By John Henwood
FOUR years ago, in common with every new government, ours made a number of promises. Among them was a determination to improve our sluggish economy through increased productivity. However the Council of Ministers might mark itself on its achievements, in this objective they would have to admit failure.
As in so many issues, the pandemic will provide an excuse, but with so many working from home, shouldn’t productivity have improved? Travel time eliminated, no formal meal breaks, staff always available.
With the return to something approaching normality some groups of employees are either demanding a continuation of new ways of working or being offered them.
In Whitehall, civil servants are refusing to return to the office and their trade union is even demanding they be allowed to work from abroad.
If remote working is so effective, shouldn’t the suggestion that they are as productive from their second homes in Provence or Tuscany be accepted? Apparently, the UK government doesn’t agree and ministers are preparing quotas which, according to the Prime Minister, will aggregate to over 90,000 job losses. Of course, he won’t admit to any cuts in services.
Well, that’s one way to improve productivity.
Recently, one of our most prominent financial services institutions announced that it would move to a 30-hour week, continuing to pay staff the same as they presently do for 37 hours. The company says it is a trial which they believe will result in increased productivity. That seems unlikely and what if it doesn’t turn out as expected? It will be devilishly difficult to persuade staff to go back to working seven hours more each week. The firm’s boss said it was a move to help them recruit and retain the best staff. Perhaps it will, it’s an attractive proposition, but if you’re not a high-end financial services business, but a retailer or hotelier the idea is impossible to contemplate.
Actually, most people of my generation will find it difficult to get their heads around a four-day, 30 hour week when their own employment was one of a minimum of five and a half days, 42 hours a week.
I’m just two generations on from the Victorian work ethic. Both my grandfathers were working before the old Queen died and would marvel at the relative featherbedding today’s workers enjoy. During the present Queen’s reign, in 1957, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told his public, ‘You’ve never had it so good’. If it was true then, in employment terms how much better it is now.
Following the 1978-79 winter of discontent, which almost brought Britain to a standstill, the cry went up for a better ‘Work Life Balance’. It wasn’t a new idea: factory owner Robert Owen suggested the formula, eight hours work, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest, as long ago as 1817, but it was psychologist Lillian Moller Gilbreath, an expert in employment efficiency, who first used the phrase in a 1954 lecture. Both Owen and Gilbreath were strong supporters of labour and saw that a better balance between work and other aspects of life would benefit both employee and employer.
A better work-life balance was a mantra promoted strongly during the last decade of the 20th century and the early part of this. Working weeks got progressively shorter, annual leave entitlement was increased and more statutory holidays were created. Pay increased in line with, or often above, inflation. People had more time and money to do what they wanted to do when they weren’t at work. All this was based on the simple but sound idea promulgated by Gilbreath and others that people happy in their lives were more likely to be happy in their work and happy workers perform better than unhappy ones.
In this, as in so many things, the key word is balance.
The question is are we now out of balance? Has the pendulum swung too far away from work? Perhaps too much attention is paid to non-working time and too little to making work attractive. It seems likely we have created an imbalance which may be a significant aspect of why it is apparently so difficult to improve productivity. Expectations have been raised such that we focus much more on the non-working part of our lives and it has become the responsibility of the employer to fund it.
Much less thought is given as to how this trend can continue indefinitely. Wealth creation is a much misunderstood function. It is those who work that create wealth for everyone. The combination of falling productivity and increasing cost at a time when the ratio of economically active to retired people is moving sharply in the wrong direction is a recipe for disaster.
Productivity will improve if we move the emphasis to understanding that it should not be a matter of balance between work and other aspects of life, but that work and life are indivisible. Most of us spend up to 40 years working and that’s an awfully long time to be doing something solely so that one can enjoy non-working time.
The emphasis must be on happy working. Work and life are inseparable and it should not be a balancing act between the two. The work ethic is a cultural matter and it will take time to change deeply ingrained practices.
