Working It

Isabel talks to Sacha Labourey from CloudBees about keeping remote staff engaged. Overcommunication is key when working apart. Joshua Chaffin discusses lonely CEOs in NYC. Find out more about remote work at CloudBees and challenges faced by all-remote companies.

Trusting your staff to take as much time off as they need to rest and avoid burnout sounds like the ultimate post-pandemic workplace reset, but what would it be like in reality?In this episode, Isabel talks to Amy Cowpe of Charlie HR, a human resources software company based in the UK, about its radical unlimited vacation experiment. What happens when you give people the freedom to make their own choices? The experiment (spoiler alert) didn’t work - but not for the reasons you might expect. Even so, some big-name companies, including Netflix, have long had a ‘no vacation’ policy. How do they make it work? Isabel also talks about the history of paid holidays - her own grandmother had just one day off a month as a live-in maid for a rich English family in the 1930s (yes, it was a bit like Downton Abbey). 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.comMentioned in the podcast:Charlie HR’s blog about its unlimited vacation experiment: https://www.charliehr.com/blog/we-tried-unlimited-holiday-heres-everything-that-went-wrong/Pilita Clark in the FT on why unlimited time off means more time at work: https://www.ft.com/content/ca935b70-bf14-11e7-9836-b25f8adaa111Psychoanalyst Josh Cohen’s long read in FT Magazine on how to avoid burnout (feat. Herbert Freudenberger’s work that coined the term ‘burnout’ in 1974): https://www.ft.com/content/ea0ea4cc-0320-11e9-9d01-cd4d49afbbe3   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.

Puppy party anyone? That’s what one employer is offering its staff to lure them back into work. Perks have always been a part of employment packages but, during the pandemic, employers have become a lot more imaginative in a bid to keep their people engaged remotely - and then get them back in the office. What is the point of these perks, do they work - and what do managers need to know to offer staff what they really want?Isabel talks to Alicia Ries, director of communications for Emea at Steelcase, a US-based furniture company that brought in a welcome programme including barbecues and its own bagpipe band when its employees returned to work. Alicia discusses what really motivates staff and how employers can help them thrive. We also speak to FT management editor Andrew Hill about the weirdest workplace incentives and what the research says will really keep us engaged at work.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.comMentioned in the podcast and further reading:Andrew Hill’s article on back to work perks, including Steelcase  What are the most in demand new perks? Charlotte Middlehurst’s FT article: https://www.ft.com/content/6f34b761-aa03-42e7-b5f2-0b128102e33bFrederick Herzberg’s research into what really motivates employees [tl;dr - make the job more interesting] from Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2003/01/one-more-time-how-do-you-motivate-employeesPresented 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.

Lorna Borenstein, CEO of Grokker, discusses the effectiveness of wellness apps in tackling burnout and promoting employee wellbeing. She emphasizes the importance of listening to staff and offers insights from her book 'It's Personal'. The discussion touches on the corporate care culture and explores alternative approaches to boosting wellness within organizations.

Welcome to Working It, the new show from the Financial Times. Every Wednesday, from October 27, join host Isabel Berwick 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.Whether 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.We hope you’ll enjoy it and we’d really like to make it as interesting and useful to you as possible, so please do let us know what you think or like or don’t. Email us at workingit@ft.com. Follow @isabelberwick on Twitter and Instagram or reach out via email: isabel.berwick@ft.comPresented 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.