RUTH SUNDERLAND: M&S boss Machin’s rebuke to shirkers

Stuart Machin, the chief executive of M&S, isn’t putting his feet up this Bank Holiday weekend, but visiting stores, taking meetings and doing conference calls.

He dislikes the term ‘work-life balance’, believing correctly that senior leaders should always be contactable and connected. Heresy to the woke and the work-shy.

His dedication was bizarrely condemned by a social media posse whose own full-time jobs seem to be bleating moralistically about other people harder-working and more successful than themselves.

The onslaught from some limp-minded habitues of LinkedIn, who declared Machin’s work-ethic toxic, sexist, cold and tyrannical, was entirely predictable. The most damaging insult, however, is that he is oppressing his team, who might feel obliged to work as hard as he does.

Alternatively, you could say he is leading from the front. Retail staff do have to work at weekends and Bank Holidays for the rest of us to carry on shopping. If the chief executive turns up at their store instead of swanning off on a mini-break, it probably boosts morale. When Machin tackled last year’s cyber-attack, he didn’t blubber about his ‘me-time’, but worked round the clock to fix it. Rather that than the reaction of former BP boss Tony Hayward who, faced with a huge oil-spill in 2010, whined that he wanted his life back.

The work-life balance brigade believe that our jobs are separate from, and of lesser value than, the rest of our existence.

One-man rebuke to shirkers: Stuart Machin will spend this Bank Holiday weekend visiting stores, taking meetings and doing conference calls

This diminishes the way in which fulfilling work can be an integral part of a good life. FTSE 100 chief executives are paid seven-figure packages and their tenure at the top is usually fairly short.

Staff and customers have a right to first call on their time: it is crazy to criticise CEOs for setting a bad example for, of all things, working too hard. Machin’s Stakhanovite tendency is unlikely to inspire an outbreak of copycat workaholism: with more than 9m people economically inactive, the UK has the opposite problem. Maybe we should be a bit more Machin: he is a one-man rebuke to the shirkers.

Whether you are working or relaxing, Happy Easter.

Keep it real

In the age of AI, it is comforting to know the Bank of England still sets great store on human intelligence, especially the information it receives from its agent network, which celebrates its 200th anniversary this year. The very first agent, Charles Cripps, was sent to Gloucester in 1826, according to The Economist. Cripps’ successors are still at large in the 21st century, conducting thousands of face-to-face interviews every year with business people across the UK and reporting back to Threadneedle Street. Their real-time, real-world insights feed into decisions on interest rates.

Old school, I know. Enough to give younger generations a fit of the vapours.

But AI cannot substitute for the rich and timely perceptions gathered by the agents, because it cannot talk to business people in person, only regurgitate data that already exists. The agents are doing essential work. Long may they continue.

Global extortion

The situation in the Strait of Hormuz is affecting everything, from food and air fares to medicines and even flowers.

Dr Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of Abu Dhabi oil company Adnoc and a minister in the UAE government, is calling it ‘global economic extortion – a threat the world cannot tolerate’, and demanding leaders take swift action to re-open. He’s right – but easier said than done.