What’s the problem with men?

Hello and welcome to Working It. I’ve been keeping an eye on the planned Amazon walkouts in Seattle today, where 1,700 people have signed up to take part, after the company demanded that staff RTO (return to office) at least three days a week.

There are other issues in the mix — including Amazon’s attitude to the climate crisis and the effects of mass lay-offs — but the action shows that these management vs workers stand-offs are certainly not going away. We’ll return to this topic soon (and do catch up with last week’s podcast if you missed it — we tackled why “back to office mandates” don’t work) ⛔️

Read on for an expert view — not mine, don’t worry — on why men are so lonely and in Office Therapy I advise a reader with a team member who plans to work from holiday. (Or “work” from holiday, more like.)

All alone: men at work 🙍‍♂️💁🏿‍♂️

There is a huge problem among men, at work and in life. And yes, I am walking myself right into a trap with that opener, don’t @me. But I am referring here to loneliness. Since 1990, the number of men reporting that they have no close friends has jumped from 3 per cent to 15 per cent. And men’s social networks shrink more than women’s over their lifetimes.

Workplaces, though, could have a big role to play in helping to improve connection, bringing attendant knock-on benefits for anyone who is a man or who works with, lives with or loves them. So, everyone.

Loneliness is in the news because US surgeon general Vivek Murthy recently issued an 82-page report to call attention to a public health issue. His advisory is called “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation”, subtitled “The Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community”. Its shocker headline statistic is that lacking social connection harms our physical health. It is, apparently, “as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day” 🚬

Following the report’s publication, I talked to Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at NYU Business School on the Working It podcast about how going back to offices (some of the time) is good for our mental health. His view is that “it’s where you make friends. It’s where young people, especially men, develop certain social skills and the ability to ‘read a room’ that they might not otherwise get sitting at home.” Scott’s comments made me realise this is something I wanted to explore more deeply: how can workplaces help foster connections — especially for men?

I asked an expert: Max Dickins, speaker, playwright and author of the memoir Billy No Mates: How I Realised Men Have a Friendship Problem. Max began investigating male friendships after finding there was no one he could ask to be best man at his wedding. The roots of men’s problems with friendship are deep, but Max says the current crisis is partly because of the collapse of “the ‘third spaces’ that used to support our friendships: the various contexts we spend our time that are neither home nor work — places like pubs, gyms, churches and parks.”

This loss puts even more pressure on work — but it is a more complicated place to meet people and develop deep friendships because of the issues around status and power in workplaces. Male friendships especially can be hard to navigate, Max says. “The sort of hyper-masculine traits that can block intimacy in friendships — aggressiveness, performative stoicism — can become exaggerated in a competitive workplace.”

A bigger, structural issue for organisations is around the role of HR departments. “Workplaces could take male loneliness more seriously, given it is a massive contributor to poor male mental health. In my experience the HR departments are staffed almost entirely by women who set up the work social calendar in a way that ignores male social interests. We need to talk about [average] sex differences again! It’s been taboo for too long, but solutions need to bear them in mind.”

We’ll be talking to Max about loneliness in a forthcoming episode of the podcast. We’d love to hear from you if you’re a man who has experienced loneliness — and also from readers who have ideas that can help foster workplace connection. We respect anonymity and always check — email me at isabel.berwick@ft.com or DM on LinkedIn.

Office Therapy 

The problem: I run a team who work pretty flexibly (we do two days in the office). However, a team member sent me a notification that they will be ‘a digital nomad’ for a forthcoming Thursday and Friday. Colleagues revealed that this person is going to Spain with mates for a fun weekend. In my view this should be taken as time off. Possibly related is that they are 20 something. The rest of us are older. I am irritated. Is it me or is it them?

Isabel’s answer: It’s them. Flexible work during the pandemic has given us different expectations — and that’s especially true for younger colleagues who had little to no work experience before 2020. It’s no coincidence that your team member said they were going to be a “digital nomad”. It’s the dream for many younger workers, but that is a long-term commitment. Your staffer is actually going on a “workcation”, aka on holiday but not taking it as paid time off. The more extreme version of this is a “hush trip” — when workers are abroad but don’t tell you. (I don’t make these terms up — read about it in HR Brew.) 

Almost everything in corporate culture is implicit: there are unwritten codes of “what’s done”. This creates a gap where staff can decide their own rules. Your next move, if you want to stop this happening again, is to send round a message outlining that flexible working does not include “workcations”. (Exceptions will of course apply, but say they must be cleared first.) Or get HR/a big boss to do this.

For balance, I asked my Gen Z son about your dilemma. He is 100 per cent behind your team member, describes my answer as “a vintage point of view” and says that people “should be able to have fun, as long as they are getting the work done”. When the 20 somethings become our overlords, anyone will be able to work from anywhere. And that’s probably a good thing. Until then, I will boringly agree with you that nobody does a full day’s work while drinking by the pool with their mates 🏝

Got a question, problem or dilemma for Office Therapy? Think you have better advice for our reader? Send it to me: isabel.berwick@ft.com. We anonymise everything. Your boss, colleague or underlings will never know.

This week on the Working It podcast

What do we wear to work now? Is the tie really dead? And why is “a good navy suit” the answer to just about every question about workplace attire? All of these questions and many more are answered in this week’s episode of Working It by the coolest FT double act: Jo Ellison, HTSI magazine editor, and US financial commentator Robert Armstrong, who is also a men’s style columnist. Work wear has changed profoundly since the pandemic, but it brings new dilemmas: are white trainers really “over”? (I hope not as I have five pairs.)

5 top stories from the world of work

1. What bosses think about the right to disconnect: A UK Labour party policy proposes that staff could have the right to ignore emails and messages from bosses in the evening and at weekends. This “right to disconnect” is already law in Ireland and the FT’s Emma Jacobs and Jude Webber look into the details and talk to business leaders about what it means in practice.

2. A new workplace etiquette column: My colleague Stephen Bush, who writes the FT’s great Inside Politics newsletter — with the best headlines you’ll ever see in this usually staid publication — has turned his deft hand to a new workplace etiquette column. The first one is about how to behave at diplomatic functions. (I am confident my first-ever invite to one of these will arrive soon.)

3. What we get wrong about ageing and work: This column by Pilita Clark was always going to get my older person vote, as she pointedly highlights that our talents change as we get older — we actually get better at processing complex problems — and our wisdom is real.

4. Humans always create more work for ourselves: Sarah O’Connor delves into what I’ve been worried about: will generative AI mean that professionals end up doing even more work? Almost certainly yes, says Sarah. She describes this as the “suitcase principle” of work — you always fill the case up whether you are going for a weekend or a week.

5. Hongkongers boost British suburbs: Fascinating piece from the FT’s Jennifer Williams, Yuan Yang and Chan Ho-him on the influx of skilled workers to the UK after Beijing’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong. Many families are avoiding London and its prohibitive cost of living and settling in the suburbs of Manchester and Birmingham, good for both schools and career prospects.

One more thing . . . Yes, yes, we all watched the Succession finale, but another great series has just ended. The Marvelous Mrs Maisel stars Rachel Brosnahan as Midge Maisel, a rich New York housewife in the late 1950s, and follows her nascent career as a stand-up, with plenty of comedy — and some drama — over five seasons. The final series offers a window into mid-century workplace culture when Midge is hired as “the lady writer” on a late night talk show. It’s 😱 (Amazon Prime).

A ‘good read’ from the Working It community📚

The business book recommendations keep coming and the “oldie but goody” this week comes from Xenia Wickett, director of Wickett Advisory, who writes:

I finished a superb oldie two weeks ago — Margaret Heffernan’s Wilful Blindness [2011]. It describes how we all miss the obvious. And how out of sight is out of mind. Heffernan discusses how the “bystander effect” explains 38 witnesses walking on by while Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in the middle of a street in New York City.

Every senior leader in a large organisation should read this. CEOs should make it mandatory homework for their executive teams. Every parent should read it. Every human should. I can't recommend it more highly.

Margaret Heffernan is indeed a great writer — and sometimes contributes to the FT (here’s her fascinating opinion piece on whistleblowers).

Keep them coming — we want to hear your ideas on the best podcasts, newsletters, novels, TV — anything that illuminates the fascinating and often weird world of workplaces. Email me at isabel.berwick@ft.com.