Stay ConnectedWhether you’re the boss, the deputy or on your way up, we’re shaking up the way the world works. This is the podcast about doing work differently. Join host Isabel Berwick every Wednesday for expert analysis and watercooler chat about ahead-of-the-curve workplace trends, the big ideas shaping work today – and the old habits we need to leave behind. Brought to you by the Financial Times.
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Copyright: © Financial Times
This week on Working It we take a step back from day-to-day workplace life and explore the issue of whistleblowing. What drives people to speak up against their employers - and what happens to those staff? Does it necessarily end your career in that company?
Isabel talks to Siri Nelson, executive director of the US National Whistleblower Center. Siri has devoted her professional life to protecting the rights of those who speak up. She offers advice for listeners who have seen something wrong and want to report it (first step: get a lawyer).
Siri and Isabel discuss some of the whistleblowers who have changed history - including Sherron Watkins. In 2001 she was a popular member of staff at US energy giant Enron, but when she spoke out about corruption in the company, it made her an outcast at work. Her efforts were not in vain, though - and Watkins ended up testifying at government hearings.
Plus, Isabel gets some insights from the FT’s whistleblowing expert, Brooke Masters, our chief business columnist. What sorts of staff decide to report wrongdoing? And how can managers ensure that our corporate cultures encourage honesty - and can deal with internal problems before it is too late?
Want to read more?
National Whistleblower Center [US] - lots of advice and resources https://www.whistleblowers.org/
Whistleblowers UK -British campaigning group https://www.wbuk.org/
Brooke Masters on why whistleblowers deserve our thanks - and protection https://www.ft.com/content/7e89bfa8-25d5-11e8-b27e-cc62a39d57a0
The corruption of cronyism in workplaces - and a whistleblower's experience of calling it out https://www.ft.com/content/98fdcde8-eba1-45b3-98a6-eceb5269e07c
Andrew Hill on the business lessons learned from Enron, 20 years after its collapse https://www.ft.com/content/4676e3e2-bdaa-4c78-8011-49508279c9ea
We love to hear from you. What do you like (or not)? What topics should we tackle in 2022? Email the team at workingit@ft.com or Isabel directly at isabel.berwick@ft.com. Follow @isabelberwick on Twitter
Subscribe to Working It wherever you get your podcasts - please listen, rate and subscribe!
Presented by Isabel Berwick. Editorial direction from Renée Kaplan. Assistant producer is Persis Love. Sound design is by Breen Turner, with original music from Metaphor Music. Produced by Novel.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Working It is a bit different. It turns out our most read stories so far this year have been about hybrid working, a term that describes working weeks split between the office and working from home. Not only do readers binge on the topic, they also have very strong views, so we thought we’d open up the debate here, too. Isabel talks to FT experts Camilla Cavendish and Pilita Clark, who have both written columns on hybrid work that went viral.
Camilla and Pilita point out that the progressive view on hybrid work is that employers need to be flexible and allow more homeworking, even after the pandemic ends. But the reality is that many business leaders are afraid to say to their staff that there are many benefits to being in the office. We talk about loneliness, mental health, collaboration and what the future of hybrid work will look like.
Isabel also shares what some of the FT readers think. Why is hybrid so polarising? Because it’s so personal.
Want to read more?
These are the columns we discuss in this podcast:
Camilla Cavendish - ‘It’s Time to Admit That Hybrid is Not Working’
https://www.ft.com/content/d0df2f1b-2f83-4188-b236-83ca3f0313df
Pilita Clark - ‘If You Thought Hybrid Working was Hard, Wait Until 2022’
https://www.ft.com/content/006e0751-21ee-4ab0-8bd2-0b954c7132df
We love to hear from you. What do you like (or not)? What topics should we tackle in 2022? Email the team at workingit@ft.com or Isabel directly at isabel.berwick@ft.com. Follow @isabelberwick on Twitter
Subscribe to Working It wherever you get your podcasts - please listen, rate and subscribe!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, we are stepping outside the 9 to 5. Side hustles, second jobs, crafting and more have boomed as millions of workers embraced working from home during the pandemic. Isabel talks to Tim Fung, co-founder of Airtasker, a platform for buying and selling services and skills, used by many as a way to earn extra cash. How does he cope with his own staff’s side hustles?
Taylor Nicole Rogers, the FT’s US labour and equality correspondent, explains that many people have two jobs because of shortfalls in pay. But during the pandemic many of us lost touch with our workplaces and focused on developing a sense of personal purpose and identity. Building an Etsy business or sock-selling empire is one expression of that - and having tasted freedom, it’s easier to walk away from a main job.
Isabel and Taylor come up with strategies for managers dealing with staff side hustles.
Want to read more?
Follow Taylor Nicole Rogers on FT.com for her reporting on employment trends https://www.ft.com/taylor-nicole-rogers
The banker turned bamboo socks seller https://www.ft.com/content/5f0e6c76-7cda-4b62-bb2f-36fd4771efaa
Financial influencer Ken Okoroafor on how his side hustle TheHumblePenny.com became a big business https://www.ft.com/content/27eff0d1-e2d0-4e41-afaf-c2aadf437873
We love to hear from you. What do you like (or not)? What topics should we tackle in 2022? Email the team at workingit@ft.com or Isabel directly at isabel.berwick@ft.com. Follow @isabelberwick on Twitter
Subscribe to Working It wherever you get your podcasts - please listen, rate and subscribe!
Presented by Isabel Berwick. Editorial direction from Renée Kaplan. Assistant producer is Persis Love. Sound design is by Breen Turner, with original music from Metaphor Music. Produced by Novel.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Many of us work with - and manage - people 30 years older or younger than we are. And sometimes it can feel like there's a bit of dissonance between the "wisdom and experience" that Gen X and Boomers can bring, and the "innovative energy" of those in their twenties and thirties. So what, and how, can both learn from each other?
Isabel (Gen X) explores how reverse mentoring programmes are bridging the generation gaps in a growing number of organisations. She talks to Alvaro Romero Artigas, a (Gen X) senior manager at Santander, the bank, and to his mentor, Philippa Whelan (a young Millennial) who have been in a reverse mentoring partnership since 2018.
Josh Chaffin, the FT’s New York correspondent (Gen X), talks about the different expectations of younger colleagues and the importance of making an effort to know colleagues with different cultural reference points - and that’s not just an age thing.
Plus, Josh challenges Isabel’s fixed ideas about corporate culture. He says that younger staff and new staff can help change culture from the bottom up - it’s not just about older people passing on their institutional knowledge.
Want to read more ?
Tips for managers in a multi-generational workplace, by former Google executive Sarah Drinkwater https://www.ft.com/content/f56d6a1b-9d64-4380-ac84-a44cb1bebb0f
The return of the corporate handbook, helping to create workplace culture for everyone. By Emma Jacobs https://www.ft.com/content/b69d4fb7-9b6b-4507-bb0e-ac9a02de37ba
Why reverse mentoring works and how to get it right - from Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2019/10/why-reverse-mentoring-works-and-how-to-do-it-right
What younger staff expect from their managers - tl;dr - they want a LOT of information and feedback. This is a really useful survey from IMD business school https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/making-generational-differences-work-what-empirical-research-reveals-about-leading-millennials/
We love to hear from you. What do you like (or not)? What topics should we tackle in 2022? Email the team at workingit@ft.com or Isabel directly at isabel.berwick@ft.com. Follow @isabelberwick on Twitter
Subscribe to Working It wherever you get your podcasts - please listen, rate and subscribe!
Presented by Isabel Berwick. Editorial direction from Renée Kaplan. Assistant producer is Persis Love. Sound design is by Breen Turner, with original music from Metaphor Music. Produced by Novel.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Team building sessions and awaydays have always been a part of office culture. But in a post-pandemic world, where we meet our colleagues IRL, or even in the virtual metaverse, will the awayday survive?
Isabel explores the appeal of the awayday with Ed Mumm, who owns Dig This, a ‘super sized sandbox’ for adults in Las Vegas. Driving Ed’s giant diggers is a popular team day out, giving staff the chance to let loose and compete for prizes.
Andrew Hill, FT management editor, talks about more ‘out there’ awaydays - including geese herding and Hunger Games reenactments - and what staff get out of them. Research on the topic is scant, but it’s likely that the impact is short-term and focuses [can an impact focus on?] on improved interpersonal relations.
The serious version of the awayday is the corporate offsite, where leaders gather to discuss strategy or do a course. There’s a long history of big companies having their own ‘campuses’ for training and retreats - famously GE’s Crotonville in New York State. That might be coming back into vogue - Salesforce’s Marc Benioff has talked about buying a ranch for his employees.
Finally, Andrew and Isabel discuss what might be next for team building and strategy days. Aside from ayahuasca journeys - favoured by some out-there start-ups - the metaverse offers a lot of potential for remote teams to gather in one place, joined via headsets.
Want to read more ?
Andrew Hill on working in the metaverse ttps://www.ft.com/content/61ce8588-5233-44d0-aa12-ce9ed60fb314 ... and on strategy awaydays ttps://www.ft.com/content/4aa19b24-6935-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f
GE’s own fascinating history of Crotonville - established in the ‘Mad Men’ era, and still going strong https://www.ge.com/news/reports/inside-crotonville-ges-corporate-vault-unlocked
Ed Mumm’s Dig This in Las Vegas, where you can watch your boss drive a giant digger https://digthisvegas.com/
From our colleagues at the tech news site Sifted, strange stories of taking psychedelics on team awaydays https://sifted.eu/articles/psychedelic-retreat/
We love to hear from you. What do you like (or not)? What topics should we tackle in 2022? Email us at workingit@ft.com or Isabel directly at isabel.berwick@ft.com. Follow @isabelberwick on Twitter or Instagram.
Subscribe to Working It wherever you get your podcasts - please listen, rate and subscribe!
Presented by Isabel Berwick. Editorial direction from Renée Kaplan. Assistant producer is Persis Love. Sound design is by Breen Turner, with original music from Metaphor Music. Produced by Novel.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Empathy has been one of the buzzwords of the pandemic, with managers under pressure to listen to employees’ woes and understand what they are going through. But what do we mean by empathy at work, and how much is too much when it comes to caring?
Isabel talks to Belinda Parmar, founder of consultancy The Empathy Business, about small changes that can make a workplace more empathetic, and why that’s often a good thing. She finds that more empathy leads to higher productivity and engagement.
The downside to empathy is that it’s easy for senior staff to burn out when they give too much of themselves to others. Isabel and Brooke Masters, the FT’s chief business commentator, find some possible solutions [like listening to - but not crying with - your staff].
Finally, Belinda gives tips on how to support team members and colleagues, and the power of having a best friend at work. Isabel and Brooke talk about their experiences of friendship at work - it might even stop you burning out.
Want to read more?
Brooke Masters on the long hours culture and burnout in Wall Street
https://www.ft.com/content/19a14cad-b5fc-4fc3-aa5a-ca306af5b831
Isabel’s column on the importance of friendship at work https://www.ft.com/content/62b2db86-60e7-11e9-b285-3acd5d43599e
McKinsey’s in-depth report on burnout in the pandemic - tl;dr? It’s still under-reported and burnt out people are … less likely to respond to surveys about burnout.
Belinda Parmar’s consultancy The Empathy Business, including the Empathy Index she mentions in the podcast [published in 2016 in the Harvard Business Review]
https://theempathybusiness.com/
https://hbr.org/2016/12/the-most-and-least-empathetic-companies-2016
We love to hear from you. What do you like (or not)? What topics should we tackle in 2022? Email us at workingit@ft.com or Isabel directly at isabel.berwick@ft.com. Follow @isabelberwick on Twitter or Instagram.
Subscribe to Working It wherever you get your podcasts - please listen, rate and subscribe !
Presented by Isabel Berwick. Editorial direction from Renée Kaplan. Assistant producer is Persis Love. Sound design is by Breen Turner, with original music from Metaphor Music. Produced by Novel.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Spreading your working hours over five, six or seven days is now an option for thousands of employees at Arup, a global design and engineering company, based in London. In this episode, Isabel talks to Diane Thornhill, Arup's director of people for UK, India, Middle East and Africa, about the company’s “Work Unbound” seven-day work week experiment in Australia and the UK. Diane talks about the importance of senior leaders ‘leaving loudly’ themselves. That means signalling publicly that it’s OK to step away from the desk and take flexible time off.
But how does a seven-day work week affect teams’ communication and collaboration? And do people really want to be able to work all the time? Isabel chats to the FT’s Emma Jacobs, who has written on Arup, about the perks and pitfalls of an always-on work week. Plus, the importance of transparency - in a flexible workplace, it’s vital to be open with our teams about where and when we are working. Is that always a good thing?
We love to hear from you: email us at workingit@ft.com or Isabel directly at isabel.berwick@ft.com. Follow @isabelberwick on Twitter or Instagram.
Mentioned in the podcast:
Emma’s article on Arup’s seven-day work week
https://www.ft.com/content/1405cb93-6625-4834-ac07-09e4062e7aa7
Arup’s own website https://www.arup.com/news-and-events/arups-new-hybrid-work-model-allows-6000-uk-employees-to-choose-their-working-days
The FT’s Sarah O’ Connor on the mysterious decline of our leisure time
https://www.ft.com/content/9df289b9-d425-49e6-899f-c963b458625f
Presented by Isabel Berwick. Editorial direction from Renée Kaplan. Assistant producer is Persis Love. Sound design is by Breen Turner, with original music from Metaphor Music. Produced by Novel.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Using social media for work is blurring the boundaries between our professional and personal lives. Do employers really want us to bring ‘our whole selves’ to a job or is there a chance that being very open in public might impact on our careers?
When Jonathan Frostick had a heart attack, he posted his thoughts about how he planned to change his life on LinkedIn. That post went viral - and Jonathan heard from people all over the world who said his inspiring words had helped them re-assess their work/life balance.
Isabel talks to him about what happened next. She is also joined by the FT’s Emma Jacobs who has written a lot about the ways we use LinkedIn, TikTok and other social media to talk about our work, our lives - and even call out bad employers, and how this is all evolving.
We would love to hear from you - email us at workingit@ft.com. Follow @isabelberwick on Twitter or email her direct at isabel.berwick@ft.com
Mentioned in the podcast:
Emma Jacobs on Jonathan Frostick and how LinkedIn got personal
https://www.ft.com/content/8d910754-3568-412c-8a10-9e4806a83b11
And Emma on staff who shine on TikTok
https://www.ft.com/content/c7f8fb0e-8f1a-4829-b818-cb9fe90352fa
A first-person account from a lawyer about how he came out to his network on LinkedIn
https://www.ft.com/content/624efffd-acb5-400d-ae9e-ee207840fa34
Presented by Isabel Berwick. Editorial direction from Renée Kaplan. Assistant producer is Persis Love. Sound design is by Breen Turner, with original music from Metaphor Music. Produced by Novel.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A workplace without bosses sounds... idyllic. In this episode, Isabel explores the topic of flat hierarchies with Alexis Gonzales-Black, an expert in organisational design. A few years ago, Alexis helped Zappos, the Amazon-owned online shoe business, to bring in ‘Holacracy’ - a way of sidelining bosses and shifting decision-making down to individual teams so they have autonomy. The experiment wasn’t a total success, as we hear, but Alexis talks about how leaders can step back and make the most of employees’ skills and expertise.
But what about other ways that companies knock down workplace hierarchies? Isabel chats to Andrew Hill, the FT’s management editor, about a consultancy that abolished job titles (cue: confusion all round) and US company WL Gore (makers of Gore-Tex), where leaders are appointed through acquiring skills and followers - not just because someone higher up gives them a job.
Plus, the dark side of boss-less workplaces. Do they give toxic colleagues a free pass to behave even more badly?
We love to hear from you: email us at workingit@ft.com or Isabel directly at isabel.berwick@ft.com. Follow @isabelberwick on Twitter or Instagram.
Mentioned in the podcast:
Alexis Gonzales-Black on Zappos’ experiment with Holacracy:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/insights-holacracy-interview-alexis-gonzales-black-usha-gubbala/
More on what happened to Tony Hsieh, Zappos’ late CEO
FT article by Alicia Clegg -’ Boss-less business is No Workers’ Paradise’
https://www.ft.com/content/34a86220-d639-11e9-8d46-8def889b4137
Andrew Hill on innovative management ideas
https://www.ft.com/content/f14b3205-f140-4e74-8743-04b881b63134
Presented by Isabel Berwick. Editorial direction from Renée Kaplan. Assistant producer is Persis Love. Sound design is by Breen Turner, with original music from Metaphor Music. Produced by Novel.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chances are, not even your best friend knows how much you earn at work. In this episode, Isabel tries to work out what we are worried about - surely salary secrecy only helps our bosses? She talks to Joel Gascoigne, chief executive of social media business Buffer, which publishes its employees’ salaries on its website - including that of Joel himself [$290k]. He thinks radical transparency helps with all sorts of potentially difficult issues at work. Isabel also talks to Brooke Masters, the FT’s chief business commentator and an expert on CEO pay. Brooke thinks there are often good reasons for secrecy: when companies are forced to be open about top leaders’ pay, CEOs can compare themselves to people leading other organisations and demand even higher salaries.
Isabel and Brooke also talk about how the rest of us can negotiate a pay rise. To do that, it may help to know what your colleagues are paid ...
We love to hear from you: email us at workingit@ft.com or Isabel directly at isabel.berwick@ft.com. Follow @isabelberwick on Twitter or Instagram.
Mentioned in the podcast:
See how much everyone is paid at Buffer https://buffer.com/salaries
Brooke Masters’ column on CEO pay in the pandemic https://www.ft.com/content/0676c6f6-1ad2-490d-b8cf-d3bccdb76182
Want to get a pay rise? Here’s how https://www.ft.com/content/967db31f-f49b-4039-a295-23db588d2a1c
Listen to Claer Barrett’s #MoneyClinic podcast on getting a pay rise https://link.chtbl.com/K3vLw7lV
National Bureau of Economic Research - the wider effects of pay transparency https://www.nber.org/papers/w28903
Presented by Isabel Berwick. Editorial direction from Renée Kaplan. Assistant producer is Persis Love. Sound design is by Breen Turner, with original music from Metaphor Music. Produced by Novel.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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