From evening email bans to a four-day week, why it’s time to rethink our addiction to work

an article by Helen Lewis for the New Statesman America

The five-day week feels natural, immortal, set in stone, even though it only arrived with the Industrial Revolution.

RICHARD POHLE/WPA POOL/GETTY IMAGES

Are we working too hard? The answer is an unequivocal yes. By European standards, Britons spend a lot of time working – 42 hours a week – but we’re not particularly productive when we’re there. And the answer to getting more done, counter-intuitively, could be working less.

At the end of last year, a Radio 4 producer called me to ask if I would present a series of One to One, talking to a single interviewee for 15 minutes. The topic should be something close to my heart. I chose overwork. There is a huge problem at both ends of the labour market: in prestigious jobs such as journalism, academia and banking, there’s an assumption that the busiest person in the office is also the most successful. Meanwhile, in the gig economy, there’s often little choice about working long hours if you want to make ends meet.

My interviewees were an eclectic bunch: the first was Robert Skidelsky, the Keynesian economist, still working at 79, overseeing a commission for the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, into the four-day week. He is also an advocate of a universal basic income. “We need to redefine work and leisure; we need to accept that meaningful activity is not the same as paid activity; we need to decouple both from pay,” he said in 2016. “In other words, we need a revolution in many of our social and economic arrangements and habits.”

Continue reading

---

Good jobs for all in a changing world of work: The new OECD Jobs Strategy

How does the United Kingdom compare?

The digital revolution, globalisation and demographic changes are transforming labour markets at a time when policy makers are also struggling with slow productivity and wage growth and high levels of income inequality. The new OECD Jobs Strategy provides a comprehensive framework and policy recommendations to help countries address these challenges. It goes well beyond job quantity and considers job quality and inclusiveness as central policy priorities, while emphasising the importance of resilience and adaptability for good economic and labour market performance in a rapidly changing world of work.

Full text of the OECD press release (PDF 2pp) with links to the main publication.

---

What to do if you hate your job

Alison Green wrote this for LinkedIn’s Weekend Essay this weekend [21 May]

If you’re miserable at work, you’re not alone. Having written Ask a Manager for more than a decade now, I’ve answered questions from literally thousands of people who hate their jobs. Whether it’s due to a difficult boss, unpleasant colleagues, mind-numbing work, or a toxic culture, there are a lot of people toiling away at jobs they’d rather not be in.

The unsettling reality is that even if you do everything right in screening your jobs, you can still end up in a work situation that makes you unhappy. The great boss who you were so excited to work with could move on a few months after you start, and her replacement could end up being a disaster. Your office could have budget cuts that leave you with an unmanageable workload. You could be assigned a new client who turns your dream job into a nightmare. Or, if you’re like a lot of people, you might just end up in a job that sounded amazing in the interview but fell drastically short of your expectations once you started.

If you find yourself in this situation, step one is to get really clear about exactly what the problem is. Is your boss a hovering micromanager who doesn’t give you any autonomy, despite your years of experience? Or maybe the problem is your coworkers – is your work life lonely because you haven’t been able to form any rapport with your colleagues? Maybe it’s the work itself; you might have signed up expecting to do X but ended up doing Y, or the workload might be way too high or so low that you’re bored for hours every week. Or maybe it’s your company culture since not every culture will be a fit for every person. Maybe your office is slow-moving and resistant to change, while you’re more entrepreneurial and need a culture that values that, or maybe it rewards people who spend their off-hours golfing with the company bigwigs and you’re not up for that. Or maybe upon reflection you’ll realize that the problem isn’t this particular job, but rather the idea of having to work in general that’s making you miserable.

Continue reading

---

EAT (Employment Appeals Tribunal) rules that holiday pay includes non-guaranteed overtime

Reported as a "Key Case" in IDS Employment Law Brief HR Number 1010 (December 2014)

Bear Scotland Ltd and ors v Fulton and ors; Hertel (UK) Ltd v Woods and ors; Amex Group Ltd v Law and ors, EAT

The EAT holds that payments in respect on no-guaranteed overtime must be taken into account when calculating holiday pay under the EU Working Time Directive. Furthermore, the Working Time Regulations 1998 can be construed to achieve that result in respect of the basic four weeks' leave due under Reg 13. However, the judgment significantly limits the scope for retrospective holiday pay claims based on a series of unauthorised deductions under the Employment Rights Act 1996, deciding that such a series is broken by any gap of more than three months between deductions.

Hazel's comment:
IDS publications are not available online. However, I have found a report of the case from Judiciary (gov.uk) – a 53-page PDF and there are other commentators besides IDS if you search on the case title.

---

An independent review of British health and safety regulation? From common sense to non-sense

an article by Phil James (Oxford Brookes University, UK), Steve Tombs (Liverpool John Moores University, UK) and David Whyte (University of Liverpool, UK) published in Policy Studies Volume 34 Issue 1 (2013)

Abstract

The view that regulatory provisions protecting the employment conditions of workers need to be minimised in order to protect the business needs of employers has been an ongoing theme in British governmental policy discourse over the past three decades.

For the present Coalition government, the assumption that current levels of regulation are unduly burdensome on employers and hence harmful to the economy has continued to be enthusiastically voiced, most notably in respect of the regulation of workplace health and safety.

Against this backcloth, this paper develops a critical examination of the conclusions of an ‘independent’ review of health and safety regulations commissioned by the present UK Government to shed light on the way in which a deregulatory policy agenda is being furthered.

The paper commences by locating the recent review of health and safety regulations, the ‘Löfstedt review’, in the context of other recent government initiatives aimed at alleviating the burden of health and safety regulation from the shoulders of employers.

It then moves on to outline the nature of this review and its main conclusions and recommendations, before considering in turn its use of evidence, deployment of the notion of ‘low risk’ and lack of attention to the issue of enforcement.

Finally, a concluding section draws together the key points to emerge from the preceding analysis and highlights how the Löfstedt review can be seen to form an integral part of a misleading deregulatory discourse that threatens to engender the wholesale undermining of workplace health and safety protections.

---

Open spaces, closed boundaries: transparent workspaces as clerical female ghettos

an article by by Varda Wasserman (affiliation(s) not provided) published in International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion Volume 5 Number 1 (2012)

Abstract

This research attempts to explore the link between organisational space and gender power relations.

Drawing on extensive research conducted at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this paper demonstrates three spatial mechanisms, which construct and reconstruct a docile female body and a gendered identity:

• “anonymisation” of space;
• disabling the ability to control space; and
• subjugation of employees to surveillance.

By applying theories of feminist geography, this paper explores how planning and design is not gender-neutral, but rather anchored in power relations, which are deeply camouflaged.

Furthermore, it illustrates that spatial arrangements render the body a site of control and organisational impression management.

---

Working conditions in the retail sector under scrutiny

This report from the European Working Conditions Observatory (Eurofound) examines trends in working conditions and employment status in the retail sector in the EU27 countries and Norway between 2001 and 2010.

The considerable expansion of the sector over the past 20 years or so is associated with a transformation in its competitive structure, greater use of technology and changes in the regulatory framework.

Large companies now dominate at the expense of the numerous small and micro businesses that once characterised the sector in most countries. One result is a significant decline in the number of self-employed workers and a substantial increase in the number of part-time jobs (many held by women) and non-permanent contracts.

These changes have affected career patterns and introduced new risks to employees’ health, especially psychosocial ones. Recent initiatives by the social partners have aimed above all to regulate flexibility and working time arrangements, promote training, reduce the risk of robbery and enhance employee well-being.

The study was compiled on the basis of individual national reports submitted by the EWCO correspondents. The text of each of these national reports is available below. The reports have not been edited or approved by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. The national reports were drawn up in response to a questionnaire (Word document) and should be read in conjunction with it.
Country reports at bottom of web page

Comparative study (PDF 112pp)
Executive summary (PDF 2pp)

---

Message Content and Sources During Organizational Socialization

an article by Zachary P. Hart (Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights published in Journal of Business Communication Volume 49 Number 3 (July 2012)

Abstract

This article furthers the recent trend of studying communication during new employee socialization by examining the nature of message content and message sources during this important process.

Results from an investigation of 85 newly hired hotel managers’ socialization experiences indicate that newcomers distinguish clearly between the extent they receive different socialization message content. They also receive distinct message content from different sources, suggesting newcomers rely on a variety of sources for socialization information.

The implications of these results on the success of newcomer adjustment are also discussed and directions for future research are offered.

Hazel’s comment:
Useful for managers and the newcomers to understand that those first weeks are not just about rules, regulations and procedures but also about the people!

---

Work Identity in Crisis? Rethinking the Problem of Attachment and Loss at Work

an article by Tim Strangleman (University of Kent, Canterbury) published in Sociology Volume 46 Number 3 (June 2012)

Abstract

The identity and meaning people obtain from their work is a central issue in contemporary sociology.

There is a debate between those suggesting that we have witnessed either great rupture or continuity in the way employees engage with their jobs.

This article reframes the question posed, developing a critical theoretical framework for understanding narratives of change derived from a range of theorists using concepts of nostalgia, tradition and generations. This framework is then used to read a set of work/life history interviews and autobiographical material from mainly older male workers in the UK railway industry who lament the erosion of their workplace culture and the sustainable moral order of the past.

The article seeks to move beyond dismissing such accounts as simple nostalgia and instead suggests that these narratives can be understood as valuable organic critiques of industrial and social change emergent from work culture.

---

Unemployment and Retirement in a Model with Age-specific Heterogeneity

an article by Mathieu Lefèbvre (CREPP, University of Liège, Belgium) published in LABOUR Volume 26 Issue 2 (June 2012)

Abstract

This paper presents a model where young and old workers compete for one type of jobs in the presence of retirement opportunity.

Within this framework, we show that increased retirement opportunities (such as a decrease of the retirement age) has most of the time a depressing impact on the unemployment rate. Indeed the number of vacancies posted by firms is influenced by the probability that an old worker is going into retirement.

We show that the degree to which younger workers are influenced by retirement of older workers depends on the relative productivity of young and older workers. It is only when older workers are much more productive than young workers that retirement may benefit to unemployment.

JEL codes: J26, J64, J68

---

Work organization, performance and health: introduction

an article by Guido Citoni, (Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy), Benoît Mahy, (University of Mons, Belgium) and François Rycx, (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium and IZA, Germany) published in International Journal of Manpower Volume 33 Issue 3 (2012)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue on work organization, performance and health.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors provide a general review of the literature and describe the main findings of the papers appearing in this special issue.
Findings
This issue provides new evidence regarding the impact of work organization (essentially defined in terms of payment methods, teamwork, workforce age structure and labour contracts) on performance (measured through employment, productivity and sickness absenteeism indicators). It also sheds more light on the determinants of workers’ health by gender, with particular attention to working conditions and mobbing.
Originality/value
The papers collected in this special issue provide some fine examples of recent work at the crossroads of health and personnel economics.

---

Retirement income and assets: …

implications for retirement income of government policies to extend working lives

 a discussion paper by Daniela Silcock, Daniel Redwood and Chris Curry published by the Pensions Policy Institute © April 2012 ISBN 9-781-90628-422-0

Table of Contents (in lieu of an abstract)

• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• What are the current patterns of work and retirement in the UK?
• What are the implications of the government’s extending working lives policy agenda?
• What can we learn from international experience of similar policies?
• How much longer might individuals need to work and save in order to meet target levels of retirement income?
• How might different patterns of work and retirement impact the pension income of individuals?
• Appendix – Modelling analysis
• Acknowledgements and contact details
• References

Full text (PDF 92pp) NB: Crown Copyright is asserted on the final page of the document. I assume that you may print a single copy for private study.

---

The origins of new ways of working: Office concepts in the 1970s

 an article by Juriaan van Meel, (Centre for Facilities Management – Realdania Research, Technical University of Denmark) published in Facilities Volume 29 Issue 9/10 (2011)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the origins of today’s new office concepts, focusing on the emergence of mobile and flexible working practices in the 1960s and 1970s. Thereby it intends to add a sense of historical awareness to the ongoing debate about the work environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The historical description is based on literature study, looking at research reports, design handbooks and depictions of office life in popular culture such as movies and advertisements.
Findings
The paper demonstrates that today’s “new ways of working” are by no means new. It shows that the concepts of mobile offices, paperless offices, videoconferencing and flexible workplaces all originate from the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s. It also shows that these concepts were far from mainstream, standing in stark contrast to the rigidity and conservatism of everyday office life at the time.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is the first result of a larger historical analysis of the recent history of the work environment. Further historical research will add to the presented insight in the evolution of office concepts.
Practical implications
The paper’s insight into the historical development of office concepts can help workplace strategists to make better, more careful forecasts of future workplace trends.
Originality/value
Whereas most literature on the office concept tends to look at novel ideas and future developments, this paper looks back at the recent past. It discusses early workplace experiments that have been largely ignored, or remained unidentified, in much of the discourse on new ways of working.

---

Links between quality of work and performance

via Eurofound Publications

This report is based on 21 case studies in four sectors:

• electromechanical engineering
• food manufacturing
• financial services and insurance activities, and 
• wholesale and retail

in six countries:

• Austria
• the Czech Republic
• Germany
• France
• Spain, and
• Sweden.

The aim of this research was to investigate whether and how improvement of the quality of work can boost employee and establishment’s performance. Results indicate that the clearest link between quality of work and performance relates to training, skills and employability. Training contributes to improved performance mostly through increased ability to use technology and to meet customer demands. Training is also used when the potential alternative, recruitment, is a less optimal investment.

An executive summary (PDF 2pp) is available.

The full report ref: ef1120 (PDF 75pp) has some clear, explanatory graphs and charts.

---

Defying Extinction: ...

the revival of the strike in UK employment relations

an article by Alan Tuckman (Nottingham Trent University) published in WorkingUSA Volume13 Issue 3 (September 2010)

Abstract
It could be argued that, as in many Western countries, there is the disappearance of the strike in increasingly mature employment relations. At a political level, the election of a coalition Conservative–Liberal Democrat government might enhance this image of growing consensus. However, challenging the features that might account for the decline of the strike, a number of current disputes in the UK are examined. Particular attention is given to the strike and long-term conflicts at British Airways (BA). The strike by the BA cabin crew indicates the perseverance of traditional employment relations in privatised industry. It also indicates the use of the legal system by employers to frustrate the workers and trade unions’ right to take strike action through implementation of draconian rule. Conclusions are indicated on the possibility of UK workers and trade unions taking militant action against public sector cuts similar to that already taken in Ireland, Greece and Spain.

---

Futuristic workspace looks like a dinosaur egg

via Boing Boing by Lisa Katayama

Do you like to block the world out completely when you’re working at your desk?

Copenhagen-based design team GamFratesi has created a prototype for a sleek, dinosaur egg-like work environment that they call Rewrite. It reminds me of those cubicles they had at my grad school library, except they’re a lot nicer-looking.

Read all about it at Dezeen

Hazel’s comment:
I want one!! If only to make significant other realise that when I say I’m working I am not available to undertake domestic chores. I will emerge from my bubble when I'm ready to emerge and not before!

---

Developments in industrial action 2005–2009

This overview examines developments in industrial action across the European Union and Norway over 2005–2009. The most ‘strike-prone’ countries during the period were Denmark, France and Belgium, while Austria, Estonia and Latvia were essentially strike-free, and the level of industrial action in the new Member States was only about a quarter of that in the EU15. Manufacturing was the sector most prone to conflict, followed by the broad public sector and transport and communications. Pay disputes were the most common cause of industrial action.

PDF 34pp

Press alert from Eurofound

---

Perceiving Discrimination on the Job: ...

Legal Consciousness, Workplace Context, and the Construction of Race Discrimination

an article by Elizabeth Hirsh (Cornell University) and Christopher J Lyons (University of New Mexico)

Abstract
Despite the continued importance of discrimination for racial labour market inequality, little research explores the process by which workers name potentially negative experiences as race discrimination. Drawing on the legal consciousness literature and organisational approaches to employment discrimination, we assess the effect of social status, job characteristics, and workplace context on the likelihood that workers perceive race discrimination at work. Analysing data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, we find that ascriptive status is associated with perceptions of discrimination, with African Americans, Hispanics, and women more likely to perceive racial discrimination, net of job and organisational controls. Results also suggest that workers with a greater sense of entitlement (as indicated by job authority, promotion experience, and union membership) and knowledge of legal entitlements (as indicated by education level and age) are more likely to perceive workplace racial discrimination. Other workplace conditions can signal fairness and decrease perceptions of racial bias, such as formalised screening practices and having non-white supervisors, whereas working among predominantly non-white co-workers increases the likelihood of perceiving discrimination. These findings suggest that personal attributions of discrimination vary across social groups and their environments, and demonstrate the importance of workplace context for understanding how individuals apply legal concepts, such as discrimination, to their experiences.

---

“We just make the pictures…?” How work is portrayed in children's feature length films

an article by Paula McDonald (School of Management, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane) in Culture and Organization Volume 15 Issue 1 (March 2009)

Abstract

This article explores how adult paid work is portrayed in “family” feature length films. The study extends previous critical media literature which has overwhelmingly focused on depictions of gender and violence, exploring the visual content of films that is relevant to adult employment. Forty-two G/PG films were analysed for relevant themes. Consistent with the exploratory nature of the research, themes emerged inductively from the films’ content. Results reveal six major themes: males are more visible in adult work roles than women; the division of labour remains gendered; work and home are not mutually exclusive domains; organisational authority and power is wielded in punitive ways; there are avenues to better employment prospects; and status/money is paramount. The findings of the study reflect a range of subject matters related to occupational characteristics and work-related communication and interactions which are typically viewed by children in contemporary society.

---

Best and worst jobs

via The Perfect Substitute by Matt E. Ryan on 7 January

The Wall Street Journal had an article concerning CareerCast.com's ranking of 200 jobs. The full list is here.

Hazel’s comment:
Mathematician is top of the list. What that says about the world, or the American world of work, I don’t know but it’s interesting!

---