105 - Dr Calum Carson - Inclusive Remote & Hybrid Working Study

Episode 105 of the Long Covid Podcast is a chat with Dr Calum Carson, Senior Research Associate at Lancaster University about the Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study which he is involved in.

Participate in the study

Project website

Previous study The changing workplace: Enabling disability-inclusive hybrid working - Lancaster University

For more information about Long Covid Breathing courses & workshops, please check out LongCovidBreathing.com

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

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Jackie Baxter  
Welcome to this episode of the long COVID Podcast. I am absolutely delighted to welcome my guest this morning, Dr. Calum Carson, who is a senior research associate at Lancaster University. And we are going to be talking about the inclusive remote and hybrid working study. I'm sure loads of other stuff too, because tangents. So a very warm welcome to the podcast today.

Calum Carson  
Thank you. Nice to be here. It's a bit of a mouthful that name. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I know. I had to be quite careful reading that, to try and get it right! So maybe to start with, would you mind just saying a little bit more about yourself? And maybe what you do?

Calum Carson  
Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I'm gonna senior research associate, which basically boils down to an academic that mainly focuses on research rather than teaching. And at the moment, I'm working on this study, which is specifically around remote and hybrid working, exploring disabled workers experiences of that. 

I've had a bit of a roundabout journey in how I've got there, I suppose. I first went to university, I was like, I'm going to do a politics degree, go into politics. And then after three years of that, I thought, no, not really. And then I worked for six years, just doing that the odds and ends, University admin jobs and stuff, went back did a sociology degree. And I looked at kind of the stigmatization that disabled Social Security recipients felt, who are claiming for benefits that weren't necessarily about being in work, but they still felt that stigma around it. So I developed a bit of an interest in like looking at kind of disability issues and disability politics. 

Then I moved on to a PhD in the business school on the real living wage, the voluntary higher living wage about why employers decide to pay it. In the middle of that I went to work at the United Nations in Geneva for a while, where I ended up working on kind of decent work and the issues around that, and around, you know, what the everyday experience of work was like for individual people. And that started to become what I really became interested in. 

So then after that, I worked at Manchester Metropolitan University on a project exploring the impact of Universal Credit on employers and low paid workers. And then from there, I've moved on to this one at Lancaster, which is really interesting, because it's kind of combined my interest in decent work with disability politics, and everyday worker experiences into the inclusive remote and hybrid working study. So that's a bit of a roundabout way of putting it. But that's been my kind of academic journey and my kind of research journey over the last, since 2005. After almost 20 years.

Jackie Baxter  
That's amazing. And I love like, just as a kind of side note, I suppose this idea that, you know, it's okay to like, train in one thing, and then train in another. I think, in my own experience, in some ways, and certainly, when I've been working myself in education, there's there's kind of like, when you sort of get to the age of 15, suddenly, you have to decide what you have to do with your life. And you have to make all of your choices at the age of like, 15, or 16, which is like, you know,when you're that age, it's, you know, some people are very set with what they want to do, but I think the vast majority of people aren't. So yeah, I think that's cool. 

But yeah, I love that you've kind of like managed to take all of the things that you've done, and kind of like, yeah, as you say, put them all into a pot together to come up with working with this study, which is what I guess we're going to be largely talking about today.

Calum Carson  
Yeah, it used to be quite frowned upon in academia, from what I've been told, about like jumping around a lot. But I think now there's a bigger focus on interdisciplinarity. And, you know, that kind of thing. And these kinds of departmental lines about what politics or what's a business school and that kind of thing. Because I remember when someone suggested I do a PhD at business school, I thought that just meant people were obsessed with money. And that kind of thing. You know, not people looking at low paid workers experiences and stuff. 

Although there is, of course, now I'm in a faculty, which is like a medical faculty, there is the added addition of being a doctor, but not a real doctor. I'm a fake doctor in a medical faculty, which is hilarious. I quite like that. It's a good opening to a conference talk.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, but I mean, you're right. You know, I think we've been talking about this on the podcast on and off about how the kind of medical system is very siloed. So you know, which is very useful for a lot of conditions. But when you have something like long COVID, for example, which encompasses so many different bits of you, actually, having a very siloed medical system is not particularly helpful, because there is not really anybody looking at the bigger picture. 

And it's kind of made me think a lot about how actually, nothing in life is on its own. Is it really? you know, it's all interconnected with other things. So that makes more sense when you talk about things like interdisciplinary research, like you just mentioned, but actually, you know, yes, you might be studying one specific thing, but actually, there's all sorts of stuff that plays into that. So it actually makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

Calum Carson  
Definitely, like, if you say long COVID. Like the sheer variety of, you know, symptoms that arise from that is so massive that even having it under this long COVID Umbrella has problems I'd imagine. So yeah, I think one of my things has been to try and break down those barriers by shifting around a lot. And talking, you know, this may interest you here, this may interest you there. I feel like that kind of thing. It just stops those new barriers being built as well. So, yeah, that's kind of one of the, like, a permanent feature of my academic career. I think I like that idea of jumping around, not just staying in one place, you know, that kind of thing. And going where the interesting research is, and right now it's definitely here, because this is fascinating stuff.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think, again, something that I have noticed over the last few years is that there can be a tendency to not talk about things because they might be perceived as difficult or uncomfortable, or a healthy person not really wanting to think about disability, because they don't really want to entertain the thought that that could happen to them. And I think that can then contribute to people who are disabled, who are unwell, feeling more isolated than they are already. So I think it's important to have conversations, and to try to work out how we can have conversations in the right way.

Calum Carson  
Yes, definitely. Yeah. And I feel there's also a sense of, like, after the pandemic, there's also an additional sense of, we all went through that, we don't want to keep talking about it, we kind of want to just sweep it under the rug. But you know, it's not necessarily the case for a lot of people that the pandemic is even over, let alone, you know, that these conversations don't need to be had. Because one of the aspects of this study, which we'll get onto is, it's, you know, trying to pinpoint what new potential inequalities could be before they arise, and kind of placing a focus on that, rather than studying them five or 10 years down the line when they've had time to get embedded in to the world of work.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, definitely. So maybe let's dive into the research study. I mean, this is obviously going to be a kind of huge topic. So part of me is thinking, should I just kind of like pull you back, like one of those little cars and let you go? Yeah, you know, sort of, let's talk a little bit about it, and what it is,

Calum Carson  
yeah, sure, I'll kind of do the headline, and then I'll boil it down to the individual bits. So the project itself has kind of like a number of dimensions. But yeah, really boiling it down to its core, it focuses on disabled workers experiences, of you know, remote and hybrid working over the past five years. Hybrid working, obviously being sometimes in the office, sometimes at home. And then essentially applying this new level of understanding that we'll get from exploring these issues to learning how to make kind of remote and hybrid working more inclusive in the future for their needs. 

So that when employers implement these kind of new forms of working, they're not assuming a non disabled worker, you know, they're actually assuming some people could have different needs, some people could have fluctuating conditions and make sure that works for everyone. So that's the kind of the headline idea for the project. So that's the employer level, we're looking at how employers can make these things more inclusive. 

We're currently in the first round of the project, which is an online survey that we're currently asking anybody, anyone in the UK, who's had experience with remote or hybrid work in anytime over the past five years, doesn't have to be at the moment, don't have to be in employment at the moment, who considers themselves either disabled or has a long term physical or mental health condition, just to fill out the survey and have their voice heard about hybrid and remote working, how it works for them, what they like about it, what they don't like, what they feel could be improved upon, you know, what hasn't been taken into consideration by their current employer or their past employer. So that's the current strand, we're talking about the survey. 

After the survey, I'm going to be interviewing about 50 people who have done the survey and have indicated they'd like to be interviewed. And then we're going to be really drilling down into their individual experiences. So then we've got, we've got a top level survey data, and then individual interview data as well, of their experiences. 

And then after that, I'll then be talking to employers about using them as case studies to see, from their perspective, what they thought the challenges have been in, you know, helping people adjust to remote and hybrid working, which over the last five years, basically all of us have had to do, you know, whether they've taken much consideration into their disabled workforce in doing so, how they feel, you know, these changes affect the world of work and how they work, obviously, will be different in each sector. 

And then after that, we'll be talking to policymakers at the local and national level about how they feel about how these issues are changing the world of work. Do they feel that any new guidance needs to be given to employers to make sure that, you know, hybrid and remote working works for everyone. 

And then finally, at the end, most excitingly, I'm commissioning a production company to create short film highlighting some of these experiences. So we'll be like, there'll be people I've interviewed from the survey who would think have got interesting stories, you know, we'll be filming them, hopefully some one or two of them in their homes to highlight really visually how this works for them. And in another way to just essentially provide a visual way of communicating our research findings, that doesn't involve reading a massive report written by academics.

So that will be up until December 2024. And we'll be releasing the film and like a big report, probably next October, November, at a big launch event. So yeah, it's all in flux at the moment. And it's a busy schedule, but it's exciting.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, it does sound exciting. And I think, I mean, I love the idea of, like, research being more accessible. I mean you said, you know, it's going to be a film well, like, you know, to me, anyway, that would seem more accessible to a non researcher, a non scientist or non Doctor than, you know, paper that's sort of thick as a tree trunk kind of thing.

Calum Carson  
Yeah. And written in gobbledygook.

Jackie Baxter  
Exactly. You know, like, realistically, who's going to read that? Like, I'm sure plenty of people will in academia, but you know, you're the sort of the people that the study is kind of speaking to, and everything probably aren't. Even able bodied people without disability, without health conditions would probably struggle with that. And I think this is a really great step forward. 

I interviewed somebody quite recently, who is doing their research output as a podcast, for kind of similar reasons. And I think as well, you know, when you think of the subject matter, it's even more appropriate. And, you know, I really hope that that might be something that, you know, is taken forward by more people in the future. Because, you know, it just makes a lot of sense to me. 

Calum Carson  
Yeah, I think so. I think like, the core of this project is, you know, giving disabled workers experiences of remote and hybrid working a bigger voice. And if that bigger voice is then taken by an academic and turned into very overly complicated language, you're almost losing their voice in his own way. And it's very, the idea of doing academic research to then only talk to other academics, seems very pointless to me, you know, unless you're doing like some very theoretical or philosophical thing. 

Like, the whole point of the research I like to do is exploring real world experiences, and then applying that new level of understanding to making things a bit better. And you can't do that if you're only talking to other academics. So, you know, a film can help - cartoon animations like stick one of the three minute one on YouTube, I saw someone did that recently, that kind of thing. Anything that kind of helps communicate findings to a wider audience, I think helps. And if we get to do a film, I get to potentially film some dogs and cats. Always nice. Works very well *laughs*

Jackie Baxter  
yeah, amazing. But yeah, you know, it's this, this whole idea that research doesn't have to just be for academics, it doesn't just have to be for those quote unquote, clever people. It is for everybody. And it's relevant to everybody, or it certainly can be. 

Calum Carson  
Definitely, 

Jackie Baxter  
I mean, I think the the idea of remote and hybrid working is something that everybody, or not everybody, but the vast majority of people were kind of like forced into three and a half years ago. And it's something that I guess I was less aware of, because the sector I was working in, was one of the less adaptable ones. I think it could have been more adaptable, but you know, education, is probably less so than office work, for example. 

But I think it was then once I started experiencing long COVID. And speaking to other people with long COVID, and with other chronic conditions, I was kind of realizing this whole thing where people were saying, We've been asking for home working for 20 years, because I have ME and I struggle to travel, or because I have, you know, whatever other health condition because it would be better for them. And you know, I think there was this kind of sort of collective frustration, but also like, Oh, my goodness, is this finally going to change? 

You know, we can all now work from home. This is great. This makes things more flexible. We have things like hybrid events now. So if you were like not able to leave your house, actually, you could go to concerts from your sofa. And, you know, this was something that I thought was great because I was unwell at the time. And I could sit on my sofa and watch like Celtic connections, and it was incredible. And actually like now, I could go to Celtic connections if I wanted to, but actually, I think I would still rather watch it from my sofa. But unfortunately, a lot of these things seem to have taken a bit of a step backwards. Because everybody seems to want to go back to this quote unquote, normal. 

So I think it's this kind of like really weird kind of space where we've proved it's possible for a lot of people. I mean, you know, there's always going to be some jobs that can't be done. If you're a like a consultant in a hospital, you're probably going to struggle to do that from home. But, you know, there's so much more flexibility in so many jobs. And there could be more with more creative thinking with more sort of, I don't know. 

I think we put a lot of this on bosses, because you know, they're the people at the top. Maybe some of that is justified. But I think in a lot of ways, maybe it's more education, and working together. So working with the people who would like to be working from home because it works better for them, working with the people who have the ability to allow them to, to come up with things. And it's not going to be the same for everybody. Is it because everybody is different, which is both beautiful, and I guess, frustrating?

Calum Carson  
I'd imagine it's frustrating from a managerial perspective, if you want to put formal processes in. But that's quite a tricky thing to do when people have, you know, fluctuating conditions that could flare up at any moment. And they don't know that's going to happen.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, definitely. And it's trying to make things work. And just because it might be slightly more difficult, doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do. 

Calum Carson  
Absolutely, 

Jackie Baxter  
I think that's quite an important thing. If it allows somebody to work a bit more flexibly, which means they then can work probably the best part or full time, they just need to maybe do it a bit more flexibly, then that has to be worth the effort for everyone's sake.

Calum Carson  
Yeah, because there's an element to this as well, which is it's not just about - How does these things work for them in their everyday work? But also like how, you know, for people with quite severe conditions, how would this allowed them to stay in the labor market, to stay within their current job? You know, I feel like at the moment we're really at this kind of critical juncture of, you know, this public debate amongst employers, policymakers, workers, everyone about, you know, are we just gonna return to forced office working after this? Or is this a real watershed. 

And it feels like it's a real kind of binary divide at the moment in the papers of like, it's either forced office working, or it's fully remote. So like, instantly, the other day there was, you know, the big thing about Zoom forcing people to go in the office two days a week. But I also read a piece that someone said, well, also, yes, therefore, something to go two days in the week. But if you look at that from the other perspective, it's formalizing a three days at home hybrid working arrangement, you know, so there are two sides to these things. 

And the idea that we went through all that, and then we just go back to what didn't work before, seems incredibly absurd to me. And part of this research is kind of showing how, you know, this worked for people as well. And it's not just, we can work from home now, that's all we want to do is, we get to work a bit more flexibly, as you say, and this is how this helps us. It doesn't mean we never want to come in the office, because that's not it either. 

But you know, just a bit more understanding a bit more flexibility, I think is what people want. And it's not just at the employer level in a mass organizational thing, it's also giving managers down the line, down the command structure, a level of understanding of people's needs to make sure that those organizational strategies do get implemented for individual people. So that's all part of it. Really. It's a very ambitious project now that I think about.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, but I think it's an important one. And, you know, having been through my own experience, in the last, you know, three and a bit years, I think I have much more awareness myself of why it's important. I think before I got ill, I was working a job that, you know, would have struggled - and did struggle - to go on an online way. But you know, was that because the job doesn't work online? Or was that because actually, it just needed a little bit more thinking around it? And I'm sure that that will be different for everybody. 

But just, you know, really, it's the difference between somebody being able to work, being able to feel like they're contributing, being able to be financially independent, being able to support their family. And not. And I think, you know, I mean, we're talking about disability in the workforce here, which, again, you know, is the important conversation. But I think if you think about it more widely, being able to work in a hybrid or a more flexible way actually could help a lot of other people as well, you know, a single parent who is struggling for childcare, for example. If they were able to work a bit more flexibly, then they would be able to maybe get their kids from school, and then work into the evening. 

Or, you know, people who are carers, for example, you know, if you actually had a disabled spouse, for example, who needed a lot of care, if you were able to work from home, then you'd be able to provide that care while also being able to work. So there's there's so many different angles to this, I think, isn't there - and I don't know maybe it isn't, maybe it is more people with disability and and health challenges that it will affect, but I think it's not just that group.

Calum Carson  
No, absolutely not. Yeah, there's so many elements to it. And I think a lot of these elements get lost in the debate, which often just comes back to, like productivity and how productive it makes workers, rather than thinking about those longer term issues, and that kind of thing. 

Like not to go too off a tangent, but when I interviewed, workers being paid the living wage during my PhD, they were happy to be paid the living wage. But they also talked so much about the importance of having a flexible manager who would let them you know, go get their kid from school, if their kid was ill, and that kind of stuff. And that kind of like every day flexibility, I think, is what's so important. 

So like having a remote working strategy or a hybrid working strategy, but then saying, you have to be in the office every Monday and Friday, that doesn't necessarily give you you know, more flexibility if you have to always be there on a Monday and Friday, than you would possibly need. And this is the kind of thing that we want to get out there really to show that people have fluctuating needs. Sometimes you can wake up and you've had a flare up, and you didn't know it was going to happen, so you couldn't have planned for it. So maybe you can't go in on your forced Friday in the office, that kind of thing. 

So yeah, it's just about finding those areas where we can show employers and we can show specific managers that flexibility here is important. You know, it's not just one way or the other, it has to be fluctuation essentially. And like speaking from a personal perspective, during my PhD, I developed quite bad back issues, which is now considered degenerative disc disease, which is a lovely phrase. And I spent 2017-2020, when I finished my PhD at the end of it, thinking, Well, I'm a researcher, I have to be in the office every day, but my back wouldn't let me do that. You know, and then you catastrophizing, you're like, I'm never gonna get a job after this PHD. And then a pandemic happens. And I can suddenly work from home and stuff. 

And now you see the debate going back towards, you know, maybe people need to be in the office more. And it's really interesting to see how kind of my research side and my personal side have intersected there. It's been so useful for me, and I often reflect on the fact that when I was 18, I almost went to Chef college and became a chef. And if I'd done that, and then my back have gone bad, my training would have been obsolete, essentially. 

So I'm very lucky that I took a career where I can work from home. And having that flexibility has allowed me to keep doing academic research and keep me in the labor market. So you know, if we can find ways to keep other people in the labor market and make employers more understanding of people's different needs and conditions, especially when they fluctuate a lot, unexpectedly, you know, that's the kind of research I want to be doing.

Jackie Baxter  
And again, I think I quoted this quite recently, and I should have looked it up, because now I'm gonna look like an idiot again. But whoever it was, that quoted something like you know, about learning from your history. And, you know, understandably, the last three and a half years have been traumatic for people. And, you know, the level of trauma is probably different for different people. And, you know, as you said, the pandemic isn't really over, certainly, for a lot of people, you know, they're still suffering the after effects of it in lots of different ways. So, you know, I can understand that people might want to pretend that the last three and a half years didn't happen. 

But I think there's a lot of learning that we need to do from that, you know, in terms of, well, you know, things like air quality, and people not going into the office when they're sick. But also, you know, in terms of the fact that actually there is the ability, when people work together, for flexibility, for working remotely, for working in a hybrid manner, for a lot of these jobs to be done in a way that actually works for people. 

And I suppose, you know, the flexibility maybe needs to go both ways, because you also find that there are some people who just cannot focus at home, and they need to be in an office, and they want to be in an office. And like, that's fine. But if you've got that side, you've also got to then look at the side of people who are actually like, I can't work in an office, I need to be working from home. And their viewpoint is no less valid than the people that want to be in the office. It's just a different need, I suppose, isn't it? There's different requirements for them to be able to do their job?

Calum Carson  
Definitely, yeah. There was a smaller research part of that which actually led to this project, which was exploring these issues on like a, you know, a less big sample size basis. And that found that you know, disabled workers, they did highlight clear benefits from working from home, more autonomy control over when and how they work, which allowed them to work better because they could manage their health and well being a bit better. But they did also value the kind of freedom and the opportunity to work from the office when they wanted to. 

And there's also a flipside of that. Some of them worried that they'd miss out promotion opportunities if they didn't get to speak to their bosses or not, and that, you know, have the kind of social side of office life. So I do just feel very worried that there's this binary divide between people who want to work from home and people want to work from the office is the debate, rather than sometimes people want to do both, and maybe they want a bit flexibly. So yeah, but I'll link you up with that report because it's really interesting.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, that would be really useful. I'll drop that into the show notes. I mean, you know, we came on to this because we connected through long COVID. But you know, we're not talking specifically about long COVID here - we're talking about, did you say, disability and long term health conditions?

Calum Carson  
Yeah, I started on this project in March, the project leader, someone called Dr. Paula Holland, at Lancaster University, who did the previous project as well. So we've got like a big project team, we've got her, we've got the work Foundation, which are kind of like our in-house Think Tank. We've got project partners at Manchester Metropolitan, and then a charity called universal inclusion. So we've got that angle. 

But we really debated long and hard about how we defined kind of disability really, because we didn't want people to feel that their voices were not, like valid to be represented in the survey, you know. So we've spent a lot of time debating, like the exact description of disability and/or long term health conditions to make sure that people didn't feel left out, you know, we're defining that very widely. 

And so we included a few examples in there that people may not automatically consider, or, and/or personally define as a disability, you know, such as attempting to balance working life with long term depression, obviously a neurodivergent condition like autism or ADHD, things like recovering from cancer while they're still in work, you know. There's so many physical, mental, behavioral and cognitive conditions that come under that umbrella of - is something a disability, or is it a long term condition. And what we're saying for our researcher, is that it doesn't really matter. 

If something's affecting your work in a long term way, it doesn't matter if it's legally defined as a disability, it doesn't matter that there may not be yet a legal definition of long COVID. It's affecting your working life. So we're interested in making sure your voice is heard. And that's the kind of - in academia, that can often be considered like a cop out in a way that, you know, you're not sticking to a particular camp. But this, again, is about breaking down those barriers, not just talking to other academics, you know. It's making sure as many diverse voices are heard, because so many people have diverse needs in the workplace, and it's making sure that employees understand that, you know. 

And it will be frustrating when we get to employers and say, Well, the answer is not that simple, you know. But maybe the point is to get into their heads that it's not simple, it's complex. And the more they understand these things the better, really. And long COVID is so new, so misunderstood, you know, and so there's so little institutional support for it at both the employer level, the policymaker level, institutional level, every level, that if we can, you know, reach out to people who have long COVID or have had it, and make sure that their experiences are understood a bit better by employers. You know, I think that's important as well, rather than just having like a subsection of people with a disability or long term condition represented. We want to make sure everyone's as represented as possible.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that is important. I think as as well, I've noticed that some people like to identify themselves as disabled, and some people don't. And it's not necessarily on the severity of the condition. It's, I think - is it may be a personal choice, or it certainly can be. So I think by making it clear that the word disability isn't necessarily the important one here, it's being affected by something long term is the important thing here. I think you're in itself being more inclusive and going to get more useful stuff. There's a word for that - data. Yes, data?

Calum Carson  
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I've been through that as well, like, debated and deliberated with myself, whether what my condition is, is a disability or not. And then you look at the legal definition of disability, and you know, it's something affecting your life over 12 months, or whatever. And this has affected my life going on seven years now. 

But then you feel that if you consider yourself disabled, does that take away from people with more severe conditions? You know, so there's all that kind of internal politics and that kind of thing, which is why we put disabled and or a long term physical or mental health condition. Because yeah, it's about self definition at the end of the day. And it's not about what the law says. It's about what is happening in their everyday day to day life. Really.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. People's people's experiences, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, should we dive a little bit deeper into - I mean, we've covered quite a lot of this already, actually, I think, but yeah, maybe a little bit deeper into kind of like, how it works?

Calum Carson  
Yeah. So at the moment, we're doing the survey. So once the survey is completed, we're hoping for around 1500 participants. We're around 759 at the moment, which is good. We want yeah, around 1000 to 1500. After that, we'll start to kind of, we'll dig into that data to see you know, like how many people work in a particular sector that answered, that kind of thing, whether there are more women answering than men answering, that kind of thing. And then what we'll look from that is, if there are people particularly underrepresented in the survey data. 

So typically, women are a lot better at finishing a survey, than men, who start a lot of surveys and then get distracted by a million things, which I can vouch for as well, on a personal level. So then we'll be like, well, maybe we'll we'll do some interviews with men, you know, from the survey data to make sure that that representation comes up. We'll dive into specific answers to specific questions. So one of the things we're really interested in is about reasonable adjustments in the workplace, and access to work and that kind of thing. 

So what I was saying about, you know, new inequalities coming in, we don't want a situation where employers say, we've now got more flexibility to work from home, we don't need to then provide as many reasonable adjustments for you in the office. Or, you know, you don't need to come in as much because you can work from home more comfortably now. And that kind of takes the freedom away from people to be like, well, maybe I want to come in the office more, you know, maybe I want to go to Thursday drinks or that kind of thing after after work. 

So we would be very interested in that kind of thing, about whether people feel it's easier to work from home, but then is it harder to work from the office? Or are employers doing very well at giving them reasonable adjustments in both? And then from there, from those answers, we can, then - we've then got new ways if, say, I look at the data, and there's very few people who are getting reasonable adjustments in the office, we can then in the interviews, write some questions out about - why is this or like, what do you feel you do need in the office that you don't currently have? 

And then from those findings, we can then take those to employers in the spring and say, Here's what workers have said, you know, what is this like, from your perspective? Because talking to employers makes you feel, and just saying it like that. It's almost like talking to the bad guy in a way, you know, but when you start to talk to employees, you're talking to individual HR managers, and that kind of thing. They're all just humans, at the end of the day, trying to do their best in the situation, or in the organization they're in. And with this, they're learning as much as you are, you know. We're all taking this step by step in a, you know, quote, unquote, post pandemic landscape, which we're not really in. 

So we'll survey data will lead on to the interview data, the interview data, and the survey data will then lead on to the questions for employers. And then we'll take all of that together, present it to policymakers, and say, From your perspective, how do you feel? You know, the current official guidance, so the official, like, not just guidance, but also like the case law around it, and the actual law around these kinds of things? You know, how do you feel like, does any of this need to be changed? Does any of this needs to be updated, anything needs to be more formally defined? 

And then after that, we'll be spending about six months diving into all that data, there's always too much data to put into one project, which is just one of the sad things about academia. And then we'll be doing the report, which we'll launch in October, November next year at a big event. And that will be like, it won't be a report for academics, it will be you know, publicly accessible report. You won't have to pay for it, it'll be on our website. It's not gonna be a gobbly gook, in academic language. 

And then we'll be doing the film, of course, as well, which will take maybe four or five people who I interview, to see what their stories are, see if they're happy to be interviewed. And then to make sure we really get that kind of voices across as the representation of the findings in general. And then we'll be launching those at the same time. 

And then following on from that, you know, we'll be writing a few academic papers, that kind of thing, but also pushing it out to disability organizations, doing presentations for anyone who wants who is interested in the research. And then following on from there, really? So yeah, there's quite a few different avenues for it. But that's the kind of structure of it really.

Jackie Baxter  
I mean, you said that you'd be looking at sort of a spread of different sort of people. And I think you mentioned gender, that you would be breaking down, are you going to be able to look at kind of like different occupations as well. Because I mean, certainly for long COVID. And I can't speak for other chronic conditions. But in long COVID, certainly, it seems that, for example, health care and education seem to be two of the worst hit professions, you know. Not that there's not plenty of other people in others, but they do seem to come up tops. And I guess in some ways, they may be two of the least adaptable to remote, hybrid, flexible kind of working options. So is that something you're able to dive into a bit more specifically?

Calum Carson  
Yeah, we've got a question in there about which sector people are in and it's very diverse in that in the things like agriculture and forestry, things like that.

Jackie Baxter  
That's probably not adaptable either, very easily is it. 

Speaker 2  
No, no. But even like retail, hospitality, things like that. You know, and it's always the kind of bane of academia that there are so many different ways this would work, in so many different sectors, and you want to understand every single one. But there's just not enough time. So drilling down into who's answering the survey, you know, Are there lots of people in education or health care answering it, for example? And what are their particular challenges - that gives us then a window into focusing on those kind of sectors a bit more. Because like you say, there are more inherent challenges within setting up remote and hybrid working there in a kind of functional way. So it gives us a bit of a window into who's doing it. And then it gives us a bit of a window into different sectors without spending two years on each, which we'd love to do. But you know.

Jackie Baxter  
yeah, but that's great, because you can get all of this data from the survey, and then you kind of can see - pick your areas a bit, can't you. So you can maybe see from that where the places to go, that would be the most useful, or the most interesting might be is that, is that right?

Calum Carson  
Yeah, definitely. And you can see where, you know, maybe it'd be interesting to talk about this a bit more in an interview of someone, you know. Like I said, if a lot of people are saying they want to work in the office more, but managers are being very flexible with it, that gives us a good opening window into talking to employers in the interviews and employees. Or, you know, are there particular sectors where we're finding that people are very resistant to allowing people to continue working from home, you know, or in a hybrid fashion, after the pandemic? You know, and why is that? Are there more kind of traditionalists in those sectors that just want to get back to the way things were and you know, that kind of thing. And so that's, that's really interesting as well, just to see it from a sector or perspective. 

And just kind of a cultural one as well, because I'd imagine there's a lot of managers who - they don't feel like work is getting done unless they can see the people doing the work. And that's not necessarily how things work in the 21st century anymore. But there are a few people out there who would still like to have it that way, which isn't very understanding of people's needs. So yeah, it'll give us a window, in like a broad way, into some of the challenges and issues in different sectors, in the particular data we've got. And then the interviews will kind of really drilled down into the individual experiences of that. And then it's kind of broadening it out, again, to employers and policymakers, and then bringing it all together at the end with a film.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah. And I think, you know, we tend to focus on the horror stories, don't we, where employers have not been sympathetic, they've not offered reasonable adjustments, they've been, you know, not able or willing, or even, you know, thinking about, you know, remote working, hybrid working, all of these things. And, you know, there absolutely are plenty of cases of that. 

But I think what we hear less of are the good news stories where actually people have been involved in the process, where the employers have tried to work with the person and to make it work for both of them. And I think, you know, hopefully your survey will pick up both, you know, the things that aren't working and the things that are, so you can then kind of, hopefully include that in your output. So it's not just a kind of like slating of employers, it's actually these are things that don't work. And these are things that do, can we, you know, work on this, kind of thing?

Calum Carson  
Well, one of the things we're also going to produce is kind of Best Practice Guide for employers. So it will be highlighting those positive examples of when it has worked, you know, that we'll get from the survey data and the interview data and from employers themselves. And, you know, we'll be producing a report, that is like, This is some guidance for employers about, it's not just we, as academics think this will work. It's like, this is what other employers and workers have said, actually works, because they have experience of it working, you know. 

So maybe when you're considering implementing a remote working or hybrid working model, you look at this Best Practice Guide, you look at how this shows how employers have made things more inclusive, for disabled workers needs in the workplace, and you try and replicate that in some way, in a way that works for your organization, or your sector. 

I've never felt that there's much merit in, you know, just the stick approach, like I think, as a carrot and stick approach. And there's also not much merit in going to employers and saying, We as academics think this. It's more like going to employers and saying, We as academics have spoken to lots of employers, and this is what they say, you know, and I think that's what gets better results. 

I certainly found that during my PhD, where employers would be scared to voluntarily implement the living wage because they didn't have to. But then I spoke to other employers who said, Well, we did that and people left the jobs less because they, shock and shock, weren't in poverty anymore, you know, and they were happier at work because they felt valued by the organization. And these sorts of other employers, and they don't just see a scary higher wage bill anymore. They see happier workers, less money on recruitment and retention, those kinds of things. 

So it's kind of distilling what we've got all this data, down into manageable lessons for employers who can then take decisions that will hopefully help disabled workers, you know, work in the workplace a bit better, and remain in the workplace for longer.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, definitely. Cool. So I will put a link to the survey in the show notes. You've given me that already. So absolutely go check that out. Maybe, would you mind just reiterating the criteria for people to take part?

Calum Carson  
Yeah, sure. Yeah. So it's basically for anybody who considers themselves disabled and or has a long term physical or mental health condition, and have experienced remote or hybrid working at any point over the past five years. They don't currently have to be working in that way. They don't currently have to be employed at all. We want to hear from you.

Jackie Baxter  
Perfect. And this is UK?

Calum Carson  
This is UK. Yeah. Yeah, we have had some interest internationally. And some disappointment from people saying We wish this was a global survey. Like we all need this on a global scale. But you know, maybe that's the next project.

Jackie Baxter  
I exactly. I think this is something that I've learned from speaking to people like yourself who are doing research, is that each research study is a piece of a bigger puzzle. So your smaller study that you mentioned already has led to this. And this maybe will lead to something that is more global. So So yeah, that's fantastic. 

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been really fun chatting, and I think it's been a really good discussion as well. So yeah, make sure you check out the link in the show notes if you fit those criteria. And maybe you will come back and talk to me when you have your results?

Calum Carson  
Yeah, that's a great idea. Absolutely, if you'll have me.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai