What we need is a workplace that works for us all
ands up who would like a four-day working week? Whoops, calm down, you nearly took my eye out! I agree it would be brilliant, not least because a sick Monday night feeling doesn’t sound nearly as grim as the Sunday version.
Think about it; more time to hothouse your children, pursue extreme hobbies, read the classics and generally dance like nobody’s watching. Live, love, laugh or what?
A four-day week sounds just the ticket – and it’s being waved about by John Mcdonnell, who is a socialist but quite a lazy one, hence only the four days of hard Labour.
I reckon on the fifth we all dutifully stream into public squares for the denouncement of the FTSE 100 kulaks. All hail comrade Corbyn.
The Tories, on the other hand, claim a four-day week would cripple the economy. Which I suppose it might, but only if we don’t toil like Stakhanovites and increase our productivity. Which of course we would.
Well, working mothers would, because an awful lot of them already squeeze five days into four for the privilege of a day off and a 20 per cent cut in salary.
I would too, obviously. Without the pay penalty, thanks. You would, probably. Mind you, what about all the rest of them, them being everyone else, including Extinction Rebellion? I’m not so sure.
But what I am sure about is that we need a debate on the 21st century world of work. That very topic was high on the agenda of The Telegraph’s sell-out Women Mean Business conference which took place this week – and rightly so.
Female staff at every level of every organisation are weary of pleading for concessions on a case-by-case basis. It’s humiliating. And antediluvian; government figures show that 75 per cent of mothers work. They are not an exception, they are the norm.
Mothers just want a working day that works for them, and indeed everyone, without the tuts and sighs from colleagues when they leave early – having worked through lunch – to start their domestic shift.
I’ve been that mother leaving my jacket on the back of my chair, hoping it would fool everybody (anybody?) into thinking I’d just moseyed off for a cup of coffee. I had my boss’s blessing to go because I started an hour earlier, but I found it mortifying nonetheless. So I was pleased to see City traders this week urging UK and European exchanges to cut trading hours to improve work-life balance.
“It’s hard to find childcare at five o’clock in the morning,” pointed out April Day, head of equities at the Association for Financial Markets in Europe. Crikey, she’s not wrong.
The idea is for exchanges to open 9am to 4pm, instead of 8am to 4.30pm. As traders usually work a few hours either side, the burden on mothers in particular takes its toll.
But the crucial thing about this proposal is that new hours would extend to all staff: those caring for elderly relatives, those desperate to take evening Italian classes and those who just long to just flop on the sofa and watch Coronation Street now and then.
Even broaching the subject represents a huge leap forward for employees. In a show-no-weaknessculture it’s quite a seismic shift for staff to acknowledge they work to live rather than the other way round.
But not all “progressive” workplace policies are positive; is it just me or is there something deeply unsettling about Goldman Sachs offering prospective parents on its staff up to $20,000 (£15,500) to cover the costs of extracting eggs or purchasing donated ones?
The Wall Street investment bank’s move is part of its latest efforts to boost equality and close the gender pay gap. To me it smacks of paternalistic interference and creeping authoritarianism.
I spent considerably more than £15,000 on IVF treatments to have my two children. It nearly bankrupted me. Would I have accepted a cheque from my employer? Absolutely, but that wouldn’t have made it less icky.
When companies like Goldman Sachs, Apple, Facebook and Google offer egg-freezing as a “perk” they are normalising an unacceptable encroachment on staff ’s private lives. How long before they start shaping or even dictating highly personal decisions?
I can foresee bosses advising women to hang fire on starting a family because the company “will take care of it” once they’ve reached the approved rung on the corporate ladder. Very Margaret Atwood.
Easy to say in theory but in practice the best of intentions can go awry. Human emotions are unpredictable; take Mcdonald’s global chief executive Steve Easterbrook, fired for having a relationship with an employee.
It was an entirely consensual affair, and British-born Easterbrook is divorced. But it “violated” company rules. Those are tough rules; according to Human Resources Review a third of all relationships begin at work.
I presume the intention is to protect vulnerable or junior employees from exploitation by senior staff but it’s rather a hardline approach. Haven’t these people ever seen Love, Actually?
Hugh Grant is the PM and Martine Mccutcheon his cleaning lady, for pity’s sake.
At work, people should be working. Out of those hours, I can see no reason why any company should be involved in what they do, whom they date and whether or not they want a baby.
As to the question of four days; Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available for completion. I’m happy to put it to the test so the rest of you don’t have to.
Female staff are weary of pleading. It’s humiliating, and antediluvian