Hello and welcome to Working It.
I ended last week chairing a stellar 🌟 panel at SXSW London, on the subject of reverse mentoring. That’s when a younger worker, often from a diverse or minority background, acts as mentor to a senior leader, or even the CEO. Once trust is built, a reverse mentoring partnership can work wonders in terms of bringing culture change. It also enables people at the top to hear what’s happening outside the executive corridors 🤫.
BA chief executive Sean Doyle, who introduced reverse mentoring for the airline’s top managers, told us: “I think we’ve learned an awful lot about what really happens in the organisation, and I think just our awareness of potential, and the kind of silent barriers to people fulfilling that potential, is light years ahead of what it would have been if we didn’t have the programme.”
Patrice Gordon, a reverse mentoring expert, and someone I’ve admired for a long time, put together the SXSW panel. She has written a book called (yes!) Reverse Mentoring. We’ll return to this topic soon as I think it could be a game-changing programme in many more companies.
As always, do email with ideas, thoughts and tips: hit reply to this or [email protected]
A month is a long time in business — and on sick leave 🤕
Long-term sickness is a huge burden for government and employers — not to mention the millions of people out of work as a result. Rather than despairing about wasted potential and the economic harms of long-term sickness (2.8mn people in the UK are “economically inactive” through ill health), there is a shift in approach under way, especially for common mental health conditions. According to new government figures, young people (16 to 34-year-olds) with mental health conditions are 4.7 times more likely to be economically inactive than their peers.
We can’t afford, as a society and an economy, to have so many people out of the workforce. A UK government Keep Britain Working review is under way, led by Sir Charlie Mayfield (formerly of John Lewis). That’s part of a wider initiative, the Get Britain Working white paper. (A lot of Big Capitals going on here 👀.) All of this is good news 🗞️ — but takes time. The plan is for government recommendations to come later in 2025.
As someone wise recently told me, our challenge is to remove the link between “anxiety and avoidance”, when it comes to work (as well as associated avoidance of exercise, social lives and much more). About 80 per cent of people taking time off with a mental health diagnosis return to work within 28 days. Speedy intervention is vital. After that, the chances of a successful return rapidly diminish.
Those figures come from experts at the University of York’s Behavioural Therapeutics Lab, who have developed a “back-to-work toolkit”. It’s simple, and backed by data to show it’s effective. I talked to the toolkit’s developers, Simon Gilbody and Dean McMillan, at an online event this week as part of the York Festival of Ideas (it will be on YouTube soon 🍿). Simon is a professor of psychological medicine and psychiatric epidemiology at the University of York and Hull York Medical School, and Dean is a professor of clinical psychology.
The programme involves a coach working with a client who is deep in the avoidance or entrenchment that automatically comes with anxiety, depression and stress-related conditions. (Coaching can be on the phone or in person — and coaches can be trained in less than a week). In future, this might be something that AI could do. (Do send me examples of AI already doing this, or of similar approaches.)
Dean summed up the toolkit as being like the Star Wars robot, R2-D2. “There are two ‘rs’ and there are two ‘ds’. The ‘r’s are about reinstating previous behaviours, so it might be something like ‘what hobbies did you do before you started feeling like this? They helped you in some way, but they have fallen out of your behavioural repertoire.” If the person can no longer manage those activities because of health conditions, the second “r” is replacing them with something else.
The “ds” involve gradually decreasing the avoidance that’s often at the heart of our behaviour when we have anxiety or depression, and then developing strategies to trigger helpful behaviours.
I’d love to see this rolled out — and it’s something that employers could adapt. Pleasingly, Dean said, “it’s all free of psychobabble”.
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In a nutshell: After 28 days, it may be harder to help people back into work. You may not be able to implement an “R2-D2” intervention programme, but could HR departments/occupational health take a more proactive/speedier role? (Keen to hear your views on this.)
Office Therapy
The problem: One colleague speaks so quietly that I have to ask them to repeat just about everything👂. I am the team manager and have a lot of close contact with this exceptionally quiet person. I know the others I manage are expecting me to say something.
Should I say something or find a workaround? This person is an introvert and super quiet generally, and would find any conversation on this subject mortifying. As would I. The situation was fine in the pandemic as we could hear them on video — now we are in the office most of the time.
Isabel’s advice: I think you can say something, given that surely this person is aware of what is happening? You can “make space” for their needs (as they say) by making sure that every one-to-one interaction is in a quiet place where you can both focus. Make sure you have ways of capturing this colleague’s thinking. A combination of messaging 👩🏽💻 and one-to-one is going to be easier for both of you.
Your team has to work to include their quiet colleague, while accepting that they will need to ask them to repeat things from time to time. Not communicating as an avoidance tactic is the worst outcome: don’t let this happen.
A direct conversation with them might well help, but you’ll need to prepare. Do you have a coach — or even a coachbot — who can help with prompts and phrasing? It might be worth having a confidential chat with your HR team. We always have “asymmetric” information about colleagues — there may be a reason why this person speaks so quietly. (One thing to be aware of, generally, is sensory overwhelm — people with neurodiverse conditions might find the office environment very hard.)
You could also arrange some speaking/confidence training, but make sure it’s offered to the whole team🎖️. While your quiet colleague may not accept the invite, perhaps others would benefit from better communication strategies?
US workplace insights from Charter: AI and what workers want in an employer
Providing workers with career-growth opportunities has become challenging for many US employers. Attrition is low and managers are cautious about hiring at a time of economic uncertainty and emerging mandates to use AI, rather than people. That leaves many staff frozen, with the result that engagement is low, and everyone is frustrated 😣.
That frustration is not surprising: Kevin Delaney, editor-in-chief of Charter, the future-of-work media and research company, notes that a recent survey it conducted with jobs and careers site Welcome to the Jungle, found that one of the top things that US workers want from an employer is career-growth opportunities.
AI isn’t all gloom: companies that equip employees with cutting-edge tools, technologies and dedicated R&D budgets received higher innovation ratings in the survey. “More and more now, our value proposition becomes AI — because what employees are often looking for their employer to do is teach them how to use AI,” Alex Buder Shapiro, chief people officer of AI company Jasper, said at a Charter event last week.
Five top stories from the world of work
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Disrupted or displaced? How AI is shaking up our jobs: Anjli Raval surveys what’s happening in workplaces and talks to experts about the reshaping of the global workforce. The good news? Human skills are still prized.
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The brutal truth about today’s lay-offs: Sacking people by phone or email is wrong and unnecessary, Pilita Clark contends in her column. She talks to a Google employee who was sacked this way — and who has good ideas for better endings.
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Who are you calling over-the-hill? The truth about brain ageing. Sarah O’Connor celebrates turning 40 with an excellent column about the longevity of our cognitive abilities — which can be maintained, as long as we keep “high skill usage” going in white-collar jobs. Keep at it, everyone.
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Pay, perks and CEO prerogatives: Brooke Masters reports that there may be plans afoot to reduce disclosure requirements for CEO pay and perks. We might complain about outsize pay packets and the private jet, but at least it’s transparent.
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Duolingo CEO on going AI-first: “I did not expect the blowback” Luis von Ahn has reassured customers and staff that AI won’t replace humans, but that came after a memo saying Duolingo was going “AI first” sent the internet into a frenzy. Emma Jacobs talks to him about the furore — and much more.
One more thing . . .
I always look out for Ted Gioia’s Substack newsletter, The Honest Broker. Ted is a jazz critic and cultural historian with an eclectic range of interests. A recent post was about “The Ten Warning Signs” that show us how culture, society — everything, in fact — is changing 🤯. In Ted’s view, it all adds up to “the collapse of the knowledge system”. The disappearance of funding for science and tech research and the breakdown of career paths for knowledge workers are two of the trends he highlights. He also has ideas on what might replace the current knowledge system. I’ve been thinking about it all week.
A view from the Working It community 📸
David Stone, partner at Mansion House Capital, writes: “Please find attached my effort at the ‘office view’. It may be familiar.” Once I’d stopped laughing (it’s a photo of the FT’s London HQ), I realised what a handsome building it is. As any estate agent will tell you, you can’t admire the best house on the street when you are living in it. This photo helped me appreciate our HQ all over again 🥰.
Please send your office view (or work-from-beach view) to [email protected]. Everyone whose photo is published receives a “lucky dip” of management and career books. (David — I will hand-deliver yours 📚.)
Read the full article here