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RADIO 4

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TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED

DOCUMENTARY

Presenter: Frances Cairncross

Producer: Innes Bowen

Editor: Nicola Meyrick

BBC

White City

201 Wood Lane

London

W12 7TS

020 8752 6252

Broadcast Date: 3 April 2003

Repeat Date: 6 April 2003

Tape Number: TLN313/03VT1013LHO

Duration: 2732

Taking part in order of appearance:

Patricia Hewitt

Secretary of State for Trade and Industry

Richard Reeves

The Work Foundation

Professor Len Shackleton

Head of the Westminster Business School

Penny de Valk

Head of Ceridian Centrefile

Ian Marshall

Employment law partner at Martineau Johnson

Tony Travers

Local government expert at the London School of

Economics

Cairncross

Theres a fashionable phrase around these

days: Work-Life Balance. Some people feel they have too

much work to do, and so their lives outside the workplace suffer.

This worries politicians. They, of course, are not a group famous

for balancing work with their own domestic lives. Why do

ministers such as Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade

and Industry, feel that it matters?

Hewitt We are living through a revolution in the way

working lives, but also family life, is organised. The relationship

between men and women and between paid and unpaid work

has really been transformed. So that instead of one model, paid

work for men and unpaid work for women, we have got different

families choosing different arrangements to suit them.

Reeves Responsibility for the lives and not just the

jobs of the people who work for you seems to me to be important

to business. This is not a return to nineteenth century paternalist

villages in which employers provide education and welfare for

workers. But it is to say that employers should be taking a

broader view of the welfare of their staff.

Cairncross

So Richard Reeves of the Work Foundation

thinks that something must be done about the stresses that work

imposes on home life. Indeed, almost everybody seems to

agree that we need a change in the pattern of work to allow

employees more time to themselves. And the government is

about to intervene to help that happen: next week, a new law

comes in designed to encourage more flexible work patterns.

Well come to that in a moment. But where are the pressures for

these changes coming from? Clearly, as Patricia Hewitt says, the

pattern of family life is changing. But so are our expectations of

working life. Professor Len Shackleton, a labour economist and

head of the Westminster Business School.

Shackleton I think we want it all from work we want more

pay, we want longer holidays, we want a shorter working life.

We have become a very individualised society. We want to think

in terms of our own families, our own domestic arrangements

which of course are very varied these days with the break down

of old family patterns and so forth.

Cairncross

But the pressure for change is coming not

just from those of us who have jobs. It comes from us as

consumers too, and that is changing the demands on

businesses and the ways they organise work. Penny de Valk is

head of Ceridian Centrefile; a company that specialises in

helping employers develop more flexible ways of working.

De Valk There's absolutely no doubt that life would be

easier if everyone came to work nine oclock and left at five. But

that is not the world we are living in any more. That is not what

our customers want they expect much more exposure, we

expect better service more innovation, more individuality, more

customisation. To remain globally competitive now we need to

get more from less. Its a very intense time in our working lives

and so the intensity and pace of working life has increased.

Shackelton I don't think work has been generally getting

tougher.

Cairncross

Professor Len Shackleton

Shackelton

If you look back twenty, thirty years or so

there were a hundred and fifty thousand plus miners under

ground living very stressed lives there were lots of people in

heavy industry where there was a lot of danger and a lot of

stress. And I think we have to recognise there is a lot of choice

in what goes on. Stress is, to a degree consciously chosen. For

example people working in London we know are the most

stressed out group. They travel on average fifty minutes a day to

get to work; this is double what the average is for the country as

a whole. They do this because they value the type of work which

they are doing. At a different stage in their life cycle they will

take the equity in their London houses, move down to the south

coast and enjoy themselves. The reality of all this talk of working

harder we are working shorter and shorter working lives and we

are showing different patterns of work. People vary their lifestyle

and work style over the years as their changing patterns of taste,

preferences, family responsibilities etc, alter.

Cairncross

Clearly, it is an oversimplification to say that

people are all working harder than they want to do. Besides

there is already quiet a lot of flexibility in the job market, because

Britain has a relatively high proportion of workers in part-time

employment. But there is also evidence that many workers dont

have as much control over the hours they work, as they would

like and they would happily trade income for more leisure. A

recent survey commissioned by the Department of Trade and

Industry found that nearly a third of workers would rather have

the right to work flexibly than an extra 1,000 of salary. And it

isnt just mothers who would prefer less traditional patterns of

working. Penny de Valk.

De Valk Weve got men who want to take sabbaticals,

we have men that want to spend more time with their families.

We have younger people without families wanting to take six

months leave to go trekking around the world and if it is just

positioned within an organisation as an accommodation to

women with children, it is very hard to drive the culture change

that is necessary in the business. If you can position flexible

working arrangements as a business based problem solving tool

for everyone in the organisation it drives consistency and equity

and transparency in to a process that will have much greater

bigger impact on the culture than something that is just there for

women with children.

Cairncross

In fact government research suggests that

the latent demand for flexible working is almost as high among

non-parents as parents, and that realisation is subtly changing

the emphasis in the debate on workers hours. Once, the talk

was all of family friendly employment policies. Now the buzz

words are work-life balance. But some of those who want more

flexibility worry about this shift. Richard Reeves.

Reeves I have to say that I think the danger with that

is that the argument losses some of its force. There is no

comparison I think between someone who is struggling to

combine paid work with the challenging job of raising children

and somebody who needs to go home early for a class. And I

think that whilst the politics of this is very difficult within

organisations we have to recognise that raising children is a

different and more important kind of activity.

Cairncross

Why then have people been so anxious to

try to conceal or sweep under the carpet the fact that it is really

all about parenthood?

Reeves

I think it is partly because people are

concerned that if they talk about being a parent in the workplace,

and this applies to men just as much as it does to women indeed

possibly more so theyll be seen as not committed to their

careers. If you talk about the need to go home or stay at home

because your children are sick and so on then the dangers is

that youll feel like your career will suffer and actually there is

some evidence that for some people that is the case. So there is

a kind of stealth parenting going on in the workplace. I think

secondly is that even those who are in favour of better work life

balance are afraid that those without children will become

resentful of the greater opportunities for flexible working offered

to those with children and we will end up with a kind of warfare in

the workplace between parents and non-parents.

Cairncross

Thus there is a real divide among those

keen to increase flexible working. Some like Penny de Valk want

to see us all able to enjoy more control over the hours we work,

whereas others emphasise the benefits to children. At

government level there seems to be some confusion. The

Department of Trade and Industrys website declares that

flexibility is for everyone. However Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary

of State, thinks it is really about working parents.

Hewitt We have to tackle this issue in the interest of

children and although, you know, I dislike applying the language

of economics to the future of our children the fact is that probably

the best indicator of future economic prosperity is the health and

well being of our children now and if children are not getting

enough time and practical attention and support from their

parents then that is very damaging to all us for social and for

economic reasons. So I think the future well being of our

children would be in any case a good reason for government to

act.

Cairncross

As a deft politician, the Secretary of State is

keen to emphasise that more flexibility should not mean that

parents impose burdens on their employers or colleagues. But

the new legislation that comes into effect next week covers only

people with children. It will give parents with a child under 6 or a

disabled child under 18 a new right to ask to work more flexibly.

Ian Marshall is the employment law partner of Martineau

Johnson, a firm of solicitors in Birmingham. How much does he

think this will do for time-hungry workers?

Marshall Its a cross between a spin doctors master

piece and a lawyers charter, because it really doesnt provide

anything new except spin. It gives them the right to make the

employer go through a certain number of hoops, it gives them

the right to request part time working or working only during term

hours say or working flexi time or job sharing. But it doesnt give

them the right to do this. Now the employer can turn down the

request for a number of commercial reasons such as effect on

customers, inability to make new arrangements that will suit the

rest of the staff and various things of that nature which the

employee is not entitled to question and so the new legislation

looks like a bit like a paper tiger in that respect. Provided the

employer goes through the motions of dealing with the

employees application then he is really beyond criticism.

Cairncross

So it doesnt really give employees much in

terms of new rights?

Marshall

I dont thinks so, but the even stranger thing

is that all the while there has been a much bigger cat lurking in

the background, which is the existing position in relation to

indirect sex discrimination. And the basis of that is that a woman

who asks for flexible or part time working can say if you wont let

me have what I ask for in terms of different terms of employment

then you are imposing on me a requirement which

disproptionately effects women because of course it is still the

case that women are disproptionately responsible for childcare

arrangements. And I think what will happen under the new

legislation is that it will kick start what has always been available.

Cairncross

You might think that the prospect of more

workers rights and the possibility of spending more time in

Employment Tribunals would have employers howling in protest.

After all, it will now be up to the employer to prove that a job

cannot be done part-time. And the new law is, on the face of it,

an invitation for people to take jobs on the understanding that

they will work full-time and then demand to be allowed to go

part-time. However, big employers seem to be positively

enthusiastic about embracing work-life balance, so much so that

they pay consultants like Penny de Valk to go in and advise them

on how to offer their staff more flexible hours.

De Valk We tend to be dealing with organisations that

beyond just complying with the minimum. Who are actually

saying that this is a real source of competitive advantage, if we

can deliver better work life balance to our people we know we

are going to get better people in the door.

Cairncross

What does it cost an organisation to have

you come in and transform them in this sort of way?

De Valk

Anything from nothing to not much to a great

deal. It depends on the scope I mean we have been working

with some organisations for five years we want to start with

where a client is and for some of them it is come in and do a

survey and that is miniscule and if that helps them we will move

on others say we want to put in place a programme where all of

our people can call up anytime and get help with childcare that is

absolutely fine as well others might say that flexible working is

our big change lever others will come in and say we want you to

help with stress in the organisation and for some of them it is just

can you help shape the business case, we know weve got an

issue.

Cairncross

That is music to the ears of ministers. Keen

though Patricia Hewitt is on the economics of happier children,

the government is even keener on arguing that there is a

business case for greater workplace flexibility. After all, if work-

life balance is good for families and good for business, then

everyone is a winner.

Hewitt

There are also costs to organisations who

dont take this whole issue of family friendly and more flexible

working seriously because one of the reasons why there are so

few women at the top of organisations is because so many of

those women simply opt out of the workaholic culture of those

organisations these days. They go off they set up business on

there own, they move in to smaller organisations and that is a

huge loss of skill and experience to their original employers.

Cairncross

How does that work here? Presumably you

have lots of people including senior people working flexible

hours.

Hewitt

Of course we practice what we preach and

one of the things Ive done as Secretary of State is actually to

bring management and the trade union side together to look at

how we can really accelerate much more flexible working.

Because undoubtedly, as in too many large organisations there

is still too much of a culture of presentee-ism - you know is the

jacket still on the back of the chair at seven or eight oclock at

night - and we need to deal with that in order to allow all our

staff with their different responsibilities in other parts of their

lives, to make the fullest possible contribution they can make to

the success of this department.

Cairncross

Does it make it difficult to call meetings at

the right time?

Hewitt

I dont find so. For instance, we recently

promoted, to within the senior civil service, to one of our team

heads a man who had been has been working part time for

some years. He and his wife both work three days a week within

the civil service thus eliminating child care costs rather an effect

way to work particularly in London where the childcare costs are

so high and the availability is so difficult!

Travers

There's no doubt that if you are in a

Whitehall department or some nice organised quango where you

are running a bureaucracy then flexible working becomes a real

possibility because it is predictable job without terrible crisises

and booms and slumps in work time.

Cairncross

As a local government expert at the London

School of Economics, Tony Travers has researched some of the

harsher realities of life in the public sector.

Travers

But I think if you are working in an Accident

and Emergency unit to take the most extreme example or even

in a social services department or in some other part of the acute

public sector then the chances of flexible hours working

consistently and effectively are much, much reduced.

Cairncross

So you end up getting best practise and

worse practice in the public sector?

Travers

Public services undoubtedly aspire to best

practice even though they know they are using tax payers or

public money they want to be seen to be good employers. I think

the difficulty comes is that most of them because they are tax

funded are chronically short of resources in relation to the scale

of what they are trying to deliver most of the time and this means

that their workers, even though they may theoretically be given

good terms and conditions, tend to be put under pressure to

deliver. And so the aspiration towards good terms and

conditions is eroded by a practicality which is that sometimes

people have to stay on until to get things done.

Cairncross

But just a minute. If cash-starved

organisations find it difficult to implement flexible hours, where is

the business case? Could it be that such policies, far from being

in employers best interests, really carry a cost? Len Shackleton

of Westminster Business School analyses the issue, not just as

a labour market economist, but as a manager.

Shackelton

As an organiser of large numbers of

academics myself I do know that employing people on a flexible

or part time basis is an enormously complex task. We have to

provide computers, room space etc which are a fixed cost per

worker employed.

Cairncross

So are you saying that actually it may cost

more to employ two part timers than one full timer?

Shackelton

It almost certainly costs more on average to

employ two part timers.

Cairncross

Why should that be?

Shackelton

Well you have induction and training costs,

monitoring of workers appraisal systems, you have to make sure

that their work is co-ordinated. Talking to people who job share,

for example, it is very difficult to fix up times when both people

are in to have necessary meetings. So although there are

benefits to individuals and possibly in some cases to firms I think

as a general rule employing two part timers is more expensive

and that is why part time pay in any job is typically rather less

than you would expect for the full-time pay for equivalent work.

Cairncross

And that extra financial burden can no

longer be reflected in pay scales. Before the government

strengthened peoples rights to convert full-time jobs into part-

time ones, it made it illegal to treat part-time workers any less

favourably than full-timers. And here is another conundrum: if

there are costs, why have so many human resources

departments, or HR, been keen to promote work-life balance?

Penny de Valk

De Valk

Most of it is about keeping talent, about

productivity. Again we know that there is a lot of evidence to

show that those people who are given more control over where

and when they work are much more engaged in their

organisation, work much more productively, certainly those who

were given flexibility around childcare we know absenteeism,

sickness absence in particular has diminished. So there is a

myriad of different impacts that this sort of work can bring to an

organisation.

Cairncross

Do you ever have companies where the

existing culture is so strong that you cannot change it?

De Valk

Yeah

Cairncross

Think of an example

De Valk

We went in to a company and got a very

visionary HR Director - so this was a large blue chip and very

high profile and visionary HR Director - but wanted an

independent person to come in and help with basically a culture

change programme. And we worked for probably three months

which was pretty much, well it wasnt wasted but at the end of

the day if the chief executive doesnt get it you are wasting your

time.

Cairncross

And what would you have wanted, what

changes would you most have wanted that company to make?

De Valk

Change of chief executive (laughs). In that

instance I think some manager training, you know they were very

anxious around scheduling, massive resistance to flexible

working amongst the middle management who understandably

thought they were going to loose the control. You train your

managers not to be so anxious about it. So instead of thinking

oh gosh is Marys two year old more important than Johns

mother with Alzheimers or Janes MBA youve got managers

sitting there saying how could this compressed week give me

more contact hours for my clients and that is a challenge.

Cairncross

Does that not tell you something as the line

managers are the people who actually have to deliver what ever

it is that the company is doing and if they often cant see that

maybe the business case is not quiet as strong as the Human

Resources people like to think it is?

De Valk

The line will feel hurt when they start really

screaming at HR for not being able to get their recruitment done

in five or ten days or whatever. They are not necessarily going

to see that the reason that they are struggling to recruit the right

people is because the policies of the organisation isnt getting

enough people through the door and the challenge for HR is to

say these symptoms you are feeling are symptomatic of a

broader issue that we need to address in the organisation.

Cairncross

The trouble is we have just lived through an

era of unusually tight labour markets, when jobs have been

chasing workers rather than the other way around. In that

climate, there is clearly a business case for many employers

voluntarily to treat good workers flexibly. But as the economy

slows down, so does the battle to recruit. As Americans say

these days, The war for talent is over and talent lost.

Besides, some businesses can get away with indulging their

workers and others cant. Some recent research from the Judge

School of Management at Cambridge University found that

flexible working was most common in businesses that were

sheltered from competition. So perhaps those firms that have so

far resisted work-life balance are not simply being short-sighted.

Len Shackleton of Westminster Business School.

Shackelton

Its a common preconception amongst the

chattering classes, Frances, that people know better than the

private sector. I believe that broadly speaking private sector

firms make mistakes but they dont consistently make mistakes

and competition tends to weed out firms which are not paying

attention to market opportunities.

Cairncross

Len Shackleton, of course, is sceptical about

work-life balance so it is not surprising to hear him argue there is

no business case for it. But Richard Reeves of The Work

Foundation is a proponent. What does he think?

Reeves

It's very difficult to simultaneously say there

is a clear business case for this but you are not doing it so we

must legislate to make you do what is in your own interest

anyway. We know for example that it is very often in companies

interest to advertise their products but no one has yet suggested

that we should legislate to force companies to do so. And so I

think there is a very real danger that we end up contradicting

ourselves and so we have to go beyond the business case.

What if someone where to produce a really good piece of

research showing that better work life balance is not in fact good

for business. Do we then throw up our hands and say well if

there is no business case for it then I suppose one should not do

it? No I wouldnt stop saying we should do it I would say we

should do it anyway. And so by putting all your eggs in the

business case basket it seems to me that you are in trouble if the

business case basket collapses.

Cairncross

Most people in this debate try quiet hard to

start from saying there is a business case for work life balance

and you dont, you come clean. How do other campaigners

regard you?

Reeves

I find there is often a distinction between

how people react publicly and how they react privately. In public

almost everybody who is campaigning in this area feels the need

to be always making a business case. In private some of them

will come up to you and say afterwards, well, you are right

actually, there is not always a business case and but we can't

say that.

Cairncross

And the research by the Judge School of

Management also reported that 10% of employers who

voluntarily switched to flexible working found that it actually cost

them more. Those companies that need government arm-

twisting to make them offer their staff more flexible hours will no

doubt be even more likely to face increased costs. So what do

employers really think of the new legislation? Labour lawyer Ian

Marshall hears their views.

Marshall

The usual reaction is that it is more red tape,

more burdens on business and going to be an increase in the

general Human Resources burden that business have to carry.

Cairncross

Will employers start to ask interviewees

when they appear whether theyve got children under the age of

six or disabled children so that employers can pick out the

people who are likely to apply under this legislation?

Marshall

Well they might but if they did theyd be

setting themselves up for a claim for a sex discrimination

compensation to be made against them because that is precisely

the type of question that is going to show up in interview

somebody who is proposing to discriminate. It puts employers in

quiet a difficult position at interview. There are various devices I

suppose which people try and use in order try and elucidate what

are the domestic circumstances of person who is applying for the

job.

Cairncross

What sort of things do they do?

Marshall

Well they ask, I suppose, a question related

to social life, which might be designed to draw out whether they

have domestic responsibilities.

Cairncross

So if you ask someone how many night s a

week they go out to discos that you might actually indirectly be

trying to get the right sort of information out?

Marshall

That is the sort of thing yes that can lead to

a stately and slightly bizarre dance as you sort of go round and

round not wanting to offend somebody by asking a question

which could be interpreted in some way as sexist.

Cairncross

Why should the government introduce

policies that force this curious minuet in the workplace? Surely it

would be better for the economy to let employers and employees

agree on work patterns without interfering, and confine policy to

the provision of better childcare? Len Shackleton thinks that is

just too simple.

Shackelton

The current government has a difficult

balancing act it wants to keep taxes down, it wants to keep the

middle class happy and it wants to keep the unions happy.

Instead of imposing tax increases that would lead to

redistribution it tries to off load its responsibilities on to the

private sector and on to employers rather than the tax payer.

One of the problems I have with the idea of imposing obligations

on firms to offer flexible working is this is a kind of hidden tax. It

is not something that the tax payer sees but ultimately it is a

cost, which the economy as a whole has to bare? If you look at

an economy for example which has accepted many of the

principles of work life balance which are being advocated in this

country, look at Germany. Germany is a country where shops

do not open after four oclock on a Saturday afternoon, where

people have long holidays, they have the shortest working life of

anybody in Europe. They start work later and finish earlier. And

that is a country that has an unemployment rate of eleven

percent more than twice that in the UK. There is a cost to this

type of arrangement.

Cairncross

Of course, not everybody would worry about

becoming more like Germany, which is still a wealthy and

comfortable country. However, Germanys economy is

undoubtedly in a mess, and plenty of Germans think that the

social burdens piled on to employers are at least partly to blame.

But some people might argue that slower growth was a price

worth paying for happy children and relaxed parents. Richard

Reeves.

Reeves The campaign for work life balance needs to

seen in terms of a broader set of questions about the kind of

society we want and that means the kind of business we want,

the kind off jobs we want, how we want to raise our children, how

men and women get along with each other but the orthodoxy that

economic growth and productivity gain and business success

automatically translates in to higher levels of well being is very

difficult to challenge. It is almost as much of an orthodoxy as the

orthodoxy of Christianity was in pre-enlightenment Europe. It is

impossible to imagine a world in which we did not say business

and markets and growth and productivity arent good things but it

seems to me that this is the point that we are at. There is

growing compelling evidence that economic growth is no longer

correlated with our sense of well being in affluent countries. And

so that should make us pause and ask deeper and earlier

questions about the purpose of economic growth and the

purpose of business activity.

Cairncross

It may not make us happier to become

wealthier, but it certainly makes us miserable when economic

growth stops and unemployment rises. And that is what

happens if governments load too many obligations on to

employers. Legislating on work life balance may look like a free

ride, but it isnt. At the very least it means resentful colleagues,

or less consistent management, or just more paperwork and

these are real costs. Employers may pay them willingly to keep

their best staff, but not to keep everyone. The government is

kidding itself if it thinks otherwise.

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