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Business leaders are used to politicians using double entendres.
But our new administration has made doublespeak a delicate art, and its conflicting positions on working from home defy logic.
On the one hand, Keir Starmer’s official spokesperson has attacked the ‘culture of presenteeism’, the disease of working in the office that can be cured by working from home.
Double standards: Keir Starmer’s official spokesperson attacks ‘presentee culture’
The government has also promised to introduce a “right to disconnect”, preventing employers from contacting staff outside office hours to avoid “blurring the lines between work and home life”.
I am baffled.
Communicating with employees after hours while they are at home blurs the lines between work and home.
However, presenteeism needs to be addressed by more working from home.
Angela Rayner is a pioneer in this area. Her staff must have been delighted when she encouraged them to come home with their laptops and will be counting down the days until the law is changed to make it a crime to communicate with them outside of working hours.
Don’t hold your breath for the promised reforms in housing, communities and local government.
And now the private sector will be forced to replicate this civil service nonsense.
I am the CEO of Vardags, a leading family law firm. After careful consideration, we decided that, by default, the majority of our staff should be in the office.
The most important benefit is that the mental health of our staff has improved significantly.
What’s next? Don’t look forward to promised reforms in housing, communities and local government
Unfortunately, we have all received letters from opposing attorneys at 5pm on a Friday that are designed to give our client a horrible weekend.
Sometimes they even go so far as to personally attack lawyers. This is not an acceptable way to behave, especially when dealing with vulnerable people, but it is sadly an all too common tactic.
But the truly terrifying thing is receiving these letters when you are isolated from an experienced colleague who can put a metaphorical arm around your shoulders and tell you there is nothing to worry about.
Or away from your peer group, who can share stories of the same thing that has happened to them. There really is nothing like the buzz of an office, full of people who have a real affinity for each other, sharing laughs and providing mutual support. And that support is absolutely vital to employee wellbeing.
Stephen Bence is the CEO of the Vardags family law firm
Our people are having fun, laughing, chatting and forming strong, lasting friendships. As human beings, we need that. Not hours sitting alone staring at a screen. We need human connection, we need chemistry. It’s about living in community. That’s what allows us to learn and teach, and what keeps us sane and happy. Being in the office also allows our junior staff to benefit from in-person mentoring and learning by osmosis.
In our open-plan office, our trainees sit alongside our senior lawyers. I have always advocated a non-hierarchical working structure.
We all make a valuable contribution, and this of course enables us to provide the best possible customer service, benefiting from true team problem solving. But we are not dogmatic.
What I have described is the situation in our London office. Our Manchester office handles different types of cases and serves a different set of clients, many of whom live far away from Manchester and want remote service. So hybrid working works for them. There is no one-size-fits-all model.
As for contact with our staff outside of working hours, we avoid this whenever possible and in particular when people are on holiday. However, prohibiting contact outside of working hours is simply not realistic in the world of family law.
Domestic violence peaks outside of work hours. Parents kidnap their children on weekends. Sometimes clients need reassurance in the darkness of their lonely nights – they don’t want to talk to a night-shift lawyer, they want to talk to their lawyer.
Underlying Starmer’s aversion to “presenteeism” is the idea that there is no value in being physically present in one’s working community.
At a time when depression, loneliness and dehumanization are recognized as diseases that are rampant in our society, this is short-termism at its worst.
And there is a worrying Orwellian poisoning of language in Starmer’s new language.
The reality is that what we need most is to “be present” and, in fact, as the Americans say, “make ourselves present.” The results, in terms of happiness and productivity, when we really make ourselves present in person are tremendously positive.
I applaud the government’s declared passion for growth and productivity, but the measures it has so far put forward to achieve this will lead to the opposite pole. Even by the standards of politics, this is beyond parody.
Stephen Bence is the Managing Director of the Vardags family law firm.
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