Our vision of e-commerce is onewhere the Co-opstore becomes a hub providing a range of things thatlocal communities need: delivery, click and collect,a Post Office in areaswhere they can’t maintain anindependent one. Another thing that’s become clearthrough the pandemic is that we also offer an emo-tional benefit – the Co-op is a nice businesswith anenjoyable experience andwe have good ethics andsustainability. Our customers can put something back.What’s interesting tome is that Amazon has suddenlywoken up to the emotional side – if you look at theirfootprint at themoment they’re trying super hard toput a nice face on themachine.

Has lockdown changed theway that you think aboutbeing a leader?

One of the benefits has been that leaders have beenmuchmore exposed to their people andwhatmattersto them.Wemeasure this internally andwe’ve seenamassive shift inwhatmatters to our employees, somuch so that I would saywhatmattered in the last fiveyearswon’t in the next five. Employees are lookingfor leaderswho are a bitmore vulnerable andwho docare about them. Real human beings. But it needs tobe authentic – are you being kind to someone becauseyouwant something back from them, or because it’sthe right thing to do?

Whydid theCo-op get involvedwithMarcusRashford’s free schoolmeals campaign?

We’veworked really hardwithMarcus on thefree schoolmeals agenda becausewe share amissiontomake theworld a fairer place, and there’s a lot ofcommon enthusiasm around thatmission. He thinksit is unfair that in amodern society there are youngchildrenwho don’t get enough food, and so dowe.It’s hard to arguewithwhatMarcus says – he isn’ttrying tomake anyonewrong. Often campaigners are

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interview

basically saying: ‘You lot arewrong and I’m right’ butwithMarcus it’s just common sense.

Our community plan is all about food poverty, andhow you can give dignity to those people and helpthem in away that doesn’t make them feel bad.We’renot doing any of this becausewe think it gives us acompetitive advantage; I don’t think any other foodretailer would look at it like that.

Youwere a pioneer of theUK’s first supermarketloyalty card.Now that it’s so easy for online customersto be promiscuous, is loyalty dead?

Tesco’s Clubcardwas a brilliant partnership; afusion of data, insight and creativity – the kind ofthing that is commonplace now but led to all kinds ofinnovations that are still with us today. Twenty-four-hour store openingwas somethingwe spotted in theClubcard data, and it generated important peripheralbusinesses too – Tesco Bank, for one.

It was one of the firstmass personalisationschemes; a trend that is accelerating hugely today.The quarterly personalised statementwe sent out tomembers had an incredibly high sales-to-cost ratio,and although it is nowmuchmore digital people stilllove it and collect the vouchers.

Clubcardwas really a sort of thank you scheme;a value exchange between the customer and theorganisation. That philosophy has stayedwithmeforever – it’s not carrot and stick, it’s truly a case of:‘Wewant to say thank you to you, and as a result ofthat we think youwill say thank you to us.’

What’s your vision for the post-pandemic future?A lot of people have been shopping onlinewho

didn’t used to, andmany of themhave liked theexperience. I think that’s going to lead to the rise ofnew forms ofmore curated shopping – subscriptionservices, for example, based around ethical,sustainable and community-based trends: ‘I’d liketo subscribe to an ethical lunchmeal plan, and thisweek I’d like to be low carb.’ I think trust, ethics andtransparencywill also become increasingly importantcurrencies in business success.

If we are to stand a chance of doing somethingabout climate change then business needs to startthinking about success in amore balancedway overthe next 10 years, so there is growing pressure onorganisations to bemoremulti-stakeholder oriented:focusing on shareholder value alone just isn’t goodenough anymore – you need to think about return tothe community and the planet too.

Ultimately I’d like to see aworldwhere the contri-bution that an organisationmakes to society and itsimpact on the planet is seen as being as valuable as itsEBITDA [financial performance]. Andwouldn’t it alsobe fantastic if the companies that were really good atthat also enjoyed lower taxes?Why not, if the commu-nity is benefiting, education is benefiting, the planetis benefiting? Tax is important, because it’s one of theways that we look after each other, but it can also beused to reward the behaviours that you seek.

Shared vision: the Co-op worked with footballer Marcus Rashford on his free school meals campaign

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JUST THE FACTSMA’AM,JUST THE FACTS

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The abolition of the fairness doctrine obliging broadcasters to offer balanced coveragein 1987 has had a significant impact on American television news but, as Paul Simpson

points out, the likes of FoxNews certainly didn’t invent biased reporting

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There were only three things wrong with thestory about the Fox News exclusive thatBarack Obama had created Festivus todestroy Christmas. First, there is no concreteproof that Obama ever aspired to torpedo the

festive season. Second, Festivus was an alternativeseasonal festival created by Reader’s Digest editor DanielO’Keefe in 1966, which only became famouswhen his son,TV comedy writer and producer Dan, incorporated it intothe plot for an episode of sitcomSeinfeld in 1997. Third, thisexclusive was not, as was widely believed in some circles,broadcast on FoxNews on 21 August 2018 by Tomi Lahrenin an attempt to distract viewers from the fact that two ofDonald Trump’s close associates – lawyer Michael Cohenand campaign manager Paul Manafort – had beenconvicted that day.

Confused? You needn’t be. It is true that Fox diddownplay the significance of those court cases, initiallyreporting Cohen’s guilty plea without mentioning anyconnection to Trump. For most of the day the channel’shomepage led with a story about police in Iowa accusingan undocumented Mexican immigrant of murder.When Fox’s popular host Sean Hannity did discuss theconvictions on his evening show, he dismissedthem as “false reporting, speculation and hysteria” bythe liberal media, which wasengaged in a witchhunt to “turnthe screws” on Trump.

Fox didn’t invent a storyabout an Obama plot to wreckChristmas to distract fromTrump’s woes for the simplerreason that it didn’t need to. AsPeter Pomerantsev, author ofThis is Not Propaganda, puts it:“In the world of Fox News, there is only one story –a conspiracy – and only two pronouns – ‘you’ and ‘they’– and, as they constantly remind their viewers, ‘they’ areattacking ‘you’.” Both these legal verdicts fitted thatnarrative perfectly – ‘they’ (and here viewers couldnominate an enemy of their choice or just stick with Fox’susual suspects: the liberal establishment) were plottingagainst your president.

So where does Obama’s plot to cancel Christmas fitinto all of this? Tucker Carlson, one of the channel’s mostcontroversial presenters, has complained that the “leftstruggles to say the word Christian”, and anchor MegynKelly famously declared on Fox that “for all you kidswatching at home, Santa just is white”, but that’s all. Thestory was a complete hoax, and the fact that it was sowidely believed doesn’t cast either Fox or its liberal criticsin a particularly flattering light.

In truth, Foxhas run stories that are almost as absurd.In 2012, the channel condemned Obama because, aftersaying he was “too busy” to meet Israeli prime ministerBenjamin Netanyahu, he found time to meet a man in apirate costume on the White House sofa. The Fox &

Friends show supported this attack with a photograph ofpresident and pirate, which had actually been created asa joke for aWhiteHouse correspondents’ dinner by threeof Obama’s senior aides. The photo was so obviously fakeone can only assume hitherto undreamt of levels ofcredulity in the Fox & Friends team or, maybe, that theydidn’t care if it was true or not.

Yet it is also true that people who don’t like Fox –actually, that’s putting it too mildly, people who loatheFox – will believe pretty much anything anyone saysabout the channel providing it is bad. In other words, wehave arrived at that dangerous point in human affairsthat Democratic senator Patrick Moynihan warned usagainst in a much-quoted Washington Post column in1983. We live in an age where everyone feels entitled totheir own opinion – and entitled, also, to their own facts.The question is: how did we get here?

There is a snobbish train of thought in Britain thatthere is something peculiarly American about thebusiness of fake news. It’s a consoling idea but, as authorand Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper points out,it is hardly supported by the facts: “The British havehad fake news for decades: tabloid newspapers. That hasbeen counterbalanced by the BBC, which Britons get 70per cent of their news from, and the BBC, although it is

much criticised and struggles onsome issues, is fundamentally agood, solid news organisation –and there is nothing like it inAmerican broadcasting.”

There is also, as Kuper argues, acorrelation between the modusoperandi adopted by The Sun in the1970s, under Rupert Murdoch’sownership, and what Fox, under

the same owner, is doing today: “Murdoch’s ideology hasalways been pretty consistent. He believes in minimaltaxation, minimal regulation and minimal governmentintervention.”

That was The Sun’s credo in its heyday under itstalismanic editors, Larry Lamb and then KelvinMacKenzie, on whose watch, in 1987, the paper soldalmost four million copies a day. The tabloid never leftreaders in any doubt about its political allegiance: on theday of the 1992 general election, its front-page headlineread: ‘If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leaveBritain turn out the lights.’

Nor did the tabloid stint when it came to findingenemies – ‘they’ – who were out to attack – ‘you’ – thereader. The cast of villains included the ‘loony left’, tradeunion leaders, social workers, Argentinians and snobs(anyone who disapproved of it, especially if they objectedto photographs of topless models on page three). PrivateEye’s spoof Sun headline ‘Kill an Argie and win a Metro’was, like Fox’s festive faux news, a parody that worked sowell because it was so close to the real thing. Outrageous,opinionated, irreverent, MacKenzie’s Sun pioneered the

“In the world of Fox News, thereis only one story – a conspiracy

– and only two pronouns:‘you’ and ‘they’”

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idea of news as entertainment. It didn’t matter if youbelieved, as it notoriously declared in a front-pageexclusive on 13 March 1986, that Freddie Starr really hadtucked into a hamster sandwich or not – the very idea wasenough to make readers laugh. In essence, Pomerantsevargues what Fox has done is to adapt The Sun’s formulaand take it to the highest level.

The Sun was characteristically vociferous in its sup-port for Ronald Reagan, and the Republican president’sapproach to regulation would, in the long term, pay divi-dends for Murdoch. “Television news had been prettyimpartial in America until Reagan deregulated it – that’swhy it was so significant when CBS News anchor WalterCronkite spoke out against the Vietnam War – but theabolition of the fairness doctrine in 1987, the rule thatobliged broadcasters to offer balanced coverage and togive airtime to anyone they attacked personally, helpedchange all that,” says Kuper.

To be clear, the duty to be fair had only applied tolicensed broadcasters (so cable channels such as Foxwould not have had to adhere to it), but it did apply toradio. Intheveryyear thefairnessdoctrinewasabolished,Rush Limbaugh began broadcasting his show on KFBKAM, a Sacramento radio station. Aggressive, articulateand crude, Limbaugh was, as The Wall Street Journalnoted, “the first man to proclaim himself liberated fromthe East Germany of liberal media domination”.

There is no doubt that Limbaugh, who died inFebruary at the age of 70, coarsened public debate inAmerica. Once you have lambasted actor Michael J Fox

for allegedly exaggerating his Parkinson’s diseasesymptoms and held up a photo of a 13-year-old ChelseaClinton to ridicule her as “theWhiteHouse dog”withoutany serious blowback, anything is permitted.

By 2008 Limbaugh had become, one poll found, themost trusted news personality in America. Such was hisinfluence, Pomerantsev says, he changed the wayAmerica talked about politics. “Hewas the first person tomake every issue about identity and not about the facts–whichmeansnomatterhowcompelling the informationyou give people, they will hardly ever change theirminds. Climate change is a perfect example – that wasnot a partisan political issue at first – for a while, evenRepublican climate sceptic Newt Gingrich said therewas enough evidence for the government to take action,but Limbaugh made it so.”

The cause of exposing what Limbaugh called“misleading environmental myths” has been taken upenthusiastically by Fox, which has cast it as a conspiracyagainst its viewers and, as Pomerantsev puts it, “impliesthat you are weak or unpatriotic” if you worry about theenvironment. “What Fox News has done is create anidentity – and that identity defines a world view,” saysKuper. “Many Fox News viewers are older white men,possibly divorced, who are constantly being told thatthere are forces out there – ethnic minorities, advocatesof ‘woke’ culture, feminists, the liberal media – whichare out to get them. If you accept this world view, climatechange is not science, it’s a conspiracy. It’s no coincidencethat, according toYouGov, America andAustralia, where

Roger Ailes, Fox News CEO from 1996 to 2016, had first dreamed of launching a right-wing news TV channel in 1970

36

Murdoch’s media empire is especially powerful, retainlarge fringes of climate change deniers.”

In her 2015 documentary, The Brainwashing of MyDad, Jen Senko explored the radicalisation of her fatherwho, after listening to Limbaugh and watching Fox, wentfrom being a “funny, non-political Kennedy Democrat” toan angry right-wing Republican, and then – after his wifedeliberately exposed him to liberal media – calmed downandwent back to his beliefs.Whilemaking the film, Senkowas contacted by other Americans with similarexperiences, includingmembers of a support group calledPeopleWhoHave Lost Loved Ones to Fox News.

The documentary’s analysis, though not especiallydeep, supports the narrative of what one media pundithas called the ‘Foxification of America’. Yet, asPomerantsev points out, it’s hard to say whether Fox’ssuccess reflects the growing political polarisation ofAmerica, has engineered it, simply made it more toxic –or a bit of all three (indeed, surveys of political attitudesshow Republicans moving to the right even before Foxwent on air in 1996).

It certainly does not seem coincidental that, as Senkonotes in her documentary, Fox’s editorial policy has beendefined,more than anyone, byRogerAiles, CEO from 1996to 2016, who had helped mastermind Richard Nixon’spresidential comeback in 1968. (He later had a lesssignificant role in the campaigns of Ronald Reagan andGeorge Bush Snr.) Ailes schooledNixon in TV techniques,encouraged his populist message that a liberal elite wasprofiting at the expense of ordinary Americans, andrelentlessly rammed home the message that themainstream media was biased against conservatism. Inpractice, as many industry insiders have remarked overtheyears, the traditionalmedia’s biggest biaswas in favourof a kind of apolitical orthodoxy.

Ailes resigned from Fox in July 2016 after a slew ofsexual harassment claims cost the channel more than$100m and made his position untenable, and died thefollowing May, aged 77. Yet he found time after hislucrative departure – he is estimated to have receiveda $40m pay-off – to coach Trump for the presidential TVdebates. Trump’s triumph, based largely on themes Aileshad developed with Nixon, seems, in retrospect, like theculmination of his life’s work.

Ailes first dreamed of founding a right-wing TV newschannel in 1970 and you could argue that the right-wingmedia narrative, which Pomerantsev sums up as ‘this iswho you are – and this is who you hate’ has deeper andolder roots in American society.Many of the sensationalisttechniques that made The Sun so profitable in the 1970sand80s – andhave servedFoxwell –were pioneered in thelate nineteenth century by American newspaper baronsJoseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the modelfor Citizen Kane in Orson Welles’s magnificent biopic.Hearst’s desperation to persuade America to invade thethen Spanish colony of Cuba – he even celebrated theconflict with a circulation-boosting ‘War with Spain’ card

Fox News may deserve its reputation forbiased reporting, but fake news is allaround us. The British tabloids havecome in for criticism, and anything goesin the unregulated world of social media

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game – set a patriotic with a capital P precedent for TheSun’s Falklands War coverage and Rush Limbaugh’senthusiasm for the second Iraq War (he insisted thatweapons of mass destruction still existed even afterGeorgeWBush conceded they didn’t).

Yet for Pomerantsev, it was the first Iraq war in 1991that changed the American news business in a way thatfacilitated Fox’s success, and the culprit was notMurdoch,but CNN: “That was the first war that was effectivelypresented like a video game. Thewaywewere encouragedto follow those planes dropping bombs – it was like it washappening on a console. Cable news channels neededviewers and decided the best way to do that was to be likeHollywood – that’s howyou endupwith a heroic narrativesurrounding ‘Stormin’NormanSchwarzkopf. In exchangefor access, broadcasters like CNN turned news intoentertainment.” It seems telling, in this respect, that, in2003, the second Iraq war led to a spike in sales of combatvideo games.

Although Fox and CNN are often seen as being atopposite ends of the political spectrum – and thereforebringing some kind of balance to cable news – Americanacademic Deborah L Jaramillo contends, in her 2009 bookUgly War, Pretty Package, that the channels had much incommon.Unitedbyanunshakenbelief in the righteousnessof America’s cause, they covered the second Iraq war as a‘high concept’ movie based on a pre-packaged idea of howthe conflictwould play out and inwhich presenters, talkingup forthcoming footage to keep viewers hooked, effectivelyacted as movie trailers. Jaramillo’s most serious charge isthat the ‘shock and awe’ bombing campaign was not, asofficially stated,basedonthepremise thatbiggerexplosionswould do greater damage to Iraqi soldiers’ morale, butbecause spectacular explosions made for spectacularfootage and therefore hadmore propaganda value.

Two years after the second Iraq conflict, Maria Ressa,a Filipinonewspresenterwhohadbecome the face ofCNNin south-east Asia, resigned. As Pomerantsev recalls in his

Rush Limbaugh (top left) ‘made every issue about identity’, an approach popularised by Rupert Murdoch in the 1970s and now at Fox News, whichhas settled sexual harassment claims from ex-presenter Gretchen Carlson and, along with CNN, has been accused of presenting war as a video game

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book: “The network was changing; reporters were beingasked to express their feelings rather than just give thefacts… [and she] did not want to star in a reality TV showversion of the news.” Ressa then launched news siteRappler and, having since fallen foul of populist presidentRodrigo Duterte, is periodically arrested.

Thismight all feel a longway from such tabloid stuntsas ‘Freddie Starr ate my hamster’, but the principle ismuch the same. Reality doesn’t matter – all that counts iswhether you are entertained. As Kuper explains, thisapproach doesn’t just influence Fox’s content, but thestyle in which it is created: “If you look at the presenterson Fox News, it is very 1980s: the tans, the smiles, theclothes, the blow-dried hair.”

The homogeneity is particularly striking when youconsider the channel’s cast of female presenters, who arealmost exclusively blonde and dressed in a style which,Hadley Freeman wrote in the Guardian, “defiantlyembraces the most conservative notions of femininity andfirmly rejects any idea of modernity, let alone feminism”and appeals to a demographic that “considers being abrunette a physical deformity”.

The assumptions behind Fox’s worldview aredrummed into presenters and contributors, a processoccasionally reinforced by guiding emails. Such tutoringcan produce some jaw-dropping moments. In 2013, Lau-ren Green, who is now the channel’s chief religioncorrespondent, sounded genuinely mystified when sheasked religious scholar Reza Aslan: “You’re a Muslim, sowhy did you write a book about the founder of Christian-ity?” At other times, there are some striking continuitieswith Murdoch’s tabloids. The same year as Green’s gaffe,Fox contributor and psychologist Keith Ablow claimedObama had been victimised by his parents andwas takingit out on America which, as media tropes go, seems like aretread of The Sun story in 1984 in which an Americanpsychiatrist studiedLabourpoliticianTonyBenn’s pathol-ogy and declared him insane.

To be fair, it is true that news organisations have, todifferent extents, always acted as echo chambers for theiraudiences. Fox may have scant regard for liberalDemocrats, but there is little in the Guardian to cheer akeenBrexiteer.What is troubling is that the echo chambereffect has become much more pronounced, creating notjust different views but distinct realities. In March 2020,63 per cent of Americans who said Fox was their mainnews source agreed that Trump was doing an excellentjob managing the pandemic, compared to just 47 per centof Republican voters and fewer than one in four of thosewho got their news from elsewhere.

The relentless, consistent presentation of Fox’sworldview can sometimes feel almost Stalinist. On6 January 2021, the evening of the Capitol Hill riots,three Fox hosts – Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham andLou Dobbs – mentioned reports that the insurrectionhad been instigated by covert antifa (anti-fascist) agents.In reality, as Sky News, another Murdoch subsidiary,

reported, you didn’t need to look at the footage for longto identify white nationalists, holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis among the leaders.

Since Trump’s defeat, and that riot, Fox has seemedto many in the news industry to be in a state of flux. LouDobbs Tonight, one of its best-rated shows (but a lossleader because advertisers shunned its controversialhost) was cancelled after Dobbs’s claims of fraud in thelast presidential election prompted multibillion-dollarlaw suits from suppliers of election technology (Dobbs’sprevious claim to notoriety was insisting that Obamawas not born in America). The ratings have been volatilesince Biden won. New right-wing rivals, such as OneAmerica News Network (OANN) and Newsmax haveemerged, possibly encouraged by Trump’s broadsidesagainst Fox – he still nurses a grudge after it correctlycalled Arizona for Biden on election night. Yet thechannel remains hugely lucrative and is on course tomake a profit of $1bn or more in this fiscal year.

Fox’s recent difficulties do not, Kuper says, signifythat the halcyon days are now gone. “If you look at what’shappened since 2016, it has become the second mostpowerful force in theRepublicanparty – andparticularlyin terms of Republicans who vote in primaries – afterTrump.” That is historically unprecedented and unlikelyto change quickly.

If you take the longer view, things do not look so rosyfor the channel. Time, as Kuper says, is not on Fox’s side:“The channel’s core audience is an ageing demographicand, when they die, it will find it hard to replace them.Young people, even those who might agree with Fox’sworldview, are not watching television news; they aregetting their news on social media – which is whereOANN has been particularly strong.”

In other words, Kuper says, those who are inclined torevel in the idea that the wheels will come off at Foxshould be careful what they wish for. “If everyone isgetting their news from social media, you could end upnot with one Fox News, but 100 of them,” he warns.

That is a troubling prospect given themechanism thatpowers social media. These channels are programmed togive usmore of the same, even if it is not good for us, if thatkeepsus staring at a screen for longer,making thebusinessof selling our attention evenmore lucrative. The incentivefor us all to give up critical thinking, succumb toconfirmation bias, climb into our own echo chamber andclose the door behind us will be stronger than ever. Wecould all become Citizen Kane – trapped in our ownparadise prison likeXanadu.

Butwe’re not there yet. Even in the land of free speech,such a dystopian outcome might prompt regulators torestore some regulatory scrutiny. It certainly isn’t easy, atthis point in time, to picture how that might come to passbut, as the past five years have repeatedly shown us, thereare no certainties in politics anymore.


media

unicef

40

Claire Fox, chief operating officer at Unicef UK, tellsJo Faragher why she believes the pandemic provides a

unique opportunity to reset humanity’s path

Portrait Julian Dodd

As for so many families during the pan-demic, YouTube fitness sensation JoeWicks has been a regular feature in ClaireFox’s household over the past year. Fittingexercise and fresh air into the day has

been a priority for Fox, who admits that juggling home-schooling with her role as chief operating officer atUnicef UK has at times been “really, really tough”.

During the first lockdown she and her wife decidedto tag-team their work schedules with looking aftertheir two children. Both have part-time roles – Foxworks a four-and-a-half-day week compressed into

four; her wife three and a half – but they often foundthemselves working more hours than before and sacri-ficed their usual Friday off together to take the pressureoff caring for their sons. That, however, proved to becounterproductive and they decided to keep those Fri-days sacred during the latest round of restrictions. “Ithad such an impact on us because we were just not get-ting that daywherewewere able to take stock and rest,”she says. “So we worked to quite a rigorous schedule.We split the days in half so we each had half the daywhen we could be really focused on work, rather thanjuggling things all the time.”

“Now is the timefor seismic change.HR leaders have acritical role toplay in that”

•

42

Fox leads the charity’s Covid-19 capacity planning,and as part of that she is keen to ensure employees can dotheir job in away thatworks for them. She has learned tobe strict with her own diary, prioritising commitments,and encourages her team to do the same. Shorter meet-ings are favoured, employees are not required to be ‘oncamera’ on every video call and every week staff areencouraged to take a two-hour lunch break so they canfully switch off and get some time away from their desk:“If everyone’s working every evening they will just burnout,” she says. “I don’t want people trying to do theirwhole jobwhile they’remanaging caring responsibilitiesor children – it’s just not sustainable.” It’s a topicshe’s passionate about, having written a book,Work-LifeSymbiosis, which looks at aligning work with life so thateachmakes the other better.

Maintaining that energy will be crucial for Unicef’sworkforce – as the world’s largest vaccine buyer (it helpsvaccinate half theworld’s children) the charity is playinga central role in the distribution of Covid vaccines glob-ally. It is currently getting ready to deliver twobillion vaccines and 500 million testing kits to low andmiddle-income countries, and has stockpiled half a bil-lion syringes. Typically, explainsFox, the rollout of a vaccineprogramme of this magnitudewould take around 20 years.Unicef aims to do it in two.

The charity’s global set-up issuch that it drives internationalaid programmes centrally, sup-ported by 33national committeeswhose job it is to raise funds. In2019, Unicef UK (or more correctly the UK Committeefor Unicef) raised £101.4m, with 95 per cent ofdistributed funds going to international programmes. Sowhile most employees in the UK will not physically beinvolved in delivering vaccines to those countries, theircontribution is vital.

Helping them understand their ‘piece of the jigsaw’in large-scale humanitarian initiatives such as this is allin a day’s work for Fox. Her remit covers the peoplefunction, but also encompasses facilities and internalcommunications, as well as overseeing informationmanagement and the strategy team, which looks afterdata analysis, project management and strategic plan-ning. Most of the workforce are (in more usual times)based at the head office in London and there is a team inScotland. In addition, Unicef UK recruits volunteers forfundraising events such as SoccerAid forUnicef, andhasa team of remote employees who deliver programmessuch as its Baby Friendly Initiative in UK hospitals,which supports new parents.

As for many charities, the impact of the pandemic ontraditional money-raising activities has led to a difficultfundraising landscape, but its work has never beenmoreimportant, something that has been brought home to

many people by the global nature of the crisis. “We’veworked for years in different humanitarian situations,conflict zones and refugee crises,” says Fox. “But thisis the first time it’s been the case that high-incomecountries are impacted by it in this way.”

The pandemic may be closer to home than usual, butgetting the workforce on board with the organisation’spurpose has never been an issue. The charity sectortends to attract people with passion, Fox says, althoughthere is always work to be done to connect employeeswith the charity’s global goals and their role in them.One of the ways it has traditionally done this is throughan employee ambassador programme, which seescolleagues go into schools or the local community to talkabout their work.

Another challenge is balancing employees’ enthusi-asm for the charity’s work with investment in tools andprofessional development while working with limitedresources. “We have a highly skilled, passionate andintelligent workforce that hasn’t had the same opportu-nity for methodical professional development [as inother sectors], so it’s about howwe find opportunities toinvest in employee growth in a way that is still meaning-

ful and impactful while beingmindful of budgets,” she says.

Fox’s own background is inHR, having joined Unilever asa graduate trainee after a degreein sports science and competingfor Great Britain as a whitewaterslalomcanoeist. Shewasworkingas a fitness instructor whilecompleting her master’s when

a client whoworked inHR, an area shewas beginning todevelop an interest in, told her to “join a big companywith a really good graduate scheme and a good reputa-tion for HR”, which brought her to Unilever.

Working for a conglomerate meant Fox got plenty ofexposure to other parts of the business, but it wasn’tuntil she joined Save the Children International in 2015that she realised she enjoyed the challenge of a broaderoperations role. Shewas looking after child safeguardingand managing a cross-functional team, which she“absolutely loved”. “When I was in the corporate worldfairly early on in my career, I’d thought about going intomanagement but chose to stay in HR because I’mpassionate about leadership and engagement. Butactually, now I’ve changed sectors, I’ve realised that itwasn’t that I didn’twant to be a leader of an organisation,it’s that I didn’t want to be a leader in that sector.”

When the job at Save the Children came up, Fox hadalready had her children andwas considering a rolewitha more directly positive impact on society. During hertime at the charity she visited a number of refugee campsto see the impact of the organisation’s work first hand.One of her most cherished memories is of a woman shemet on a breastfeeding programme in one of the camps

“Her food was rations andher home was a makeshift tent,but the hospitality she showed

me was mind-blowing”

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unicef

who invited her to share a meal. “Her food was rationsand her home was a makeshift tent shack but, despitethat, the hospitality and generosity she showed me,a complete stranger, was mind-blowing,” she says. “I’vemet children in a camp in Jordan who told me theywanted to be lawyers and doctors and teachers; they arenot without ambition.”

Thinking back to those experiences now, she reflectson how they have reinforced her personal vision thatopportunities should be equitable for all, not just at workbut in society as awhole. “They’ve been put in a situationthrough no fault of their own because theyended up living in a conflict zone, where theireducation has been massively interrupted,and we just can’t allow that to happen – wehave to create a world where everybody isincluded and everybody is treated fairly.” Thepandemic, she adds, marks a unique point inhistory where we can reset the trajectory ofthe human race: “Now is the time for seismic,groundbreaking change and I think leaders,particularly HR leaders, have a critical role toplay in that.”

The combined forces of Covid, climatechange and increased political polarisationhave accelerated the need for leaders toespouse a different set of values, she believes.Social media has enabled people to havea platform and a voice that they may not havehad before, and organisations are underpressure to show they’re committed tomakinga real difference. “I feel like, as a human race,we’ve lost ourwayabit,” she says. “Because thethings thatweplacevalueonarepower,wealthand influence. You think about a cocktail partyand this is what people stand around showingoff about. Imagine if we lived in aworldwhereeveryone was wildly impressed by howempatheticyouwereorhowmuchyoushared.”

Working in the charity sector andinternational development has shown her thatcorporates and the third sector alike can havea role in societal change. Corporates can usethe UN’s Sustainable Development Goals asa roadmap for behaving differently, to changetheway theymeasure value and interactwith their supplychains, while HR leaders have the opportunity to act ascustodians of this values-led culture, shaping who comesinto the business andwhat they are recognised for.

When it comes to her own leadership style, Foxdescribes her strength as the ability to listen to peopleand understand what’s happening on a practical level,but also from a social and interpersonal point of view.The most important lesson she has learned is the valueof feedback, and her favourite piece of leadershipadvice is that if someone has an idea about how toapproach a problem, they need to speak to five more

people about it. “You always end up with something bet-ter, especially if you speak to people who don’t have thesameexperience andbackground as you, andwhomaybedon’t have the same perspective,” she says. Opennessand trust are also at the heart of how she leads her ownteam and the charity’s broader focus on diversity, equityand inclusion. Fox has led a number of changes in howthe charity recruits, with a view to improving diversityat all levels, and last year it held events around BlackLives Matter and Pride that generated “more open, hon-est conversations” about how people feel about working

for Unicef UK.In the immediate term, however, Fox’s pri-

ority is the wellbeing of her staff and ensuringthey can do their jobs while staying on top oftheir mental health. Like so many employers,UnicefUKflipped to remoteworking overnightin March 2020, but she is keen that it doesn’tfall into the trap of advertising great flexibleworking policies that on further investigationonly apply to limited roles or circumstances.Around a quarter of the charity’s workforcehave caring responsibilities and identifyingwhat tasks are not a priority has been as impor-tant a part of her work on capacity planning asdeciding what really must be done. “I think, ina way, the pandemic has provided quite a goodlesson, because for years organisations haven’tbeen good enough at prioritising and stoppingthings,” she says. “Maybe this periodwill do ussome favours and force us to be better at that.”

If organisations and societies fail to learnany lessons, Fox fears there will be a greaterchasm between the rich and poor, and any pro-gress made on bringing people out of hunger orconflict will be undone. She is painfully awareof these extremes, reeling off an alarming list ofstatistics: 9 per cent of the global population arein extreme poverty, 690 million people aregoing hungry and 80million people around theworld have been displaced. The difference incontext we’re witnessing now, she insists, isthat the Covid pandemic is showing up the vul-nerability of high-income countries too, andthe global scale of its impact makes it more

urgent than ever to act.What is clear is that Fox wants to make a lasting

contribution to resetting that balance, both on a personaland a professional level. Because, for her, this is morethan just a job – it’s a vocation. “It’s not about any of usjust doing our jobs; we’re facing actual jeopardy asa human race, as a planet, and we all have a role to play,”she says. “I’m just focusing on trying to do the best jobI possibly can for an organisation I love, at a time that’sexceptionally challenging.”


THE LOWDOWNON UNICEF

190

Countries whereUnicef has a presence

on the ground

2.5 billion

Approximate numberof vaccine doses

delivered every year

25 million

Number of people thecharity helps providewith clean water andsanitation each year

3.4 million

Children Unicef helpedvaccinate againstmeasles in 2020

1.5 million

Children Unicef helpedtreat for severe acutemalnutrition in 2020

44

What’s

forqueFiveesnext?

45

pandemic

Coronavirus hastransformed the

world of work overthe last year. As

thoughts turn to lifeafter the pandemic,there is much to

consider if we are tobuild back betterHR.

stionssential

46

pandemic

1.Will

the 9-5?goodbye to thebeable tosay

When Financial Times columnist Gillian Tettdecided to go against convention and keepher cheery Christmas tree up past the first

week of January, she mused that if we have startedbreaking once-rigid cultural rules like this, what willhappen when the Covid crisis finally begins to ease?“Willwe return to aworldwith the immovable patternsof old? Or will we also rethink other cultural norms,such as the structure of education or the concept of theworking week?” she wrote.

A year out of the office is a long time for habit-lovinghumans. We quickly forget the daily commute and thePret sandwiches. “There is no question that this is a

Words Emma De Vita

The hope is a year of remote workingwill prompt businesses to embrace moreflexibility – but not everyone is convinced

we

•

47

Businesses around the world have been forced to embrace remote working during the pandemic, and many are likely to make it apermanent fixture – but would such an approach work in a country like Japan, which has a culture focused on office presenteeism?ag

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schism with the past and, the longer this goes on, themore this will be the case,” reflects Lynda Gratton ofLondon Business School. It has been disorientating,yes, but also liberating.

The question is whether our connection as a societywith the structures that gave shape to our workinglives has loosened enough for us to commit tosomething beyond the ‘time and place’ approach towork.Will coronavirus be the final nail in the coffin forthe five-day working week that Henry Ford is largelycredited with introducing in the early 20th century?And is change likely to be temporary and superficial,or permanent and profound? “While there is always arisk after a crisis that people rush back to the statusquo to something that is familiar, there are plenty whohave seen a future of work that builds on the positivesthat the pandemic has wrought, both in flexibility ofhours and of place,” says Alex Soojung-Kim Pang,Silicon Valley futurist and author of Shorter: HowWorking LessWill Revolutionise theWay Your CompanyGets Things Done.

Once-sceptical executive eyes have been opened tothe possible productivity and wellbeing benefits of notcommuting or travelling constantly, while managershave been encouraged to manage by outcome ratherthan by bums on seats. Or so the argument in favour ofpandemic-induced long-term change goes. But noteveryone is so convinced. “I do not hold with the ideathat post pandemic we’ll emerge blinking in the light ofa new dawn where everything in the workplace has

changed,” says Richard Donkin, author of Blood, Sweat& Tears: The Evolution of Work. “Working hours areextraordinarily resilient. I’ve seen people talk aboutworking revolutions before – the rise of computers, thedotcom boom and the dawn of the search engine.”While the pandemic has been a catalyst for change, hesuspects progress in flexible working will still begradual. Old habits die hard, as the saying goes, andcultural barriers to working any time, any place, maybe difficult to shake off.

Accelerated by the Covid crisis, experiments inflexible working around the world continue. In Japan,for instance, a country whose culture is highly weddedto office presenteeism, Hitachi was forced to move80,000 people to remoteworking in oneweekwhen thepandemic hit but, in July 2020, introduced a permanentremote working initiative for all its staff, to start fromApril 2021. And in November, Unilever announced ayear-long trial of the four-day working week for 81 staffbased in New Zealand. Partly in response to calls fromprimeminister Jacinda Ardern for businesses to look atbringing in reduced working hours, staff will be paidfor five days but only work four – the aim being tochange the way work is done.

While Unilever’s trial is laudable, flexible workingis not just about remote working or a shortened or part-timeworkingweek.Flexi-time, jobsharing, compressedhours and term-time only working are among some ofthe options already provided by some employers, buttruly flexible working means an individual menu of

The Ford Motor Company became one of the first businesses in the US to adopt a five-day working week Bet

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pandemic

flexibility across both time and place tosuit the preferences of an employee andthe requirements of their stakeholders.“Time is up for grabs, not just place,”believes Gratton. “Work is becomingunbundled into different tasks, so you canmatch the type of task to the best timeand place.” The future lies in a ‘hybridworking’ approach that hands overcontrol of how to get your work donefrom the boss to the person who is doingthework, with periods of flexibility for anindividual to get on with focused work ontheir own, combined with periods wheneveryone is co-present (either physicallyor virtually).

A flexible workplace will offer threetypes of space, envisions Gratton. Therewill be the highly branded, downsizedoffice to bring clients to, spaces forcollaboration where you go to meet yourteam (with great tech to facilitate the bestin videoconferencing) and a place otherthan home, but near home, such as aco-working space or a regional hub.

Jeremy Myerson, chair of design atthe Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design atthe Royal College of Art, and director ofthe Worktech Academy, believes theoffice is far from dead. “Why does theoffice have such an iron grip on us? It’sbecause going to the office is about morethan just work,” he says. And that’sespecially true for certain demographics.While during the pandemic olderworkers, especially those with space for ahome office and established professionalnetworks, may have embraced losing the dailycommute, younger staff have tended to miss the sociallife and the space to work well (who wants to Zoomtheir managers from the end of their beds?)

The office may be far from dead but, says Myerson,it will need to be repurposed to become a social,cultural and collaborative space – after all, there’s littlepoint sitting at a desk for hours “with 300 peoplesending emails to the floor below”. “We don’t want togo back to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with 200 peoplequeuing for the lift in CanaryWharf,” he says.

There are certainly signs that employers are at leastthinking about a more flexible working future, even ifat this stage it’s more about place than time, not leastbecause of the savings in physical workplaces. HSBC,for instance, has announced it plans to capitalise onpart-office, part home-working arrangements bycutting its office space globally by nearly 40 per cent.

For themost part, members of the FTCity Network,a forum of more than 50 senior executives, believe

home working, at least some of the time,will become permanent, while PwCreports that the overriding priority formost of the 800 international companiesthat took part in a recent webinar wasincreasing support for hybrid working.

This isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.Companies, reports PwC, are in widelydifferent stages of preparing for a morehybrid future and the challenge isgreater in some sectors, such as retail,hospitality and transportation, wherebigger shifts in both employee ways ofworking and customer expectationswould be needed.

The risk is that Pang’s ideal of aworkplace that is less about presenteeismand more of a place to do the specialisedwork that is hard to do remotely is largelyonly available to white-collar workers.Gratton points out that while in thisinstance flexibility of place is not anoption, flexibility of time is. Yet Donkinis sceptical: “Working hours are not amatter of choice for many people. If youwork in a shop, you have to work for afixed number of hours.”

Peter Cheese, chief executive of theCIPD, is a firm advocate of flexibleworking, but he worries that it won’t beavailable formanual, low-skilled or zero-hours contract workers. According to theCIPD’sGoodWork Index 2020, the abilityto work from home already varies amongdifferent groups of employees. Based ontheUKWorking Lives survey, carried outbefore the first lockdown, the index

reveals that while 62 per cent of higher managers andprofessionals had worked from home in the previous 12months, the figure dropped to 37 per cent for lowermanagers and professionals, and even lower forsupervisory and technical workers (8 per cent) androutine occupations (4 per cent). Flexi-timearrangements, which allow employees to vary thestart and finish time of their working day, aresimilarly skewed, with 54 per cent of higher managersand professionals making use of it, reducing to 18 percent for routine workers. “We’ve got to make sureflexible working is fair,” says Cheese. “At the beginningof the pandemic, the language was ‘we’re all in ittogether’, but what emerged was that it was very farfrom the truth.”

If there’s one thing the pandemic has done it’s shinea light on the working conditions of essential workers.It is Cheese’s hope that they are not left behind in apotential shift to a more flexible working future when,or if, it comes.

FLEX

UNEQUAL RIGHTS

Nearly half (46 per cent)

of employees do not

have flexible working

arrangements, according

to the CIPD. That’s why

it has launched Flex

From 1st, a campaign

urging businesses to

support flexible working

for all, as well as the

right to request it from the

first day of employment.

Under UK law, employees

can only make a

request for flexible working

after 26 weeks of

employment and are

only able to make one

request every 12 months.

As part of the campaign,

the CIPD is calling for a

legal change that would

make it a day-one

right. Find out how you

and your company can

get involved at cipd.co.uk/

FlexFrom1st

•

50

The da Vinci surgical robot, on display at the third ChinaInternational Import Expo, is said to extend rather thanreplace the capabilities of human eyes and hands

51

pandemic

‘D o you love me?’ asked the song. It was a goodquestion. When US firm Boston Dynamicsrecently releasedavideoof its robots boogying

to the 1962 hit byMotown band The Contours, it is fair tosay that opinion about their moves was divided. “It’spretty awesome how dancing makes robots lessintimidating,” mused Reza Zadeh, founder and CEO oftech company Matroid. But many were less enamoured.“This is the dance they will do on top of a pile of humanbones,” commented one Twitter user.

Ambivalence seems to be baked into the very idea ofrobots. The word was coined by Czech writer KarelČapek in his playR.U.R., first performed in 1921, inwhicha race of artificialworkers rebel andkill all humanbeings,sparing just one.

Over the years our fear of robots has taken on manyforms, but these days we worry less about being killedand more about losing our jobs, no doubt exacerbated bysome of the headline-grabbing statistics that haveemerged in recent years. In 2013, Oxford Universityacademics Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osbornepublished a paper predicting that 47 per cent of existingAmerican jobs were at high risk of automation. A 2017McKinsey report estimated that up to 30 per cent ofworkfacedautomation,whileanotherfrom2019byconsultancyOxford Economics said 20million jobs were at risk.

Before Covid, robots were already picking fruit,flipping woks, cleaning sewers, delivering packages anddriving lorries amongother things–a trend thepandemicseems to have accelerated, especially in the logisticssector, where robots pick goods, and the medical sector,which accounted for 47 per cent of robots sold in 2020.

In a Covid hospital in China, robots were used todisinfect and deliver food and other supplies to patients.Others patrolled the streets, telling people to put on theirfacemasks.USfirmHansonRobotics has said itwill startmass production of its Grace and Sophia robots in 2021for use in healthcare, but also to keep isolated peoplecompany. In 2019, there were about 2.5 million robots intheworld, a number that is predicted to rise to 20millionby 2030, according to Oxford Economics.

While robots are highprofile, it is the rise of other lessvisible kinds of automation that could have a muchgreater impact.Artificial intelligence is alreadybeaveringaway behind the scenes processing large amounts of data.“In the next 10 years, we will shift to a world that isAI-first,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, has said.

When, at the start of the pandemic, airlines foundthey had to process millions of cancelled flights, andbanks had to assess millions of loans, they reached for‘robotic process automation’ to do the job. Similar thingsare happening everywhere, prompting David Autor, a

Words Jeremy Hazlehurst

The coronavirus pandemic has acceleratedtechnological advances at work. The question iswhether theywill enhance jobs or destroy them

robotscomingfasternow?2.Are the


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leading economics professor at MIT and co-chair of theuniversity’s Work of the Future Task Force, to dub theCovid crisis an “automation-forcing event”. Research byMcKinsey found that in the first months of the pandemic,companies accelerated the digitisation of their customerand supply-chain interactions and of their internaloperations by three to four years, and the share of digitalor digitally enabled products in their portfoliosaccelerated seven years – 10 in Asia. In another study ofC-suite executives’ intentions by EY, 41 per cent said theywere investing in accelerating automation.

Some of that optimism, however, may have beendented by the reality of travel bans, illness andhomeschooling. As Frey points out, Covid is acceleratingready-to-use plug and play automation: “Anything morecomplicated, which requires new expertise or innovation,has been slowed down by the pandemic.”

It’s fair to say that technology often does not arrive asquickly as expected. Five years ago, all the majorautomakers believed they would have fleets of AI-pilotedvehicles on the road by now. None have, despite throwingmoney at it. US carmaker GM, for instance, spent $500mbuying 9 per cent of ride-sharing firm Lyft, with the aimof having thousands of self-driving cars on the road in2018. Similarly, IBM halted sales of its high-profileWatson for Drug Discovery, an AI that used machinelearning to create newmedicines, in 2019 after poor sales.

Anxiety about ‘themarch of the robots’ remains high,however. Statistics from the Pew Research Centre in2017 found that 85 per cent of Americans wantedlawmakers to restrict their use. “All you need is self-driving cars to destabilise society. That one innovationwill be enough to create riots in the street,” said 2020presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who floated theidea of banning some robots to protect jobs. He is not thefirst to suggest such a move. In his book, The TechnologyTrap, Frey points out that, throughout history, action hasbeen taken to safeguard jobs. Several European citiesoutlawed mechanical looms in the 1600s for this reason.The industrial revolution happened in the UK because“political power was with those who stood to gain bymechanisation”, says Frey, and “it took half a centuryuntil average people saw the benefits”.

It is clear that automation canhave a lasting impact onjobs. Research byMIT economist Daron Acemoglu foundthat automation in the US between 1990 and 2007 had“fairly major negative employment effects”. Across theUS, the addition of one robot per 1,000workersmeant theloss of 3.3 jobs per thousand, and lowered wages. But thereality is more nuanced than the figures suggest.Acemoglu also found that early adopters of automationactually see a growth in their workforce (although thiscomes at the expense of those who tread a slower path).And this is not a binary issue. Frey and Osborne’s work,for instance, has been called into question given on thewhole it’s not the case that entire jobs are either done by ahuman or not, rather it’s individual tasks that can be

automated. A 2019 ONS study found that 1.5 million jobsin the UK are at ‘high risk’ of automation but, the authorspoint out, “it is not so much that robots are taking over,but that repetitive taskscanbecarriedoutmoreefficientlyby an algorithm written by a human, or a machinedesigned for one specific function”.

It iscertainly truethatmanypeople, includingcashiers,accountants, underwriters and fast-food servers, to namejust a few, might find their jobs transformed. But it is alsotrue that technologyhas awayof enablingnew jobs.Thirtyyears ago no one could have dreamed of social mediamoderators, Instagram influencers or SEO consultants.The nub of the robot question ultimately is not whetherautomation costs jobs – or whether the pandemic hasaccelerated adoption – but what that means for society.And that’s a questionwe have yet to answer.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE ROBOTS BY USE2018 and 2019 turnover, and projections to 2023 ($bn)

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53

pandemic

The knowledge that the 243-year-old Debenhamsbrand name is to survive the pandemic, thanks tofashion ‘e-tailer’ Boohoo’s £55m brand-and-

digital deal back in January will probably be of littleconsolation to the 12,000 mainly female shopfloorworkers expected to lose their jobs. Thedepartment storechain’s collapse is just one (if iconic) snapshot of the joblosses we have seen over the past year from the economicscouring of Covid, with retail, hospitality, travel andaviation all being hit hard.

The UK’s unemployment rate reached 5 per cent inthe three months to the end of November 2020 and, it isfeared, will only accelerate when the government’spandemic financial support begins to be lifted. There is awider concern too that a combination of the pandemic,Brexit, redundancies and a looming recession will causegreater inequality in the UK’s workplaces.

Across many areas of diversity – women, black andethnic minorities, younger and older workers, peoplewith disabilities, those who identify differently – there’sevidence that the pandemic has had a negative effect (seepanel overleaf). And this is before we take into accountthe impact of higherdeath rates anddisease severity fromCovid on people with black and minority ethnic back-grounds, older people (but still often of working age) andthose with underlying health conditions and disabilities.

3.Has the

Job losses, furlough and early retirementhave hit some groups harder than others

during the Covid crisis

Words Nic Paton

set

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pandemic

54

Given that, as the Equality and Human RightsCommission identified in an analysis of the 2008-09downturn, economic duress does tend to widen anddeepen inequality, does this indicate we are on the cuspof aworrying reversal of advancesmade in theworkplacein recent years? Encouragingly, the consensus so farappears to be a cautious ‘no’, albeit with fingers crossed.“You may have fewer staff but, the point is, in a contextthat is wholly different from previous contexts, you nowreally have to look after them.You’re not going to surviveunless you really focus on this stuff,” says SimonFanshawe, author and co-founder of Stonewall,whonowruns consultancy Diversity by Design.

Stephen Bevan, head of HR research development atthe Institute for Employment Studies, points out that itsannual conference this spring (whether physical orvirtual) will be about inclusion and diversity because ofthe pandemic, not despite it. The Black Lives Matter(BLM) and #MeToo movements in the US haveheightened the focus on these issues, especially amongyounger people, he highlights. The BLM-inspiredprotests seen in theUKlast summer, notably the topplingof the statue of slave trader Edward Colston into Bristolharbour, have also played a part here. “We think it is oneof the issues that will be coming up the agenda and notjust because of Black LivesMatter, though it did give it abig kickstart. There is a recognition that inequality hasbeen widened by Covid,” says Bevan. “Although thingshave fallen back in terms of some of the indicators, Ithink, for many employers, not just in the public sectorbut beyond, they see this as something they really need totackle. So I think that is a sign of optimism.”

The caveat to all this, of course, is that when you’retalking about inclusion and diversity to I&D specialists,there is always the risk of falling into an echo chamber.So will this optimism be reflected when businesses mayhave to make tough decisions in the coming months?Fanshawe, for one, concedes there is uncertainty here:“Mysense,fromtalkingtoHRanddiversityprofessionals,is there is some awareness of the need to focus on this.But, arguably, we come into contact with people whowant to do this kind of work.

“I understand if you’re under pressure and you’ve gotto sack staff you’re just going to put your head down andtry tomake thingswork, and things like thismay appearto be a luxury. But any business thatwants to survive hasgot to think about the talent it needs.”

When Colston had his unceremonious ducking lastJune, distinguished historian and Bristol resident DavidOlusoga described the act as “one of those rare historicmoments whose arrival means things can never go backto how they were”. When it comes to I&D, however, it isall too easy for things to fall back and recessions can beprecisely the catalyst for this sort of retreat. Themessagefor leaders in that case? Proactively work to ensure thatI&D doesn’t get lost in the post-pandemic/globaldownturn ‘noise’.

DISPROPORTIONATE

IMPACT

It is estimated that 80 percent of those working forArcadia (much of which is

disappearing from the highstreet) and Debenhams are

women. Some 1.5 millionyoung women have lost their

income so far during thepandemic, according to the

Young Women’s Trust.

A study by the University ofSussex found that three infour mothers (72 per cent)

believe they have become the‘default’ parent during

lockdown, with two-thirds ofworking mothers (67 per

cent) saying the same.

Black and ethnic minorityworkers have been harder hitby pandemic job losses than

their white counterparts,says the TUC, with numbersfalling by 5.3 per cent overthe past year, compared to

0.2 per cent of white workers.

According to the Shaw Trust,the disability employment

gap – bad enough pre-pandemic – has widened

in the past year.

The Institute for FiscalStudies warns that older

workers (aged 54-plus) aremore likely to have been

furloughed during the crisis,or to have taken early

retirement (often because ofworries about their health).

A study by McKinsey reportsthat employees who identify

as lesbian, gay, bisexual,transgender, queer or

gender non-binarydisproportionately fear losing

ground at work and reportfeeling isolated as

a result of the pandemic.

We’ve come a long waysince the days whenadverts like these wereacceptable, but many fearthe Covid crisis has setequality back

• Cou

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pandemic

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Explore how we can work with you to professionaliseyour teams.

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57

pandemic

Judging by the number of provocative headlinesquestioning its future, HR could be the mostdissected function in the business world. In one

such article in 2014, Ram Charan announced that it was“time to say goodbye to the department of humanresources”, arguing that the function should be splitalong strategic and operational lines.

The business adviser and academic advocated foreliminating theHRdirector (or CHRO) role and dividingthe department between administration (payroll andother transactional tasks) and ‘leadership and organisa-tion’, which would focus on improving the peoplecapabilities of the business. His manifesto prompted aslew of follow-up pieces, ranging from angry denials tosuggestions of how it might work in practice.

Almost seven years later, the HR function looks verydifferent. People leaders now oversee a growing range ofactivities includingdata analytics, inclusion anddiversityandwellbeing, alongside ensuring theoperationalwheelsrun smoothly. Technology and artificial intelligence arealso transforming the way organisations do business,with greater value attached to data analytics and howwecapture and measure knowledge. Throw into the mix aglobal pandemic and the role of HR is wider than everbefore. Could this be time to look at splitting the functionagain and, if so, how?


splitHR?The people profession has a wider remit thanever. Work. asked two experts whether it is

too much for one functionWords Jo Faragher

the timeto4.Isnowthe

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I’d argue that the function has been split for some timealready. Since Charan’s article was published, HR hasgonefasterandfurtherandtoplaceswehadn’t imagined.The big revolution in recent years has been thedigitisation of HR, which has led to the repatriation ofmany tasks to linemanagers. In the past, a linemanagermight ask to onboard someone or give a pay rise, andtherewould be somework done byHR to set this up, butnow so much of this can be executed by the managerthemselves.We’re less involved in the transactional sideother than providing the policy framework and themechanisms to support it.

The world of HR has gone in two directions. On oneside, we’re empowering managers through technologyand supporting them through high-touch consulting onthe more difficult day-to-day issues, and on the otherside this has left business partners free to become morestrategic and business focused. Here technology is driv-ing another trend, where teams are upping their gamethrough data and analytics. This skillset is providingnew fuel for the HR director role, giving them realinsight to bring to the business strategy discussion.

Historically, finance has been the language used tosteer the business, but what you have in your financialnumbers is not necessarily representative ofwhere valueis being created or destroyed. HR is a natural contenderto look at the intangible assets. As a function this isbecomingmore important, particularly as organisationshavemore interplay between contingent workforces, forexample, and newways of working. Data analytics is notstatic like the oldHR reports. Asking the right questionsis critical and increasingly this needs to happen in realtime, as has been shown in the pandemic. The days ofbeing able to stop and restructure things are over – wehave to change the tyres while we’re still moving.

Imagine if you’re a factory manager – you can eitherdevelop and run factories around the world and bebrilliant at that, or you can explore other managementfunctions and become a CEO. Many CEOs come fromsales, but thebest also spend time inmanufacturing.Onesize does not fit all, as organisations are in differentstages of development, but I see a similar split in HR.Even though that divide exists, we can still spend timeonbothsides.Peoplecandevelopacrosstheseboundariesand indeed spend career time out in the business. If wekeep that bridge alive, rather than obsessing about thesplit, wewill be the richer for it.

“The function isalready fragmented”

Toby Peyton-JonesThe former HR director at Siemens and board-level adviser

says HR has started to go in different directions

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pandemic

It’s my job to help the organisation I work for to bebetter through its people. If you think about how youalign your people to the purpose of that organisation,everything you do gives them a message about what’sexpected – from how you advertise jobs to how youreward people. So why would you let any other part ofthe business take that on?

Part of the challenge is that the HR function is allabout people, and everyone thinks they know aboutpeople. No one talks about splitting up finance. If thereare engagement issues, the business asks: ‘What’s HRgoing to do about it?’ but if it reports a loss they ask thebusiness what its going to do about it, not finance. TakeHR support services versus others – they’re both sup-port services but one requires different skills and someindependence. Things that involve people can be emo-tive and HR can look at the data, focus on what’s agreat outcome and manage it in a calm way.

It’s a two-way street. HR absolutely needs to under-stand what the business wants to achieve, but thewider organisation also needs to know how HR addsvalue. ‘Getting HR to do it for me’ is not leveraging thefunction to its best.

As the function expands, we need the right expertson our team. Inclusion and diversity is now such a fun-damental expectation, for example, and you needsomeone who can challenge the board on how to movethis forward. Analytics is also a bigger focus now; wecan use data not just to show absence, but also what wethink might happen in the future. We know what mat-ters and that is grounded in data – we start with thescience and applying the expertise is the art.

Is it all toomuch forone function? Inmyexperience,the HR profession is really good at workingcollaboratively with other teams across the business.We have helped organisations make dramatic changesduring the pandemic, working with security, businesscontinuity, IT, comms… the people function isincredibly collaborative.

I’ve seen HR leaders being given an even widerremit – combining colleague experiencewith customerexperience, for example, or taking onmarketing along-side HR. We’re now looking at what work should beand what jobs will look like. We can get ahead of thisand train people for this future.We can get on the frontfoot for the wider business and this is how we demon-strate our value.

“No one talks aboutsplitting up finance”

Danny HarmerThe chief people officer at Aviva believes a unified HR

function can move businesses forward

60

How many of you took to your doorsteps to‘clap for heroes’ during the latest lockdown?It’s fair to say the follow-up to ‘clap for carers’,

which brought streets and communities together lastspring and received weekly media coverage, has beensomething of a damp squib.

Its failure could of course partly be down to the factthat for much of the current lockdown it’s been cold,dark and often wet at 8pm on a Thursday night. Yetequally, with the nation grinding through lockdownmark three and numbingly high (albeit now falling)death tolls, the sense of being in it together many of usfelt this time a year ago has begun to dissipate.

If our gratitude to NHS frontline workers remainsundiminished, many of those we clapped for or wentout of our way to thank during the first lockdown,such as supermarket workers or delivery drivers, nowcomplain of feeling forgotten or taken for granted byan anxious, exhausted or in-denial general public.

Even if it doesn’t directly compare, for manyworkers away from the frontline the past year has beenchallenging, too. There’s been the adjustment to long-term working from home (perhaps in a less-than-idealenvironment), juggling work with homeschooling orchildcare, and the slog of back-to-back Zoom or Teamsmeetings day in, day out.

Most of us will have recognised, and broadlyaccepted, that unprecedented times have demanded onoccasion going above and beyond,whether that’smeantpicking up the slack for colleagues struggling withchildcare issues or who have been furloughed or evenlaid off, taking on extra projects or responsibilities,working extra hours or even accepting a pay cut.


goodwill for5.Havewe

Employers need to recognise andreward weary employees who have soldiered

on throughout the coronavirus crisisWords Nic Paton

Supermarkets have worked to ensure their staff are safe, but manyfeel they are taken for granted by the public

too long?reliedonstaff

61

pandemic

The question now is what happens next? If, as weall hope, the continued successful rollout of vaccinesand arrival of new therapies mean that we graduallycome out the other side of the pandemic and thingsstart to pick up economically, what will be the payback– the reward or recognition – from employers forall the goodwill and, for want of a better word,‘Blitz spirit’ UK workers have shown? Indeed,given the financial reckoning from Covid that is likelystill to come, will there even be a payback or simply afaster and ever-more-desperate hamster wheel ofemployer demands?

As Stefan Stern, author, journalist and visitingprofessor at The Business School (formerly CassBusiness School), points out: “We have got toacknowledge howdifficult this has been; people are justso wiped out. We need to recognise what everyone hasgone through and what people have done to keep theshow on the road. The risk is of us unthinkinglystumbling back into how things were before.”

Worryingly, some indicators do suggest that, by thetime we come out the other side of the pandemic, manyemployers may have little left in the tank financially to‘thank’ their employees, irrespective of whether thereis the appetite to do so. This year’s Robert WaltersSalary Survey, for example, has concluded that bonusesare likely to be a rarity for white-collar professionals in2021, with just 5 per cent saying they expectedto definitely receive one, and only 12 per cent ofemployers agreeing theywere ‘very likely’ to pay out onbonuses. Pay freezes are also likely during the year,something that has already hit large swathes of thepublic sector.

In the supermarket sector, although Morrisons haswon plaudits for guaranteeing employees at least £10 anhour, 45 per cent of retail staff still earn below theLiving Wage Foundation’s ‘real’ living wage, accordingto Citizens UK, begging the question of whether itis just thepublicwhoappear tohave forgotten their vitalcontribution during the pandemic. The TUC hassuggested ‘fire and rehire’ is becoming morecommonplace generally, with one in 10 workers sayingthey have been told to reapply for their jobs on worseterms and conditions or face the sack.

Then there is the question for home workers ofreturning to physical offices and the consequences ofwhether, or if, they will be expected to return to thedaily commute. Stephen Bevan, head of HR researchdevelopment at the Institute for Employment Studies,believes a year of home working has potentially led to apermanent change of expectation among employees. “Ido think the notion that the [home working] genie hasbeen let out of the bottle is probably a serious one. Andthat fundamentally shifts the nature of the psychologi-cal contract; it represents a recasting of the employer/employee relationship for many of those white-collarroles because people have shown that, actually, they

can be trusted and that line managers need to play adifferent role,” he says. “Their job isn’t about commandand control; it is about facilitating and supporting, andletting people get on with their job.”

The risk, however, is that employers don’t get togripswith the reality of this psychological step-change,especially if managers and leaders are distracted by theexigencies of surviving a post-pandemic recession.“There are going to be fewer people because many ofthose on furloughwill bemade redundant,while otherswill be made redundant because of employers needingto keep labour costs down. That is inevitable; that’swhat happened in 2008,” says Sir Cary Cooper, CIPDpresident and professor of organisational psychology atManchester University.

In that event, workers may feel they have littlechoice but to begrudgingly put up and shut up.Research fromoutplacement firmRandstadRisesmartUK has warned that mass redundancies are alreadycreating a generation of ‘zombie’ workers just goingthrough the motions and unprepared to put in anydiscretionary effort.

Yet Bevan, for one, is more optimistic that any post-pandemic financial crash may not be as deep or as longlasting as some fear. “If you compare it to the 2008crash, that was a big collapse in demand, for all sorts ofreasons. This one hasn’t been driven by a collapse indemand; if anything there is a massive pent-up demand– people who have been able to work at home and notspend much money,” he argues. “Of course, jobinsecurity is going to be there in significant pockets ofthe labour market. But I think in some sectors, wheredemandhas just beenpaused,wemight see a reasonablyquick recovery.”

In this scenario, employers that try to push theenvelope, that try to take advantage of or simply failadequately to recognise and reward the goodwill andextra effort employees have put in over the past year,could find themselves coming unstuck.

Ultimately, of course, there will be shades orgradations here. Just as sectors have experienced orbeen affected by the crisis differently, how businessesrespond to the challenges of the (hopefully) post-pandemic world will also vary widely. ‘Good’employers or managers are likely to be more alert orsensitive to the issues here than those who are tunnelvision-focused on the bottom line or just survival. AsCooper puts it: “I think employers will want to do wellby their employees because they know they havetolerated a lot and worked long hours. But I think,when push comes to shove, we will see a bit of whathappened in 2008; except among those managers whoare very socially skilled and emotionally intelligent.Will we have learned from this? I pray we do, but it isthe big question.”

For further reading, see page 72Vla

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CORPORATE ETHICS

BUSINESS RESEARCH, REPORTS AND INSIGHT

Mention CEOs and pay inthe same sentence and the

result doesn’t usually portraybusiness leaders in a favourablelight. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos –whosefinal year as chief executive saw hispersonal wealth increase by $48bnduring the global pandemic – is justone of those regularly criticised in themedia for his perceived rapacity.

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WhosaidCEOsdon’tcare?Bosses have been doing their bitby sacrificing salaries during theCovid crisis – but their showofsolidarity isn’t all that generous

However, recent data from ImpactInternational has revealed that anumber of leaders gave up someor all of their salary last year to easethe pressure on their businessesand show solidarity with employeesduring the Covid crisis. A study ofmedia articles conducted by Impactsuggests 37 high-profile CEOssacrificed their pay, with 41 per centof those giving up 100 per cent oftheir base salary. A further 32 percent gave up 50 per cent ormore.Among the sectors with the highest

proportion of leaders giving up theirearnings (32 per cent) were aviationand hospitality, two of the industrieshardest hit by the pandemic. Forexample, Delta Air Lines CEO EdBastian volunteered to forego allhis salary for six months, whileHeathrow Airport’s JohnHolland-Kaye decided not to take more than£185,000, equating to 25 per cent ofhis pay. Meanwhile, the late ArneSorenson of hotel groupMarriott

suspended his salary fromMarch lastyear for the remainder of 2020.The largest total pledge by sector

came frommedia CEOs, with fiveleaders sacrificing almost $11mbetween them, including LachlanMurdoch of Fox Corporation, whogave up $3m.Out of the 37 leaders, Ana Botin of

Santander sacrificed the single largestsum – just over $4m, amounting tohalf her base salary.Impact points out that while it’s

laudable that CEOs are opting torefuse pay during difficult times, theirbonuses and additional compensationfar outweigh their salaries, and “fewhave committed to giving up thisadditional source of income”. Also,the donations represent an averageof just 2.7 per cent of total net worth.However, it concludes this representsa vital small step in the right directionand shows strong leadershipwhen itis most needed.bit.ly/CEOsacrifice

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Ana Botin of Santander emerged as one of the most generous leaders during the pandemic, forgoing half her base salary

63

Inside Out puts emotions front and centre – but are workplace supervisors more reluctant?

MANAGEMENT

It’s beenemotional…Increasing creativity anddeveloping new skills requiressupervisors to tap into feelings

Bosses who can recognise and tapinto their employees’ emotions

will bemore successful at unleashingtheir creative and innovativeside, a new study has highlighted.Supervisors who show emotionallyintelligent behaviour help createan environment whereworkersgrow and develop new skills, whichincreases creativity at work. It meansthey are an important resource fororganisations that want to encourageinnovative thinking.Researchers carried out a survey

of 14,645 USworking adults,asking them to rate how goodtheir supervisor was at perceiving,understanding, using ormanagingemotions; their opportunities to growand develop new skills; how their jobmade them feel; and their creativecontribution at work.Employees whose supervisors

showed high emotional intelligencereported being primarily happy intheir work, explains co-author DrJochenMenges of Cambridge JudgeBusiness School and the University ofZurich. “In contrast, those employeeswhose supervisors showed littleemotional intelligence said they feltfrustrated and stressed,” he adds.In other words, supervisors focused

on nurturing creative and innovativeskills need to recognise that emotionshave an important part to play in thecreative process, explains the paper,Supervisor Emotionally IntelligentBehavior and Employee Creativity.Feelings can range from anxietywhen facing an open-ended problem,or frustrationwhen encounteringdifficulties, to excitement at newideas or pride in an achievement.

Employers, in turn, have toacknowledge the role of emotionallyintelligent behaviour amongmanagers if they are to createpositive experiences at work.The study concludes that targeted

training, which is aimed at specificorganisational and individual needs –or, for example, integrates emotionalintelligence training into culture andmission – can increase innovation.bit.ly/emotionalbosses

INCLUSION

The bittersweetsuccess of femaleleadersWhenwomenmake it to theboardroom, it wrongly infersequality has been achieved

While women’s achievementsin business leader roles are

rightly celebrated, research hasuncovered aworrying aspect of such

positivity: it leads to a perceptionthat equal opportunity has been fullyrealised and that inequalities such asthe gender pay gap no longermatter.The language used by businesses

when announcingwomen’s successesmay need to bemore carefullythought out, according to researchfrom lead author Dr Oriane Georgeac,assistant professor at Yale SchoolofManagement, and co-author DrAneeta Rattan, associate professorat London Business School.The pair carried out experiments

among more than 2,500 full andpart-time workers in the US, testingtheir reactions to messages aboutincreasing female representationamong organisations’ top leadershiplevels. The results seem to defyconventional thinking. “Weobserved that when people read thatwomen are now well representedin organisations’ top leadershiplevels, they show decreased concernfor persisting forms of inequalitythat women face in other domains,”says Georgeac.Senior leadership representation

is not necessarily amarker of

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progress towards equality in otherareas or even at other levels oforganisations, she adds.Milestone achievements bywomen

should of course be publicised,says the paper, Progress in women’srepresentation in top leadershipweakens people’s disturbance withgender inequality in other domains.But it’s important to be careful withthe language used in announcements,since it can create the impression thatgender equality has been realised.How can businesses use language

that giveswomen the credit theydeserve but doesn’t undermineprogress towards gender diversity?Rattan says talking about progressopens an opportunity to also remindpeople of what is still to be done,andwhere the next goal is located.“Rather than focusing solely on thepositive progress being made in onearena, use it as an opportunity tomove the conversation along to areaswhere improvement still needs to bemade,” she advises.bit.ly/Womenexecs

HEALTHCARE

Why theNHSneeds agovernanceoverhaulIt’s tough to reinvent theway youwork during a global pandemic –but the health servicemust try

Almost a fifth of NHS trustdirectors rate their boards

as ‘average or worse’ in theirability to face their most criticalchallenges, which points to agrowing governance crisis acrossthe health service.The same proportion – 19 per

cent – of non-executive directorsbelieve that the standards theyare expected to deliver make itimpossible to perform their role,research fromHenley BusinessSchool shows.

Many NHS trusts have goodgovernance, but a number of othersare at risk, warns the study, titledNHS Governance, A critical Timefor Change.Based on a survey of 203 non-

executive directors (NEDs) andexecutive board directors across NHStrusts and foundation trusts, as wellas interviewswith NHS chairs andCEOs, the findings underline howNHS organisations continue to facetremendous pressure on resources,particularly amid the Covidpandemic, while also being askedto transform theway they operate.Boards should act as ‘strategic

stewards’ that enable change to takeplace, but instead are being hamperedbyweaknesses in governance, saysthe research. For example, NEDsreported that they spendmuch oftheir time onmonitoring and controland compliance tasks, despite arequirement to play a greater role insetting strategic direction, successionplanning andmentoring andsupporting the executive. N

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65

A third of respondents reportedspending more than one day amonth onmonitoring and controltasks, such as auditing or lookingat performance, compared withjust 21 per cent for strategic andstewardship activities.To compound the problem, NEDs

are also perceived as beingmuchless effective in their stewardshipand strategic duties than inmonitoring and control.While 90 percent agreed or strongly agreed thatNEDs performwell when it comes tooperational matters, only 70 per centsaid theywere effective in showingstrategic behaviours.The study found that NHS chairs

are effective overall.Where theyneed to improve is in dealing withdisruptive or underperforming boardmembers – 37 per cent of directorsfelt this was a problem. They alsoneed to focusmore on transformationand strategic issues.

The research, authored byDrFilipeMorais, Professor AndrewKakabadse, Dr AndrewMyersandGerry Brown,makes severalrecommendations, including:• clarifying the role of NHS boardsand placing greater emphasis onstrategic and stewardship roles,and creating conditions that enablechange, such as usingmentoring andcoaching to help executive teamswork through difficult situations;

• developing anNHS-wide board/NED development programme thatsupports a shift to amore strategicstewardship role; and

• addressing pay and board diversityby harmonising NED pay, and usingpay policy alongside more inclusiveselection criteria to tackle thediversity agenda and attracthigher-quality applicants.

The findings from the studyare included in a book called TheIndependent Director in Society: Ourcurrent crisis in governance and whatto do about it.

MENTAL HEALTH

Which camefirst: the burnoutor the stress?Employers can avoid theworsteffects ofmental ill-health if theyunderstand the causes

The harmful effects ofwork-related burnout are

widely understood. Butwhatweknow less about is exactly howburnout is caused inthe first place.A paper from

researchers at JohannesGutenbergUniversity,theUniversity of SouthAustralia andHumboldt Universityof Berlin now shows thatwhile stressand burnout can drive each otheron inwhat becomes a vicious circle,burnout in fact has amuch greatereffect onwork stress than vice versa.It’s an important finding for

organisations that want to beable to break the cycle leading toburnout, which can bring poorerjob performance andmental andphysical ill-health.The paper, titledReciprocal effects

between job stressors and burnout:A continuous timemeta-analysisof longitudinal studies, evaluated48 studies that involved 26,319participants. The research pieces,spanning 1986 to 2019, came fromvarious countries across Europe, aswell as the US,Mexico, South Africaand China, among others.When burnout occurs, it can lead

to a person feeling emotionallyexhausted, detached from colleaguesandwork, and less able to performtheir jobwell, the research paper says.The topic of stress has been

receiving greatermedia attentionduring the pandemic, as thementaltoll of lockdown onworkers hasbecome clear. In January, Tom

Blomfield, co-founder of online bankMonzo, made headlines after he lefthis job citing stress.The fact that burnout has amuch

larger effect on stress than the otherway roundmeans “themore severe aperson’s burnout becomes, themorestressed theywill feel at work, such asbeing under time pressure”, explainsthe report’s co-author, ProfessorChristianDormann, from JohannesGutenbergUniversity.At that stage, even the smallest job

or task can appear to bemuchmorestrenuous or stressful than it reallyis, he adds. The consequence of that

increased stress isgreater burnout.What can help break

this cycle?Making sureemployees have greatercontrol over their

ownwork and receive support fromcolleagues or team leaders are twovital factors that can act as buffersto burnout, says the paper. It’s alsoimportant for staff take a break fromwork during lunchtime, weekendsand holidays so they have time to‘recover’ from the overload and stresstheymay experience at work.bit.ly/stresscycle

Tom Blomfield left his role, citing stress

“The more severe aperson’s burnoutbecomes, the morestressed they feel”

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The time and effort required to pen an individual thank you, along with its permanence, means it is more valued by employees, says a new study

CYBERSECURITY

Are you helpingthe hackers?Expensive solutionsmay breedcomplacency among employeesand open back doors

Protective security controlsdesigned to head off company

‘phishing’ attacks sound like asensible precaution in an age ofwidespread online criminality – butwhat if they actually increase thelikelihood of employees falling preyto such scams?Research has highlighted that

expensive measures such as emailproxy, anti-malware and anti-phishing technologies do not inreality act as complete deterrentsagainst cyber attacks because staffassume emails are checked andsafe to open once they reach theirinboxes. This can subsequently

make them less vigilant againstexternal threats.The study goes on to suggest

that the fear of feeling embarrassedby or guilty about being caught outby a cyber criminal can be a strongerinstitutional defence.Academics Hamidreza

Shahbaznezhad and Farzan Kolini,both of the University of Auckland,andMona Rashidirad, of theUniversity of Sussex Business School,set out to find out why employees fallvictim to phishing scams, which areresponsible for almost one in threedata breaches and rely on trickingemployees into allowing hackers onto company systems.Using a survey involving 142

workers from two firms in NewZealand, they identified a rangeof individual, organisational andtechnological factors that couldexplain why employees fail tocomply with their businesses’email security policy and becomesusceptible to fraudsters.

One reason was that clicking onemail content was simply a matterof habit – an automatic responsetriggered by having to deal withmessages every day.Security technology designed to

block phishing emails from employeeinboxes also requires a human toanalyse and distinguish betweenscam and legitimate emails. It istherefore “incumbent on employeesto apply additional due diligence toinvestigate any suspicious emails”,warns Kolini.Interestingly, no single group

of employees proved to bemorevulnerable to attack: factors such asage, gender and education level madelittle difference to their susceptibility.Protecting against criminal

attempts to steal sensitive orconfidential company information,the report suggests, is down to robuststaff training and education, informingemployeeswhat securitymeasurestheir employer already has in place,but alsowhat security risks remain.

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“Our research showsmanagers need to focuson personalised andindividual thanks”

The paper, Employees’ Behavior inPhishing Attacks: What Individual,Organizational and TechnologicalFactorsMatter?, says staffmayalso benefit from a greaterunderstanding of the factors thataffect their behaviour, so they canbe alert to how they are exploitedbymalicious attackers.bit.ly/phishingstaff

APPRECIATION

Courtesy costsnothing atworkHowdoes thewaymanagersdemonstrate gratitude affecttheway it is received by staff?

Athank you goes a longway,the saying goes. But it’s not a

phrase beingwidely used in theworkplace, despite previous studiesshowing that such appreciationincreases employee engagement andcommitment. And newresearch now showsthe way a thank you isdelivered bymanagerscan also make adifference. Employeestend to prefer one-on-oneexpressions of thanks from theirboss or leader rather than beingthanked in front of others. Andthey favour written thanks oververbal thanks, particularly favouringhandwritten notes.The paper fromMarshall School

of Business, University of SouthernCalifornia, highlights that staff carewhen they aren’t shown appreciation.Around seven in 10 workers admittedthat they are either bothered a littleor a lot when not thanked.Researchers conducted two studies

– one that asked 58 professionalsin the US to journal for onemonththeir experiences of being thankedin theworkplace, and the otheran online survey of a further 1,200

professionals that aimed to uncoverwhether written or verbal thanksweremorewelcome by staff.The findings reveal that “the

workplace is full of missedopportunities for thankingothers”. Only half of employees arethanked by their manager at leastweekly, although colleagues showappreciation for each other morefrequently, with three-quarterssaying they are thanked by a fellowworker on a weekly basis.Written thanks are highly valued,

the study explains, because of thetime and effort it takes, the factit’s more specific and becauseit is a permanent record, whichindividuals can reread wheneverthey wish. “We wondered ifhandwritten thanks had goneout of style but, for one quarterto a third of our respondents,handwritten thanks were right atthe top of the list,” co-author PeterW Cardon says. And millennialsenjoy handwritten notes as muchas older generations, he adds.

In addition,around two-thirds ofprofessionals preferexclusively privatethanks. However, thepaper also explains

that different forms of gratitudehave greater value in differentcircumstances andmanagers needto use various approaches. Forexample, spoken thanks can bebetter when trying to give publicrecognition or for smaller efforts,while written thanks tend to beevenmore highly valued when a lotof effort has gone into a task, or aperson’s accomplishment is a majorone. Andwhile millennials are mostlikely to like both written and spokenthanks, older employees increasinglyprefer spoken thanks.“Our research really shows

managers need to focus onpersonalised, individual thank-youexpressions,” concludes Cardon.bit.ly/workplacethanks

PERFORMANCE

Why successfulleaders aremoresackableWhen earnings are abundant,CEOs aremore likely to bevulnerable to a downturn

The boards of companies thatenjoy a steady and consistent

level of financial return are moreaggressive in firing their CEOsfollowing a bad earnings period,according to new research.CEOTurnover and Accounting

Earnings: The Role of EarningsPersistence explores an issue thathas been overlooked to date – therelationship between a firm’s earningspattern and decisions on retaining ordismissing a chief executive.The study explains that so-called

‘earnings persistence’ describes howlikely the earnings of a companyare to recur.When a firmwitha ‘highly persistent’ (or steady)earnings pattern suffers a negativeperformance in the current period,that pattern is more likely to continuein future years. This is in contrast toa firmwith low earnings persistence;in this instance, a dip in earningsperformance in the current periodis less likely to continue.This trend can have amajor bearing

on a decision onwhether or not tofire a CEO. As co-author Inho Suk, ofthe University at Buffalo and KoreaUniversity Business School, says:“Firmswith high earnings persistenceunderstand the performance inthe current period is likely to carryforwardwith the incumbent CEO, sothey’remore likely to fire a CEOwhoyields poor earnings.”For boards of firms with low

earnings persistence, a CEOdelivering poor performance isless likely to be sacked becauseit’s seen as temporary. Despite

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“A longer-term view ofjob support schemes

would make workforceplanning easier”

this, data shows that earningspersistence is often left out of CEOcompensation contracts.The research involved analysing

data frommore than 1,500 CEOturnovers between 1993 and 2017.The results show that earningspersistence is the most importantfinancial metric for explainingboards’ decisions over CEO turnover,because of its direct link with thefuture of a company’s bottom line.However, the study also examined

earnings persistenceand CEO compensation,specifically lookingat its relationshipto changes made topay in response to aweaker performance.It was noted that boards will go togreater pains to fire weaker CEOsin companies with more consistentearnings but where compensationpolicy does not tie pay to long-termperformance. In such cases, the“discipline system substitutes forthe compensation system”.Where CEO compensation and

performance are linked, there isless incentive to remove a poorlyperforming CEO, the research adds.bit.ly/CEOearnings

PLANNING

Arewe readyfor the nextpandemic?Howweapproach furloughing staffand support retraining should bediscussed before another crisis

Even in the midst of a pandemicthat has wreaked global social

and economic havoc, it’s not tooearly to think about what happensnext. And in the case of the UK, anew report argues it is imperativeto think about howworkers will be

supported during the next crisis thathits the country.The CIPD says taking a long-term

view of job support schemes in theevent of a severe economic threatwould ease the difficulties facedby employers trying to protect jobsand undertakeworkforce planning.A key recommendation in its newreport is that any future job supportprogrammes should be based on a flat-ratewage subsidy set at the equivalentof the national livingwage for a full-

timeworker, whichequates to around£1,300 permonth.There should also bea requirement to trainstaff, supported bygovernment funding.

The programme put in placeduring Covid, officially known as thecoronavirus job retention scheme(CJRS) or furlough, pays 80 per centof wages for hours not worked up to acap of £2,500.The CIPD’s publication,The future

of furlough: Recommendations fornow and for any future wage subsidyscheme, provides a review of thepositives and negatives of the CJRS.It acknowledges that the need torespond quickly to the pandemiccreated issues, but says there are stillopportunities to improve thewaythe CJRS schemewas delivered. Forexample, although the subsidy isregarded as generous, it is inequitabletowards thosewhowere already outof a job and collecting unemploymentbenefit pre-Covid.

To improve the CJRS, the CIPDrecommends:• extending it until June 2021, with thewage subsidy falling to 70 per centthroughoutMay and June. Reviewsshould be held to ensure subsidiesstay at an appropriate level;

• a levelling up of support for the lowpaid by introducing a lower limitto the CJRS, set at the nationalminimumwage. This would“share the load and ensure that

no one’s income dips below thisthreshold”; and

• making training a component ofthe CJRS, so individuals who arefurloughed or working reducedhours are offered training supportand those made redundant givenoutplacement skills developmentsupport. The funds to deliver thiscould be found by diverting theapprenticeship levy.

bit.ly/futurefurlough

SKILLS

How remoteworkers getaheadFrom showcasing achievements toanalysing problems, adapting howyouworkmakes a difference

There are five special skillsremote workers can develop that

canmean the difference betweena below-par career and a highlysuccessful one, says new research.The skills reflect the specific demandsof working from home but can alsohelp ensure staff are not sidelinedbecause they can’t be a part of theface-to-face informal interactionsthat form a key part of workplace life.

The research, published by EMNormandie Business School,suggests the core behavioural skillsfor effective homeworking are:• having a good understanding of yourown skills, influence and potentialcontribution;

.• being able to analyse and solvecomplex problems, and identifysolutions;

.• being in the know about the skills,influence and help others in theorganisation can offer;

• understanding and being able to putto good use the company’s rules andstrategy; and

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Being able to analyse and solve complex problems can help remote workers succeed

• being able to showcase and promoteyour ownwork and achievements, aswell as the company’s.

The last skill is particularlyimportant for remoteworkers todevelop, according to the paper,because it ensures their contributionis not overlooked or ignored.The study analysed the career paths,

performance levels and behaviouralskills of a group of 317 French remoteworkers between 2009 and 2019.In terms of their career success, itfound fewwere ‘middle of the road’.Employees fell into two camps ateither end of the spectrum: the highlysuccessful and the below average.Interestingly, the successful group

wasmade up ofmale executives forwhom remoteworkingwas offeredas part of a reward retention strategy,so companies could hold on to theirtalent. By contrast, themuch lesssuccessful groupmainly comprisedyounger, non-managerial women,with low-level skills and forwhomremoteworkingwas considered an‘opportunity’ or was taken up tomeeta specific need (juggling home andwork life, for example).When both groups of employees

stopped remote working andreturned to the workplace, thehigh performers continued toexcel and enjoyed larger salaries,more promotions and improvedperformance. The second groupsaw no improvement in pay orpromotions and even experienceda decline in performance levels.The variation in attainment was

accounted for by the difference inindividuals’ ability to hone and applythe five soft skills outlined.The research, titled Full Remote

Skills: Which skills do you need tobe a successful remote worker?, hasimplications for HR teams andorganisations trying to create theright conditions for remote working.For example, to ensure everyone’scontributions are visible, managersshould encourage employees to share

what they have done or accomplishedduring the day in virtual meetings.They can also help staff develop thespecific skills identified.bit.ly/remotepromotion

EVIDENCE-BASED HR

Solving theengagementconundrumHowa better grip of definitions,and use ofmore precise language,can help drive a crucial agenda

Employee engagement can bea problematic term forHR

directors – it’s often considered‘contentious andwoolly’ and appliedin an inconsistent way. Yet it hasbecome a central focus for seniorleaders, boards and investors, whoregard it as a valid indicator oforganisational health and use itto inform important decisions.So how canHR practitioners

make sense of employee engagementin a way that is both scientifically

convincing and practically usefulwhenmaking decisions?A newCIPD report,Employee

engagement: an evidence review of anumbrella term, aims to supportHRin navigating these challenges andprovide greater clarity. The evidencereview of areas that fall under‘employee engagement’ addressesthe critical question ofwhetherengagement boosts performance,as is commonly argued.A first step towards creating a solid

foundation for employee engagementis being clearer about what it meansand usingmore precise languagearound it. The study suggests this isno easy task. For example, the 2009UK government-commissioned study,Engaging for Success, which helpedelevate the engagement agenda,foundmore than 50 definitions.One solution, the CIPD

recommends, is for HR to treatemployee engagement as an umbrellaterm that describes a broad area ofpeoplemanagement. This wouldencourage separating out and abetter understanding of the specificelements that make up engagement,such as organisational commitment,meaningful work andmotivation.

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Finland’s five largest political parties are all led by women, exemplifying its progressive approach

Taking this approachmeansHRprofessionals have to “reflect onwhich components theywant tounderstand, prioritise and leverage”,avoiding confusion or vagueness.The study also makes a distinction

between employee engagementand work engagement, explainingthat the latter has a narrower focusrelating to three aspects: energy,dedication and absorption in work.Crucially, much of the high-qualityresearch that exists on this topicis in relation to measures of workengagement specifically, ratherthan employee engagement. In theinterests of applying evidence-basedpractice, it might be better for HR tobe clear and consistent about the factit is referencing work engagement.The report goes on to shed light

on the link between engagementand performance. The reviewfocuses on 23 longitudinal studiesand concludes that there is apredictive relationship betweenwork engagement and performance– but it is weak.Despite the subject being around

for 30 years, the body of researchon employee engagement is stillrelatively nascent, say authors Jonny

Gifford and Jake Young of the CIPD,although they point out that causalitycan be difficult to establish in anyaspect of HR or workplace research.bit.ly/Workengage

EXECUTIVE REPRESENTATION

Female leaderscan’t do it allMorewomen at the top is a goodthing – but their broader impactdepends on local cultural norms

The question of whether genderdiversity in top teams leads to

companies performingmore stronglyhas been revisited in a recent studyfromNEOMABusiness School. Andresearchers have found there is a link– but it is dependent on the region orcountry the company is based.In countries where the equal

opportunities agenda is moreadvanced, such as Norway or Sweden,greater female board representationleads to a boost in firms’ effectiveness.However, in less egalitarian cultures– for example, China, India and Japan

– the presence of female directorshas no real impact on howwell anorganisation performs.Professors Samia Belaounia, Ran

Tao andHong Zhao account forthis disparity by explaining thatwomen in countries with a less equalculture may lack the educationaland professional background thatwould equip themwith the skillsfor boardroom roles. Other factorsinclude boardroom dynamics andwomen not being taken seriously,or having as strong a voice as theymight. “If a society in general holdsa biased attitude toward women,it is difficult to believe that femaledirectors will have a voice amongtheir male counterparts,” saythe researchers.The study, Gender equality’s

impact on female directors’ efficacy:A multi-country study, analysed1,986 public firms from 24 countriesspanning 2007 to 2016. It measuredthe percentage of women directorson boards, gender equality indifferent regions from officialindices and a range of companyperformance measures.The results confirmed the

researchers’ argument that femaledirectors can add value to boardsbut that this can vary substantiallyacross countries and is dependent onsocietal and cultural norms.Wheregreater female representation doesprove beneficial, it increases a firm’soverall value, reduces its exposureto risk and leads to higher-qualityfinancial reporting (or restraint inearnings management).How do the findings fit with

moves to increase the number ofwomen on boards, through quotas orrecommendations? For example, inIndia all listed firms are required tohave at least one independent femaledirector, Kenya imposes a 33 per centfemale director quota on state-ownedcompanies and quotas have beenenacted inmany European countries.These policies can have a positive

effect in the long term because they

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affordwomen greater opportunitiesin the top ranks of business, the studysays. But it warns it’s not a solutionthat can immediately improve boardperformance in countrieswhere thereis less gender equality.

WORKPLACE TECHNOLOGY

Phones are notthe enemyReducing smartphone use doesnot necessarily lead to improvedmental health, researchers find

With smartphones now acommon part of theworkplace,

it’s little wonder therehas been growingdebate aroundwhetherthey have a damagingeffect onmental health.The latest research,however, suggests thismight not be the case.General smartphone usage

is a poor predictor of anxiety,depression or stress, says a studyfromLancaster University, theUniversity of Bath’s School ofManagement, the University ofBristol and the University of Lincoln.And the amount of time spent on asmartphone is not related to poormental health.The study aimed to examine how

results differedwhen collectinginformation on smartphone usagebased on objective data as well asestimated use. Informationwasgathered from 199 iPhone usersand 46 Android users for oneweek.Participants were asked to thinkabout howmuch time they spenton their phone, as well as to whatextent they thought their usagewas ‘problematic’. Theywere alsorequired to answer questions abouttheir physical andmental health.Not only did the results reveal

that average daily screen time does

not significantly predict anxiety,depression or stress symptoms, butparticipants categorised as being athigher risk of having both generalanxiety and major depressivedisorder did not use their phonemore frequently than those atlower risk.What the study does show,

however, is that mental healthis associated with concerns andworries felt by participants abouttheir own smartphone use.Whileprevious studies have focused on thepotentially detrimental impact ofscreen time, it is individual attitudesor worries likely to be driving this.Co-authorDrDavid Ellis, of

theUniversity of Bath’s SchoolofManagement, says: “Mobile

technologies havebecome evenmoreessential forwork andday-to-day life duringthe pandemic. Ourresults add to a growingbody of research that

suggests reducing general screen timewill notmake people happier.”Addressing people’s worries about

howmuch time they spend usingtechnology is likely to have greatermental health benefits than reducingtheir overall smartphone use, theresearchers conclude.bit.ly/Worksmartphone

FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY

Open budgetsmean happieremployeesSharing financial informationwithstaff reduces stress and enhancesrelationships atwork

Businesses that are open andtransparent about their profits

and budgets – and finances ingeneral – enjoy better relationships

between employees andmanagersandworkforces that are less stressed,research has revealed. A strong linkbetween greater transparency andstaff feeling less distress, worry ortension at workwas evident evenwhen taking into account factors suchas hours worked or income bracket.A study by Hui Zheng, Jacob

Tarrence and Vincent Roscigno,of Ohio State University, and ScottSchieman of the University ofToronto, also reveals that staff feelmore secure in their jobs and greatercommitment to their employerswhen financial details are morereadily shared with them. Data fromthe UK’sWorkplace EmploymentRelations Study, which includesinformation on 15,747 workersfrom about 2,500 workplaces, wasanalysed to determine the effects offinancial transparency.Employees were asked how often

and towhat extent their jobmadethem feel tense, depressed, worriedandmiserable. They then rated howwell managers did at keeping staffinformed about financial matters,including budget or profits.The study, calledWorkplace

financial transparency and jobdistress, found employees atcompanies with the highest levelsof financial transparency had stresslevel scores about 15 per cent lowerthan those at companies with thelowest levels of transparency. “Eventhough financial transparency isabout disclosing budgets, profitsor other financial matters, theway it reduces job distress is notmainly about the money. It is aboutthe relationships, especially withmanagers,” says Roscigno.Workers not covered by collective

bargaining agreements may feel evenmore stressed by a lack of disclosureof financial information, he warns,because they cannot rely on theirunion to look out for their interestsandmay worry about fair wages orlosing their job.bit.ly/transparentfirms

“Our results suggestreducing screen timewill not make people

happier”

Further Reading

72

Fox News p32

Behold, America by Sarah ChurchwellHachette, 2018

Did Fox News Discuss the ‘War onChristmas’?Snopes, 2018bit.ly/FoxWarOnChristmas

Corruptions of Empire by AlexanderCockburnVerso, 1987

Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and theConservative Media Establishment byKathleen Hall Jamieson and JosephCappellaOxford University Press USA, 2008

Former Australian PMs put Murdoch inthe hot seat on climate changeFinancial Times, 2021bit.ly/MurdochClimateChange

The Loudest Voice In The Roomby Gabriel ShermanRandom House, 2014

The myth of the echo chamberThe Conversation, 2018bit.ly/EchoChamberMyth

This Is Not Propaganda by PeterPomerantsevFaber, 2019

Workplace tunes p26

Behind The Song: ‘9 to 5’American Songwriter, 2020bit.ly/9To5Dolly

Beyoncé’s Other Women: ConsideringThe Soul Muses of LemonadeFaderbit.ly/BeyonceOtherWomen

Heigh-Ho: Declarations of the DepressionWordpress blog postbit.ly/HeighHoBlog

The Life of a Song: ‘Shipbuilding’Financial Times, 2015bit.ly/ShipbuildingSong

‘9 to 5’ Turns 35, and It’s StillRadical TodayRolling Stone, 2015bit.ly/9to5Turns35

Roxy Music: Both Ends Burningby Jonathan RigbyReynolds & Hearn, 2005

Song Of The Volga BoatmenMaking Multicultural Music, 2011bit.ly/VolgaBoatmen

Q&A:MattAtkinson p28

The History of the Co-opSolutions for Retail Brands blog postbit.ly/HistoryOfCo-op

Co-op’s marketing boss on whymembership is more powerfulthan loyaltyMarketing Week, 2020bit.ly/PowerfulMembership

The couple who helped transform theway we shopBBC, 2014bit.ly/TescoClubcardStory

Debt p14

Debt: The First 5,000 Yearsby David GraeberMelville House Publishing, 2014

The Secrets of our Success: HowCulture is Driving Human Evolution,Domesticating our Species and Makingus Smarter by Joseph HenrichPrinceton University Press, 2017

Public Debt: how much is too much?The Economist on YouTube, 2020bit.ly/PublicDebtTooMuch

Why were notched sticks so importantin medieval times?Modern History TV on YouTube, 2020bit.ly/NotchedSticks

The bottom Line with Evan Davies:The Covid HangoverBBC Radio 4, 2020bit.ly/CovidHangover

How is money created?Bank of England knowledge bank, 2020bit.ly/BoEHowMoneyCreated

Pandemic borrowing takes nationaldebt to highest since 1960sThe Times, 2020bit.ly/PandemicBorrowing

UK households repaid £16bn on creditcards and loans in 2020Guardian, 2021bit.ly/RepaidCreditCards

What is the sociology of debt?Transforming Society blog post, 2019bit.ly/SociologyOfDebt

Buy-now-pay-later products to beregulatedHM Treasury, 2021bit.ly/TreasuryBuyNowPayLater

Unicef UK p40

Eight things I’ve learnt from lockdownClaire Fox blog post, 2020bit.ly/8LockdownLessons

Covid-19 crisis could force one in 10charities to close within a yearThird Sector, 2020bit.ly/CovidClosingCharities

Claire Fox: “When your employees arebeing kidnapped, flexible working takesa back seat”People Management, 2018bit.ly/KidnappedEmployees

Because business is about peopleWork.

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Work. is published on behalfof the CIPD by Haymarket BusinessMedia. Registered office:Bridge House, 69 London Road,Twickenham, TW1 [email protected]

EditorClaire WarrenArt directorAubrey SmithProduction editorJoanna MatthewsPicture editorDominique Campbell

Editor in chiefRobert JefferyEditorial directorSimon KanterGroup art directorTim ScottEditorial consultantPaul SimpsonBusiness directorAngela HughesSenior production controllerLee BristerHead of production operationsTrevor SimpsonCIPD PublishingSinead Costello

CIPD members can get freeonline access to leading HR,L&D and management journals.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/journals

Work. – ISSN 2056-6425Printed by Stephens & George Print Group,Merthyr Tydfil. © All rights reserved.This publication (or any part thereof)may not be reproduced, transmittedor stored in print or electronic format(including, but not limited, to any onlineservice, any database or any part of theinternet), or in any other format in anymedia whatsoever, without the priorwritten permission of Haymarket MediaGroup Ltd, which accepts no liabilityfor the accuracy of the contents or anyopinions expressed herein.CIPD contact details:151 The Broadway,London SW19 1JQ, 0208612 6208,[email protected] you are a CIPDmember and yourhome or work addresshas changed, pleasecall 020 8612 6233.CIPD is a registeredcharity – no. 1079797

Brought to you by…Has the pandemic setequality back? p53

Equality impacts of the current recessionEquality and Human RightsCommission, 2020bit.ly/EqualityImpacts

Evaluating the effects of the currenteconomic crisis on the UK labour marketResolution Foundation, 2020bit.ly/EconomicCrisisAndJobs

No Returns: a new direction to tackleinsecurity in retail following COVID-19Work Foundation, 2020bit.ly/InsecurityInRetail

Is it time to split HR? p57

It’s Time to Split HRHarvard Business Review, 2014bit.ly/TimeToSplitHR

Do Not Split HR – At Least Not RamCharan’s WayHarvard Business Review, 2014bit.ly/DoNotSplitHR

It’s Time to Retool HR, Not Split ItHarvard Business Review, 2014bit.ly/TimeToRetoolHR

Changing HR operating modelsCIPD, 2015bit.ly/ChangeOperatingModels

Have we relied on staffgoodwill for too long? p60COVID-19 and the employee experience:How leaders can seize the momentMcKinsey & Company, 2020bit.ly/CovidEmployeeExperience

Pay ratios and the FTSE 350: an analysisof the first disclosuresHigh Pay Centre, 2020bit.ly/PayRatiosFTSE350

The impacts of the Covid-19 crisis onlow-paid and insecure workersInstitute for Employment Studies, 2021bit.ly/CovidInsecureWorkers

Five essentialquestions for HRWill we say goodbye tothe 9-5? p46

Lynda Gratton: How to make flexibilitywork for everyoneLondon Business School webinar onYouTube, 2020bit.ly/MakingFlexibilityWork

The World of Work in 2021WORKTECH Academy, 2021bit.ly/TrendsReview2021

Four Principles to Ensure Hybrid Workis Productive WorkMIT Sloan Review, 2020bit.ly/HybridWorkPrinciples

Has time lost all meaning for you?Join the clubFT Weekend, 2021bit.ly/TimeLostMeaning

Are the robots coming fasternow? p50Do You Love Me?Boston Dynamics on YouTube, 2020bit.ly/DoYouLoveMeRobots

The Technology Trap: Learning fromthe History of AutomationSocial Europe on YouTube, 2019bit.ly/TheTechnologyTrap

How many jobs do robots really replace?MIT News, 2020bit.ly/DoRobotsReplaceJobs

The Work of the Future: Building BetterJobs in an Age of Intelligent MachinesMIT Work of the Future, 2020bit.ly/TheWorkOfTheFuture

Harnessing automation for a futurethat worksMcKinsey Global Institute, 2017bit.ly/HarnessingAutomation

74

Blame textmessaging, socialmedia and information overload for the fact that acronyms have becomeso commonwemay all drown in an alphabet soup. They can be useful – in 1944, a BritishArmytransport officer coinedVIP (very important person) to disguise the identity of passengers, includingLordLouisMountbatten. But it’s easy to forget that they depend on our POV (point of view).WhileUFOmeans one thing formost people, for keen knitters, it stands for ‘unfinished object’.

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Strictly speaking, acronyms are abbreviations pronounced aswords, such as ‘scuba’, whereasinitialisms are abbreviations pronounced one letter at a time (likeHR) but in everydayparlance, the terms have become interchangeable, which – sorry pedants – is howwe’re goingto use them. DuringWorldWar II, a lexicon of abbreviations helped keep tabs on the varietyof weaponsmanufactured. Inevitably thesemetamorphosed into such anti-mnemonics asNAVCOMTELSTAASCOMMDETWHIDBEY (naval computer and telecommunication,antisubmarinewarfare communications centre detachmentWhidbey Island). Neither a properacronymnor an initialism, this is big but definitely not clever.

Although themilitary came upwith YABA (yet another bloody acronym), abbreviations have beenembraced by self-important officers, as RobinWilliams highlights in the 1987movieGoodMorningVietnam. Informed that the former VP (vice president RichardNixon)would host a PC (pressconference),Williams’maverickDJ asks: “Excuseme sir, seeing as how theVP is such a VIP shouldwekeep the PC on theQT because if it leaks to the VChe could end up anMIA andwe’d all be put onKP[kitchen patrol]?” When it comes to acronyms, that gagmust be the GOAT (greatest of all time).

Useful time saving or alphabet overload? Paul Simpson explores our love of abbreviations

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2 Atwork, acronyms can signify that you are part of the ‘in crowd’ – the ‘I know something you don’t’ school ofone-upmanship – ormaybemanagement are using them as a sleight of hand. Their usage can also be incrediblyvolatile. Google trend data shows that British searches for VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous)peaked in July 2020 but had fallen by 45 per cent by January 2021. No onewants to use such terms asDFTBA(don’t forget to be awesome!) when they are past their sell-by date.Wemust also bewary of RAS (redundantacronym syndrome) by, for example, saying ‘PIN number’ when theN already stands for number.

TheGermans love their ‘silbenkurzwörter’, abbreviations formed from the initial syllables of aword or groupofwords. TheHaribo brand is named after the founderHans Riegel and Bonn, the citywhere he launched thecandymaker. At least that acronymwas Riegel’s idea – the infamous Belgian airline Sabena stood, businesstravellers joked, for ‘such a bad experience, never again’, while in France in 2016 the termTSF (tout aaufSarkozy), literally ‘anyone but Sarkozy’, stymied the former president’s comeback.

Not all acronyms are stupid of course. B2B (business to business) and B2C (business toconsumer) are efficient, succinct andwidely understood, for example. Yet ElonMusk had apointwhen hewarned SpaceX staff in 2010: “Individually, a few acronyms here and theremaynot seem so bad, but if a thousand people aremaking these up, the result will be a huge glossarywe have to issue to new employees.”

3 The popularity of socialmedia hasmade such abbreviations as LOL (laugh out loud), IMO (inmy opinion) and YOLO (you only live once) ubiquitous. The top brass at themighty FBI, intheir finitewisdom, felt the need to provide agentswith a dictionary of such slang. TBH (to behonest), howmany crimesmight be solvedwhen an agent discovers that ‘ICBINB’ stands for ‘Ican’t believe it’s not butter’? And no, ISIANMTU (I swear I amnotmaking this up).

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DaVinci of DebtGrandCentral Station, January 2021

Billed as the most expensive piece of art in theworld, the value of the Da Vinci of Debt installation

lay not in its resale value but in the cost of thecollege diplomas suspended in mid-air above the

historic Vanderbilt Hall in New York’s GrandCentral Station. The 2,600 diplomas, provided byAmerican graduates, together account for $470m

of debt, given the average US student accruesaround $180,000. Designed to call attention to the

sheer scale of the crisis, the artwork camecourtesy of a promotion by Anheuser-Busch’s

Natural Light beer brand, which has pledged £10mover 10 years to help students pay off their loans.

Today governments across the world findthemselves in a similar situation, having used debt

to prop up their populations throughout thecoronavirus pandemic. Now we must all consider

the repercussions – and the subsequent bill.

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

Because business is about people - CIPD

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