The decline of corporate giving

Hello and welcome to Working It.

I have been talking to my friend and colleague Claer Barrett about the UK’s National Insurance rise for employers, announced in the Budget last week. This (alongside a rise in the minimum wage) will substantially increase the cost to employers of taking on low-paid staff.

Some people might see a reduction in hours, possibly even lose their jobs. Plus, there are questions about the future of flexible working.

Many employers have found it cheaper to employ two part-time workers on the minimum wage rather than one full-time worker, as this has avoided triggering the threshold at which they have to pay the employer’s national insurance. From next April, the substantial cut to this threshold — from £9,100 to £5,000 — means this advantage will be lost for all but the smallest private sector employers.

Clearly, it has implications for those who want flexible and part-time work — the majority of whom are women — or who are coming back to work from long-term sickness.

You can read Claer’s column here about the effects of higher employer taxes — but I’m keen to hear what Working It readers think. The comments under Claer’s article suggest that higher costs may force organisations to become more efficient, productive — and automated.

Do email me with your thoughts/analyses — we will return to this topic: [email protected].

Read on for insight into the woeful state of corporate giving to charity — and how this might change💰 — and in Office Therapy, we advise on managing several staff members with mental health conditions.

Why is corporate giving so low? 💵

How much does your organisation give to charity? If it’s 1 per cent of pre-tax profits, congratulations. That puts it in the too-rare “best-practice” category. Overall, corporate donations to charity from FTSE 100 companies have declined 34 per cent over the past decade.

Outside the FTSE 100, 75 per cent of UK businesses did not support charities in 2023 👀. (My outraged italics.)

What’s happening? I went to see Neil Heslop, chief executive of the Charities Aid Foundation, which did this research, to find out what’s going on. He dates a drop in donations back to 2013, when an amendment to the Companies Act removed mandatory reporting of charitable giving. At the time, it was argued (by a Conservative peer who proposed the change in the House of Lords) that this reporting was burdensome for businesses and there was “no evidence” of disclosure affecting charitable giving. Except — there was, and it did. As Neil told me, “in our view, that’s what has coincided with the decline”. 📉

There’s a parallel here, I think, with what happens to diversity initiatives and other attempts to create organisational change. If they aren’t measured, or reported — and nobody is held accountable — then long term they will fall away. (“What gets measured, gets managed,” is the famous quote attributed to the original management guru, Peter Drucker.)

Working It readers in the UK probably know CAF, which celebrates its centenary this year. CAF (and there are equivalents in other countries) is a charity set up to support the sector as a whole, influence policy, and make giving tax-efficient and impactful for businesses and individuals. The well-known “Give As You Earn” payroll scheme, for example, has been operated by CAF since 1987.

CAF is hoping that the new Labour government is going to bring in joined-up thinking about corporate giving and philanthropy to help direct donations where they have the most impact. Company leaders could, however, make immediate changes that would make a huge difference: “If business as a whole got closer to that best practice of [giving] 1 per cent, you’d be talking about a lot of money,” Neil says.

CAF estimates about £5bn a year more would be going into the charitable sector if all companies gave it 1 per cent of profits. And it’s not just about the benefits for the communities where businesses operate — and for society more widely. Neil points out there are internal advantages. The most sophisticated corporate givers build charitable giving into their purpose-driven culture, through donations and opportunities for staff to give cash (via GAYE or matched funding) or to volunteer their time. As Neil says, they “see it as part of their employee value proposition these days. For new generations of workers, it’s become an important consideration about whether you want to work for somebody or not.”

Do you have a great corporate giving story to tell? Or an innovative partnership with a local charity? Email me at [email protected].

In a sentence: Get back into the habit of corporate giving: it brings both wider social cohesion and internal employee benefits.

Want more? Our latest Working It video explores how to retain your workforce — and includes examples of volunteering and community programmes as an effective way to engage and retain staff.

This week on the Working It podcast

Is kindness a key leadership skill? It’s not the most obvious thing — but I’ve talked to experts who believe that it really helps build staff engagement and productivity. And it’s absolutely not the same as niceness. To find out more, I invited two guests on to this week’s podcast: Hong Kong University business school professor Bonnie Hayden Cheng and Graham Allcott, founder of Think Productive. Both have written books about kindness at work — and why it matters. We had a fascinating conversation — in a turbulent world, I hope you will find it soothing — and useful.

Office Therapy

The problem: My issue is trying to manage a big team where several people now have mental health diagnoses. One person asked to work from home because they were struggling. Another then said they’d been signed off with anxiety. A graduate trainee just disclosed a condition that will require them to work from home/take a lot of breaks. There are others, too. We are caring employers and make accommodations. But it seems to be spiralling. Any advice?

Isabel’s advice: You’re living the reality of the mental health crisis — which is especially acute among the young. As my colleague John Burn-Murdoch wrote recently, “the share of 16/24-year-olds reporting a health problem that reduces their ability to carry out day-to-day activities has almost tripled from 7 per cent in 2008 to 20 per cent today.” That rise is driven by mental, not physical, health issues. What can managers do? Encourage open discussion — which can be hard. I’d probably say something I’d later regret (this topic is 😰) so I asked an expert: Ryan Hopkins, chief impact officer at Jaaq, a video-based mental health platform.

“Once you have made sure that [the staff] are OK and getting the support they need, then be clear on what the outcomes and KPIs [key performance indicators] required for the role are. This sounds cold, but anxiety is often fear of the unknown and this placates that fear. This will enable both manager and employee to know exactly what the target/goal is. If, given all the updated accommodations, the team member is unable to hit the targets/goals, then this is a performance issue and can be addressed.”

Ryan’s second piece of advice?

“Ask them what they need to be the best version of themselves, given the circumstances. You’d be amazed how many people simply make assumptions. Open the dialogue and listen. And if the anxiety/stress is work-related, it may then be helpful to do an activity such as the dichotomy of control (some ancient Stoic wisdom 🏛️). In the left column, you note down the things that you can control and on the right, the things you cannot. We then make a plan for the controllables and discuss how we can take a passive stance towards the uncontrollables.”

I am all for the controllable/not controllable idea — in a volatile world, post US election 🤯, we would all benefit from doing this exercise.

Next week: Jonathan Black, director of the careers service at the University of Oxford, answers a reader’s career dilemma. All questions are anonymised. Email: [email protected].

Five top stories from the world of work

1. US employers warn staff to remain civil to avoid election conflict: After Donald Trump’s win, polarisation will be a huge issue inside workplaces. Taylor Nicole Rogers reports on leaders’ efforts to keep people talking — and not be at loggerheads.

2. The biometric retreat: executive getaways that fight stress with science: For $20,000, stressed executives have hundreds of “biomarkers” tested and are equipped with better skills to combat fatigue and burnout. Oliver Balch reports on the booming high-end retreat industry.

3. The do’s and don’ts of the email introduction: Pilita Clark navigates the delicate etiquette of introducing two people who don’t know each other — and why you always need to send a warning email first.

4. The extraordinary life of JPMorgan’s librarian Belle da Costa Greene: A new exhibition in New York honours the woman who assembled the financier’s huge collection, celebrated and highly paid in her lifetime. Greene was also a Black woman who passed as white, writes Ariella Budick.

5. Richard Oldfield, the accountant tasked with turning around Schroders: The incoming head of the UK’s biggest asset manager spent three decades at PwC — an interesting career transition in itself, and there’s lots for him to do, as Harriet Agnew and Michael O’Dwyer outline.

One more thing . . . 

Storytelling is a key skill at work, on stage — and in our personal lives. Psyche, an online magazine, has a great article by Micaela Blei on how to tell a better story, with lots of great tips: ever heard of “situating” your story? Me neither.

This week’s giveaway

Join me in London on December 2 for an evening with The Career Collective, the hosts of the UK’s most successful career and workplace podcasts, for a live recording. I’ll be alongside Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper from Squiggly Careers, Bruce Daisley from Eat Sleep Work Repeat and Jimmy McLoughlin from Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future.

Tickets are £40 and all proceeds are divided between two great work-focused charities: Beam, which helps homeless people and refugees into homes, skills and jobs, and upReach, which supports undergraduates from lower socio-economic backgrounds to access and sustain top graduate jobs. You can sign up here.

We will be answering audience questions and talking about skills, trends and the future of work. It’s a very special one-off event — and we’ll be in the Shaw Theatre bar afterwards, so come and say hello 👋.

I have five tickets to give away to Working It readers — enter on this form before Thursday November 7 at 5pm GMT and I’ll let the winners know on Friday morning (because December is busy 👯).