BrewDog boss James Watt is mercilessly trolled on-line after declaring a work-life stability is just for ‘individuals who hate their jobs’ in video along with his Made In Chelsea fiancee Georgia Toffolo

BrewDog boss James Watt has started an online row after saying work-life balance is for ‘people who hate the work that they do’. 

Mr Watt stood beside his fiancée, Made in Chelsea star Georgia Toffolo, as they encouraged everyone to aim for ‘work-life integration’ – the act of combining your job and your personal life. 

The video was met with furious social media users who slammed the couple’s lack of ‘self awareness’ as not everyone is a successful business owner. 

In the clip, posted on LinkedIn, Mr Watt says: ‘I just think the whole concept of work-life balance was invented by people who hate the work that they do. 

‘So if you love what you do, you don’t need work-life balance, you need work-life integration.’

The businessman’s fiancée, better known as ‘Toff’, supported his suggestions, saying the pair are ‘scarily similar’ in their approach to work. 

‘It’s so true. When I met James, I was quite taken aback by how aligned we are on the important stuff, and one of those is lack of work-life balance but in a really beautiful way,’ she said. 

‘So work knows no bounds. Constantly in our home we are working, but we do things that we find incredibly fulfilling and we also have a supportive other half that loves that high-octane obsession with what we do.’

Toff, 30, is best known for appearing on reality television series Made in Chelsea and winning I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! in 2017. 

‘I’ve always known that I would end up with someone like James because it would not work otherwise,’ she said. 

‘You know if someone was saying “right you need to knock off now’ I’d be thinking ‘well did you not like my business? Do you not believe in me? Are we not driving towards the same thing?”‘ 

People reacted to the video on X, formerly Twitter, criticising the couple for their advice. 

One wrote: ‘Thoroughly embarrassing…wonder if they’d like the “integration process” if they worked as a toilet cleaner.’ 

They added: ‘Self awareness levels – zero.’

Another penned: ‘Business owners need to realise that no employee will ever love their business the way they do.’

A third said: ‘Are they answering a question that no one asked?’ 

Others took to Instagram to share their thoughts, with one saying: ‘Please say this straight into the face of somebody who works in the NHS.’ 

A second added: ‘I cannot believe you thought this was a good idea even for a second. Pure delusion!’  

Within the clip, Toff continued to discuss the pair’s likeness to eachother. ‘We are so scarily similar and you say it more often than me because I don’t want to admit it but we are wired up from our fingers to the top of our head to our toes – we are just really, really similar, and I think when you find someone that you click with, and you’ve got the business alignment in the way that we have,’ she said. 

‘Even at the weekend we sit around the table and we come up with business ideas. That’s amazing; what a great thing for James’s little girls. But you need to be appreciative and encourage that.’ 

Reacting to some of the backlash he received on the video, Mr Watt responded with a statement on social media. 

‘People are saying they’d like to murder me with a hammer. All because I posted about my approach to work-life balance on Instagram…,’ he wrote. 

‘The video went down well on @linkedin, with almost 2 million views and the vast majority of the responses being overwhelmingly positive.

‘But on other platforms where it went viral, the amount of abuse I received was off the charts.

‘I didn’t think the video was controversial at all, but this whole bizarre controversy has made me think:

‘What does it say about our society when a post extolling the virtues of hard work gets met with this kind of furious backlash?’ 

Mr Watt added: ‘As a nation, we love to joke about the French being lazy, but the reality is that our output per hour is 13% lower than theirs.

‘And I’ve heard countless international leaders say that the UK’s work ethic just doesn’t stack up against other nations, especially the US.

‘Indeed, a recent study by King’s College London’s Policy Institute found that Britain is now among the least work-oriented countries in the world.

‘Worryingly, the study found the UK to be the least work-orientated, by far, of all 24 nations involved.

‘With other developed countries now leaving the UK behind economically and as relative standards of living continue to plumet for families living in Britain, the Institute For Fiscal Studies conclusion was clear:

‘Britain’s relative lack of growth in the last fifteen years can be explained by a decline in productivity.’

MailOnline has contacted BrewDog for comment.