Starmer has turned Orwellian doublespeak into an art form. And this nonsense will make workplaces impossible, writes STEPHEN BENCE
Business leaders are used to politicians speaking with forked tongues.
But our new administration has turned ambiguity into an art form and its conflicting positions on working from home defy logic.
On the one hand, Keir Starmer’s official spokesman has criticised the ‘culture of presenteeism’, the disease of office working that can be cured by working from home.
Doublespeak: Keir Starmer’s official spokesman attacks ‘culture of presenteeism’
On the other hand, the government has promised to introduce the ‘right to switch off’, meaning that employers will no longer be allowed to call their staff outside office hours, in order to prevent ‘the boundary between work and private life from becoming blurred’.
I am astonished.
When you contact employees who are at home outside of office hours, the boundaries between work and private life become blurred.
However, presenteeism must be addressed by working from home more.
Angela Rayner is a pioneer in this. Her staff must have been delighted when she encouraged them to take their laptops home and they will be counting down the days until the law is changed to make it a criminal offence to contact them out of office 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 repeat this bureaucratic nonsense.
I am the CEO of Vardags, a large family law firm. After much thought, we have decided that the default is that most of our staff should be in the office.
The main benefit is that the mental health of our employees has measurably improved.
What’s next? Don’t hold your breath for the promised reforms in housing, communities and local government
Sadly, we have all received letters from opposing counsel at 5pm on a Friday designed to give our client a terrible weekend.
Sometimes they also resort to personal attacks on the lawyers. It is not an acceptable way to act, especially when dealing with vulnerable people, but unfortunately it is a common tactic.
But it is truly awful to receive such letters when you are alone with an experienced colleague who can put a metaphorical arm around your shoulder and tell you that you have nothing to worry about.
Or away from your peer group who can share stories about what happened to them. There really is nothing like the buzz of an office, full of people who have a real affinity with each other, laughing and supporting each other. And that support is absolutely essential for employee well-being.
Stephen Bence is CEO of the family law firm Vardags
Our people have fun, laugh, chat and form strong and lasting friendships. As humans, we need that. Not just staring at a screen for hours. We need human connection, we need chemistry. It’s about living in a community. That’s what allows us to learn and teach, and what keeps us healthy and happy. Being in the office also allows our junior staff to benefit from personal guidance and learning by osmosis.
In our open office, our interns sit next to our senior lawyers. I have always advocated a non-hierarchical work structure.
Everyone makes a valuable contribution. And of course, this enables us to deliver the highest possible customer service, which benefits from true team problem solving. But we are not dogmatic.
What I’ve described is the position for our London office. Our Manchester office handles different types of cases and serves a different group of clients, many of whom live far from that city and want a remote service. So hybrid working works for them. There’s no one-size-fits-all model.
As for contacting our staff outside of office hours, we avoid that where possible and especially when people are on holiday, but to forbid contact outside of office hours is simply not realistic in the world of family law.
Domestic violence peaks outside of work hours. Parents abduct their children on weekends. Sometimes clients need reassurance in the darkness of their lonely evenings: they don’t want to talk to a lawyer on night duty, they want to talk to their lawyer.
The reason for Starmer’s aversion to ‘presenteeism’ is the idea that there is no point in being physically present at work.
At a time when depression, loneliness and dehumanization are recognized as common diseases in our society, this is short-term thinking of the worst kind.
And there is a disturbing, Orwellian poisoning of language in Starmer’s new language.
The reality is that we need more ‘being present’, and indeed, as the Americans call it, ‘showing up’. The results, in happiness and productivity, when we really, in person, show up for each other, are dramatically positive.
I applaud the government’s outspoken passion for growth and productivity, but the measures it has taken so far to achieve this will do the opposite. Even by political standards, it is not parodyable.
Stephen Bence is director of the family law firm Vardags.
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