178. Is Labour going full Trump? PLUS! Conspiracy theories and why supporting fathers is the key to equality - This Week in Work, 11th March 2025
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This week in work, is International Women's Day focusing on the wrong thing?

Everyone talks about women in leadership and pay gaps, but our Hot Take guest, Rachel Vecht, says the real issue might be how we treat dads at work. Do you work in the civil service? Are you afraid of losing your job? Labour is planning what some are calling a Trumpian overhaul to the UK civil service with performance-based pay and the ability to fire people much faster. Is this a genuine efficiency drive? Or just a sneaky way to make job cuts?

And in the workplace surgery, a company's bring-your-whole-self-to-work policy sounded brilliant until someone started sharing conspiracy theories in meetings. Has DEI gone too far? Or is this just poor leadership?

That's all coming up in Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning psychology podcast brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne and I'm a chartered psychologist. And my name is Al and I'm a business owner. And together we help organizations build amazing workplace cultures. Let's dive into this week's episode after this very short message from our lovely sponsors.

Hey, if you like interviews, then you're in luck because every Thursday we bring you a brand new interview with an expert guest who knows how to create great workplace cultures. This Thursday, we talked to a guy who helped a company go through everything from 9-11 to COVID. It's going to be a good one. But right now it's Leanne's favorite time of the week. It's time for the news roundup.

Leanne, what have you seen the news this week? The UK Labour Party is preparing to unveil Trumpian plans for the civil service. That is according to The Guardian this week. So big changes are coming to Whitehall and they're already being called Trumpian by critics.

Do you know what? Of all the things actually UK government, I think in terms of being digitally like there, not bad. That is coming from someone who lives in Bosnia though, so you know, apples and oranges. Yeah.

But anyway, if this sounds familiar, it's because it mirrors reforms we've seen in the private sector, but also because of comparisons being made to Donald Trump's newly announced Department of Government Efficiency. Al, are we going with Doge or Doggy? Doggy. I've been liking Doggy. That's what we're going for. Yeah, Doggy, run by none other than Elon Musk. The government's argument is that the civil service is too slow, too bureaucratic,

and not delivering for the public. Despite Whitehall adding 15,000 jobs since 2023, Mr McFadden says that people aren't seeing improvements in NHS waiting times, job opportunities or community safety. His answer is a tougher, faster moving system that rewards high performers and removes those who fall short.

So this is what is being proposed. Pay linked to performance so senior civil servant salaries will be tied to the outcomes they deliver. Faster routes to dismissal so civil servants who don't meet the required standards will be placed on personal development plans with dismissal possible after six months if they don't improve.

So the announcement is...

is already sparking backlash civil service unions have slammed the plans as a thinly disguised attempt to slash jobs while others argue that performance-based layoffs don't necessarily lead to better results and here is where the trump comparison comes in critics say this is just another right-wing attempt to weaken public services but other experts are saying we need to be careful about lumping government reform together one strong voice in this debate is dominic campbell a

public service focused investor and advisor he pushed back on the doggy comparisons doggy doggy you know what I mean in a recent LinkedIn post calling them disingenuous and even insulting to Americans dealing with the full force of Trump and Musk's policies

So this is his argument, word for word, that he put on LinkedIn. We have to be able to distinguish between a vindictive, deliberately cruel, authoritarian destruction of government and efforts that aim to be reasonable and effective approaches to government reform that strengthen democracy.

democracy and deliver better, cheaper public services. Otherwise, we risk normalising the fascist moves in the US and undermining the reasonable efforts to make change in countries like the UK. Not all change is the same and not all change is bad.

So in other words, we can't afford to blur the lines between legitimate attempts at reform and dangerous political agendas. The challenge now is, of course, figuring out which category this civil service overhaul really falls into. Al, thoughts? It seems strange because if you're from the US, then I think roughly speaking, Labour equates to Democrats and Conservative or Tory relates to Republicans. I think roughly speaking. Roughly. They're both a lot more centre, I think they are.

They probably were. Yeah, what, the UK's? Yeah. Yeah, I think so, I think so. So this seems a very strange thing for Labour to be bringing in because, like you said, it sort of feels quite right wing, feels sort of very commerce driven, which as a business owner, I'm like, yeah, I kind of like that because, yes, the stuff online is pretty good. The online services from the UK are pretty good.

When we compare the bureaucracy to where we live in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then it is light years ahead. But it's still not brilliant. I think that there is a lot of fat to be trimmed from the civil service. My dad used to be in civil service. He's out now. Don't worry. He's not going to be sacked. But I think there's a lot of fat to be trimmed.

At the same time, I don't know, it just seems to come at a very bad time and they've only been in power for a few months and it seems like they're sort of like going back on everything they promised and everything their voters believe in perhaps.

Yeah, I'll be honest. Sir Khan. Sorry, Sir Kama. Sir Khan? Probably going to slip there, isn't it? Sir Keir Starmer. I don't... Yeah, he seems to be doing a lot of things that I didn't realise he said he was going to do. And a lot of people get angry because he didn't say he was going to do that.

I think, do you know what? I think it's true that we shouldn't really lump this in as a Trumpian agenda necessarily. I think that's a bit click-based from The Guardian there because it's a very different approach with a very different potential outcome. It has been brutal what we have seen come out of the US in so many ways, especially what they've been doing at Doge and with Elon Musk.

I can't even give the man more air time to even express how I'm currently feeling about how Elon Musk approaches things. The evil billionaire in a cave. I'm sure he's got a lair somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Yeah, I hope he... No, I can't say that. You can't say that. We're on air. Sorry, Elon. When they go low, you go high. I know it's really fricking hard.

I think there's a few things here. I agree. We shouldn't necessarily go, this is a Trumpian move. That's a bit naughty. We need to see how it shakes out. More importantly, it's not necessarily about the decision that is being made. Sometimes these decisions need to be made to improve public services. How that decision is executed will tell us everything we need to know. And hopefully you're done with lots of transparency, lots of empathy. Equally important.

Cutting jobs doesn't always improve efficiency and we've got lots of different data that shows that. There was a study not so long ago that found that organisations that downsized for efficiency actually saw a 20% decline in performance. We've also seen research specific to the public sector that has found that when the government made previous staffing cuts, it did make it harder to respond quickly to things like

Brexit, COVID-19, economic instability and the talent drain, man. If you just make a 1% cut in your workforce through layoffs, you'll typically see a 30% voluntary turnover rate in the six months following. So it's a huge talent drain.

So I think, yeah, we need to tread carefully here. And I think we'll learn more as these things unfold. In terms of what happens next, Pat McFadden, who is running this reform, insists that it isn't just about job cuts, it's about making government more effective. So, yeah, we'll see. I think what the critics are currently concerned about is the speed at which this strategy will be executed further.

much like we've seen in the US and perhaps that was where the comparison started but yeah I think we'll have to wait and see on this one but so far I agree I think it's a bit unfair to at this point compare it to a Trumpian like approach or a Muskian type approach or a doggy type approach because that I agree it's that is brutal and that is not what is currently happening in the UK so let's not let's not go there quite yet

The Musk of Trump, that sounds like just a horrible sort of cologne that people might buy. Let's move on, shall we? What have you seen this week? Well, there was a few articles I saw recently about this. People are saying this new workplace trend called micro-retirement. And basically the article is saying that's where Gen Z millennials take extended breaks from work, a few months or even a year off, and then come back to the workforce. Now, just be real for a second. This is not new.

Stop saying old things are new. Stop giving them a new name and saying they're new. We've had sabbaticals for ages. In fact, fun fact, when I was doing the research on this, the word sabbatical comes from the book of Leviticus. I'm sorry, I'm not a big Bible follower. Leviticus, I think, where they let fields lie fallow every seventh year to recover.

The same principle applies here, where people are letting their mental fields recover, I suppose, before they burn out completely. According to some research from the Kemi Business School in Ireland, a massive 65% of Gen Z's and Millennials prioritize work-life balance over career progression. We've already said that. We've said that many, many times on this little pod. But what they're essentially asking is, is the juice worth the squeeze? And when it comes to climbing the corporate ladder, many of them are saying, no, it really isn't.

I mean, technology is always going to be to blame. It's potentially with this always-on culture. You know, you feel like you're never truly away from work, you know, checking emails at 10 o'clock, that sort of thing. Interestingly, this is a big problem in Ireland, which is apparently ranked amongst the highest in Europe for employee burnout in a recent study.

I don't know whether there's any correlation because there's a lot of big tech companies based in Dublin. So I'm wondering if that's skewing it. I don't know. But anyway, from a business owner's point of view, I can see how this might send some executives or owners into a bit of a panic, worrying that their top guys are going to disappear for six months to Bali. They're going to meditate, drink smoothies and wear ridiculous clothes. We've been to Bali. Don't go to Bali. It's not a great place. Anyway, here's the thing. Maybe we should be thinking about this slightly differently. The

The article suggests, now this is where I had to do some research. The article suggests that organizations consider something they call a triple transition approach. So I didn't really understand what this was. So I did some digging. Now, traditionally, forward-thinking companies have been focusing on two big transitions over the last few years. Going digital, so that's putting everything in the cloud, automation, and obviously it's going to be AI agents at this point, and becoming sustainable, reducing carbon footprint, ethical sourcing, you know, the whole green agenda.

But this research suggests that in 2025, businesses should have a third transition that they're looking to prioritize, which is genuine work-life balance. Not the typical ping pong, pizza, Friday, free fruit, all that kind of stuff, but genuine actual changes like truly flexible schedules or proper career paths that don't require 60-hour work weeks, or even building in these sabbatical programs from the actual get-go.

I suppose it's acknowledging that, I mean, sorry, I'm going to quote from the article here because this was a good line. It's acknowledging that human sustainability is just as important as environmental sustainability. I thought that was a really good line. The reality is that when your best employees are literally walking out the door for months at a time because they're burnt out and they've had enough, something's

clearly broken in the way the organization is being run now you can either dismiss this as a trend and potentially lose people as the end was just saying there um 30 voluntary attrition i think you said didn't you or you can adapt and potentially gain a competitive advantage by attracting the best people

and acknowledging A, that we shouldn't be working so hard and B, why not just disappear off whenever you want? There was a company we had recently who were talking about every number of years they built up credit to go and have a sabbatical. Do you remember anything? Remember that was? Might have been Basecamp. I can't remember, but I'll try and find it. Try and put the show notes.

So I think the key message we're getting out of this is that obviously this needs to be a change, but also senior leaders need to model this business, this idea themselves. As Leanne said, if CEOs are sending emails at midnight, it doesn't matter what your policy says. This becomes the real culture.

So the bottom line is this, if people are willing to walk away from their paychecks to recover, it's a pretty strong signal we're doing something wrong with work. What do you think, Lee? It's no great surprise. When we factor in that Gen Z, young millennials, what's the average age? You're probably going to be 100 now. They could have like a 70-year career. It's not physically or psychologically possible to work at that rate for that long.

So it sounds like a very sensible, adaptive behaviour that people are finding to make work more sustainable for a longer period of time, longer throughout their lives.

People will always find their own way to regain some kind of sense of control, meaning and purpose over their work and life. You can beat your fists and demand people come back into the office. You can demand that people work a 60-hour work week and are in the office at least five days a week, whatever Google was chatting about last week. You can do all of these things in terms of sending emails like Elon Musk is doing and saying, tell me what you do, what I justify your job. You can do all of that, but that doesn't remove my agency to go, I've had enough. Thank you.

thanks though I'm done and I think what this is a really good example of is an actually quite extreme response to extreme leadership behaviors we're seeing in the workplace we're not having much choice in terms of being able to integrate a working life in a way that is healthy so let's just semi-retire for a year and then come back and do it again and then come back and do it again and another thing that I've seen more of recently is

And I think it's through this whole narrative of more masculine energy in the workplace. It's lots more analogies being brought up in terms of sports. Like, oh, you don't see the greatest sports people sacking off. You don't see them skipping a day of training to work from home. You don't see them doing that. Let's not forget the average sports person probably retires at about 30, 35. They have a very short, sharp, intense career. So yeah, they can do that for that period of time. But also...

But ultimately, that's where sports people retire because they're physically and or psychologically exhausted. So it's not, it's a good analogy to kind of bring in lessons and transferable ideas, but it's not a like for like. I applaud it. We've been semi-retired for a few years now. Different peaks and troughs in terms of how busy we are with work. And it is much more sustainable. It gives us much, since we've been doing it,

I would say, what do you think, 2020 kind of COVID stopped us a bit, didn't it, in our tracks and kind of slowed us down a little bit and enabled us to reflect a bit more. And since that time, we've been much more innovative, much more creative. We've achieved so much in the past five years that it's...

I think it's more than the five years previous when we were both hustling a lot. Yeah, and I think what's interesting about that is that we... What I have noticed with us is that we might have two weeks where we just...

you know, do the bare minimum. And I don't mean that with no effort. We do it with lots of care and love, but we do stuff. And then we might have three weeks, like a sprint, where we'll do something and stuff will just get done. And you're like, how the hell have I got all my to-do lists? You're still at eight o'clock at night, you're still working. But then we have two weeks. And then over summer, we tend to try and have two weeks off, three weeks off, possibly four if we can do it. We get a bit bored after a while. But I think the point is, like Deanne's saying, is that

If you expect everyone to be honest, like, you know, if you go and buy a piece of equipment and you run it 24-7, then you're going to end up having to buy a new piece of equipment much sooner than if you ran it for eight hours of the day. It's the same here with people, I think, is that you can't expect people to put in 100%

for 80, 90, even 60 hours a week. The fact is that there's lots of research out there that show that if you work really hard for 40 hours a week or even eight hours a day, really there's only two hours a day when you're actually going to produce exceptional work. The remainder of the time, especially if it's those first two hours in the morning, great. The remainder of the time is probably just doing the tasks and let's be honest, most of our to-do list is just pleasing other people, isn't it? Leah, what else have you seen, my love? What happened?

What happens when AI is used to track, monitor and evaluate employees? Nothing good, I would imagine. Well...

Well, no, probably not. This is an article that I saw posted by Matt Smead, who is a business psychologist, posted on LinkedIn. It was a proper scroll stopper, so I had to tell you about it. The study is from two researchers at the University of Valencia. I'm going to try and recall my Spanish now from a few years ago. Okay, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry. I'm trying to do Spanish here. Sorry, I'm lost.

So the researchers, University of Valencia are Raúl Paya Castiblanque and Alejandro Pizzi. Buenos dias, profesores. Nice, nice.

They looked at how AI-driven performance monitoring is affecting workers' well-being across Europe. And yeah, as you guessed, all the results aren't so great. According to the study, when AI is used to monitor, track and assess employees, it actually increases stress levels, reduces teamwork and even increases the chances of accidents in the workplace.

So the study surveyed over 27,000 workers across Europe. Massive sample. They found that AI is basically being used in four main ways. First of all, supervising performance. So AI tracks how fast you work, what you do, and even how often you pause. Don't dare pause to think.

Assigning tasks and schedules is another way it's being used. So instead of a human manager deciding, AI is handing out work, setting deadlines and even allocating shifts. Third, evaluating employees through ratings. So in some jobs, AI is processing customer and colleague feedback to assess performance. That's been around a long time. I'm all right with that. And finally, tracking biometric data. Some workplaces are monitoring heart rate, stress levels,

and even posture using AI-driven wearables. Al, you predicted this three years ago. I did. I did. If you want to go back, actually, I think it was two years ago, to be fair. But I think if you go back to our predictions from 2023, this is exactly what I predicted.

It was. So yes, this isn't just AI suggesting calendar invites or filtering spam emails, Al. This is what is being called algorithmic micromanagement on steroids. Nice. So what did the data show? Well, this is where it does get a bit worrying. The study found that AI-driven monitoring is making work more stressful, isolating and even dangerous. So the first key finding, more work, more pressure. Workers under AI surveillance reported 50% more time pressure

and workload stress. AI was found to speed up the pace of work, but it didn't care if you were tired, overwhelmed, or just needed a minute to breathe. It doesn't make work easier. It just leads to longer hours, shorter deadlines, and higher expectations. There is, of course, less control of your work if employees are being tracked

in workplaces in terms of how AI is deciding how they do their job. So what tasks get assigned to who, how long they should take, and even whether they're expected or even whether they're meeting the expected performance levels. The third key thing was that people stopped talking to each other when AI is used to monitor and evaluate performance.

Because basically, if AI is tracking everything I do, then I'm not going to stop to have a conversation with my colleague. In fact, it saw a 1.5 times increase in poor communication and reduced teamwork.

I think I suppose as well, if AI, if you've got a wearable and it can track what you're saying, then it's going to store that, then it knows exactly what you're saying. And therefore it's another metric for the boss, the fat cats to go, well, for three minutes you talked about football when you should have been talking about the project. Anyway.

Potentially, yeah, absolutely. And the final main headline finding was there is more stress burnout and accidents. So employees in AI-monitored workplaces had a 1.5 times higher likelihood of reporting stress, depression or anxiety. And the biggest shocker was that workplace accidents increased by 70%.

in AI-tracked environments. The researchers suggest that this is because workers under AI monitoring are constantly rushing, mentally exhausted and more likely to make mistakes.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Surely there's a way to use AI without turning the workplace into an episode of Black Mirror. Of course there is, and the researchers agree. AI itself isn't the problem. It's how it's being used. How many times do we say this on that show? It's not what you're doing, it's how you're doing it that's the problem. If AI was implemented as a tool to assist workers helping with admin tasks, flagging safety risks, or even optimising schedules based on actual human needs, then yes, it could be a game changer. Really?

Really interesting and timely study. Thank you to Matt Smead, our LinkedIn, for sharing that. I will leave a link, both of the original post and the article, which is in Spanish, in the show notes. Okay, so after this very short break, we'll be back with this week's hot take, which is from Rachel Vecht, a former school teacher and a parenting expert who's got some strong, strong views. I think you're going to like it. See you in a second. Welcome back. Al, what is this week's hot take?

Well, as I said, joining us today is Rachel Vecht, founder of Educating Matters. She's a former school teacher, a parenting expert and a global speaker on work-life integration and family-friendly workplaces. With nearly 30 years of experience, Rachel has worked with tens of thousands of working parents and partnered with major organisations across finance, law, tech and beyond to help employees successfully balance career and family. Rachel, over to you and your hot take.

We're around the time of International Women's Day and there's so much talk always when it comes to gender equality about women. And I think we need to really talk much more about men and more specifically about dads.

So around 40 percent of employees are parents. And the real, real route, and I've been saying this for years, I think before International Women's Day was a thing, to really shift societal expectations. We need to stop thinking that mothers are the primary carers and fathers are always kind of in a just standing back and helping role.

um and so many men that I speak to and obviously have men in same-sex relationships as well they want to fully share those caring responsibilities but very often for dads flexible working requests are more likely to be denied or they don't get that extended paid leave and we need to kind of shift this whole

assumptions and expectations. And it still happens so much in the workplace. Even teachers do it. They're like immediately, if a child is ill, call the mother, even if both parents are working full time. And everybody, everyone benefits from equally involved dads. The kids, obviously, partners and the workplace.

So we've got, you know, during COVID, we had like this golden opportunity where a lot of our office jobs were, you know, we were able to do all these things from home, trying to get rid of that culture of presenteeism and always being on and almost humanizing. We have got this whole life outside of work, which is as important to us.

And I think even, you know, we're talking about mums and dads, but taking it a step further is to stop having this assumption that it's only people with caring responsibilities who need that flexibility, who want to work from home. I mean, taking it a step further back, that is the real route.

to an authentic, inclusive culture, because there are so many different reasons why people might benefit from condensed hours, a job share, working from home, whatever it is. So I just really believe that the real route to greater gender equality is any of that solution is good for the economy and society as a whole. So

you know, we all benefit from to successfully integrate work and family. A key determinant of that is like good physical and mental well-being and just giving people more autonomy and trust and all of that great stuff. I mean, I've been in this space 24 years. So when I first started, there was no such thing as an employee resource group and DEI wasn't even in a job title. So I've seen, I mean,

Tremendous change, but so much more we could do. And there's one thing having all these wonderful policies and benefits and even paid parental leave. So much of it, and I'm sure you've kind of discussed this in other episodes, boils down to your line manager and your direct experience of who you report to. Also, there is a huge cultural piece.

So a lot of dads, which is something mothers have always had to navigate, are concerned about if they ask for extended leave or they want more of that flexibility. They are concerned about the impact on their career progression or, you know, they're going to be perceived as not really prioritizing work over family.

So those are kind of challenges. And also, I think a huge piece is about the role modelling and really openly talking about caring responsibilities, especially dads and more senior parents.

roles and being open like when I started out it would be like just leave your jacket on the back of your chair and you just you know disappear off to sports day and say I'm popping out for a meeting and I'm coming back but really being really being open like putting it in your diary that you're going to do school pickup or whatever and if people in more senior positions are able to do that

that kind of gives others the feeling that they can as well. And also talking about all these things can be good for business. I remember speaking to an investment banker. He said he had a really difficult relationship with one of his clients. He was a guy in his 70s, hugely important client. But the minute he became a father,

and started to talk about, like this guy, this older guy was giving him advice. Their entire working relationship changed because they were talking about something, you know, family and having that connection. And I also, I'm a passionate advocate for this idea that being a parent does change you, but it has...

unbelievable transferable skills that you can bring into the workplace. And we need to talk about that more. You know, you're forced to manage your time better and be more organized, that greater sense of purpose and perspective. Things like managing difficult stakeholders. If you've ever tried to get a toddler into a car seat, when it comes to

you know, navigating a challenge at work with some that's being a bit difficult. That is just a piece of cake compared to things with your own kids. And it's just that increased level of

awareness and empathy for the needs of others. I've had some really challenging conversations with a few friends that I know personally who are CEOs and they're like, I don't want to hear this stuff on LinkedIn. I don't want to be encouraging, you know, people to take more leave or have that flexibility. You know, I've got a business to worry about. And of course, it is a challenge when, you know, someone has to go and leave and you've got to sort all of that out. And line managers have so much within their remit that they need to be thinking about.

But I would say that when you just the same as it's not only people with caring responsibilities, but a huge, the biggest topic in the last couple of years for our business has been neurodiversity. When you just.

understand and acknowledge what else is going on. You can't separate, you know, they talk about work-life balance thing. It's a terrible term. It's a merge and integration. And it's very difficult to separate the two things. So when you give back to people and you give them trust and flexibility and you openly communicate and you are there for them when they're having challenges, but they will give back, you just build so much

um loyalty and um employees would just feel so much more motivated and engaged and you know do you know what it costs or obviously these people that are the ceos or whatever to attract and retain talent if you're losing that talent um because you haven't created that inclusive culture then it's going to take you a lot of money a lot more time to

to recruit new people and I think that you know obviously salary is important particularly for working parents but having this inclusive culture and flexibility and not being able to hide your you know what's going on in your personal life is really valued a lot more than it used to be and it's kind of like we've opened this Pandora's box and people have experienced

you know even if it's once a week but being able to pick up kids from school or be there for a family dilla and log back on afterwards and that's how you really get the best of people creating this environment where they can truly thrive. What advice would you have Rachel for any parent listening who's maybe feeling a bit overwhelmed in the minute with trying to balance work and their children and life and everything else going on is there any any kind of advice you'd offer them?

Yeah, I mean, they say being a parent is the hardest job in the world with the least amount of training. So number one, I have got loads of advice on strategies on how to raise children to thrive. And I'm going to share a free little masterclass as a bonus for anyone, any parent listening that wants some quick wins. But you've got three things. You've got work, you've got your family and you've got yourself. And what I've really noticed speaking to

tens of thousands of parents all over the world is what's the first thing you do when you're really overwhelmed and you've got so much going on you just completely negate yourself and everyone like rolls their eyes when you mention the word self-care but if you don't look after your physical and mental well-being everything's just gonna you know you can't be productive at work and

and you can't really show up in a way that you want to as a parent. So it's all about boundaries, really. Really forcing yourself to sit down and think, what do I really value? What matters to me? What are my priorities? You are not,

never ever going to have enough time to do everything in the way that you want to do it. If you'd like to connect with Rachel, the best place to find her is probably LinkedIn. She's there every single day. You'll find her writing cool things and having great conversations about parenting. She's obviously quite opinionated, which is quite cool. Search for Rachel Vecht Educating Matters, which is Rachel Vecht. It's V-E-C-H-T. Is that

German or Polish, Rachel? I don't know. Interesting. If you're an organisation who's looking for ways to better support working parents or carers, then Rachel's put together some really great tips plus loads of useful resources on Educating Matters. You can find all of that in the show notes. And if you're a parent looking for practical advice, don't miss Rachel's free masterclass on raising children to thrive. It is partnered with her best strategies from over 30 years of experience. You can also check out the Educating Matters blog for even more tips and insights. And as always,

All the links are in the show notes. Fabulous. Okay, it's now time for my favourite time of the week, the world famous weekly workplace surgery. This is where I put your question to Leanne, who is a chartered occupational psychologist, who's an expert in workplace culture. She is the person who is going to be able to answer your question. If she can't answer it, no one can. Not even AI. If I can't answer it, don't know, but I'll go find out. That is actually true. She does do that. Okay, Leanne, here's question one. Authentic self or authentically unhinged?

This person writes, I'm at my wits end here. Please don't laugh, Leanne. Our company recently introduced a bring your authentic self to work policy, which I initially thought was brilliant. Then our sales director started sharing his authentic self. Turns out he's deeply into conspiracy theories.

We're talking full on the world is controlled by lizard people and 5G towers and mind control devices. He's bringing these topics up in client meetings. Wow. Team catch-ups and even our company WhatsApp group. He's a top performer revenue wise, but staff are understandably uncomfortable and two clients ready-made comments. HR says the policy is about creating a judgment-free workplace and won't step in.

How do I handle this without crushing our culture of authenticity or losing our top sales performer? It's hard to answer this one with much advice without knowing the relationship of the writer to the person because you might have very limited power in this situation. Just have to watch back with your popcorn and see how this turns out. Yeah.

do you know what first of all it's a fundamental misunderstanding again like intention is in the right place but why are we doing these things and it screams to me if somebody a senior leader somewhere good intentions who has heard about this and thought huh I know we'll implement a bring your whole self to work day and not really put any intention behind it any boundaries behind it any kind of reasonable purpose behind it yes it is to encourage these conversations but it

It doesn't sound like it's been executed in a way that is actually...

fundamentally useful for culture or organisational life. Undoing that is now going to be very difficult because like you say, you could potentially get called out. It's like, oh, you tried to do this thing and now you're rolling back, especially in this time, in this climate, in these times, rolling back any kind of VDI initiative is probably going to get some eyebrow raises. Adam Grant said some really focusing on the person who enjoys conspiracy theories. And I think this is well, it's got quite...

It's got quite politically charged, hasn't it, I think, after COVID. Like before COVID, conspiracy theories for me were like, lol, you know, someone thinks the earth is flat. Well, that's fine, but who are they hurting, you know? COVID would really change that, didn't it, in terms of conspiracy theory and anti-vaxxing. And I think there's a lot of people, science-driven people, such as myself, who did get quite frustrated about some of that.

Adam Grant has written about this recently. It's interesting. I actually Googled it. Full disclosure. I told you if I didn't know the answer, I'd find out. I remember that Adam Grant spoke about this recently. I mean, he said, believing conspiracy theories isn't always a sign of stupidity. It may be a mark of narcissism. Grandiose narcissists want to feel special. I know something that you don't. Vulnerable narcissists have self-centered paranoia. Of all the people, powerful groups are out to yet me.

So worth, I guess, just reflecting on in terms of the psychology of the person you might be dealing with could be narcissistic, could be wanting to feel special or in control rather than necessarily that they're, you know, just incorrect. So I think, yeah, I mean, it gives you some context to it all. I really don't know what to suggest when I don't know who you are in this relationship scenario. But I think any conversation is...

of this kind, the first person you should feel able to go to as your manager and maybe provide that feedback that it's causing some performance related issues. And it actually doesn't matter if it wasn't conspiracy theories, if it was something else than that bringing somebody's whole self to work, if it's impacting performance in some way, that's a conversation to be had. Not necessarily a change being made by the individual, but a conversation to be had. So I think take it to your manager, provide that feedback, see if you can work with them to

to maybe give this person a different environment where they can share this part of themselves there's also an argument that actually this part of themselves isn't particularly productive and is quite disruptive for a working environment because it's not about a demographic is it necessarily it's about a viewpoint um oh it's a really tough one but i refer back to adam grant this person is probably a narcissist there's probably not a lot you can do about it unless you have direct um

control and power over them as a manager um and if you do then it's a conversation about these conversations aren't very productive we'd like to to see um them not occurring this is what we actually meant by bring your whole self today work this is how perhaps you can channel your individuality into something fun at work um

Yeah, tough one, Al. What are your thoughts? I'm not sure there is an answer. I'm not sure there is, but I just, I picked it out because I thought it was really funny. And I'm so sorry if you're a big believer in conspiracy theories, but if you are, you probably believe that we're lizard people as well, so. Okay, now question number two. Our CEO has turned into Sherlock Holmes. Hmm.

After months of asking for a way for our teams to give honest feedback, our CEO finally introduced an anonymous feedback system. But ever since, he's been obsessed with identifying who wrote what.

He's comparing writing styles, asking managers which team members might think that way, and even calling people into one-to-ones with suspiciously specific questions about feedback that was supposedly anonymous. People are panicking, and the system that was meant to improve psychological safety has made everyone paranoid. I drafted some important feedback about our toxic leadership culture, but I haven't submitted it because I'm genuinely worried about repercussions. Yeah, don't submit that. No, no, no.

Can we salvage this situation, Leanne? Not really. Not really. And it makes me really sad because I've seen various different business owners go through various different emotions when first opening themselves up to this type of feedback. I understand it's a very...

very hard situation to put yourself in as a business owner to open up to this, you know, yourself so vulnerably to this type of feedback. So you have my empathy business owners out there who are going through this process. This screams to me, was it an Indian company not so long ago that did like a stress test and then ended up sacking everyone who said that they were feeling a bit burnt out. Once that trust has been breached, it's very hard to get back. It's like in any type of relationship, right?

You know, if somebody goes against their word, if somebody breaks a promise, essentially cheats on you by not meeting your expectations, then that trust is really, really hard to earn back. Because there's always going to be that part of you that is going to think, I don't trust that you're not going to do it again because you've done it before. I agree, Al. I wouldn't be submitting that feedback immediately.

I think if there's a, it was this person, a manager in the company or. Yes, this person's a manager, but it's a CEO has put this in place. I mean, the only thing you could do is go to your peers or depending if there's other leaders between you,

or basically kind of get together almost like a group of people at your level. Like an angry posse? Is that what you're saying? No, like an intervention. Like an intervention that you've got. Let's say there's four of the managers in the business that are reporting to this year. You could go to them and go, do you think this is uncool as well? Is this fundamentally a problem? Do we need to bring this in?

to his attention that actually it's backfired massively. If you get all four people on board and you go to your CEO together in a supportive, articulate way and perhaps with some suggestions of how we can start to undo this, which is basically stop this activity immediately, make sure that there are added guarantees around this data retention

remaining anonymous and confidential there's nothing else he can do to find out who people are I would suggest that he's no longer involved in the raw data or indeed those initial what we'd call listening events or more kind of information gathering sessions and

And really work towards, at this point, I'd say try and get in an independent consultant if you are going to try and salvage this to get the feedback. Because with that, if I, for example, go in as an independent consultant, as I do, to work with organisations to gather this type of feedback, if I break confidentiality in any way...

An employee has the right to contact the HCPC, the British Psychological Society, make a formal complaint and potentially strike me off so I'll never work again. So my professional reputation and lifestyle, well-being, what's it called? What's it called? Life, what's it called? Living, my professional living. It's a more complex word than that. No, it depends on it. So there's, you know, a direct path you can take should you want to complain, which is what is the nice thing about bringing in an independent consultant. Yeah.

So that would be my kind of advice. Try and get some people together who share your thoughts. Try and get this CEO away from any kind of data. Don't submit what you have put together and maybe look in the future to bring in an independent person to run this with. The thing I would say to a business owner if they're listening and going, oops, I might have done a little bit of this.

There is nothing you're going to gain from knowing who said this. It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. Irrelevant. It doesn't matter if one person thinks this in your business or a hundred people think this in your business. It doesn't matter because that's a pocket of toxicity that we always talk about. The pocket that isn't quite right that defines your culture. If there's one person in your business that feels uncomfortable about something and happy about something, marginalized by something, that defines your culture. It doesn't matter who said it. The fact is it was said and that's where you put your energy into fixing the problem.

Just a quick one about this. We did have, and I've said this before in the pod, and I almost hope this person does hear this and realizes I'm talking about them. We had this person who was going to do a, implement a employee survey. And so for the day it was going out, did one of these cringy posts on LinkedIn with a picture of her looking really nervous going, oh my God, I'm so nervous.

My employee survey is going out today. Number one, what a way to skew results. Number two, what a way to set yourself up. Number three, you probably know it's not going to be as good as you hope it is. Number four, you're binding your entire personality and your self-worth to a set of results. Instead, be a scientist. Instead, approach it like a really good marketer or product manager will do and say, I have a hypothesis, but let's test it.

Let's see if we do have a good workplace culture. And if we don't, these are results. This is not an... All right, yes, it probably is a little bit to do with you, but this is an interesting set of results that will help you to improve things massively. So treat it like an experiment. Get the results back. Be impassive. Not impassive. What's the word when you're slightly removed from it? Do you know the word, Leanne? We both wrote our words today. Passive. Passive, yeah.

listening you know i'm talking about um and just treat those as results sexy when you talk about science i talk about science the way of uh the way of uh of doing um of doing marketing and sales and products and all that kind of thing exactly it's data collection isn't it and it's only useful if the data is actually reflective of what's going on yeah it's um it's not to be used for evil anyway you got a bit pink by saying i sounded sexy i'm gonna move on to question number two

I'm not sure if I'm angry or impressed by our sneaky team. I manage a team of content creators who work remotely. Last month, I noticed a dramatic improvement in their output. Have you got any ideas for what's happening, Leanne?

We had more content, faster turnaround and consistently high quality. I was impressed until I discovered their little secret. Lee, what would you guess their secret was? Are they using chat GPT? They're using AI to generate most of their work. On one hand, they're exceeding all of their KPIs. Clients are happy and the quality is very, very good. Much better than what it used to be. On the other hand, I feel deceived and worried about ethical implications.

Some team members are spending just two to three hours a day or hours, sorry, some members are spending just two to three hours on work that used to take a day, but they're still billing for full time.

I genuinely don't know if I should discipline them for the deception or praise them for the innovation. Well done, by the way, you personally wrote this in for being a little bit more sort of like, huh, fair enough. What is it? Bill Gates from Microsoft always says, I always want to, I always want to hire someone who's lazy and innovative because they will find all kinds of little shortcuts. Lee. I, first of all, it's perfectly fine to hold both of these emotions at the same time. You can be furious and really fricking impressed. Yeah.

Those two things concur. That's happened to me. I've spelt that about me quite a few times, I think. Oh, many people that I've employed over time, furious, but incredibly impressed. It's one of those things where I think, look, if you're meeting all your KPIs and everyone's happy, brilliant.

The difficulty you have, as you say, is that, and I'm interested to know how you're doing this. Are you monitoring them somehow to know that work that did take them a day is now taking them a few hours? Or is that a conclusion that you're coming to? As I mentioned before, you know, we use AI for various different things, but it usually gives us a skeleton that we then have to spend time kind of like getting right and correcting and changing around a bit and everything.

Putting the little fairy dust on, I think. And that can actually probably take us quite a long time. And sometimes maybe it's not much shorter than if we'd have just done it ourselves. So I think unless you absolutely know for sure that that's what's happening, you're not making an assumption, that it requires some more investigation. I mean, the other thing is as well, is that it depends on the commercial industry.

commercial state of your business right now. If your business is doing really well and these new inputs are really great for performance and potentially adding more revenue or improving your profitability, then it's a fairly simple thing to solve and kind of going, well, what else can I get these really cool, innovative, clever, lazy people to do?

And I think ask them. This is a really nice way of kind of job crafting, which is really, really powerful for an individual in terms of creating meaningful work that they engage with, that they're going to perform really well in and consistently as well over time.

This could be a really nice opportunity to kind of go, well, how now we've used AI to augment a process that is fundamental to our business. And you've smashed it, by the way. Good for you. What else can we do to craft out a meaningful role that will take you back up to a full time, full time job that is going to enable us to grow our business even more, add more value to our people, you

You know, all those really nice, lovely things. It could be that it's going the other way, that commercial things aren't great at the minute. And it might actually be that your people are just giving you a reason to make some job cuts or reduce hours down, which is unfortunate, but a very common risk of AI, which we've talked about multiple, multiple times before. So I think to summarise, be furious and impressed at the same time. And I'd be very open about that feeling when you talk to your people, but probably with a little bit of humour.

um really understand commercially what it means for your business can you um are you in a position where you can add more work on or is it in you're in a position where actually you might want to reduce your pay down and then take that conversation to your your people in a really open transparent collaborative consultative way and ultimately ultimately these people have done an incredible thing for you and your business they've created a way to do higher quality work

in a shorter period of time. Yeah, and I think also, let's be honest, this isn't mouse jigglers. What's a mouse jiggler? You've never heard of that? Is that the same as a gigolo? No. No. Very different thing with a very different idea. What would a mouse jiggler look like? Lee, I'm trying... Mouse jiggler is when you get a little machine to move your mouse for you and then you disappear off to Portugal. I've heard mouse. Yes. Not mouse. No, no.

mickey mouse no mouse on your mice so this is not a mouse jiggler this is not someone who's cheating you this is actually someone who's delivering better work in half the time or a quarter the time so you have to ask yourself first of all are you annoyed and i know we appreciate that you're smiling when you're saying you're annoyed but are you annoyed and thinking about reducing the amount that you pay them because the because what because they're doing the work in a third of the time

that's just good business. If you could do your job in a third of a time, would you expect to get a third of your salary? No. And in fact, this has probably reduced the amount of work you need to do yourself. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater is the first thing. Secondly, as Leanne said, you've either got the two options of where you can go job crafting. So you can go to these people and go, great, look, you've got some extra time. How would you like to spend this?

And it'll be so interesting, your answer, because they will either go, well, do you know what I've always wanted to do? I want to build our own LLM or I want to build this. I want to do that. Or they'll just go, well, you know, I've got some stuff to catch up on. That will tell you how engaged they are in the job and how much they care and what your culture's like.

Because if they just say, oh, no, we've got loads of stuff we can get on with. Don't give me anything else. They're checking out. They're spending the afternoon at the beach or taking the dogs for a walk. But if they genuinely want to find more stuff to work on, then you've got a great team, as Leanne says. They're innovative. They're clever. All right, a bit sneaky, but I think most of the innovative and clever people in the world are a little bit sneaky. And so it could also be a chance to completely transform your operating model and how you work. Like when you were talking, the thing that sprung to mind was

potentially moving to a four-day work week which some organizations want to do and let's be honest if you're fully remote and you do a four-day work week for the full-time pay you will be you'll be swamped with applications every time people will say they will love you stay hard they will stay stay safe not taking that out of context sorry carry on yeah sticky employees which is out of the official term i don't particularly like it um

It's true. We're going to call that bit out. It's true. So what else were you going to say? Moving away from staying hard and sticking employees, what else were you going to say there? This is a massive opportunity. Massive opportunity. I think, yeah, and with that in mind, it takes some time to actually figure out what you want first and how you want the business to look with this new way of operating. It could be that you actually create a really high-performing remote business that's four days a week that

that does everything it needs to do, makes all the money it needs to make and grows at the rate you want it to grow. And everyone does it in a very happy and healthy and meaningful way. What a problem. This is a very first world problem. Very much is. Talking of great opportunities, you listening, I've got a great opportunity coming up this Thursday to listen to the amazing Eric D. Stone, or watch if you're on YouTube.

He's the author of Jumpstart Your Workplace Culture and a leader who's weathered everything from 9-11 to COVID while running regional operations at Enterprise Holding. Now he's helping business build cultures that actually last through his company, Clear Path Ventures. Yeah, I'm particularly excited about this one because Eric cuts through all the corporate nonsense with really practical

strategies really for any leader big or small business that wants results without resorting to the micromanagement and fear tactics that we're hearing so much about recently so Eric will be sharing why spotting culture carriers in your organization might be the most important skill you're not using yep so join us Thursday for what is going to be a cracking conversation Leanne any other business I feel like we've run out of words we feel like we can't speak anymore anything else to say subscribe

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