A REPORT from the think tank Theos argues that increased lone working without security of employment could also be making hundreds of thousands of British people “insecure and unwell”.
It argues for a rediscovery of Christian work principles. These would restore dignity, fairness, connectedness, and higher health to working arrangements, the writer, Tim Thorlby, argues. He is the director of Beautiful Enterprise, an ethics and sustainability consultancy.
His report, The Ties That Bind: The rise of insecure and lone working and the seek for mutual bonds, seeks “a recent and fuller conception of what work means in the trendy world”, and says that this “must begin from a deep account of how human beings are more than likely to flourish”.
Mutuality — “an ethical commitment to one another beyond immediate transactions or written contracts” — is a vital theme.
One of the writer’s foremost findings is the estimate that pre-Covid 19 pandemic levels of lone and hybrid working at 27 per cent have now risen to 59 per cent, as a proportion of the workforce operates “alone for not less than a number of the week”.
Loneliness, blurred boundaries between work and residential, less creativity, and greater prevalence of health issues are all known as aspects of concern within the spread of home working.
Flexibility within the labour market is usually a positive for a lot of, the report says, but has also enabled the so-called “gig economy”. A big issue is the apparent lack of fairness and security for staff. This, it says, affects nearly one in five (19 per cent), or greater than six million staff. Self-employment and zero-hours contracts are further facets of a working pattern that may contribute to poor mental health and financial insecurity.
Dignity, agency, limit (“of boundaries in an environment of limitless work”), and fair rewards are areas of on which the writer makes recommendations, in addition to on moving “beyond contract to covenant”, and “the importance of ethical leadership”.
The report suggests that “4 essential features to strong mutual relationships for each employee [are] fair hourly pay at or above an actual living wage; predictable hours and income that are modified only with fair notice; connection for staff, who must be well managed and supported; and healthy work, [which] supports good physical and mental health.”
The report concludes with two sets of recommendations to the Government and employers. It is the primary in a series of three reports “ how we will create higher work for us all by being attentive to the social dynamics — the love, even — in our workplaces”.
The General Synod heard last month how “the longer term of labor is one of the crucial pressing questions of the times”, in a paper presented by the Bishop of Oxford, Dr Steven Croft (News, 1 March). “Work is a central theological in addition to anthropological concern,” he said.
