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TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED
DOCUMENTARY
Presenter: Frances Cairncross
Producer: Innes Bowen
Editor: Nicola Meyrick
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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
tougher.

I don't think work has been generally getting

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
terms of new rights?

So it doesnt really give employees much in

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 worklife 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
the right time?

Does it make it difficult to call meetings at

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
employ two part timers.

It almost certainly costs more on average to

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 parttime 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
Cairncross

Yeah
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 armtwisting 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.

15