Examination of witnesses
Ruth Wilkinson, Professor Gail Kinman and Kate Field.
Q149 The Chair: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the House of Lords Select Committee on Home-based Working. I say a big thank you to our three witnesses today; we will hear from you shortly. It would be great if you could introduce yourselves the first time you speak. We will send you a transcript in a few days’ time for you to check for any factual errors, and if you want to provide any supplementary evidence in writing afterwards, please feel free to do so. I thank you again for your written submissions and for coming today. Baroness Watkins will start us off.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock: Good afternoon; it is a real pleasure to speak to you today. I would like to focus on the work you have all done, in different ways. What impact, both positive and negative, do you think remote and hybrid working has on physical health, including musculoskeletal issues, diet, exercise, sleep and, perhaps, domestic abuse? I realise that the latter affects both kinds of health, but we have some evidence that the impact can be more problematic and other evidence that that is not necessarily so. If you could try to tackle those, that would be great.
Professor Gail Kinman: I am a professor of occupational health psychology, and I have done quite a lot of research on home-based working. I am sure my colleagues here will also contribute to this question but, first, I would like to say that a lot of the evidence we have is based on research conducted during the pandemic and on studies of varying quality. Of course, the problem was that they were very difficult and challenging times, both psychologically and in terms of physical health, and people had perhaps not developed the strategies they needed to cope very well with those kinds of conditions. Certainly, we found that, over time, many people developed strategies and got the right type of support, so there was less of an impact on physical and mental health.
In terms of musculoskeletal health, we know that that is one of the most common causes of work-related health issues and time off work, so, clearly, we need to make sure that these risk factors are not exacerbated. Evidence from a survey conducted by the Institute for Employment Studies on home worker well-being at the early stages of the pandemic (in March 2020) suggested that over 40% of people with musculoskeletal problems felt that these were exacerbated by working at home. Research that I have conducted suggests that people were working from various unsuitable places, such as cars, sofas, beds, et cetera, but, over time, when people were given the right type of equipment, that helped. Certainly, non-ergonomically designed workplaces can be a massive problem, and we need to make sure that they do not cause or exacerbate back or neck pain. I will hand over to Ruth.
Ruth Wilkinson: Thank you. I am the head of policy and public affairs at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. Our acronym is IOSH, to which I may default. If I say OSH, I am referring to occupational safety and health. Thank you for inviting me.
A few years ago, the International Labour Organization introduced a guidance note, Healthy and Safe Telework, in which it referred to all working at home or on the move as “telework”. It started by saying: “When organized and carried out properly, telework can be beneficial for physical and mental health and social well-being. It can improve work–life balance, reduce traffic and time spent commuting, and decrease air pollution, all of which can, indirectly, improve physical and mental health. Telework can also have public health and social benefits”.
I want to highlight the words “When organized and carried out properly”, which links back quite nicely to some of what Gail mentioned. Research says that musculoskeletal problems have been exacerbated or caused because, for example, people have used sofas at home. If your work environment is at home or in your car, it is an extension of your workplace, and those health and safety responsibilities should be continued, regardless of where you are working. We must make sure that we impart those; otherwise, we can see the knock-on consequences that you mentioned, Baroness. If you do not manage your psychosocial risks, there will be impacts, including people working more hours, isolation and detachment. If you do not have good communication and good management practices in place, which you would have in the workplace but can be replicated in a similar way, obviously you can cause new problems, hazards and risks or exacerbate ongoing problems.
Some of the benefits of working in this way include improved work/life balance for individuals and family well-being. It can also help get greater participation in the workplace.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock: Other people have questions about that area. Could you come back to the physical health question, on sleep and activity? Just to get here today, I have walked something like 6,000 steps, which I know is very good for me. Do you have any evidence about whether diet and exercise are negatively impacted for some people working entirely from home?
Ruth Wilkinson: I will say something on sleep, and then perhaps Kate will say something on the other aspects in a moment. An ILO study on sleep that explored the impacts of working remotely found that 42% of people who consistently work from home or multiple locations suffered from insomnia, compared with 29% of individuals working at their employer’s site. There is a difference in the sleep impact, but we need more research in that area. On the incidence of domestic violence, we need more long-term research, but there was definitely data during the pandemic showing that people were not able to leave their home situation because they were there to work, and if that environment was not the ideal one then it would exacerbate those problems.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock: That is really helpful. You said something about management. Unfortunately, many of us in this room will have seen people whom we were anxious about, perhaps because of bruising or other changes in behaviour. If you see people in the workplace, there is often an opportunity to have a cup of tea and ask, “Is everything all right at home?”, or whatever you might want to do. Do you have anything on whether that kind of managerial support is lost as a result of entirely working from home?
Professor Gail Kinman: That is something that I will return to later, if that is all right. I have some responses on diet, exercise and sleep as well, but it is probably Kate’s turn.
Kate Field: Thank you very much. Good afternoon to you all. I work for the British Standards Institution, BSI; I am sure you get used to hearing a number of acronyms. I hope you are all familiar with the British Standards Institution. We develop best-practice guidance for businesses to help with businesses’ and society’s biggest risks, challenges and opportunities. I have been working for BSI for eight years in my current role, which is global head of human and social sustainability, so all things people, but I have been a health, safety and well-being expert for over two decades now—I know I do not look like it. I worked as a regulator—the Health and Safety Executive—and I have worked in private industry. I hope to draw on all that experience and predominantly on what we do at BSI.
To answer your question on the physical aspects of the opportunities and, perhaps, some of the challenges around hybrid and home working, fundamentally, the evidence I have seen in the course of my work and the work that we do at BSI is that it is more positive from a physical health point of view than it is negative. Some of the studies that we do at BSI are to understand workplace challenges, so going out and asking industry and individual workers what is working for them and what is not. We do a number of studies each year, and most recently we did one looking at those who started their career during the Covid pandemic, so Generation Z—we have called them the hybrid generation. We asked them, “What impact has hybrid working had on your physical health?”, and 75% said that they have better physical health and more physical movement than working in static, office-based roles.
That is reflected in the focus groups that we had around that study as well. These groups said that they exercise more and that they eat more healthily because they have the time to prepare. It is part of what they are gaining as an overarching improvement in their work/life balance—being able to manage their physical health. The impact of that was really interesting because this group said, without a shadow of a doubt, that that impact on their work/life balance and all the benefits that come out of it is more important to them than how much they are paid, what their career development is and their job security. That really brings to life that challenge.
This group in particular is very aware that they will probably be working the longest of any generation: they will be working well into their 60s and into their 70s—longer than previous generations—and they have an absolute focus on their physical and mental health. Some of our other studies have also touched on that for the other age groups, but I will come back to that.
Q150 Baroness Freeman of Steventon: Moving away from physical health and on to mental health, which you touched on already, what evidence do we have on the effects of hybrid and remote working on mental health? Professor Kinman mentioned some studies where it is not all positive. A lot of witnesses have suggested in their evidence that hybrid working is the best of both worlds. You suggested that maybe that is not always the case. Perhaps you would like to start.
Professor Gail Kinman: Like any working pattern, there are challenges. There always will be. Hybrid working is very popular, as you just said, and people are increasingly willing to make lots of trade-offs and compromises to continue to work flexibly. Obviously, employers need to be aware of these challenges and put things in place to address and mitigate them.
Essentially, if you ask employees who are working remotely or in a hybrid fashion, the most popular aspect of working from home is usually better well-being and a better work/life balance. This evidence is certainly coming out but, of course, the relationship is complex and dependent on so many different factors. In the work that I have done it is very much dependent on the type of work that you do: is it emotionally demanding? Do you need access to physical support from people? Research I have done with child protection social workers suggests that having a ‘secure base’ that they can get emotional support from is really important. If people have a secure and stable team then they can get that online, but it is the new starters who tend to struggle because they have not forged this close relationship.
So job type is important; workload is important as well. There is something called extensification and intensification, which essentially means that people use the flexibility that they have from working at home not to have a better work/life balance or to improve their physical or mental health, but to work longer and harder. That is something that we need to be careful about. On the one hand, it can be due to high workloads from the employer and increased expectations of their availability, but it can also be due to the individual being, perhaps, overcommitted to work and reluctant to disengage from it. Also, some workers may see working from home as a bit of a ‘favour’ that they have to repay in some way. To be always on and able to respond rapidly is really important to them.
The other circumstance is the workplace culture: it has to be ready for people to work at home and in a hybrid way. Before the pandemic there was something called flexibility stigma, where in particular men who worked flexibly were subject to stigmatisation not only by other men but also by women, which was really interesting. We might have thought that this stigma would have decreased during the pandemic, when people were obliged to work from home, but there is some evidence that it is perhaps returning. That is something that we need to be careful of in the organisational culture. There are also demographic factors: caring responsibilities can exacerbate the risk if people do not have support in place.
Regarding hybrid working, the evidence points to the fact that people should have control and choice over their working patterns. Imposed flexibility is no flexibility at all. There are different types of hybrid working and, for it to work best, people should be enabled to have the type of working pattern that fits their needs and preferences. With hybrid working, people may struggle with a sense of identity, certainly in the beginning: are they home workers or are they office workers? I know that Nicholas Bloom gave evidence here previously. His research found that the structure of the working week can change: people may go into work in their hybrid days and have meetings, socialise, catch up, do some creative brainstorming, et cetera, but actually do their real, meaningful work during evenings and weekends. We need to be sure that the working week is not lengthened in that way. I agree that hybrid working has the potential to be the best of both worlds but we need to put these measures in place to reduce the risk.
Baroness Freeman of Steventon: Among some of those measures, do you think you found that remote workers had higher benefits in mental health because the management was specifically around managing them at home, and that, for hybrid working, management was perhaps more suited to office-based working?
Professor Gail Kinman: Managers do not automatically know how to do it. All the evidence suggests that managers need to be trained very carefully. A number of competency frameworks can help us do this; I would be very happy to share some of them at a later date. Some research from America suggests the competencies that line managers should have to help home-based workers improve their work/life balance, and the skills and abilities that home-based workers themselves need to work remotely in a safe and productive way. These frameworks can be very helpful. They probably need to be flavoured and tailored to the working context, but they can form a very useful evidence-based framework, which is what we need.
Kate Field: All the research that we have done—and, again, from my wider experience—is that there are more positive benefits, potentially, from a mental health point of view than there are negatives. It is not a panacea for everyone, and we need to be alert to that. Gail touched on this: one of the best things for people’s mental health is to have a sense of autonomy and flexibility, and that can be delivered in a number of different ways within the workplace. A lot of that comes down to the culture of an organisation. A culture is not made by the four walls of the office. The culture is made by the people and the work they do and the dynamic within that, and that can work face to face, and it can work very well and effectively in a virtual environment. Certainly, the competency piece is really critical—and comfort as well; whether that is on the technology or the relationships, all sorts of really interesting dynamics start to come through.
Specifically in terms of mental health, I have talked most recently about what I call our hybrid generation. Seventy per cent of our respondents felt that their mental health improved with hybrid working. Again, that comes down to the complexity of that sense of autonomy, their ability to have more control of their physical environment, all of those things—it is not a single framework. We do need to understand that home working or more flexible types of working can present challenges in mental health, and isolation in particular is one of those. We have a lot of studies, particularly from Covid—a very specific, intense experience of isolation. A third of our hybrid generation absolutely felt that their mental health suffered in the midst of Covid, when they felt most isolated.
We need to be alert to something; again, Gail alluded to this. Some of the nature of hybrid working can increase factors that can impact mental health at work. They are what we call—Ruth mentioned this term—psychosocial risks. It is a lovely snazzy title to get your teeth around, that one—sorry. Of these factors that can impact mental health at work, we need to be alert that they can become worse with hybrid working. Things like discrimination—that is a really interesting one. There is a bias about whether people are present physically and can be seen, or whether they are virtual. We know that there are biases already around part-time working; that can be increased again if they are working part-time virtually rather than part-time in person. We need to be alert to some of the new forms of these harms that can have an impact on mental health, and particularly things like AI management tools and constant monitoring. We need to find the balance, but all of those can be balanced and managed. We just need to understand what they are.
Ruth Wilkinson: Earlier, I was going to mention some of those negative consequences. We see them from being constantly connected. When you are online you have different communications, different technologies—you have got Teams chats, you are in different meetings and back-to-back meetings. You used to go and travel to a meeting for a day, but now you have six or seven meetings stacked throughout the day, and you can work internationally on different time zones, which enables you to work in that way. So we see that there is work intensification blurring between the lines of your traditional work time and working day.
Also, there is being overly connected; Kate just mentioned the algorithmic management. That is another piece that is of concern to people where they feel their work is being monitored—their performance. That bit of control is being taken away and that surveillance is in place. From a mental health perspective—thank you for talking about the psychosocial risks, Kate—we do see that it can bring those excessive workloads, when you think of work demands in the normal day-to-day jobs, conflicting demands, obviously poor communication and the inability to influence your work. All of these can impact the hours you work, your work rate, your work pace, and that isolation. If you look on the HSE’s website, under the impacts of stress on these types of workers it does talk about isolation if they are not with their peers, they have not got those social interactions, and if you have not put mechanisms in place.
At IOSH, we did a survey with our members in 2024. It was not just for remote and hybrid workers, but to give a feel of how everyone was working. A quarter of respondents said they were regularly working more than 48 hours a week on average. That is the legal maximum that people should be working in the UK. So the members that we spoke to just feel generally through the work they do, whether they are in an office or if they are hybrid or remote, that they are working longer than the hours they should be.
Baroness Freeman of Steventon: Can I just ask, on that data point: were you able to separate those who were working in the office, hybrid and remotely, to see whether there was a difference in the number of hours people were working?
Ruth Wilkinson: I do not think we did on that occasion but I will go back and check, Baroness, and submit something in writing if we did. We were really interested in long working hours on that occasion, rather than the type of work or where they were actually based. We are worried about the burden of disease on the long working hours that the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization mentioned. On that survey, as well, nine in 10 of those respondents believed that workers should have that right to switch off, which I know is something that has been talked about, and it was potentially going to be in legislation through the Employment Rights Bill, and now it has been looked at as a code. It is very relevant to this conversation from that mental health perspective. If you have got the blurring of lines and you have got information and communication technology that you feel you need to respond to or you are responding to outside of your normal working hours, it can impact on the mental health perspective.
Q151 Lord Farmer: Perhaps this is for Professor Kinman. It is just about the quote where you said that hybrid workers had lower levels of psychological safety than either in-person or fully remote workers. Say you are at home Monday, working Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at home again. Is there a stress in relating to how you work at home, and all of a sudden you have to transform yourself to be an office worker for three days, and then back home again? In other words, you have to go through two transformations in a week. I sort of got the impression from your quote that there was a stress attached to that which could affect mental health.
Professor Gail Kinman: Absolutely. That is a really good question, and very little research has been done on this issue. It is kind of the in-between. We know that people need to be much more organised to prepare themselves for these transitions, which can be time-consuming and emotionally draining. You may not have the right stuff with you if you are at work and it may be on your home computer, et cetera, so alternating—unless we help people develop these skills can be problematic. Also, as I mentioned earlier, developing a strong identity as a hybrid worker is really important, but we really need to know a lot more about the in-between and how that affects people.
Kate Field: Might I just add something? Again, it depends on individual workers’ experiences. One of the reasons we wanted to conduct this study of those who started their career since Covid is that they have only ever known hybrid working. For them, that transition is just part of their normal working life. Within that cohort, we looked at those who are working fully remote, hybrid and in the office and what their views are from their peers. This is the norm for them. That is where we need to understand some of those generational shifts and changes. How can we learn and support those who find the transition harder than those for whom it is completely normal?
Professor Gail Kinman: Absolutely. Practical steps like making sure people have office space when they go in are really important. Many organisations have sold off their offices and have brought in hot-desking. If you go in, you may have to book a desk. You may not be able to get a desk. You may not be sitting with your team. These structural factors are really important as well to bear in mind.
Q152 Baroness Nye: Actually, that brings me very nicely round to my question, because you have given us a lot of very good evidence about the risks and the benefits of remote and hybrid working, but I want to ask: what steps can workers take and what actions should employers be implementing to reduce those health risks that you have identified and that are associated with remote and hybrid working? I was reading in one of your pieces of evidence—I think it is you, Kate, and the BSI—that you are working on some new guidelines. I understand they are not coming into force until 2027, which sadly is too late for us, but if you could maybe say a bit about the direction of travel, that would be useful for us as a committee.
Kate Field: The good news is that there is guidance out there already, so we do not have to wait until 2027. There is some new guidance coming. When we look at what employers and employees can do to manage this risk, there are some fundamental principles: you need to understand what the risk is, then you need to know what to do about it, then you need to check whether what you are doing is working. That is what standards do; that is what they are created for. They are a best practice toolkit to help organisations understand exactly what they need to do. Some of the standards are free, so sometimes it is free consultancy, or it is very cheap consultancy. This is information and guidance written by experts in business, for business.
On the standards that are currently available, the Cabinet Office actually led the way when the Civil Service was looking at new ways of working. We have a numerical reference system for our standards, as well as a title, so a publicly available standard—a PAS—is freely available, and the number for that one is 3000. That is on smart working. It is guidance looking at how organisations can get the best out of all these different ways of working and how to manage that: what the culture is, and what you need to do from line manager, leadership and employee points of view. That guidance is freely available already.
We have touched on the risks in the workplace from a mental health point of view, and particularly overarching this is autonomy, which comes down to the culture of the organisation. There is an international standard, which is referenced ISO 45003, on psychological health and safety. That is an excellent overarching guide that helps organisations understand what they need to do, from the mental health risks to installing a culture that creates the trust and autonomy that will allow their employees to succeed and their businesses to thrive.
We have talked about how there are sometimes some nuances—particular groups need particular support—so we have some guidance that really helps with that. We have freely available guidance that looks at those who have challenges with menstruation, menstrual health and menopause. The reference for that is BS 30416. It is a really amazing, practical guide to help those who might be impacted by those conditions to stay in work. We have some great studies coming back from organisations that have implemented that guidance. A third of them have increased their ways of working flexibly, which includes home working. The benefits they are seeing off the back of that are that six out of 10 see a reduction in sickness absence, but also six in 10 see women stay in the workforce where they may have left before. It is a great standard in terms of driving that productivity and keeping people in work.
Then there are two standards I would like to call out that address our ageing demographic. We have an ageing demographic in the UK and in many parts of the western world, which creates potential challenges for businesses, so how can we help and support them? We have an age-inclusive standard. Again, it is practical guidance about how to help and support. It definitely touches on flexible working and home working as part of that. The reference is ISO—it is an international standard—and the number is 25550. There is also one that looks at and supports those who are carers. We have not really touched on that, but those who have caring responsibilities have real challenges. We often talk about sandwich carers: those who have a still young family and older parents who they are looking after—they are literally sandwiched in the middle. They need to keep working from an economic point of view and they want to keep working, but they have these responsibilities. Flexible home working plus other support can make a huge difference for them to stay active in the workforce. The reference for that standard is ISO 25551.
That guidance is out there already. To support it, a new international standard is in development, which will build on the publicly available standard that I mentioned, and is specifically on home working. That will have the reference ISO 45008. As you said, that will be in 2027, but lots of guidance is freely available already to help organisations get the most out of their workforce by keeping them in work, engaged and healthy.
The Chair: I think that is our homework.
Baroness Nye: What about workers? What can workers do?
Professor Gail Kinman: One of the most important things is to learn strategies to manage the boundaries between work and personal life effectively. Work can spill over into personal life when people go to an office environment, because you can physically take work home to do, but one of the more insidious ways that it can spill over is through rumination about work—thinking about it, worrying about it, and not having clear separation. That can be a bit of a challenge.
Workers can learn how to create boundaries between work and personal life when their home is also the office and there is no physical demarcation between the two. There are all kinds of strategies that people can use. They need to have a balance that suits their needs and preferences because—typical psychologist—different people like different things. Some people like their work and personal life to be almost fully integrated; others like them to be completely separated and would favour being in an office, finishing work and then going home. If they work at home, they may benefit from having a dedicated office space.
Going back to what we were saying about sleep, the evidence is that sleep can be improved with working from home provided you do not sleep too long and you do not have too little exercise. That is the key issue. One piece of guidance that is very important is not to work too late into the night, because your sleep will be affected.
The key is to share this evidence-based guidance with individuals to help them develop strategies and make them work for them. What employers can do is be aware of changes in people’s personal life and in their job responsibilities that may affect the boundaries, and keep on monitoring them. It is a partnership, essentially, between the organisation and the individual, and the team comes into it as well.
Ruth Wilkinson: On workers, you need to go back to the employer. I am here representing the health and safety professionals, and the framework exists through having good, robust occupational health and safety management systems in place—Kate has alluded to this already. You might have heard of the principles of prevention, where you follow the hierarchy of control: you eliminate and substitute hazards first off, you reduce the risk, and you put in engineering control measures or some administrative controls. If the employer does this correctly it can help eliminate or reduce the risks of harm, generally by having the right display screen equipment at home so people are not sitting on sofas or dining-room desks and have the right infrastructure in place.
On the culture piece that Kate mentioned, to come back to the workers, if you build the right culture where you break down the stigmas then people can come to work, stay at work and thrive at work. You can have those conversations with your manager. One of the items I was going to mention was that if individuals with disabilities or ongoing health and medical conditions can work from home, it helps them re-enter the labour market. I do not have the numbers, but that ability to work from home in this different way is there for them. If we have the right culture that enables inclusive work environments, conversations where workers can raise concerns, hazards and risks of harm, and they partake in good risk assessments—what can cause you harm, what we put in place—then these things can happen if they co-operate with their employer and get training. The World Health Organization and the ILO talk about mental health literacy and digital literacy, so that training can be imparted and education and awareness provided to employees on how to keep themselves safe at work through the way they work. They can then have the opportunity to raise concerns and do the things that Gail mentioned to say, “Actually, I know now that I can stop here". If a policy from my employer is in place to say, “These are your working times” or “This is how you work”, it helps build what is a system. You need all the parts in place in order to create a safe and healthy working environment.
Q153 Lord Farmer: How do remote working and hybrid working affect sickness absence? Do they raise issues of sickness presenteeism, whereby people work from home while unwell? Do they lead to people not working from home while claiming to be unwell when they are in fact well? There are two sides to that. What evidence have you found?
Professor Gail Kinman: I would be very happy to share with the committee some reviews that I have written on what we can call digital sickness presenteeism. We know it is a problem. Research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development suggests that HR professionals are seeing it much more regularly among people working from home. Clearly, working while not fully fit can be therapeutic, if people are being monitored by occupational health and there is a negotiated and supported return to work, where people can work within their limits. That is really important, but we are talking about the type of presenteeism that is not necessarily good for people. Lots of longitudinal research shows that, over time, people’s recovery is affected. People may go on to have more serious illness and more sickness absence in the long run, so it is not really having any benefit, if you like. Of course, it can be easier to work when unwell if you are working from home because you do not have the commute. You may feel that you can work according to your abilities, but it has the potential to be damaging.
Certain groups of people doing certain types of jobs are at greater risk. There are occupational factors. People such as those working in healthcare or in education can feel a sense of responsibility and duty for the well-being of others, particularly when there is short staffing and no sickness cover. People often feel, “If I don’t do the job, nobody else will”. Also, some research that I have done suggests that some people feel that continuing to work is less stressful than going back to a mountain of work that remains undone.
Lord Farmer: Are there any recommendations for how the employer can establish what the health situation is?
Professor Gail Kinman: It is much more difficult, because of course—
Lord Farmer: I understand that, but I wondered whether you have any thoughts on the subject.
Professor Gail Kinman: Most larger organisations will have well-established systems to record absence, but presenteeism is often hidden. When people work from home, it can be even more hidden, because line managers may see people for only a few minutes a day, and people can be very good at masking symptoms, such as by switching their cameras off, saying, “My camera’s not working” or “My bandwidth isn’t good”. So presenteeism is much more difficult to record and manage, but there are recommendations that we can make, such as having questions about sickness and presenteeism as part of employee surveys, which is one way of gauging its prevalence, or by looking at an organisation’s sickness absence culture. In some sectors I have researched, there can be what is called an ‘anti-sickness absence culture’, where it is frowned on, and people may be put under pressure to come back to work too early. The culture is important. Other recommendations are training line managers to spot signs of difficulty and making sure that home-based workers are aware of the policies and practices they need to put in place to go off sick and be monitored. Occupational health has a very strong role to play there, too, but it can be problematic.
Ruth Wilkinson: I was going to reference the same challenges with measuring presenteeism, as it is really easy to account when people are not in. The CIPD study said that, of 5,000 employees, more than half had done their job despite not feeling well. So, again, this is about looking at not just remote work but presenteeism in general. In our organisation, we find that you have to have a sickness absence policy and the right culture, so that you support people to have time off when they are unwell. But, as Gail mentioned, if you are not feeling 100% or you have something that is communicable, there is that ability to still work at home and not come to the office and be a spreader of some of the germs you have. It is about getting the right culture, so that when you are unwell, you take time to recover and get the recuperation that you need.
To come back to your question, Lord Farmer, it is not that simple to measure presenteeism because it is a collection of different factors. When you do an organisational level assessment, you need to look across different things, including the stress risk factors, what your employee engagement scores are like, how often you engage with employee pulse surveys and how employees are feeling. There are a multitude of options to do this, but it is a bit more tricky, and it comes back to the culture. I cannot say whether it heightens presenteeism, as organisations have that challenge anyway, irrespective of whether employees are in the office or working from home.
Professor Gail Kinman: I think we are getting better at asking the questions.
Kate Field: I have a slightly broader view. A lot of this comes back to the culture of the organisation, in particular the relationship with and the emotional intelligence of the line manager, and their ability to have a conversation with and understand their team. Whether they are seeing their team in person or virtually, they need an understanding of what is normal for an individual so that they can spot the signs that something might be amiss. Therefore, having the right culture to be able to have a conversation is key.
I would like to have some caution when we talk about sickness absence; I think it is seen very negatively. I would like us to talk about attendance management. There are many instances where individuals have ill health but they can work. They want the value of being able to stay in work; it is about how we support them. To give a specific example, and speaking personally, a couple of weeks ago, I had one of those cold bugs. I did not feel 100%, but I could do 50% of my work, and I had that culture and autonomy to work.
We have an ageing population and issues with chronic health, comorbidities and increases in cancer within the workplace because people are working longer and therefore cancer comes up more. We are able to keep people in work and productive to a much greater extent if we allow flexibility—which might include home working, a flex about when you start and when you finish, or all sorts of things—and if we can support them through attendance management, rather than simply saying, “You’re sick and you can’t work”. We need to evolve that conversation.
Just this morning I was in a meeting about this, as we are doing a business case for a new standard to help organisations understand how to do this. My view is different; I think a lot of large organisations are really poor at this. We have come from a culture where we had a sick note to having a fit note, and the fit note did not do the job of trying to keep people in work. We can be much more sophisticated and keep the UK economy up and running by keeping people in work.
Q154 Lord Fink: My question is about legislation, which has been partly addressed. Do you think changes should be considered to legislation relating to remote and hybrid working, including concerning the health and safety risks and the right to disconnect, which I think has been touched on?
Ruth Wilkinson: Thank you for that question. I have already held my hand up to say that we at IOSH support the right to disconnect from a legislative point of view, or a code of practice point of view. We need to give guidance to employers about how to do this in order to support workers. If you look across the EU at the moment, lots of countries have implemented the right to disconnect in different ways. Some of it is in legislation, some of it is specific to a type of working group and some of it is being implemented at the business level, but it is all about having that conversation with the workers—giving them a voice and having those consultations and opportunities, but being really clear about not influencing those cultures with long working hours and giving them that time.
I have heard challenges from people saying, “What about the right to disconnect for people who are on call?” They are on call and doing that job. This is about people who have normal working hours having the ability to say, “Actually, I’m not at work now and I don’t need to respond to that email”, and not feeling the pressure or expectation to respond or to do that piece of work. Then we can provide that rest and recovery piece.
We would support having something on that in the UK. Maybe we are in a good position to look at home-based telework as well, through legislation or a code of practice, and definitely at that right to disconnect, and at making sure that we reinforce this through health and safety—including the labour inspection piece—and maybe some campaigns to get the advice, education and guidance out there on how we do this. As Kate mentioned, there is lots of guidance through BSI and the standards; our regulator has got some guidance, and it comes back to the principles of good health and safety management through risk assessments.
You asked earlier how we can support workers. It is through education—making sure that we move it along in the right way and give everybody the tools and knowledge they need to work safely and healthily.
Professor Gail Kinman: I completely agree. The very best way to get this knowledge is to consult employees, because they are the experts in their jobs and will know what is practical. They will be able to identify the challenges and what the work is. I have done some work with academics, who tend to prefer high levels of autonomy, and they were very reluctant to have any kind of rights such as those because they saw them as perhaps interfering with their autonomy to work when they wanted and when it suited them. That will also need to be looked at.
Kate Field: As an ex-regulator, I believe that the majority of the existing health and safety, equality and employment legislation is fit for purpose and covers it. The challenge we have is around enforcement and consistency of application. The enforcement is for Government. For consistency, my view is that we should take a carrot approach over the stick approach and incentivise businesses to do the right thing. As you have already heard, the right thing exists; standards are already out there. They are an amazing tool that allows organisations and countries to implement best practice without legislation. If we can encourage organisations and businesses to take up those best practice standards through things such as tax incentives or other pro-business measures, it will be a win-win without having to add to what might be perceived as a business burden around legislation.
Lord Fink: On the right to disconnect, should employers and other employees not write emails to you after your working hours, or accept that you will not respond until the next working day?
Kate Field: It is a great question. We would love a world where there was a black and white answer, but unfortunately there is not. We have heard that there are individual preferences. As you have heard, my role is global, so I literally work globally, which means that I have to span different time zones. I might write an email in my time zone to a different time zone, so, to re-emphasise my point, it is about getting the culture of the organisation and the understanding. Quite often if I am doing that and I know that it will hit somebody’s email at a really unhelpful time, I hope they are not looking but I also include in the email “I am not looking for a response until it is your working time”.
I am not saying that we want to add complexity, but we need to understand that the world has moved on and think about how we can manage that practically. A lot of it is really simple. The point about communication was made—talk to people. It is really easy. It is one of the easiest things we can do; we just have to make the time to do it.
Q155 Lord Parker of Minsmere: I have a question about the future, but before that, Kate, can I draw you out a bit more on the point on productivity that you mentioned? What is the macro productivity impact in this area? I think there was a bit in your written evidence about it.
Kate Field: Yes, there was—I will try to bring it to life rather than go through the detail in the written evidence. We have some challenges about what we call productivity. Historically, productivity has been seen as people logging in at 9 o’clock and logging out at 5 o’clock, and as long they are there between those hours they are “productive”. If there is a tangible, measurable output then that can be easier. How many widgets they produce is an easy measure of productivity, but the reality is that we are moving to a service-based industry and need to understand and think in a more sophisticated way about what productivity is. There is not an answer as to how we measure it at the moment. It is a real challenge.
We need to move away from productivity as a measure of presence or time and towards a measure of output, and look at how we support organisations to understand that. In the meantime, we have to retrofit some of these other measures. Things such as absenteeism, or sickness absence, are a useful measure. It is not perfect—we have touched on some of the reasons why—but it is a helpful measure in lieu of something else. We have done some studies and have case studies from our clients. I mentioned the standard looking at supporting the best culture within an organisation—its reference number is 45003. A great example is London Luton Airport, the first airport in the world to implement that standard, which has had a 41% reduction in its mental health absence by doing so.
I would love to give you a direct answer, but we need a more sophisticated metric for productivity which understands that it is about output—that is difficult when it is a service rather than a product—and other metrics we can use to really start to understand this, such as having more people in work, how often they are working, or people not retiring early. I mentioned our menopause standard; we have done some research off the back of that and our second glass ceiling study. Women who face menopause are being forced out of the workforce prematurely because they are not being given the support. Let us give them the support and keep them in work. Surely being in work has to be productive.
Lord Parker of Minsmere: I want to give all three of you a chance to give us your view on where the trends are leading in the short and medium term and your thoughts on the future features, changes and effects in hybrid, remote and home-based working.
Ruth Wilkinson: I was reflecting on the different terms that we have used in this room. I mentioned telework, which is the ILO terminology. The HSE talks about home-based working. We have hybrid or remote, and I have talked about mobile workers through health and safety. We have lots of different terms. To answer your question, it is about recognising that we have a changing world in how and where we work, and the definition of a workplace. I talked about your car being an extension of your workplace, or your home. It all comes under that umbrella.
What can we see at the moment? Kate talked about the older workforce. We have four to five generations of workers in workplaces at any one time, so you have a younger workforce who, from a mental health perspective, need that social interaction and like to be in offices. It comes back to choice and what is available. Older workers could be suffering from slips and trips or musculoskeletal problems, so how do we support employers to have the right infrastructure to support them? We know that we have economically inactive workers.
From IOSH’s perspective, it is about how we support employers to build the system and infrastructure to support workers to come back to work, stay in work and thrive at work.
We also have the rise of the gig economy and platform work. We have talked about algorithmic management, but we have a rising group of workers whose work is informed by what comes through on an app: information on where they need to go, where they need to be.
Again, we have to look at pace of work and work intensification. We are seeing that the way we work is changing and adapting. Even if you are not doing that role yourself, your supply chain might be connected to it.
Kate mentioned being global. We are the same: we can be in meetings in other countries. We have this global supply chain.
On SMEs, I failed to mention earlier that small-to-medium enterprises will be impacted differently as compared to larger organisations. I have been talking about good health and safety practices, and standards that are already in place. But the health and safety professionals and HR professionals are in large organisations. The bulk of businesses are SMEs and micros. They have not got those professionals. The challenge is getting the information there.
There is lots of information. We can see this changing world of work. The question is how we respond to support all those different audiences, and how we champion the good health and safety framework that we have. That is my perspective.
The Chair: We have a couple of minutes left to hear from Gail.
Professor Gail Kinman: I just want to follow up what Ruth said. Certainly, the future of work is likely to be the hybrid model wherever possible, but we must recognise that not all workers are able to work from home, even for a few hours a week; for some that is not possible.
Maybe we need to re-evaluate the type of work that can be done from home. Before the pandemic, nobody would have thought that social workers and some healthcare workers could work from home, but they can, and do, very productively.
Home-based working can help us build a more inclusive workforce. It can help drive the equality, diversity and inclusion agenda. But I am slightly alarmed by recent findings that the people who were more likely to work remotely before the pandemic continue to be the ones more likely to do so post pandemic. It tends to be professionals, people with high levels of qualifications, living in particular parts of the UK, in more senior roles and in higher income brackets. To reap the benefits of home-based working, we need to make sure that it is truly inclusive.
Kate Field: I will start with diversity and link it through to productivity. It is a mixed picture. We are finding that this more flexible way of working—however we want to frame that—increases diversity within workplaces.
People who have not been able to access a traditional physical workplace for whatever reason—whether it is about their physical mobility, or they are neurodiverse, whatever it happens to be—are able to access work in a way that they were not able to do before.
The benefit of diversity is not just productivity, although that is hugely important. The biggest benefit is that the more diversity of thought you have, the more creativity and innovation you have. I speak to business leaders—to CEOs—and it is all about innovation.
If you are increasing diversity, and the diversity of thought, in your organisation, you are creating and improving innovation.
There is a big change coming through, much more rapidly, in relation to technology. We have already touched on AI; that will continue. As AI is paired with robotics and autonomous systems, we may see sectors that historically have struggled to give workers different options that are not site-based will be able to offer options where people can work from home. A great example is in the construction industry, where you can now drive your digger from your home.
We must continue to understand the opportunities, of course, and to manage and balance the risks, but diversity and innovation are creating more opportunities for different workers to go into sectors such as construction, which are maybe are not as attractive, and that is an amazing opportunity for us.
The Chair: Thank you very much indeed, all three of you, for coming in this afternoon and talking to us. I am sure that we have all found it fascinating. I now bring this public session to a close.