Back in one day or another, we used to arrange many more income protection policies. They pay if you can’t work and you’re sick pay stops, which for most happens pretty quickly now. The two principal reasons for claims have always been 1. Back problems and 2. Stress, and any mention of previous problems with either would trigger exclusions or declines. It seems that little has changed and that if anything, the workplace has become more stressful, with or perhaps because of greater mental health awareness and less attaching stigma. There are many pretty awful employers out there and far fewer unions and the like to represent or help their employees. And far fewer salespeople selling often much-needed and potentially valuable protection plans; more’s the pity.
“The working-from-home illusion fades”
Are workers working from home more or less productive than those catching the 7.02am to London Bridge every day? ‘Probably sitting at home in their bleedin’ jim-jams’, said someone recently of a less-than-helpful call centre employee, the assumption being that, were they surrounded by colleagues and with a manager cracking the whip, he or she would have sorted his energy bill more efficiently.
