12 July 2021. Weather | Work
It’s not ‘climate change’. It’s ‘everything change’. // The biggest UK public sector four day week is a success—and here’s the data [#587]
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1: It’s not ‘climate change’. It’s ‘everything change’.
As I’m writing this, more than a million households in Houston, Texas, are still without power after being hit by Hurricane Beryl, as they now cope with sweltering heat. In South Africa, strong winds and heavy rain have left thousands homeless in the Western Cape, leading to calls for the state governor to declare a state of disaster.
I had to email someone in Houston today, and hadn’t realised that they were battened down because of Hurricane Beryl. As it happens, they had built their house to withstand 130 mph (200 kph) winds. They posted to a list I’m a member of,
I've lived in hurricane areas for most of my adult life - either Florida or Houston, Beryl was not your normal hurricane - either in timing, intensity, speed, or impact. I've paid attention to climate change for a while... [I]t will take months for Houston to totally recover.
(Hurricane Beryl seen from space. Source: NOAA Open Data Dissemination Program. Public Domain.)
We also know that for that last 12 months global temperatures have been continuously above 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
David Bengston, who’s an American environmental futurist, posted a piece at the Houston Foresight blog last month about some of the consequences of this.
[The Canadian writer] Margaret Atwood made an astute observation about the increasingly wide-ranging effects of climate change: “I think calling it climate change is rather limiting. I would rather call it everything change. Everything is changing in ways that we cannot yet fully understand or predict.”
He suggests that haven’t really got used to the idea that climate change will affect everything. We’re still focussed on weather effects: flooding, extreme heat, wildfires and so on. But, he says, the indirect effects are far broader than this:
A few examples illustrate the countless cascading consequences of climate change: Civil war, refugee crisis: Syria suffered its worst drought in at least 900 years from 1998 to 2011, a megadrought made much more likely by climate change. Devastating crop failures occurred from 2006 to 2011, resulting in millions of people moving into cities, worsening social stresses, and contributing to the Syrian Civil War.
Bengston works through some of the other possible second order and third order effects that we might already have seen as climate change worsens. It is quite an eclectic list, but that is the point, I think:
“Increased human trafficking: Frequent flooding from rising seas is eroding land, damaging homes, and destroying crops and livelihoods in the Sundarbans, a large group of densely populated, low-lying islands in India’s Ganges delta. Climate-induced extreme poverty has resulted in growing desperation and increased openings for human traffickers.”
“Higher inflation worldwide: A 2023 analysis from the European Central Bank and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found that climate change could increase global inflation by up to 1 percent every year until 2035. Food inflation was even higher: As much as 3 percent more than without climate change.
These inflation effects are worse in Africa and Latin America.
Gentrification and growing housing inequality: The rise of mega-fires and increased flooding in the American West are reducing both the existing housing stock and land suitable for building. New homes built after a climate disaster are consistently more expensive than the old homes they are replacing, along with much higher fire insurance rates.
Dangerous fungi adapting to humans: The human body’s best defense against deadly fungi has been our body heat, which is too warm for most infectious fungi to survive. But fungi could be evolving to withstand higher global temperatures and thus become pathogens for people.
Hotter classrooms reduce student learning: Heat waves are increasing are increasing in frequency, intensity, and duration. One of the many social effects of these climate extremes is their effect on education in classrooms that are too hot for students to learn in.
Such classrooms are more likely to be found in poorer areas.
Bengston is an environmental futurist, so he’s primed to look for these consequences, but this list is really only the beginning:
Some of these effects are potentially catastrophic, like social instability driven by climate change eroding democracy... A review article published in the journal Nature Climate Change… found “… traceable evidence for 467 pathways by which human health, water, food, economy, infrastructure and security have been recently impacted by climate hazards…”
There’s certainly enough here to justify Bengston’s suggestion that “our rapidly changing climate will be the leading driver of change for the foreseeable future.” He hasn’t even mentioned the risks to our financial and business systems caused by the pressures that climate change is putting on the insurance system.
In policy terms, he suggests that there are two straightforward implications for public organisations. The first is that they should use tools and methods designed to identify possible second or third order consequences of change—for example the futures wheel.
The second is that since these are complex emergence systems, it won’t be possible to anticipate everything. So this means that wherever possible we need to design for resilience, so that systems can absorb the unexpected.
One note from me. The Limits to Growth model’s base case shows industrial production declining from the mid-to-late 2020s. The reason for this is that “pollution”—their catch-all modelling category for the external consequences of the global economic system—increases. And in turn this means that investment capital needs to be directed towards repairing the system. And that’s more or less what’s happening here.
2: The biggest UK public sector four day week is a success—and here’s the data
Regular readers will know that I have been following closely Britain recent trials with a four day week, partly because it involved a significant range of organisations across a wide range of sectors. (My write up of the national trial is here).
One of the more controversial participants in the trial was in a local authority—South Cambridgeshire District Council (working with Cambridge City Council). This wasn’t the council’s fault. The Conservatives who were then running the country chose to use the fact of the council’s trial to open up the four day week as a new front in their rolling culture war.
It probably didn’t help that South Cambridgeshire District Council was run by the Liberal Democrats, but the local MP was a Conservative.
So it was that a year ago the Local Government minister, Lee Rowley, wrote to the council leader, Bridget Smith, to instruct her to end the trial.
As I am sure you are aware, all councils are expected to ensure that finite and valuable taxpayers’ money is used in a way which demonstrates value for money – something which paying employees for an extra day of work that is not carried out is unlikely to demonstrate.”
Etc etc.
The local MP, Anthony Browne, had described the trial as “an ideological crusade”.
(Cllr Bridget Smith, leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council, Source: SDUC)
As it happened, Bridget Smith decided not to stop the trial as a result of Rowley’s letter—councils have quite a lot of autonomy to decide how best to manage themselves, even if their finances are tightly constrained by government. And even then, the initial evidence (which she had shared with the relevant government Department) was positive.
All the same, there was a bit of what looks like a bit of government harassment later on—the Council received a ‘best Value Notice’ from the relevant department in November 2023, which means it has had to compile a lot of data and send it in to the relevant ministry.
Well, the results of the trial are now in, and have been reported in The Guardian. South Cambridgeshire was running what’s known as a 100-80-100 four day week: 100% of delivery, in 80% of the time, for 100% of the pay.
The 15 month trial was assessed by academics at the Universities of Cambridge and Salford, and the headline version of the outcome is that:
In the largest public sector trial of the four-day week in Britain, fewer refuse collectors quit and there were faster planning decisions, more rapid benefits processing and quicker call answering, independent research has found.
The academics assessed performance in 24 areas, and they found that it improved in 11 of these areas; was about the same in another 11; and got worse in two. The two: rent collection was slightly poorer, although this may have something to do with the cost of living crisis, and the speed of re-letting council housing fell by two days.)
The full details of the assessment are included as an appendix in a Council agenda paper (from page 9).
The critical impact seems to have been on staff retention and morale. The paper lists these out:
Staff turnover has reduced by 39%, substantially reducing our total recruitment demands.
Intention to leave the council has improved from -2 to +9 (where the benchmark is 0)
There has been a 53% increase in average number of applications for roles advertised externally. [The calibre of applicants has also improved].
134 new colleagues have been successfully recruited – including some in traditionally hard to fill roles such as waste vehicle drivers and planners
Our survey of new starters showed the four-day week trial influenced 76% to apply for roles
Employee commitment improved from -4 to +4
Mental Health improved from -4 to +6
Physical health improved from -3 to +7
Motivation has improved from -2 to +4
Average sickness has shown no meaningful change when compared to previous years
Numbers of complaints have reduced by 8.5% in non-waste teams, and 20% in the Shared Waste Service, during their trial periods.
I normally summarise more than I have here, but it is relatively unusual to have this much detail and analysis of actual outcomes from a four day week trial.
The trial also delivered substantial savings, of £371,500. These came from reduced staff turnover, which meant that the Council didn’t have to buy in more expensive agency staff to cover posts. The numbers are laid out in the report.
One of the striking things in the internal report is that the four day week was much better at improving retention than conventional financial incentives. Prior to the trial, it notes:
Despite adopting well known incentives such as golden hello and retention payments, and benefits such as health cash plans, salary sacrifice for pensions and wellbeing and wider support schemes, operating in a very dynamic and competitive job market meant that recruiting to certain roles and retaining talent was proving difficult.
The Council had spent around £65,000 on ‘Golden hello’ payments in the 12 months before the trial started, and nothing afterwards.
The improving outcome in staff health is also interesting, because, judging from the council report, that was the main reason they went into the trial in the first place. As the report notes:
The Council was also aware – anecdotally – that some colleagues felt stressed and were struggling at work. [Surveys] showed that colleagues reported physical health at a level independently rated as ‘caution’ and mental health at a level rated as ‘risk’ - data that was reflected in the national picture as the country emerged from the challenges of Covid-19.
So, given that employers in the UK do have a duty of care to their staff, doing nothing here might itself have constituted a business risk.
(South Cambridgeshire District Council offices. Source: SDUC)
Further, as I heard when listening to how a Welsh housing association had implemented its four day week, the process of working out how to deliver 100% of productivity in 80% of the time provided teams with the opportunity to find new ways of working:
The four-day week was seen as a real opportunity and became a catalyst for teams to plan how to deliver to make it succeed, while ensuring a focus on service delivery and the continuation of improvement and innovation.
The report was tabled on the day after the UK’s General Election, although clearly written before it. In the risk assessment it notes that one of the risks is that
the four-day week may be stopped by the government, or that financial penalties are imposed forcing the Council to return to a five-day week.
I find it hard to believe that the new government will do this, since it is concerned about improving productivity and improving local services, especially given that there’s no equality impact.
As for Lee Rowley and Anthony Browne, they both lost their seats in the General Election. But schadenfreude is such an ugly emotion.
j2t#587
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