Working for the NHS was miserable so I started dance classes on my ward

Things are not going well in the NHS right now. It is under sustained attack day after day; the media bad-mouths it, while the people who work for it are being asked to do more and more with fewer and fewer resources.

In my 15 years of study and training, I have watched cuts immiserate the services we can offer children and their parents all over the country. Fewer funded paediatric nurse training spots; local closures leading to clogged emergency departments; and £80bn slashed from mental health services resulting in ever more troubled young people occupying acute hospital beds, because there’s simply nowhere else for them to go.

Working in a health service under pressure – one that is low in finances, low in staff and low in morale – is hard. And things are only going to get worse. The current political climate actively pits health workers and patients against each other, the opposite of what caring relationships are supposed to look like. Under this kind of pressure, it’s not only the patients who need healing, it’s also the staff.

I felt this myself. I would see my colleagues, hungry and thirsty from lack of breaks with circles under their eyes, struggle to do their jobs. Being in hospital can be scary and alienating for sick children at the best of times – how much worse when the staff looking after them are too tired and busy even to smile?

I decided to do something about it. Barnet Bopping is a pilot project I developed with colleagues that brings dance to the paediatric ward of Barnet hospital, in north London. The aim is to help patients, parents and staff feel happier, healthier, less stressed and more connected by doing physical activity together that’s mood lifting and fun.

One morning, we gathered some of the kids and staff in the playroom and I asked a friend – who happens to be a nurse on the ward – to lead a hip-hop dance class. At first it felt a bit awkward; here we were, in the middle of the working day, my colleagues and I, swaying our hips with the consultant. And in front of the parents. But with every new move, and with every song, we all got more and more into it. Before long we forgot who we were, and even where we were. It didn’t matter whether we were a doctor, nurse, patient, parent or cleaner – all that mattered was the music. By the end, the atmosphere on the ward was really, well, happy.

I noticed how things changed after that. The boundaries between the nurses and doctors were gone. People smiled more. The team communicated better. It made us all wonder why we didn’t do things like that more often.

On its own this will not fix the NHS. But it is a way for us, in our local general hospital, to take matters back into our own hands, to resist the destruction of our health service and try to offer the best care we can to our patients.

Wellbeing should be for all of us. Health workers operate under huge stress, all while feeling as if we aren’t really doing justice to our patients. We need take care of each other – health workers and patients alike. Whether it’s standing up for patient safety or being creative at work, we stand with our patients. Cuts or no cuts, this is the kind of spirit that hasn’t yet been crushed in the NHS.

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Working for the NHS was miserable so I started dance classes on my ward

The fetishisation of work is making us miserable. Let’s learn to live again | Anna Coote

Mounting pressures at work are taking a heavy toll on life at home. Employees say their bosses want them to put job before family, and many are expected to be on call around the clock. More than one in four say they work longer hours than they want to, we learn from the latest YouGov poll.

It’s not a pretty picture: an economy where high levels of stress and anxiety are normal, where people get ill because they’ve lost control of their time, where marriages are damaged and children suffer. And yet, it’s a picture we’re invited to applaud. Our political leaders idolise “strivers” and “hard-working people”, not “chilled-out, caring dads”, for example. The longer and harder we work, the more admirable we are supposed to be.

I am old enough to remember lunchtime. When my workmates and I went out to a nearby eaterie for at least an hour, scoffed a proper meal and probably a glass of wine. These days, like most worker bees, I stay at my desk with my fork and Tupperware pot, nose glued to the screen. And I‘ve become so mesmerised by the modern working culture that I’d be quite shocked to find a colleague dining out at lunchtime. No booze, no siestas, no playtime.

It seems a bit odd when we hear so much about automation and “the end of work”. If the robots are coming, why are we rushed off our feet? In fact, it’s all part of the same picture.

All the main UK political parties insist that the only successful economy is one that grows, preferably faster than other economies. Growth calls for greater productivity: getting more output per unit of input. The system is greedy for more resources, but workers and machines have to do more for less. More efficient processes (including more robots) reduce the amount of human input required. So those who have jobs must work harder – and longer hours – to hang on to what they’ve got and to keep the economy growing.

Meanwhile, since robots can’t do everything yet, there are new flurries of low-end jobs with zero-hours contracts, insulting pay and no security. This class has been called the “precariat” and much of it thrives on the over-busyness of other workers. It ferries people home at night (Uber), delivers fast food (Deliveroo) and fixes things around the house (TaskRabbit). Many precarious workers have to do two or three jobs just to make ends meet. So they are under heavy pressures too, often torn between poverty and an intolerable work-life balance.

What can we do about it? First, take back control of the workplace. This means workers in all settings finding ways to organise and build up bargaining rights. For the casualised precariat, it could mean building new digital platforms to rival the technological giants that have cornered the market so far.

Second, let us never forget that this is a challenge for men as well as women. Much of the stress and unhappiness that women experience at work is because they take on most of the unpaid work at home. Until men really share the housework and childcare, they are unlikely to be powerful advocates for a more humane regime in the workplace.

And third, let’s move to shorter hours of paid work for everyone, not just women. This has long been argued by the New Economics Foundation and there is growing evidence of its many benefits. Nobody should have to work more than four days or 30 hours a week, even in today’s 24-7 economy. As some jobs are automated out of existence, others could be created to cover the hours left unworked by the newly unstressed.

It should be a gradual shift, with minimal impact on pay. For example, suppose all workers over 50 take a one-hour cut in their working week each year. If they start with a 40-hour week, they can be doing 30 hours at 60 and 20 hours at 70. And suppose all young people entering the labour market for the first time start on a 30-hour week – and stay that way, with each new cohort adding to the numbers, until it becomes the new “normal”. What if all workers in organisations where there is an annual round of pay negotiations were to trade a bit more time each year for a smaller pay rise?

All this should go hand in hand with a higher minimum wage, more generous child benefit and a more secure “social income” in terms of high-quality services that are collectively funded and provided (education, health and social care, childcare, housing and so forth). If lousy wages force people to work around the clock, the problem is pay: it’s not a sensible argument against shorter hours.

If 30 hours became the new standard working week, for women and for men, across all kinds of jobs, from doctors to delivery drivers, from teachers to task-rabbits, there would be a lot less stress and anxiety at work and at home. We’d have more control over our lives, more time to look after one another. We could slow down and relax more – and rely less on carbon-intensive fast food and travel. We’d have more time to be active in our communities and in politics. We’d have more time to campaign for a new working culture that respects love, family and friendship instead of fetishising “hard work”. And most importantly of all we could build an economy that enables people to flourish, instead of one that is entirely fixated on growth.

The fetishisation of work is making us miserable. Let’s learn to live again | Anna Coote