Hello and welcome to Working It.
We haven’t touched here on the impact that the war in Israel and Gaza is having on many of you, and your colleagues, but we will. How are you managing internal debate between people who may have radically different views — while prioritising support for staff who have family and friends in the war zone?
Do let me know — and we don’t have to use your name if you’d prefer to be anonymous: [email protected]
Read on to find out when it’s OK to work while you are feeling unwell, and in Office Therapy we advise someone who can’t let go of her anger over past injustices at work.
When it’s OK to keep working through illness 🤧
New research has identified three different ways in which we work while we feel unwell — and two of them are “functional” — meaning it’s absolutely fine to do some work, even if you’re not at full capacity. By being more precise about who needs to rest 🛏️ and who can log on, employers could save money, reduce absence rates, and help overall staff wellbeing. That’s the idea, anyway.
Intrigued, I contacted Ben Moss at Robertson Cooper, the wellbeing consultancy that published the research. Ben says that the first step for managers is to understand the differences between the two “functional” types of unwellness, and the dysfunctional third type. So here goes:
Functional presence — the good sort of working while unwell — includes:
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Pragmatic presence — staff are working at, or near, full capacity. “These are the occasions when employees want to be in work to complete some tasks despite not feeling their very best,” says Robertson Cooper.
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Therapeutic presence — when staff are working far below maximum productivity but they gain a “therapeutic” benefit from being in work, such as social connection and purpose. “For example, when duties and/or hours are adjusted to aid a return to work after a period of illness.”
And the bad one (tell them to stop work 🛑):
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Presenteeism — this offers no benefit to the employer or the staff member. When we are too unwell to focus, we should be at home. “This behaviour impacts both the business and individual negatively and must be managed appropriately.”
These distinctions also help create a general expectation that one should not work through illness automatically: we all know colleagues who came into the office feeling unwell and gave Covid/flu to everyone else.
Confusingly, presenteeism is often used colloquially (by journalists like me) to mean “working crazy long hours performatively, and to impress the boss”. So there is more than one meaning.
By separating the people who really ought to be off sick from those who are merely not at full capacity, organisations could end up with lower absence rates overall. Presenteeism often leads to more long-term illness: it is far better for staff to be off work in order to recuperate.
And differentiating between the three types of working while unwell could affect corporate culture for the better. As Ben says: “It’s then about creating a climate where open conversations about health and wellbeing are the norm. Where it’s OK to say ‘I want to work but not 100 per cent today’ but, equally OK to say ‘I’m too unwell to work and doing so will make my health worse 🤒.’”
Do you agree with this assessment — or is being unwell a binary work situation (working/not working)? I think this approach is new and interesting — but please disagree: [email protected].
This week on the Working It podcast
Productivity is such a weird puzzle, so this week on the podcast we try to work out what makes us work harder and better — and what very much does not. Andrew Hill has written about the UK’s productivity problem, and talks to me about some of the reasons for why we lag our peers in Europe. (Under-investment, bad management — I could go on.)
Then I talk to FT correspondents in countries at the top and bottom of the productivity tables — Richard Milne in Oslo and Leo Lewis in Tokyo. What have the Nordics got that we lack? (Country cabins for the weekend, for starters.) And why is Japan, with its long hours work culture, not actually very productive? I learned a lot, and I hope you will, too (and then we can all leave work at 4pm).
Office Therapy
The problem: At my employer, women get great support when they come back from maternity leave — and are often then promoted when they work part-time or flexibly. But I can’t let go of my anger at how hard it was for mothers here in the past. We were made to feel we were “bad” employees. We had to keep children “invisible” — I did not dare to have photos on my desk 😧. My mental health suffered. I can’t talk about this to anyone. I feel a bit ashamed.
Isabel’s advice: I relate to your feelings, and have also never really articulated them 📣 — until now! — for fear of sounding ancient/bitter. (Although I did always have a photo of my kids on display — the FT was never draconian like that.)
I asked psychoanalytic consultant Gabriella Braun for advice for us, and any other women who are still fuming. She says that anger is understandable: “Mothers in your generation had a terrible time in the workplace. The lost time with young children and the impact on mental health was enormous, and the pressure to keep quiet, be grateful for a job and hide the cost, made it far worse.
“You mention feeling ashamed; it’s such a difficult corrosive emotion, that makes us feel weak and perpetuates the impulse to hide. I think you’re describing a social shame — society says women shouldn’t get angry, and older women ought to feel generosity towards younger ones, and rejoice in how different things are for them. That’s simplistic and unrealistic.
“Why shouldn’t you feel angry? And why should you let it go? I imagine your anger also encompasses loss and grief, which may still need some mourning. Allowing your anger will help that. In staying with your anger, instead of trying to suppress it, you’ll probably find that other emotions emerge too.”
Gabriella suggests having honest and supportive workplace conversations between women of different generations. “Appreciation builds generosity so such conversations will give space for compassion as well as anger, and help build alliances of generations of mothers.”
Got a question, problem or dilemma for Office Therapy? Think you have better advice for our readers? Send it to me: [email protected] or via a voice note. We anonymise everything. Your boss, colleagues or underlings will never know.
Five top stories from the world of work
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Law firms under pressure to make more women partners: Despite big increases in the numbers of women becoming lawyers, gender parity at the top of UK law firms is still lagging. Kate Beioley investigates the blocks to promotion — and what might help.
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Performance reviews are awful yet unstoppable: Performance reviews are usually done very badly, and, as Pilita Clark points out, the wrong people often get praised. She cites evidence that a very small percentage of workers produce outsized results. Not sure where that leaves the other 95-odd per cent of us.
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In defence of the Gen Z challenge to the work ethic: You’ve probably seen the sad graduate on TikTok bemoaning her 9-5 life that leaves no time for going to the gym, but Jemima Kelly goes beneath the outrage to explain why Gen Z has a point. None of us benefits from a work culture that puts mental and physical health at risk.
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The one where Chandler Bing’s impenetrable job defined a generation: My favourite article of the week. Emma Jacobs pays wonderful tribute to Matthew Perry and the way he made Chandler’s jobs (nonsensical, well paid and with no purpose — pure Gen X) into one of the best things about Friends.
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We might be surprised by our reactions to generative AI: The always-insightful Elaine Moore suggests that we may all become far more terse in our dealings online when we know there’s only software on the other side of our conversation. A great new take on a much written-about subject.
One more thing . . .
Most of us dismiss our own creativity because we associate it with artistic genius — and we probably don’t have any of that. This bias towards “arty” forms of creativity can hold us back in other areas of our lives, where we could be far more creative if we just allowed ourselves to try. Creativity, it turns out, can also involve being bad at something.
These are just a few of the insights from Aeon’s essay Are You an Artistic Genius? by an educational psychology professor, James Kaufman. It’s longish but well worth your time. (And if you aren’t familiar with Aeon, it’s a wonderful resource for anyone who likes long-form writing across all sorts of moral, spiritual and cultural topics.)
A word from the Working It community
When we asked “What’s the point of meetings?” on the Working It podcast, it generated a lot of correspondence. Everyone’s been in too many Bad Meetings, it seems, so we all have views on how to do it better 🙋🏽♀️.
I’m highlighting this response from Adam Roscoe, a crisis management professional, who makes a smart distinction between different types of companies, and the meeting styles they deploy:
“I’ve worked for process-driven companies (chemical/oil and gas) and non-process (PR, communications consultancy/HR services). What sets these sectors apart is: process industries tended to have few, short regular meetings designed to raise exceptions (to the process) and where colleagues needed help from colleagues. There is a high level of competence, autonomy and delegated responsibility to relatively junior managers. Meetings start on time, even with the CEO, and you can walk into the office at the appointed hour.
“PR/HR companies (excepting the brainstorming meetings for client projects in PR, which I think are a necessary evil) had a mass of meetings about everything and anything. This seemed to be because there were no processes or if there were, people ignored them, so everything became a reinvention of the wheel.”
From his experience in both sorts of meetings, Adam has crafted his own ways to control them. (Also, Adam says the best and most efficient meetings happen in a crisis — so we do all know how to do it right, when it’s forced upon us.)
• Meetings are for agreeing on things and noting actions/action owners and deadlines
• Objective for meeting and agenda shared in advance
• 30-minute meetings by default
• One-to-one meetings with team members usually held weekly changed to fortnightly, but with “contact me anytime” in case of emergency
• Stand-up meetings (unless participants were not able)
• Default to no meeting if an email, or a short note, would be more efficient
Got better meeting ideas? And anything else that’s on your mind- email me at [email protected]
Read the full article here