How workplaces become inhumane

Hello and welcome to Working It

It’s the peak week for festive workplace events, including here at the FT🕺.

And this week’s Working It podcast has you covered so you don’t make any mis-steps — on the dance floor or beyond 😳 (read on for more on that).

The best tip I’ve heard comes from the FT’s Stephen Bush, who writes the excellent Inside Politics newsletter (subscribe here). Stephen eats a meal at 5pm during the busy weeks in December 🍜. It means he never goes out to a drinks party on an empty stomach. Simple, but effective.

Read on to find out why inhumanity is a feature of too many workplaces, and in Office Therapy we advise a newly promoted - and newly pregnant - worker.

*There was an overwhelming response to last week’s giveaway of the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year shortlist. The books are on their way to the first person who replied — two minutes after the newsletter went out. (Update: I have sourced a few extras for readers who narrowly missed out. I’ll be in touch if you are one of the lucky ones!)

Where is our humanity when it comes to work?

It was distressing to read the recent news reports from the inquest into the death of Ruth Perry, headteacher of a successful English primary school. The coroner recorded a verdict of “suicide, contributed to by an Ofsted inspection”.

Ofsted is the body that oversees UK schools, inspecting them to make sure they meet benchmark standards. But the stress of an Ofsted visit is a matter of huge anxiety for every school leader. At Ruth’s inquest, the coroner said the inspection had “lacked fairness, respect and sensitivity”. Ruth died while waiting for a report that would have downgraded her school from “outstanding” to “inadequate” — over its child safeguarding measures.

The pressure on all headteachers and school leaders is acute. I talked to my colleague Bethan Staton, deputy Work & Careers editor, and the FT’s former education correspondent. She says: “Headteachers talk with dread about ‘getting the call’: being notified of an imminent Ofsted inspection. Many feel like inspection week creates unmanageable and unfair pressure, and that a relatively arbitrary judgment can make or break a decades-long career or deem a vibrant, complex school community a failure. Leaders feel that pressure most, and that gets passed down to staff.”

How have organisations such as Ofsted become so uncaring and fear-inducing in the first place? And how can we fix them?

For answers, I turned to Cath Bishop, an expert on creating high-performance teams and leaders. She knows a bit about this: Cath was a medal-winning Olympic rower, a diplomat and is now a leadership and culture coach.

Cath says the problem is excessive focus on outcomes. “Ofsted is typical of many organisations that have become centred on an arbitrary and restrictive set of KPIs [key performance indicators], reducing the work of huge numbers of people into a set of numbers, or in the case of an Ofsted inspection, a single word which, in the case of Ruth's school, was ‘inadequate’.

“As the focus grows increasingly on the outcome, so the focus on the route to the outcome — usually a set of multiple human experiences over a large space of time — is reduced to the point of being ignored. Leadership in such organisations has been reduced to the management of processes and numbers, and the experience it creates, regardless of whether you get a positive or negative outcome, is largely fear-based.”

Cath acknowledges that too many leaders still “think we can only achieve high performance through damaging people. How can that achieve any kind of sustainable high performance in the long term, or show any moral compass?”

As so often happens with workplace issues, the solutions are seemingly obvious — and yet few people seem able to act on them. As Cath says: “How have we become so detached from what we need to thrive? We need to focus much more on intrinsic drivers — purpose, autonomy, learning (and mastery) and the importance of belonging to a group or team — than extrinsic drivers of the next set of short-term KPIs. That is a sure route to suppressing performance.”

And yet . . . many organisations just address the symptoms of workplace misery. Ofsted, for example, has announced that it is developing training for its inspectors on noting and addressing visible signs of anxiety among school leaders. Cath is unimpressed. “What a nonsense. Rather than recognising signs of anxiety, how about addressing the root causes of creating that anxiety? What a crazy response and total failure to address the need to reform the system away from one that causes anxiety.”

Why do organisational systems become inhumane? All thoughts eagerly received. Email: isabel.berwick@ft.com

This week on the Working It podcast

Christmas brings some very, ahem, *special* workplace issues, not least the delicate etiquette of team lunches and events 🥳.

How can we learn to relax — and not make fools of ourselves? To find out, I brought together three experts in navigating seasonal faux pas — my colleagues Stephen Bush and Emma Jacobs, and the writer, comedian and podcaster Viv Groskop. The result is a lively discussion covering dirty dancing, existential crises . . . and a tip on how to greet someone when you can’t remember their name.

Office Therapy

The problem: I was offered a promotion but have not got it in writing. HR says the offer is coming soon. I am now pregnant and am worried if I tell the bosses, the promotion will disappear. Should I tell them before I have signed a contract? I feel guilty about not having said anything. (I am also fuming at the fact that I have to think about this dilemma . . .)

Isabel’s advice: I am also fuming on your behalf. Worries about pregnancy impacting a job offer — even unfounded worries — should not even be on our radar in 2023, but here we are. And you do not need to mention the pregnancy. Or feel guilty. Jane Johnson, founder of Careering into Motherhood, reminds us that “it is illegal for an employer to renege on an offer because of pregnancy, and you have until 15 weeks before your due date to inform your employer”.

Here’s how Jane recommends that you get that job confirmation sorted: “Although an offer is not legally binding, you will need a documented offer should you find yourself needing legal advice. Write to the new line manager, and HR, state that you are delighted to have been offered the role as <job title> on <insert date> following interviews with <insert names and dates>. Ask when you can expect to see an offer letter; if you feel you must give them a reason for pushing ahead, you can say you want to ensure a smooth exit from your current team and time to hand over to a successor. You may not get a new contract as it is with the same employer, so you need that offer letter.”

Jane also suggests that you “use every communication to emphasise your commitment to the company and to the long-term success. Also use every opportunity to build a relationship with the new line manager and team members. You want them to see you as a committed team member.”

Good luck — with everything.

Got a question, problem or dilemma for Office Therapy? Think you have better advice for our readers? Email isabel.berwick@ft.com or via a voice note. We anonymise everything. Your boss, colleagues or underlings will never know.

Five top stories from the world of work

Tom Kerridge on the magic of restaurants: One of the UK’s most successful restaurateurs tells Emma Jacobs about the hard work required to keep a hospitality business afloat, and about the kinds of people who thrive on working in restaurants: “It’s the most eclectic mix.”
Are we all narcissists now? Jemima Kelly takes on the overuse of the diagnosis, which is now applied very generally (any bad boss gets called a narcissist) but which has roots in very specific traits. Check out the reader comments, some of which are really illuminating.
The unexpected revival of America’s trade unions: Or, how the United Auto Workers took on employers who planned to shut a car plant, and won. The story of US labour unions on the rise has been bubbling throughout 2023. Claire Bushey and Taylor Nicole Rogers recap recent victories — and predict next steps.
Workers and bosses opt for Christmas payments over parties: After the pandemic, some employers have shifted to paying staff rather than hosting events — although Emma Jacobs finds that some of the payment enthusiasts have shifted back to in-person gatherings.
Kirkland & Ellis: Is it party over for the world’s most profitable law firm? If you like reading about corporate culture, prepare yourself. This is an extreme workplace — and the money is extraordinary. Will Louch gives us a rare glimpse of the people behind the profits in the legal sector.

One more thing . . .

If you are approaching the holiday season with exhaustion and dread, or feel overwhelmed with the knowledge that, globally, things are grim, then I recommend asking for a new book* called Life Skills for a Broken World as a gift (it’s out on December 28). Or buy it for yourself 🎁.

Dr Ahona Guha, an Australian psychologist, has written an easily digestible book showing how to build a better framework for mental health, plus useful chapters on the concepts of radical acceptance and setting boundaries. It’s an easy read without being full of woo-woo nonsense: a rare feat for a self-care manual, in my (ahem) considerable experience of the genre.

*I’ll send my review copy to the first person who emails with their address.

And finally . . .

The annual FT charity auction offers readers the chance to bid to have lunch with top columnists and editors, with all money raised going to the FT’s Financial Literacy and Inclusion campaign, FT Flic. Not to play favourites (sorry, other colleagues) but I want to highlight two of my friends among the “lots”: the political columnists and broadcasters Stephen Bush and Miranda Green.

I guarantee you’ll have a sparkling lunch with either of them. (And of course, as a winning bidder, you can ask “off the record” whether that hair-raising Westminster gossip you heard . . . is actually true.)