Hello and welcome to Working It.
The FT weekend festival at Kenwood House on Saturday was great fun. Thanks to all the Working It readers and listeners who came along to my sessions or stopped by to chat candidly about the things we love (and struggle with) in our working lives.
Another highlight was chatting with my friend and colleague Claer Barrett and a group of impressive young people. The event was part of festival sponsor Bank of America’s partnership with Upper reacha charity that supports students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. succeed in graduate studies.
We tackled plenty of questions about how to make your job application stand out, artificial intelligence in the workplace, and why Gen Z shouldn’t sell themselves short. Younger people have valuable experience and perspectives that their older colleagues lack. (On that note, check out this week’s “one more thing” recommendation, below ⬇️).
And if you missed the festival, You can register Now for next year’s event on September 6, 2025!
Read on for a heads-up: it seems highly likely that employers will be asked to do much more to recruit and retain people who are currently out of work due to (often complex) health conditions.
PS: Next week office therapy is back. We have a lot of new problems to solve. (The absence in summer, apparently, doesn’t make us fonder with our coworkers 😇).
Next on the agenda: getting the long-term ill back to work
A new report estimates that 9.4 million adults are “economically inactive” in the UK, and that number has risen by 900,000 since 2020📈. We are an outlier: in other countries, many more people have returned to the workforce since the pandemic. Much of the UK’s jobless population is classed as long-term sick, and in the stark words of Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the National Health Service Confederation, “being economically inactive makes you sicker.”
Matthew was speaking at the launch of a report — the weight (both the size and length of the title) Improving the health of our nation: A whole-of-government approach to addressing the causes of chronic disease and economic inactivityIt has been produced by the Boston Consulting Group’s Centre for Growth and the NHS Confederation.
The authors say that around 375 million working days are lost each year as people lose work due to long-term illness. They also suggest that bringing back half to three-quarters of the people who have left their jobs since 2019 “could increase UK GDP by £109-177 billion and tax revenues by £35-57 billion over the next five years”.
These millions of unemployed adults represent a massive potential pool of workers at a time when we need many more people to join or re-enter the workforce as the UK faces major demographic changes – ageing populations, falling birth rates and lower immigration rates.
The change will involve new alliances between all kinds of organizations 🤝 (and let’s not underestimate how difficult this will be: different work cultures and organizational “silos” are difficult to manage). But it is clear that the role of employers will be key. a lot a push within the new Labour government to get more people with long-term illnesses back to work.
My colleague from the FT Camilla Cavendishwho has worked in government and social policies (most recently About this Harvard report The chief executive of BCG, the specialist in health and care for the over-65s, chaired the launch of the BCG/NHS report. Afterwards, she told me: “Tight labour markets mean that businesses have more at stake in this issue than they did 20 years ago. Businesses are likely to be asked to commit to recruiting and retaining more people with a range of chronic conditions, including mental health problems.”
Now is a good time to get ahead of future goals and mandates. Companies will need to create pathways back to work, for example by cooperating with the government service Jobcentre Plus and voluntary sector programmes.
How is it done? To understand, read the BCG/NHS Confederation report for a “top-down” analysis, which gives a national view of the scale of the problem. Then combine this with a “bottom-up” view from Barnsley in Yorkshire, a post-industrial town with high levels of deprivation. Commission on Pathways to WorkThe study, commissioned by the local council and the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, spent a year analysing the problem and interviewing long-term unemployed and sick residents (it’s a detailed analysis, as the jargon goes). It’s also an easy-to-read analysis of what keeps people out of work and what helps them get back into the money (this report could be useful for internal plans and presentations).
Like Camila wrote about the Barnsley report In July, “seven in ten of those surveyed…said they would like to work if they could find a job that suited their circumstances.” Flexible working patterns and offering adjustments for people with health problems emerge from both reports as key ways for people to get and keep work.
Employers will also need to invest in occupational health services – I didn’t know the UK was so poorly served 😞. The Barnsley report notes: “Evidence suggests that around 51 per cent of employees in the UK have access to occupational health services, compared to countries such as Finland, France and Poland with coverage of over 90 per cent.” Wow!
I have read both reports. What has surprised me most? The sharp rise in the number of 18-24 year olds who are out of work due to mental health problems. This is the fastest growing category of people out of work. As Matthew Taylor said at the launch of his report: “Young people have a very negative view of what working life is like.”
We all have a responsibility to help change that view. What can we do? Please tell me about your innovative plans to support staff with long-term health conditions: isabel.berwick@ft.com
This week on the Working It podcast
Oliver Burkeman is a productivity guru who doesn’t cling to systems, optimization, or any other passing attempt to “take charge” of our workloads and busy lives. Oliver wrote the best-selling Four thousand weeks In 2021, a book that starts from the reality that we are all going to die and suggests that we prioritize our time accordingly.
I have recommended this book to many friends and colleagues, and I really enjoyed talking to Oliver about it. This week’s podcast episode about your follow-up, Meditations for MortalsIt’s a four-week course packed with lessons and insights (no preaching or superstitions) that will help us find ways to do more of what matters to us. You’ll feel better and more energized (even optimized) after hearing Oliver’s reassuring and wise advice 🦉.
Five standout stories from the world of work
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Should companies let their employees do whatever they want? Rohan Banerjee looks at the rise of freelancing, with examples including hackathons, which allow time for personal project development and the absence of fixed working hours.
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Why did shared parental leave fail? Emma Jacobs on SPL, launched in 2015 to try to give parents and couples more free time to bond with their children. Loss of income and surprisingly entrenched opinions are two of the reasons it hasn’t taken off.
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Not everyone needs to have an opinion on AI. Stephen Bush goes there: that’s what we all thought but didn’t like to say 😬.
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Can Labour revitalise the UK’s creative industries? The sector faced huge cuts under the Conservative government, but the UK remains a global powerhouse in the arts, and the new government has made it a central plank of its growth strategy, as Daniel Thomas reports.
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Out of work but no desire to play golf, how about joining a board? Excellent article by Brooke Masters on “what’s next” for senior executives. Former Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman completes a year of transition as CEO and joins many others who are embracing portfolio careers.
One more thing…
I’ve jumped right into this week’s (apparently UK-specific) viral workplace trend: just type “When you ask Gen Z staff to write the marketing script” into TikTok or Instagram. Companies as varied as Currys, Northumberland Zoo and East Midlands Airport have all drawn their bemused older staff into a vertical video, in which they overuse the word “kill” while pointing out highlights of their workplace. It all started with a Bed and Breakfast in Oxfordshirebut my favorite is Hever CastleThe deadpan effort of, “My boy’s curls are fire,” alongside a bad Henry VIII mannequin 👑.
The raffles are back
He Brave leaders The conference caught my eye among the flood of autumn invitations. Its net proceeds go to charity, in this case to Plan International. It is a one-day event taking place on 7 October in London: a great line-up of speakers, with the aim of inspiring (yes) courageous leaders.
The first five readers to register on Eventbrite with code FTCL2024 You will receive one free ticket. If you don’t get one, the code will unlock a 10% discount on tickets for all Working It readers.
And finally…
The first FT video in the autumn Working It series is now available. “How to grow the next generation of CEOs” covers the rise and fall (and rise again) of corporate learning campuses. Remember GE’s Crotonville? What’s the alternative in 2024? To find out, I talk to leaders from Ricoh, Deloitte, and Emeritus, an online leadership development platform. We also film in a giant green-screen studio run by Global Alumni in Madrid: it allows business school professors to “teleport” into the room. (Reminiscences of my beloved Journey to the stars.) Comments are appreciated*: isabel.berwick@ft.com.
*Be nice, I’m a newbie to videos 🙈.