The Productive Pessimist

  One of the positive - if the government don't fumble it, and employers step in to provide the necessary 'assist' - elements of Labour's Welfare Reform announcements on March 18th was the "Right to Try", where claimants, including those on Limited Capacity for Work Related Activity, can engage with employment they feel they may  be able to manage alongside disabilities and health challenges, without  the risk of losing their welfare support, meaning that, if they can't  manage the workload, or an employer feels it is not safe for them to continue, they - in theory - wouldn't be required to start a new claim (which, for those currently on LCWRA, would see them receive substantially less  than their existing claim pays, obviously not a desirable outcome for anyone.) I've been around long enough, and had enough interaction with the UK's abysmal employment landscape, and encountered enough of the toxic, self-important, ableist attitudes of employe...

  As Q1 2025 draws to a close, and before you power forward into Q2, do you know how to effectively  process and consolidate the lessons from the past three months? Quarterly progress should be  progress, which means it needs to include reflection, association, and conscious knowledge   in order to be purposeful, and bring genuine benefit to your organisation. So, what is RACK , and how can you effectively apply it to your team's planning? Reflection What did you fail at  in Quarter One? - List all  your failures. - Go through the list, and using either different coloured text, or different symbols, whichever is most effective for your team, identify each item on the list, distinguishing them as: . Failures that are entirely down to your own/your team's  human error . Failures which are partly, but not wholly, down to your/your team's human error . Failures which are down to circumstances beyond your control Be as honest as possible with yourself ...

  I don't normally do personal deep dives on this blog, which is, after all, my professional presence as The Productive Pessimist Ltd. In the past - in jobs, when building connections and relationships, in social media discourse, and yes, in blog posts - I've apologised for "going into all of that"  or "going on about me".  In several jobs, I've been made  to apologise - and to feel ashamed - for mentioning personal challenges I was facing.  In my first office-based job, aged 21, on my first day, I was told, directly: "When you come to work, you leave all your personal shit at the front door of your own house. You're not you , here; you're the company, and the company doesn't have headaches, the company isn't tired, the company isn't worried about how it's going to pay its rent, the company doesn't have family members or friends who die, that it gets sad about. You're being paid to be the company for 10 hours a day, f...

  Recently, we were asked "if wedding fayres actually make any money, & how resilient they're likely to be." The ask came from someone who had attended a wedding show as an interested observer, and hadn't noticed a great many customers in the time they were there. While the wedding industry is not our focus, challenges to all sectors, including retail, absolutely falls under our strategic leadership focus. The wedding industry, in particular, is very much feeling the impact of people buying formal wear through vintage, thrift, and low-cost online retailers, because it is more affordable. However, many of those people, particularly brides, still want an "experience" as part of their wedding preparations, which is something wedding retailers used to give as a loss-lead, knowing they'd sell high-mark-up dresses as a result of the "pamper day experience", and make a plentiful amount of income from even just one session. Online retail, and its ...

This morning, LinkedIn was being very Monday, very LinkedIn, not very demure, not very mindful. A woman, whose profile suggested she works in recruitment, responded, quite aggressively, to a disabled man asking why companies were still  engaging in discrimination against disabled individuals with: "Because disability is a liability, it costs money, and businesses can't expect to run up their costs to an infinite degree whilst tiptoeing around every single need people could ever possibly have." This isn't an isolated thought.  It's not often said out loud in the UK - but it always has been elsewhere in the world, and it very much is being shouted from the rooftops of the USA. And it's not just recruiters and executive leadership; it's ordinary people, meaning that, even with the most inclusive, welcoming, accommodating leadership, disabled people will still be encountering hostile environments courtesy of the able-bodied people they have to work with  on th...

As soon as air travel began to become more affordable, Britain's small museums, and other smaller tourism attractions were in trouble. The problem was that, being British, those organisations didn't consider that they were  in trouble. Their entry fees were still a lot  cheaper than a plane ticket, and flying abroad was so much hassle , wasn't it? And besides, they were British.  You could have a conversation  with the lovely, British volunteers working in lovely, cosy, local British museums, you could enjoy the bracing British seaside, or the beautiful British countryside, whilst exploring quaint, quirky tourist businesses, and - the really cool  payoff - keeping your money in the local economy! And, for a while, the British public agreed with all of this. They pottered, they provided endless 2ps, 1ps, and 5ps, they brought quirky knick-knacks that would sit on a windowsill for a few weeks, then be moved to the mantlepiece, before finally being scuttled off to ...

Recently, an article was circulated through the UK media about "neurological issues affecting Gen Z", which were 'blamed' on "excessive reliance on noise-cancelling headphones". These 'neurological issues' are actually known as Auditory Processing Disorder, or APD. What Is APD? Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is a difficulty in the brain being able to distinguish background noise from speech, but with hearing tests returning "normal" results. This is a tricky issue, because some people in the early stages of hearing loss will struggle in exactly this way, however their hearing test may come back as in a 'normal range'. As with all medicine, sometimes doctors fail to pick something up that could be managed or may be part of a wider issue. However, where this is relevant to neurodiversity is that these issues combined with a normal result hearing test, are a hallmark for Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). APD can occur for a va...