The current trend of advice and focus, particularly financial advice and focus, is "sacrifice, go all in on work, work, work, save and invest through your 20s and 30s, which is the best decades of your life for compound growth! so you can have an absolutely amazing retirement, with enough money to do everything you want, and not worry about money, because there won't be social security!" This feeds into a wider toxic focus of positioning work as "the thing that exists in opposition to the life we deserve to live." In reality, work is part of life. Retirement is actually the thing that exists in opposition to life. The vision that's being sold is "if you sacrifice all fun and socialising, and just grind through your 20s and 30s, you'll get to have this wonderful, rewarding retirement" - but the reality is, many of us will not be in good enough health by the time we reach our 60s or 70s to actually do much of anything. Many of u...
Today, I attended a webinar on "Capability and Ill-health in the Workplace". It was hosted by a corporate insurer who provides HR consultancy services. Those attending were business leaders and HR representatives, and the Q&A at the end made it clear they believed they were only in a "room" with other leaders and HR reps. Their attitudes around long-term ill health and disability were immediately presented as: . This is an intolerable and ridiculous burden to us as employers . This is too expensive . These people are taking the piss . It's not going to be fair to able-bodied people who have to pick up their slack. This is also the attitude I've personally, directly encountered as someone trying to work whilst also being disabled. It's the attitude that lost me my last job - a job I mostly enjoyed, and a role I'd hoped to build a career from. Employers. HATE. Disabled. And. Chronically. Ill. Employees. They do not want to employ disabled p...