Special Episode 3

Podnotes: Asking for what you need to thrive at work

Transcript

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0.03

Claire Campbell: Welcome to this part-time works podcast. My name is Claire Campbell, and I’m a director at Timewise, and your host for today. We’ve brought together three experts to discuss part-time working, particularly focused on those with long term health conditions and care responsibilities. Why? Because around 7 million workers juggle work and care, and 2 million working age people report having a long-term health condition that then limits their ability to work. While employment rates for this group have improved in recent decades, only half are in work, today.

Each year, over 300,000 people leave their jobs and end up out of the workforce entirely with work limiting health conditions. This has resulted in substantial costs for individuals, employers and the wider economy, and risks deepening existing inequalities. At Timewise, we’ve long been champions for quality part-time work because we know it makes work possible for millions of people. Through this podcast series, we’ve listened to people tell their stories, describe how work supports them and pass on their tips. Today, we’ve asked along three guests to give us their perspective. We want to explore why this is a growing challenge, and what advice we can pass on to people who are trying to balance work and care or health issues or seeking part-time work. Welcome to all of you. Can I first come to each of you to introduce yourselves?

1.19

Emily Holzhausen: I’m Emily Holzhausen. I’m director of policy and public affairs at Carers UK, and we’re a membership organisation of unpaid carers, so people who care for their older, ill or disabled relatives and friends.

1.32

Julie Denning: I’m Julie Denning. I’m a chartered health psychologist – that’s my clinical background – and CBT therapist. I own a company called Working to Wellbeing that supports people with long term conditions back into work. And I’m also chair of the Vocational Rehabilitation Association, which is also a membership organisation supporting practitioners, vocational rehabilitation practitioners, to support people to remain in work, to return to work, to recover in work.

1.57

Patrick Thomson: Hello. I’m Patrick Thomson, and I’m head of research analysis and policy at the Standard Life Centre for the Future of Retirement. We’re a thinktank with a bold ambition to help everyone achieve long term financial security.

2.11

Claire Campbell: As I mentioned in my introduction, more people than we realise are facing challenges around balancing work and care, or maintaining work while managing a health condition. Patrick, I’ll come to you – what’s your take on why we have such high numbers of people affected by health and care responsibilities, and with longer working lives, is the forward look that this becomes even more prevalent?

Patrick Thomson: Yes, well, I mean, one answer is, we’ve always had a lot of people with health conditions or caring responsibilities, so in some ways, it’s nothing new. And these are people who’ve – are often only noticed or brought to public attention when, it’s often when it’s costing the economy something. We’ve had a whole cohort of unpaid carers and who with, without which our society wouldn’t operate or function properly. And we’ve always had people struggling in work without health support that they might need. So those two things, health and caring, they’ve for decades been the main reason that people stop work or maybe leave work earlier than they’d like to. We have millions of people with long term health conditions, limiting the type of work they can do.

Those have been increasing over the years, so it’s around 20% now of the working age population, up from about 15% a decade ago. A lot of that is to do with a topic I focus on a lot, which is the ageing population, the fact that we are getting older as a society and our workforce is as well. We also – looking at, in terms of mental health conditions, those are more prevalent now than they were in previous decades, particularly amongst younger age groups. Alongside that, I suppose we, you know, the jobs we do are different as well. They are, they are less manual. We’ve got a few of those kind of heavy industry jobs, but work now remains and is ever getting faster paced. We have higher stress. We have less chance to switch off. So even though those – the type of jobs we have, you may not think about it affecting people’s health and caring needs in the same way, often, these are jobs that are difficult to maintain and carry on for the long run.

4.02

Claire Campbell: I want to start, Emily, perhaps, with the advice you’d give to people who are in one of the situations we’ve explored in this series, which is trying to manage part-time work and a caring responsibility. So one of the challenges many carers face is, of course, their responsibilities can change day to day. So what time off are people entitled to and what should you do? You know, if you need more time off than the Carer’s act might allow.

4.28

Emily Holzhausen: Yes, well, it’s such an important issue. You know, things that can change overnight. And I think people can suddenly become carers as well. 5,300 people who are working every day become carers. I mean, it’s a staggering number.

So in terms of rights at work, I think we’ve got three foundational pieces here. We’ve got the first one, which is a right time off in emergencies. And this is for a domestic emergency, and that is somebody who reasonably relies on you for support. So that might be a few days, it’s classically unpaid, and you have to tell your employer as soon as you need that time off, so that builds in a bit of that flexibility.

The second foundational piece is planned leave if you’re caring for somebody with a disability or a long-term condition, and that’s sort of around three months or so, and that is the ability to take up to five days of unpaid leave per year. So that is, if you’re working full time, if you’re working part-time, it’s prorated. So let’s say you work three days a week, your entitlement would be three days a week, and that’s really quite flexible. So because it’s planned, you have to give your employer notice, and it’s about twice the amount of notice you have to give for annual leave, and it can be taken in half days or full days, or up to your full entitlement.

The third part, of course, is the foundational piece of work, which is day one rights. And all of these are day one rights, day one rights to request flexible working. And when you do that as a formal change, it’s contractual change with your employer.

So having said all that, it’s really important that people check the terms and conditions, because it might be that you’ve got different leave provisions that are paid. There might be flexibility on top of that, so you need more leave, it might already be written into a policy that there’s discretion with managers, or there’s leave for, you know, sabbatical. So a lot of paid leave is put under special leave, for example. So it’s essential that you raise this if you’re worried about it. First read your terms and conditions and then talk to your line manager. And if you’ve got any queries then and you’ve got an HR function, talk to them. And otherwise, there’s some fantastic advice out there, and lots of websites. And of course, you’ve got informal flex as well.

6.46

Claire Campbell: Do you think, Emily, given the giving the growing numbers, as we talked about, and how common this is, that kind of employers are a bit more, you know, receptive to requests. What are you hearing?

Emily Holzhausen: Yes, we are hearing, I mean, when we look – we’ve measured the implementation of the Carer’s Leave Act, and we’ve seen very positive response from employers. We work with a lot of good practice employers. We’ve got some employers who certainly don’t know about these changes. And when we look at employees knowledge of these different areas, it tends to be better when they’re in bigger organisations. So as soon as we get to smaller organisations that awareness then diminishes. And you know, there’s certainly a job that we need to do in terms of helping managers understand how to manage this equity within the workplace. And what happens if somebody comes to me with this situation, what do I do. Understanding how caring can affect someone’s life, that caring for your mum with dementia, for example, can be emotionally very stressful. So it’s the sort of thing where that training – managers who’ve received that kind of training just feel that that’s a really good investment. But I would also say that when we talk to carers about, do you feel confident about raising this within the workplace, it’s not always understood. It’s not always well received. And I don’t want to be negative about this, but that is people’s experiences, so there’s a bigger job for us to do.

8.22

Claire Campbell: And Julie, I know you work with a lot of people managing a long term health condition and returning to work. Again, I know employer policies really vary around sick pay, but a lot of organisations, you know, will only be giving statutory sick pay, which is kind of up to 28 weeks at a kind of fairly low rate. So financially, it’s obviously better to be in work. Could you say first, perhaps a little more about vocational rehab and how you help people?

8.46

Julie Denning : Vocational rehabilitation is actually a really broad church, so it can range from non-clinical input, which is often about planning phased return to works, or supporting line managers and the employee with reasonable adjustments and what that looks like, because most people haven’t necessarily come across that thing. What is reasonable adjustment? What does it look like? And there’s kind of a lot of lacking in knowledge, as you were saying, Emily, about the need for training. It’s really, really important.

And then at the sort of other end, and it’s a continuum, I guess. You can have – book rehab that involves some clinical support, which is the sort of work that we do that kind of integrates sort of rehabilitation from a broad perspective of psychological, physical, cognitive health, to enable someone to think about the symptoms they’ve got to manage as part of their long term conditions, and think about that in a work context. That sort of vocational rehabilitation, in my experience, would deliver on, is saying, Okay, so you’ve got this particular long term condition. These are the symptoms you’re experiencing. You can manage them to a point, and you’re able to function in your everyday life. But how do you then function at work? And how do you manage a flare up, for example. And how do you communicate with your line manager about that process?

So Voc Rehab practitioners will work with the individual employee, but they will often want to work with the employer and the line manager as well to join up the dots. Tto make sure that it’s a really smooth pathway in terms of supporting somebody back in into work. Because it’s hard to do. It’s hard to have those conversations – you don’t often know where to start, and it’s good to have an advocate that sort of sits alongside you, helping you to have those conversations, either to enable you to have them with – like your line manager, or to have the line manager in the room in order for us to talk to the line manager separately. Either way, the goal is, how can we enable someone to remain in work?

Because it’s just so important, the moment someone falls out of work, the clock starts ticking in terms of their likelihood of returning. So to have part-time opportunities to be able to do that, and often phased return is a part-time process. And then sometimes people get to the point where they actually can’t get back to full time. They kind of hit their, almost, ceiling. And I’ve known people that have sort of, we’ve done gradual returns, pushed for the hours increase, changing job increase, we’ve gotten to a point it’s just like, I can’t do this. And we might revert back to a previous step in the phased return. And that’s the comfort zone, that’s the sweet spot, so for everybody, that’s different. But we just want people to get all the benefits from good work and to remain in the workplace where we can.  

11.14

Claire Campbell: When people come back after a long period off, and you’ve talked about sort of phased return and so on. You know, is that something people have the right to do, they have their right to return, you know, different hours or in a phased way, kind of, is that just or is that, again, down for employer policy?

11.28

Julie Denning: It’s the right to request it. Often when we work with people, we’ll say, almost, let’s not do the change in hours thing first. Let’s just have a conversation. See how far we can get before we have those kind of conversations, because people often, and understandably, like in the here and now, at this moment in time, I can’t possibly do return to work.

We’re like, Yeah, I get it. But full time, for example, it’s like, well, let’s just hold that on pause for a second. Let’s see what Rehab we can do. See how much we can help you to recover, often seeing work as part of the rehabilitation process. And then think about adjusting and changing hours more formally in a contractual sense. But the moment an employer understands that there is an issue, they need to support their individual with, their employee with – they have to consider reasonable adjustments.

Claire Campbell: And what about you know someone in work but has a health condition where they might have good days and bad days, how do you talk to your employer about what you need?

Julie Denning: Yeah, I think that’s a really important point, and doesn’t get covered often enough. I think we often talk about getting someone back in, but how do we help them to stay there?

And we think about a return to work plan. But what’s that plan where we help people to actually stay in work? It’s a different thing because we’re not getting back in, they’re already there. And that’s where the concept of a wellbeing action plan can really come into the fore. And it’s kind of a live document that exists between employer-employee about what the employer is struggling with from in a health and work context, and what a line manager can do and the employer can do to help that employee. And it’s kind of an almost an agreement. It’s not a contract, but it’s an agreement between the two parties, if you like, of saying, This is what I need, and this is how it’s going to help from the employer perspective.

And then we work through all of that, and then we kind of regularly review it, make sure that it, it stays current, and that it’s actually still a useful document. You don’t just do and go, yay, we’re done. And then shelve it. It needs to be a live document.

And as part of that, I would kind of expect, certainly, if there’s a VR, Voc Rehab practitioner involved, if it’s a fluctuating condition, that that is part of a wellbeing action plan. You say, What do I do if, in the event, I have a flare up of my pain, for example, or if someone’s recovering from long COVID, that is a condition that has flare ups as part of it, as much as someone really can effectively pace themselves, often, it comes out of the blue, this, this flare up.

And so we need to be able to actually, let’s put in a plan that when we can see a flare up coming, this is what we do to try and manage it. But if we just comes out of the blue and you wake up one day and you feel like, you know, you get a bus and you feel absolutely exhausted, you know, deeply fatigued, this is what we do in that eventuality as well. So you kind of have different plans for different sets of circumstances, but it’s about tailoring it to the individual and what they need.

14.01

Claire Campbell: Emily, you gave a couple of examples, but there any other policies that you wanted to highlight that you think a proactive employer, you know, should have in place, or you’d like, would really support carers in the workplace?

Emily Holzhausen: Alongside paid leave, which does make a big difference, because when we’ve talked to carers, you know, there are a lot of people who feel they can’t take the unpaid element.

So paid really does make a difference, and for those employers who’ve put those adjustments in place – find that people don’t take the full entitlement, and that’s because they treat it like a precious commodity. They only take it when they need it. They kind of keep it for a rainy day when they might need it.

Other elements are things like Carer’s passports, for example, and that they sort of sit alongside a wellbeing action plan. Actually, you might have a wellbeing action plan, or you might have Carer’s passport. They might – they’re, in principle, the same kind of thing, in that they allow you to talk about your situation. You don’t necessarily need to impart any confidential information about who you’re caring for. But there might be things that, if you move line management quite a lot, there’s a shared understanding, for example, of what your needs are and how to manage your situation – any informal flex that might be needed.

And that’s the other part. I was just going to say, just because it’s about the culture within an organisation, and that might be the for a certain period you might need to work from home, or that your hours might change slightly. I mean, it’s just as Julie’s, you know, was talking about people with health conditions. They’re really helpful things, because it helps managers know where they are, and it helps the workers know, know where they are. So very, very popular documents for the people that use them and use them well.

So that’s why sort of flex and these encompassing policies are there for a really good reason. To make sure that we keep the talent within the workplace, make sure that people are working to their full potential for as long as they need to. And I think, I mean, we’ve done a lot of – Carers UK has done a lot of work with carers on poverty, and we know the impacts that taking time out of the labour market has on not just immediate income, but future retirement income as well. So like what we’re talking about today is really future proofing our working population in lots of, lots of ways.

Claire Campbell: Patrick, I wanted to bring you in it, you know, in terms of, Emily’s made a good case there for individuals and for society. Why this matters. But you know, any benefits that you wanted to highlight about, about offering the reasons to offer enhanced support to staff facing these sort of challenges?  

16.47

Patrick Thomson: I’d agree, things like flexible work, 100%. I know this is, we’re kind of preaching to the choir here a little bit, but it’s, you know, such an important thing, we – you know, multiple surveys we’ve done and research showing what are the things that would help you be in better, sustained work for longer. And it is flexibility in all those forms, whether you know how, where and when you work, the paid Carer’s leave. Agree, really, really key. I mean, I think, you know, it’s great that it’s actually right to unpaid carers leave. I mean, but it really doesn’t go far enough. And from you know, I’m lucky. I work for an employer who are offer 10 paid – 10 days paid Carer’s leave. And completely agree with Emily, people don’t… people take that seriously. It’s not a perk or something. It’s something that people take very seriously and use when they need to, and they use it in a sensible way. But it makes all the difference.

What’s really helped as well in our company is having high profile senior people within the organisation talking about this themselves, talking about their own situation, their own circumstances, you know, admitting and saying that these things are often hard. People have ups and downs in life. Life is often far from straightforward. And being – hearing someone senior talking about that in an open way, actually, that – the policies matter – but it’s hearing something like that that makes, makes a real difference, I think, to a lot of people.

Claire Campbell: Julie, perhaps with an example or from your experience, what does it mean to individuals to have that support, to stay in or return to work?

18.08

Julie Denning: Well, I think it just it means, it actually means the world. I know it sounds really trite to say, but it’s one of those things I often say to people, you take it for granted that you’re at work. It’s only when you fall out of work that you realise exactly what work does for you. When you’re at work, work provides you with a structure. You get up, you get ready, you do your job, whether you’re commuting or not. You stop for lunch, you go, you know, go home, go commute. But it also, you know, work provides us with social support. We’ve got people around us, whether it is in a hybrid setting and you know, 2d or 3d however you are doing your work. There are people that you connect with. You share a joke with. You… emotionally connect with you. You cognitively connect with – it’s that dynamic – those people with you. You love your colleagues or you hate them. You’re in a social connect. You know you’re in a social space. And if you’re of working age, the likelihood is that most of your friends and family will be at work, so you are even more alone, whereas when you’re at work, you still do spend more time with your colleagues than you do with your loved ones. So it’s a really important place. You get to derive social support. And of course, you do get paid. You know, I have seen people literally, you know, desperately hang on to working till five o’clock because that means they’ve got another day clocked, which means they can then have another sick day, and then when they leave it, they’ve got a sick day banked.

So, so, you know, and getting back to work too quickly because of the financial implications and ramifications of not being at work. And it’s a major, major worry for people, obviously, but it’s not necessarily the main reason why people do work. It’s quite an interesting measure, is financial engagement, but it’s also about a sense of norm. It’s the norm to be at work and in that social context again. And also it’s that sense of self, you know, people will describe themselves if you’re out, I’m a psychologist. It’s how you just define yourself and describe yourself. So work actually gives you an awful lot more than you’d even sort of sit there and think about ordinarily.

And thinking about that, I remember one chap that I was supporting, and he had a lot of physical challenges. And he would, you know, get extremely fatigued, like full on fatigue, not talking about bit of tiredness, that was a main part of his condition. He was really, really struggling with that. And we would sort of negotiate with his employer about how he might come back to work and what he can do, and whether he was able to do certain hours and job content, or that scenario in terms of phased return. And it was sort of umming and ahhing about whether to go back on it. And I remember him just one day saying, gee, I’ve just, I know my mental health isn’t isn’t great at the moment either. And I know that if I don’t get back to work soon, my mental health will be more of a problem than my physical health, because it is literally – I’m climbing the walls being at home. I just want to be connected and be at work, even if it’s just a couple of hours every day when I’m connecting in. It just will make all the difference to me to feel like I’m getting back on that road to recovery or that connection. So it’s extraordinarily valuable.

And I just wanted to pick up on what Patrick and you, Emily, were saying as well. This word flexibility comes up an awful lot, and we think about it in the context of carers and long term conditions, and, like we say, that the combination of the two, but, but if we just take a step back and think about sort of, I’m big into looking at intergenerational stuff at the minute, and the younger generations want flexibility. And it kind of strikes me that whenever you make a change in a workplace that’s for one person, actually, you often find the changes we suggest actually will benefit the whole of the working population.

And actually, you know, we can be all encompassing in these changes that actually help everybody, because we are seeing folk, you know, younger folk who aren’t ill, but actually are wanting more flexibility to look after their mental health. They’re not yet mentally ill, but they’re trying to guard against becoming mentally ill. And so I think if we just had this philosophy generally, and I think you were saying, Patrick, about a shift in work and the way work is defined and described. I think we’re in that moment actually. I think there’s lots of flex and flux in what work looks like, or could look like.

21.53

Patrick Thomson: Julie, just to build on that, I completely agree, and it made me think – we did a study a couple of years ago looking, we’re actually trying to look at ageism in the in the in the job market, looking how different job ads were described. And we’re looking at different age groups responded to different factors within a job ad. And the one thing that people of all ages clicked on and said they liked and said they’re more likely to apply for a job, and think it was for them, was offering and talking about flexible work upfront, it was almost the only thing that cut across all ages. So, yeah, agree, completely important topic.

Claire Campbell: Well, that brings us nicely in, you know, the first episode in this series featured people trying to find part-time work with flexibility they need. And, you know, for many of them – struggling. So let’s chat for a moment about, you know, handling a conversation about health or care when you’re going for jobs. Julie, perhaps I’ll come to you first. If someone is living with a health condition, how would you suggest they bring that up when in the recruitment process? And how would you bring it up?

Julie Denning: This is a really interesting one, because it’s entirely up to the individual’s discretion as to when they want to discuss it. They are not under any obligation to nor should an employer, prospective employer, ask about it, pre job offer. So that’s the first set of things to consider.

So it becomes a very personal choice of whether somebody wants to disclose. And I completely understand both sides of it, actually. I think an interesting thing about disclosing in advance, though, of saying, Look, you know, I’ve got this long-term condition or I have these caring responsibilities. What can you offer me in terms of support? I think it enables you to suss out the employer as much as an interview is a two-way thing. You’re deciding whether you want to work for that organisation, as much as whether the organisation thinks you’d be right for them. And I think you can almost determine whether your values are aligned as to how they respond. And if they haven’t got, you know, haven’t got the support for you, then it’s going to be an uphill battle once you do start working for them. So you can kind of make that decision early on and see, almost see the whites of their eyes, of what sort of employer actually are they? But I think it’s personal choice at the end of the day about whether you do or don’t want to disclose, and I think it’s – and as a Voc Rehab person, and we would talk about that and help someone think that through, of what would they prefer to do.

And then if they get offered the job, then we think about, then again, having the conversation, because it is a tricky one, of, how much do you want to disclose? Some people are extraordinarily open, and that’s their choice. And other people are like, Nope, I don’t want anybody to know. They don’t need to know. It’s my private stuff. And the only thing I would guard against that in is saying that it goes back to that reasonable adjustments. If an employer knows, they are obliged to think about it and to think about how they help you. If they don’t know, and you’re not giving them any sense of it either, you know, you’re extraordinarily good at masking, for example, what’s happening to you then, then there are implications for that too, for you.  

Claire Campbell: Emily, you know, how do you talk to people about discussing their caring commitments in that sort of process?

Emily Holzhausen: Very similar, when you’ve got caring responsibilities. There is – the employer shouldn’t be necessarily asking about that or probing questions, because there is discrimination by association. You’re covered by that by association with disability, by the Equality Act. So, once you get to job offer stage, this is something you can absolutely discuss with people. And I would say to employers, is just keeping an open mind, because, you know, to see part-time work as well, for example, that goes up the seniority scale, is really important for people who – quite often, if we restrict part-time work to more junior roles, we are losing out on a lot of talent in a lot of places.

Claire Campbell: And final question, I’ll perhaps come to Julie and Emily on this, how, how important is it for the people that you support to have access to good quality part-time roles? And you know, what would your ask be to employers?

Julie Denning: It’s game changing. It really does make the most enormous difference to individuals, to be able to have that flexibility and to be able to be in work and to be contributing, and actually sometimes have the opportunity to switch off.

It’s the opportunity to be me in this environment, and I can be different me in other environments, but it’s actually, you know, this is what I’m doing here and now. And I think that sort of opportunity to be able to focus in a different way, and to be able to just do something different and step out of what can be a maelstrom in another space in their lives, I think, is really powerful.

And I’ve got a couple of things I was thinking about, you know, what would be my ask to employers? It would be things like, consider whether you actually want to lose this talent. You’ve, you know, the person you’ve got in front of you, and the skill set they’ve got and the experience they’ve got, and the knowledge. And think, you know, think about the value of that. And will you, where else will you find that from that individual? What can you therefore do to facilitate them staying at work? I think it’s always to have an open mind what’s possible here, rather than I’ve always done it this way, actually look at your business model, because I think the workforce is shifting. There is a change that’s coming, and I think if I could look at it, what, can you do it in a different way? Can you think outside the box and be innovative about how your business model plays out and how you can really harness those with talent, but who need to work on a part-time basis. For all, as you said, Patrick, any number of different reasons. What is possible?

27.07

Emily Holzhausen: I just think this has been such a rich conversation, really, hasn’t it? And I think there are probably two – part-time is so important. I mean, 38% of unpaid carers in work work part-time, compared with 28% of non-carers, and that’s a, you know, again, the 10-percentage point difference when we see the gender difference is particularly important for women. I think, you know, Julie’s finished up with some brilliant recommendations. I don’t think I can top and I would just wholeheartedly agree with. So my final thought, really, this is fundamentally, it’s not just a personal thing for people and their families. And financial resilience actually has a fundamental economic question about productivity and the future around our ageing population and the changing world of work.

Claire Campbell: Thank you to you all. With growing numbers of people impacted by caring responsibilities and health issues, you know, we’ve come a long way, listening to the conversation today, but we still have a way to go to ensure that people feel supported to stay and continue to progress in work. Part-time is not the only solution here, but it is a key one, and we know demand massively outstrips supply. Our Timewise research shows that only 12% of jobs are offered part-time, which is massively out of sync with the one in four people who work that way. So our biggest ask here, if you’re an employer or manager listening in, is, could that vacancy be done part-time or job shared or with some flexibility?

We hope we’ve highlighted through this, these special episodes, the amazing resilience and skills you can benefit from. For individuals listening, we hope these stories and advice have given you ideas and tips, but also the knowledge you are far from alone. There are millions of people juggling these situations, often in secret.

We encourage more people to share their stories, as we have here, and you’ll find podnotes for this series, which give you practical tips, advice, more tools and information that we hope you’ll find useful. A huge thank you to my guests for today’s episode, Patrick, Emily and Julie, and also a thank you to the Standard Life Centre for the Future of Retirement for partnering with us on this series.

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