Lloyd’s of London’s boss has sounded the alarm over plans to bring in a raft of workers’ right saying it was vital to ‘get the balance right’.
John Neal, who has battled to bring staff back to the three-century old insurance market after the pandemic, said: ‘The employee’s got to understand that they’re being paid to do a job.’
He warned that putting employers under too much pressure with new rules could risk job cuts or pushing them into sending jobs overseas.
Workers rights: Lloyd’s of London’s boss John Neal (pictured) has battled to bring staff back to the three-century old insurance market after the pandemic
Labour wants to give staff the right to ask for a four-day week and the ‘right to switch off’ and has strongly backed working from home.
Speaking at the Labour party conference yesterday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the plans amounted to ‘a new deal for working people’ to ‘make work pay’.
But many businesses are concerned that the plans – which also include ‘day one’ entitlement to protection from being sacked – will deter hiring.
Neal acknowledged that in the past the pendulum had at times swung too far against workers – for example, if they are expected to be always available to be contacted.
He said that ‘can’t be right, because they need a break’.
But Neal told the Mail: ‘You want UK plc to be alive and well, if it’s alive and well it needs to grow, if it’s growing then it’ll create employment opportunities. If you put businesses under too much pressure where they get very, very cost-
focused, then the risk is you find yourself in two issues: do they go through restructuring or redundancy programmes, do they think about job offshoring.
‘And we don’t really want to find ourselves in these debates. We’ve got to make sure that the employee feels valued in terms of compensation and benefit.
‘But at the same time, the employee’s got to understand that they’re being paid to do a job and that job’s got to be done well. So we’ve just got to get the balance right.’
Lloyd’s allows its employees some flexibility but they must be in the office at least three days a week and for some it would be four.
He said attendance at the building was ‘pretty much back to normal’ from Tuesday to Thursday, and for Monday was ‘getting there quite quickly’. Friday was always ‘a bit quiet’ for Lloyd’s even before the pandemic, he said.
Neal said being present was vital for a business.
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