The question always asked about the UK economy is, why are we so unproductive? Might it be that UK businesses do not seek to use the skills, talents, curiosity and drive of their employees in useful ways, which is why so many of those employees direct those talents into their hobbies instead?
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Why are people so good at their hobbies? It's a question I've often asked myself because I have hobbies, and I go to events organised by people who are the leaders in the field in the hobbies in which I'm involved. And what I see time and time again are people who are simply outstanding at what they do.
Whatever their craft is, whatever it is that they're pursuing, however they do it, what I recognize is people who produce work of amazing quality. They release into their hobbies their frustrated energies, usually created by the fact that in their workplace, they are not asked to use their skills to the full. And as a result, they create things that are little short of works of art.
And even those who don't do that become the administrators at these sorts of events that I go to.
I go to exhibitions where people who do not run exhibitions as their mainstream employment activity put on events of significant size. They manage and coordinate all the logistics. They set up the arrangements. They do the accounting. They arrange the insurance. They can manage the flows of people in and out. They can arrange the catering. And everything else that goes with such a thing. And yet, during their working day, they're probably not asked to do anything requiring that degree of skill.
And I find that immensely frustrating because one of the biggest debates that there is in economics is why some countries, like the UK, are so apparently labour-unproductive. Why is it that the skills that are bought from the people of this country and put to work in our businesses produce so little output for such high levels of input compared, for example, to France, where they are supposedly up to 20 per cent more productive than we are?
Well, I think that if those people who asked that question went to some hobby exhibitions and watched what happens there, they would find some of their answers. Now, this is part of what Danny Blanchflower, who I work with on occasion, calls the economics of walking about. You have to go out into the real world and open your eyes and see what's happening to answer the questions which theoretical economics appears unable to address.
And in this case, the answer to the question appears glaringly obvious. If we look at what people do in their hobbies, they are being allowed to develop their own skills and put them to use in applications that they find interesting. That results in amazing work.
When they go to work, managers tell them to do the tasks that they think they want done. They do not require the employee's input. They do not ask for their opinion. They do not invest in their skills. They do not seek to develop the person, and they set the standards for output that are required that are very often too low. The consequence is that the employee is not motivated to deliver for that employer who is giving them no incentive to cooperate with them. And as a result, we get low productivity.
This is the choice of the manager. It isn't the choice of the employee. The employee - and I am talking about thousands and maybe millions of people who do hobbies to an exceptionally high level in this country - their choice is to work to the best of their ability when they're given the opportunity to do so. So, it is the manager's fault for not letting them do that in the workplace.
Good management would seek out the skills of the people who work for them, would mould their jobs to provide the opportunity for those skills to be put to best use, would provide the training to ensure that the person can improve on their innate abilities, and will encourage them to innovate so that best outcomes are achieved.
But that doesn't happen. And that's why we're in trouble. If only we could put the skills that people actually have in this country to use in the way that I know they exist because I can see them being delivered in people's spare time, then we could solve our productivity crisis. But we won't, because we believe in having businesses that deliver just in time, to formulas, in accordance with preordained scripts, creating products that are frankly uninspired. And that's why we have low productivity.
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I live in France in a mixed English-French family. It’s true that in France there is a very interesting emphasis on people finding their ‘métier’ rather than getting a job – ‘métier’, tellingly, is not really translatable, being a sort of cross between job + vocation + passion.
But I would add there are other differences between the French and English economies that play into higher productivity – one is that France is less services-dominated (services being much harder to automate and therefore resistant to increasing productivity) – another is better infrastructure – ie. years of more public investment. I often wonder if anybody counts the cost to productivity of having English people stuck in traffic jams or delayed trains…
All good points
Metier has been made unaffordable for most in the UK
Thank you and well said, Geof.
I’m glad that you used the term metier. It’s very different from the word job.
My parents are Mauritian Creole, so French is our first language.
Thank you for a perceptive and fundamentally relevant article.
Alas, much the same hierarchical ideological blindness to reality and wider person -involvement applies to state education. There the student has to be made to fit the decreed curriculum and the « boxed pizza » delivery of such.
It is so much kinder and more effective to fit a curriculum to the interests, enthusiasms, personality and contexts of the students.
Alas, the latter is not so facile in its presentations and applications.
«Do you want it enabling or do you want it glossy? »
Quite right Steve. The ‘boxes’ are even smaller than when I started Post16 teaching in 1983. The UK obsession with a restricted curriculum and incessant testing of that curriculum truly stunts our development as a nation. Great talent tends only to find expression in the creative arts and music; in other areas it is denied. In the voluntary sector there are many very able and talented people who otherwise have demeaning employment.
@ Steve Trevethan and John Griffin
These boxes….?
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky ?
Probably.
Austerity is designed to make us unproductive.
Neo-liberalism wants the well-off to profit from anything that is produced.
It’s not as if we don’t need homes and better infrastructure, both of which have a positive cost/benefit ratio. But the government should be managing and organising them.
It does not matter what it costs initially, the money can always be taxed back.
You make a very good point, Richard. The problem is, I remember this very topic being earnestly discussed in broadly similar terms (the release of imagination and energy) – more than forty years ago. The problem is, the deep-seated culture in Britain is functionally quite different, oppressive and destructive. My view is that, although not exclusively any single person’s fault, the pernicious effect of John Locke’s indelible intellectual legacy remains, and has deeply affected the way we think and function. Of course that observation doesn’t help; but it is not clear what would deliver us from the difficulty, because underneath our capacity to persuade ourselves we are ingenious and consciously adaptable, we are not* and the problem is never fixed.
* We are unconsciously ‘adapted’ by the new emerging technology of our time. We are servants not masters of the time in which we live.
I will muse on that
The John Lock who is the “Father of Liberalism”? Yeah, you’re reminding me of my philosophy student days (at So’ton when a certain somebody else was studying Economics) John. Liberalism and capitalism are supoosedly two sides of a single coin. Neoliberalism kinda buggers them both up.
In ‘Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work’, Craig Gent posits that rather than AI replacing humans it will simply use its algorithms to manage humans to become robotic.
“The fact is that, for most practical work, human workers are simply cheaper, more reliable and easier to replace than robots. Rather than being replaced by computers, it is instead the case that ever more workers are being managed by them, by virtue of workers being subject to algorithms.”….and “increasingly workers begin shifts at different times and in different locations to each other and are required to stagger their breaks”….and “Workers in these jobs are often highly atomised and the workplace prevents few opportunities to communicate”.
The reduction of humans to machines…Orwell or Huxley….take your pick.
Apparently the NHS needs to improve its productivity. I wonder how they measure that. What is the productivity of a psychiatrist or a palliative care nurse? Are we measuring some simplistic statistics, such as the number of patients seen or number of prescriptions written and met, just because they are easy to capture and plot on a graph? So must the medical staff all just see more patients in the same time, which probably means they give worse care and achieve worse outcomes? Perhaps we just give statins and GLP- agonists to everyone and claim a success, and ignore the side effects.
Or are we measuring the complicated health outcomes and well-being of the patients?
My wife always wondered what they meant when talking about this when she was a GP. She wondered if those making the claim ever knew how long an old person took to take off a garment to enable an examination, and then put it back on again?
Another very good point. Why do it? We have a very old-fashioned, industrialised idea of productivity. It is Taylorism’s dreadful impact (Taylor did not ever apply his system to a Ford assembly line – it is all mythology) still playing out. The desire is a reductionist one; so we can easily measure it. The need to measure then becomes, not the product of work, but its purpose. Measurement becomes central, and instead of focusing on the work done, the focus is on turning work into something that is (easily) measured. If it cannot cost-effectively be measured – it doesn’t exist.
Modern technology should release us from this problem, but we are dealing with decision makers and their gophers who live in their own anachronistic and outdated version of a world that should no longer exist; but this is Britain, so we do.
Productivity as it’s generally understood isn’t applicable to the NHS. I’m sure this is recognised by those citing it as an excuse to further diminish it, serving to illustrate their ill-intent in citing it as a reason to underfund it.
Well thats a very thought provoking blog. Yes I can see what you mean. In a former life I was allowed a degree of autonomy in what I did but outside of work I did and do a lot of work on my own behalf. It does require a range of skills! Whether I am that good at it I’m not sure!!
How true. I used to be a middle manager in further education . I managed budgets £3-4million so I had a reasonable level of responsibility. Since semi retiring I left education (my last college didn’t want to set a precedent of p-t managers) I now work for an organisation that employs 5-6 staff. Over the last 3 yrs I’ve learnt not to use my initiative at all. It still feels strange not to engage my brain when working. When I see problems I ignore them. I leant that in education. If you see a train coming down the tracks step aside but don’t tell anyone, you’ll be blamed for stoking the engine.
That’s sad but so true of so many organisations
There is the superb book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig in which the concept of ‘quality’ is discussed at length and how this relates to workers and their output.
I believe Marx also alludes to this idea with his quote, “To each according to their abilities….”.
As Richard points out, when employers expect employees to fit in to roles, they are attempting to fit a square peg into round hole.
How old is that? 30+ years. I am sure I have a copy
Even older than that Richard: it was first published in 1974.
I spent 50 years as a square peg in a round hole before retiring last year. My school years were spent gaining passes in what my parents and the school thought were useful ‘O’ Levels – maths english language physics geography and music. I was made to drop my favourite subjects of woodwork and metalwork.
I ended up spending my whole career in what is basically very boring but fairly well paid work i.e. parcel logistics in vans of varying sizes and then 40T artics.
Schools never asked us what career or subjects would suit us back in the early 1970s.
My main hobbies have always included music (playing and listening) and making things.
If I could turn the clock back to leaving school I would have aimed for an apprenticeship at one of the top organ building firms. I may or may not have been more wealthy than a driving career has made me, but I would most certainly have had a much more rewarding career in job satisfaction terms.
I’m always surprised how many truck drivers are qualified for and have moved over from other highly specialised careers – teachers for instance, also very many ex-forces people and ex-miners etc.
Truck driving tends to suit loners who like to be their own boss once out of sight of the transport manager.
I have heard that tale, in its various parts, from others.
Thank you.
My late husband was involved in the restoration of Wortley Forge, near Sheffield, an early irob-forging works. They worked every Sunday, usually 20-30 people, mostly but not exclusively men. He also took foreign visitors there from time to time. All were amazed at this intensity and skill being used in a hobby. The French reaction was “What about the family Sunday lunch?”. And one German reaction: “In Germany we have paid officials to do this stuff”.
This is strong support for your point about hobbies. So are the “Digging for Britain” TV programmes. And back in WWII, Dorothy L Sayers was writing pamphlets about the need for work to seem meaningful and worthwhile to workers. I’m not sure that changing the system to allow workers to have more control over their work would lead to higher “productivity”, as currently defined, but I do think we would have a happier, healthier country. How is this to be fitted into national statistics?
An economist with a soul! Yet another reason to visit here frequently – multifaceted wisdom.
Well reasoned and well said Richard, thanks.
There is so much untapped talent, energy, and ability in our society. IMO that is because, in our neoliberal society, we think of people as a labour resource, a fungible good. People are undervalued.
To address this I propose a substantial increase in minimum wage. Whenever this is suggested employers whine that it will make their business uneconomic. In practice this has repeatedly been shown to be false. But, if your business is economic only because you exploit your employees, it deserves to fail. The money paid to employees does not disappear into a black hole, it recirculates in the economy. It may cause a shift in which businesses are profitable, and hence which businesses thrive, but overall it does not hurt the economy.
If the minimum wage were increased it would force employers to value their employees more. Those employers who found it hard to manage would be forced to go bust, or invest and improve productivity. That’s as it should be.
I think that chronic undervaluation of employees is the reason for lack lustre productivity growth. There is no productivity conundrum, we’re simply undervalueing people. We’re not making good use of our real resources.
Another constructive possibility is Universal Basic Income (UBI). This would produce a massive growth in all kinds of cultural activity by liberating creative individuals from the need to do badly-paid menial work just to exist. Britain has always under-valued the Arts despite the Arts contributing substantially to the UK economy; but the Arts function a bit like competitive sport – only a tiny proportion earn the big money. The rest work in pubs, supermarkets and dead-end jobs by day, leaving only a small amount of time for the creative activities that drive their very being. It would also substantially push the UK’s “happiness ratings” out of the relegation zone.
Depends on the context. Give everyone an extra £50 a week and rents would all go up by that amount. So, rent controls are needed. If we had genuine capitalism here it might be ok but we don’t; instead we have oligopolies. The food cartel would sit down and devise ways to transfer it straight into their gaping maws, so price controls would be needed. Same with all the utilities & necessities. Context is all!
My view is that economics are largely removed from hobbies, so for me restoring an old motorbike I ask , how much will the bits cost, how much will the services I cannot do cost, which are usually minimal, then the thousands of hours I spend in my workshop are thrown in for free.
In my working life I was mainly forced to ask, Can I install this bathroom for £xxx to be competetive, often I was 2 grand more expensive that some other quote so didn’t get the job, which mattered a lot when I had a mortgage, now not so much.
I know many people who have fantastic talents out there, but not so many people willing to pay for them.
My tuppence worth anyway.
In my youth I dreamed of a world in which automation had progressed to the point that the basics were freely available to everyone, so the hand-crafted creations of those with talent and time on their hands became more valued and valuable. Unfortunately, the ‘benefits’ of any such automation seem to have accrued not to the whole population, but just to the rentier class. Perhaps that is the crux of what is going wrong with capitalism?
Maybe a Universal Basic Income could do something to redress the balance?
couple of thoughts. Paying more doesn’t always get you better, john (true that!), and, imagine if you had reason to run a business restoring motorbikes, you’d probably have customers queueing round the block. You’d be a happy, well, busy, mechanic!
Mid-1980s. Lancer-Boss, UK fork lift truck mfu run by two ex-Guards officers guys. Tried to make a bid for a German fork lift truck outfit Jungheinrich. Failed & then J-H took over Lancer-Boss. Amongst the first acts that the MD of J-H did was to walk around the L-B factory floor – talking to workers. It had never happened before (can’t go talking to the troops – eh what!) and he was interested in their ideas on how to improve production – ratiuonalising – as one would – that they were best placed to improve production (bloody Germans eh!! with their common sense – what is the world coming to?).
That, in a nutshell, is the UK. Is it all like that? – nope – but I’d bet quite a bit still is. Some of the technicians @ Sony (where I worked at the time) had good ideas – which we used, but I guess I was young & naif – obvs this is not what should be done
(irony alert on parts of the above).
In a company I co-ran in the 90s my jount MD used to be very annoyed when he could see my car had arrived and I did not turn up to see him for 30+ minutes because I had been walking through building the people talking to people to find out what was really going on, how they were, what the issues of concern were, whose birthday it was, or whatever. He did not think that was my job. And then he wondered how I knew so much about how the company really worked and had so many ideas on what we needed to do.
Management By Walking About – the best way to manage most things.
On my visit to Denmark with other Somerset teachers we were given a talk by the Director of the Cultural Institute.
He was interesting. One thing I remember. Danish manager goes to France. First day he comes out of the office . The staff say, ‘what are your orders for today?’
French manager comes to Denmark. Assembles the staff to give them orders. They say. ‘we know our job. Let us get on with it/’ And probably come and talk to us,
Now these stories are apocryphal but it may explain why a country with few natural resources and high taxes is so productive.
He also said they didn’t have much centralised data on what was happening in schools. ‘We might to use your American system of regular testing and inspection.’
I suggested it was not a good idea. If reported back to Emgland, it would probably have put me on a MI5 file as a subversive.
Back in 1997, there was a BBC (?) documentary about the standing down of Ian Maclaurin at Tesco. He was the first management trainee in the company and did every job including stacking shelves.
On Friday, I think, he used to to visit Tesco stores unannounced. He first talked to the shelf stackers, then the checkout and so on, gradually working his way up to the store manager. This was on the basis that the people on the shop floor would tell him the truth and the manager would tell him what he thought MacLaurin wanted to hear.
They also showed Leahy. He rarely visited stores and went straight to the store manager, totally ignoring those on the coal face.
I am in the Maclaurin camp
By chance, a pertinant quote came up on another blog today (Farnham Street, quoting Derek Sivers on what money can’t buy):
“Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.” As bosses won’t pay for it, the only reason for developing it is the satisfaction of having it…
Another thought: you are your own most demanding customer. Anyone else will accept imperfection for a lower price.
In Britain, the tradition is your ‘superiors’ must be obeyed, never questioned. I imagine this comes about as a consequence of our being the subjects of an hysterically incompetent ruling class, one which simply points its snoot in the air when contradicted as if discussion of such matters were beneath it, the real reason being it simply has no answers other than it is the authority and it may do as it pleases. All the complaints above are a consequence of society in the UK being shaped this way. This is why it’s failing. This is why a new dark age looms… frankly, not before time.
I’ve been writing intermittently about a work experience I had thirty-odd years back. I do it in bits and pieces as the mood takes me and that’s usually after I find myself lying in bed at night burning with anger and frustration at the memories and unable to sleep. Writing about it helps get it out of my system (this process is called the writing cure for anyone interested). So, this post resonates.
Well, we both suffer the vice that has no name. (Model Railways)
Firstly there is a lot of talk about ‘Support for the Arts’ but it needs to be expanded to support all activity that enlightens, educates, enthuses, encourages mental and physical activity.
All these activities help develop people, help them live worthwhile lives, provide support etc etc etc This has all sorts of benefits both on and off the balance sheet.
Oh and my youngest son won a competition to design the Town Criers new outfit based on his interest in (more like encyclopaedic knowledge of) Military Uniforms so that’s the sort of ‘cross fertilisation’ you can get. OK not in this case an economic benefit but its an example of how a ‘Hobby’ can have wider benefits.
Indeed….
I play guitar – I’m a guitar player, not a bad one according to others.
I’ m a photographer. People like my photo’s.
I am involved in grass roots rugby union – ‘raised money for years to keep my local club going.
I love railways – they taught me a lot about the world, particularly geography, engineering and lobbying.
I read a lot.
These things allow me to dream a little.
At work, I’m not allowed to dream. I have to deal with reality that is delivered by cruelty, incompetence and indifference.
Thank God for hobbies or I would lose it completely.
Very much to agree with.
Worth reminding ourselves at this point the NHS are now joining with the DWP in suggesting work is in itself a health outcome.
Perhaps the lack of productivity is also linked to the feeling that the job has little point, value or meaning, think David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs ?
There is so much relevant necessary fulfilling work out there to be done, but no conventional profit to be made, so the neoliberal order cannot allow such meaningful work to flourish.
I grow 80% of our fruit and vegetables, so read and follow various people running market gardens in various parts of the world. (think Charles Dowding in Somerset). Look at the huge rise in Hobby veg gardening ? And yet growing vegetables on Market Garden scale as opposed to an industrial farm scale actual produces MORE stuff, let alone more nutrient dense food. There are younger (and older too I am sure!) people crying out to get Back to the Land, but the current insanity off land ownership and house pricing this has become all but impossible. I do not wish to sound Maoist, but in my utopia I would encourage this return to local production for local need, for so many things, particularly in agriculture, a good introduction being Local is Our Future by Helena Norberg – Hodge.
Yes, I know big factories are needed for producing this digital device I am writing on etc, but as mentioned above, manage humanely for happiness and be content with profit that is “enough” and no more, preferably by employee ownership models.
Perhaps because I dropped out of the so called real world so long ago I find it difficult to understand what half the jobs that exist now actually Do ? I do not think it is just because I am an old fogey alernativo either, my daughter is something high up in the local authority social work world and she thinks half the jobs around her are pretty pointless and definitely not fulfilling, or “productive”, whereas society is crying out for real healing welfare work to be done, but can’t be provided for lack of funds.
I very largely think that a lot of jobs are as David Graeber described them – and people doing them know it
You notice that in the unregulated arena of hobbies where government interference, control and taxation are minimal that people can do amazing things. Yet all you do all the rest of the time is call for more government rules, more government regulations, more government control, more government taxation.
Wow! Talk about naive. If you want to succeed in my hobby there are a mighty lot of rules to follow or nothing works. And if you ignore regulations on things like electricity, good luck. You are obviously utterly clueless.
I well remember my young son (about 3) and his first visit to an adventure playpark. He climbed the “helicopter” and I was poised to support him on his way back down, only to realise he was being very careful, not releasing his hand before his foot was safely on the next rung. He made it back down without any help from me. The point I am making is, rules and regulations are made, not directly for the people who need them, but for their employers/bosses who would otherwise be inclined to exploit their workers. People doing hobbies, even quite dangerous ones, don’t put themselves at risk needlessly.
Excellent video. I concur completely. I retired from a career in IT always feeling my skills had never really been made maximum use off. Having no interest in using office politics to seek promotions I often described my job to friends as “getting paid well for being given stupid things to do by idiots” I was even told on a few occasions, towards the end, that my reduced bonuses were due to me often being un-contactable (in my own time) because I was “always busy with my hobbies”
That was probably a trade-off worth making
Perhaps one case study in this country could be the engineering industry. AEI and English Electric, very mediocre management, taken over by GEC under Weinstock, excellent but ruthless, followed by Marconi and oblivion. Compare to Siemens in Germany.
As well as wage levels (and the minimum/living wage); and lack of good management approaches, like ‘walking about’ or other forms of simply (?!) actively listening to the right people, those doing the work (think Japanese quality circles)… I think job insecurity – based on ideas like Jack Welch and the ‘bell curve’ of performance evaluation followed by ‘improve or out’ – also inhibits productivity, creativity and a sense of value at work. I worked for much of my career for two foreign companies (Norwegian and Belgian) and the culture, especially in the Norwegian one, was so much more open than in the UK companies I worked for. People seemed to be respected for their skills, knowledge and ideas – even if contrarian – and didn’t feel threatened with dismissal as a ‘troublemaker’. They also shared knowledge with each other very freely, whereas in one British company (now disappeared!) people seemed unwilling to share (or only to give an answer, not explaining ‘why’) in order perhaps to retain a degree of indispensability as a defence of their position. It was sad; and one reason I left.
Hobbies are important. My dad didn’t have any really apart from DIY around the house and after he retired he didn’t know what to do with himself. My life outside work and family has always revolved around sport – playing and watching – and now that I’m retired and my knees are creaking back aching after all that sport I can finally get my model railway going again. Thank you Frank Hornby.
This and your recent comment on young people have brought me to tears.
I’m an autistic unemployed man, and have been for several years. However I graduated with a master’s degree in physics – my first love – and spent years trying to find work afterwards. I was the first person from my family to go to university. I never got past any scheme entries. After being turned down for 100, 200 jobs… You end up permanently shut down. In the end I gave up and only avoided homelessness due to friends and family.
I then got better, and started working in retail. I saved up and progressed into another master’s, this time in environmental modelling. But the same story repeated afterwards. I don’t tell people about this, as when I used to, people think it all works out if you’re smart. It doesn’t.
Despite all that, I started using my time at a food bank. I now run a gaming club, one of the largest in London. We run live events all over, and it gives me such joy to help others and be respected. However it’s entirely unpaid.
I’ve read careers advice, LinkedIn posts. Thing is, my autism gives me a narrow focus. Whereas others see opportunities/twists, I see one prospect at a time and work on it. But of course a recruiter just sees one form among many, one with long gaps and suspect education.
I don’t like to think about the future.
Chris
I am so sorry, and recognise what you say.
The sad reality is that the world is built by and for extrovert neurotypical people, and they by and large have no clue that there are other types of people in it. For everyone else survival right now is about making the best of earning what is possible and doing as you have done – being creative elsewhere.
Is there no money to be made from running gaming events? I know they are incredibly popular.
Good luck
Richard
One of my very, very Aspie friends from the high IQ community suffered the same problem. She wanted to teach English but in the UK could never get past the interviews. She spent many years of her life doing menial work as a consequence. Then she tried abroad and was accepted straight away into teaching communities. She earned enough to buy her own flat here, renting it out while she was abroad, came back from Italy just as Covid was beginning, sold her flat and is now in Portugal setting up her own school.
Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion there are ways of thinking which are simply unacceptable here, and that I further assume is is due to the status quo being so fragile some areas of thought simply cannot be entertained without that status quo crumbling. Attitudes are rigid here therefore, ossified if you will.
Like my friend, you might do better, much, much better, abroad.
Finding your Element by the late Ken Robinson is worth reading