The word ‘workshy’ has become meaningless dogwhistle

Sound the “workshy” klaxon! It has been about a fortnight since the news cycle was last clogged up with patronising soundbites about how the UK is apparently not working hard enough, meaning that we were long overdue a rehash of this most irritating of debates. And lo, right on cue came the shadow home secretary Chris Philp, with his own contribution to this empty dialogue. Speaking to Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4, Philp — whose most memorable contribution to public life perhaps came when he tweeted “Great to see Sterling strengthening on the back of the new UK growth plan” shortly after Liz Truss’s 2022 mini budget, only for the pound’s value to promptly take a nosedive — said he has found “that working hard brought its own reward and I’ve kept doing that ever since. It is something I would like to infuse more into our national culture as well.” He went on to argue that “we need a work ethic, we need everybody to be making a contribution”, and that “as a country, we need to up our game”.

If you got a sense of déjà vu hearing those words, that’s probably because they echoed recent remarks made by BrewDog co-founder James Watt. Earlier this month, Watt (a man whose entire vibe answers the eternal question of “what would happen if a LinkedIn profile was somehow anthropomorphised in an ill-advised Frankenstein-style experiment?”) claimed that Britain is among the “least work-oriented countries in the world”. Right now, the term “workshy” is starting to feel like a meaningless dog whistle, a way of attempting to score political points without doing anything useful or attempting to unravel a complicated picture. To borrow the LinkedIn phrase oft-used by entrepreneurial types like Watt, so-called lazy Brits have become “low hanging fruit”, an easy target. It’s well on the way to being placed in the same part of the political lexicon as “woke”, becoming a convenient catch-all phrase that can rail against a nebulously defined group of people who are apparently ruining everything. When did it become so fashionable to start negging our national work ethic?

In the 2010s, so-called hustle culture seemed to permeate the mainstream as millennials, who’d come of age amid a global financial crisis, pulled out all the stops to climb the corporate ladder. Pushing yourself to the point of burnout and exhaustion was reframed as a badge of honour, the ultimate proof that you were, quote unquote, making it. The underlying message, too, was that however crap your role, however terrible your remuneration, however unlikely the possibility of ever getting promoted, you were somehow lucky to be there.

All this was great news for the people at the top of the corporate food chain, who somehow managed to give off an air of general benevolence by dishing out free beverages on a Friday, or going the way of Silicon Valley and installing table tennis tables and, shudder, ball pits in their premises. The pandemic, though, seemed to bring about a sea change in our collective attitudes to work.

Vast swathes of workers got a longed-for taste of work-life balance when they proved that they were able to competently do their jobs from home. Others saw that they’d been over-investing emotionally in businesses that would never love them back — and that would probably cut them loose at the first sign of economic turmoil. It’s also worth noting, of course, that Covid had wide-ranging impacts on the nation’s physical and mental wellbeing, and on its health service, which has inevitably shaped the workforce too.

No wonder, then, that our feelings towards the 9 to 5 shifted considerably after such a seismic event. Throw in the fact that wages have stagnated across many industries, and that many companies are rolling back the flexible working policies they put in place during lockdown (Amazon and Boots are among the high profile names that have recalled their employees to the office five days per week) and it’s hardly a huge shock that some of us are feeling disillusioned, lacking in motivation and unwilling to place work at the top of our priorities.

But as soon as we collectively realised that work won’t necessarily make you happy, this new attitude been demonised (Generation Z, for example, keep being written off as slackers, rather than being celebrated for having a much better grasp on work-life balance than their elders). Might that possibly be because it threatens the bonuses and bottom lines of the already super-wealthy?

Watt’s argument that Britain isn’t particularly “work-orientated” compared to other countries stems from a 2023 study from King’s College London. The research found that one-fifth of British participants believed that work was not important in their life, which was the highest proportion among the 24 countries surveyed. The UK was also the least likely country to say that work was either “very” or “rather” important in their life (although 73 per cent of the participants still agreed with those statements).

Placed within the context of our unpredictable and often hostile working world, it’s no wonder that many are putting less value on their jobs, and more on their actual lives. This just feels like a rational response or even a sensible coping mechanism. But of course, it’s easier for the wealthy and the powerful to write this off as idleness, rather than focusing on the structural problems that got us here — just as it’s more simple to brand the 9 million economically inactive Britons as lazy scroungers instead of considering all the factors keeping people from work. Lengthy NHS waiting lists. Mental illness. The vast cost of childcare, which prevents so many women from returning to work after maternity leave. Oh, and the fact that 2.7 million of those “inactive” are actually students.

If the likes of Philp and Watt took some time to chat to ordinary people, they’d probably soon see that the vast majority of people aren’t anti-work per se, they just want to be paid fairly, have decent chances of progression and not be made to feel guilty for switching off once their allotted hours are over. Essentially, they’d like a decent quality of life, one that would probably make them better workers.

Wouldn’t we all be able to focus a bit better if we had the time and the financial firepower to eat more healthily and devote the odd weekday evening to working out? Or if we were able to sleep without that 10pm email flying round and round in our heads? Or if, god forbid, we didn’t have to worry about scrabbling together childcare, or paying for an extortionate travel pass? That might sound a bit utopian, sure. But we shouldn’t be made to feel bad for wanting work-life balance, just because it doesn’t fit in with a millionaire’s “grindset”.