An emotive choice of title i'm sure, but as i've been travelling last week, i noticed something at my hometown of Sheffield, South Yorkshire and it's mainly at the train station, but is a trend across all sectors and it's workers are working less hours but still claiming a benefit of some description.
10 years ago when i travelled from the very same station i knew all the people who worked at the station by name, i would chat with them and i knew their interests, hobbies, general stuff we learn about people. But now it's completely different, the same people still work at the station, but in the last 4 weeks i've only seen the people whom i knew well, perhaps once or twice.
I don't have nothing against new faces, but for a company such as Stagecoach Group to be able to take on more employees whilst still having half full trains seemed a bit of mystery until the Autumn Statement.
The deficit on this nation is expanding not because we have more unemployment, but because we have more people claiming tax credits to supplement their incomes, so they're working less hours and still need government assistance.
It doesn't mean these employees are unproductive, it means that generally the governments attempts to get people off welfare payments has meant that those who are unproductive have joined the labour market, thus lowering the working hours and ability of already established employees from working effectively.
Welfare Reforms have worked somewhat, unemployment is down, but it's time to look at the psychology of how those who have been asked to join the labour market think, some people whom i talk to have got it into their minds that all they have to do is work 16 hours per week and they can then claim tax credits to supplement their income, unfortunately this is unsustainable in the long term.
To look at the long term effects of this mentality, the government would still have to keep borrowing to support the new welfare claimants in the forms of tax credits.
At the moment the unproductive that have joined the workforce need to be enthused to look at working longer hours as a good thing, longer hours and your paid at an hourly rate means you can earn more money than the state can pay you, you get to socialise with people and you have money to live and enjoy things.
The same can be said for companies that employ these practices, giving workers longer hours benefits the company greatly, if your in the service sector, people see the same person more frequently and that is comforting to the customer, they gain a rapport with the employee and this in turn can lead to better customer service, experience and all round well being of the relationship between employee and customer.
The flipside is that customer service and productivity is broken when we employ these practices as employees become stressed on how they are going to manage their income, thus giving a less than favorable experience to the customer who might use the services of another company.
