My Favourite Failure: Given a settlement and pushed out after declaring disability | Molly Johnson-Jones

0:00This might sound like the plot of a spy novel, but UK startups are increasingly at risk of state actors trying to steal their assets. Take one Scottish renewable manufacturer that was harnessing wave power. They were visited by a 60 strong delegation led by a senior Chinese official. A couple of months after that, some of their laptops were stolen. Guess what happened next? Yep, pictures emerged showing a Chinese firm making a product that was virtually identical. This is why we're working with a National Protective Security Authority and the National Cyber Security Centre, the UK's security experts.

0:36They got in touch with us because they seized such a growing threat facing UK startups. How are they responding? With the launch of a new campaign, Secure Innovation. It's not just your cybersecurity that matters, but your physical security too. If you want to get a better handle on your security, check out npsa.gov.uk forward slash innovation and download their free quick Start Guide. There's a link in the show notes. I was a mess, both physically and mentally. Yeah, the stress of it very much caused the flare up and I was a lot of pain in bed for about two weeks. But I also like looking back and knowing what I know now, some of that was psychological too, I'm sure.

1:23Molly Johnson-Jones is the founder of Flexa, a jobs platform that only features companies vetted for their flexible working practices. The idea was born out of the worst moment in Molly's career, which left her doubting her worth and ability to be in a workplace. She learnt to be more cynical, but says everything happens for a reason.

1:49Molly started her career in investment banking, doing equity research, evaluating when to buy, hold and sell stocks. She thought she was on her way at her company and in that career, but she was in a lot of pain. I've been living with a kind of chronic, suspected autoimmune disease since I was about 18. Still largely undiagnosed, sadly. We do know that part of it is very severe PCOS, which literally hundreds of millions of women struggle with all over the world. But what it means is that sometimes my feet swell up, my hands swell up, my face swells up. It's just something that really can be quite limiting because I can't walk.

2:31And obviously it's not nice to go into an office when your face is all swollen and everyone asks what's wrong with you. But otherwise I can work absolutely fine. It doesn't affect really how I feel apart from that. Nowadays, she might get a flare-up once a year, but it used to be way more frequent. Back when I was between the ages of about 18 and 25, it was happening once a week, sometimes for really long periods of time when I was at university. I spent about three months of my final year of uni unable to walk properly. So what it means, yeah, it's horrible. What it means is that my feet swell up so much that it's painful to stand on it.

3:09I remember I flew when I was about 24. I went on first holiday with my now husband and we went to Mexico. And after a long, long haul flight, my feet swelled up so much that for two days, when we'd gone to this lovely hotel, we went to explore Mexico City. My feet were so swollen that I had to crawl around to go to the bathroom. And I literally couldn't get out of bed. And so that would happen to me about for a day, about once a week. So obviously getting into an office was near impossible. I could work from home because you don't have to walk. But it was really, really difficult to deal with and it almost led to me being asked to drop out of university as well.

3:49But thankfully, I didn't have to in the end. Molly had been apprehensive about moving into the world of work because she'd have less control over her time or where she needed to work from. She developed techniques and coping mechanisms. You know, I tried to struggle through. I'd wear slippers on my commute. try to make my feet as padded as possible do everything I could to make sure that I didn't get sick on a work day like I could generally know what would and wouldn't trigger it or make it worse you know if I ever got dehydrated or I didn't exercise or if I had too much sugar or other I learned little things that would make me worse and I would always try to make sure that none of them happened on a weekend so that I wouldn't be sick in the week I managed it for about 18 months until I did start to get a lot worse.

4:38I think, you know, ultimately if you're working 16 hour days and I used to have to get up at five in the morning, I was getting maybe four hours sleep a night for 18 months and like your body can't really heal and be well on that limited amount of sleep. So I think that was probably what pushed my body over the edge. Molly had to do something about it. So she put in a request for flexible working and she was feeling good about her prospects? I was actually just about to kind of publish my first like owned note as an analyst which was like a big thing and that was going quite or I thought it was going quite well and I remember being called into a meeting room about 10 days after I was asked to put in a flexible working request which came out of nowhere as well so I was asked to put a flexible working request told that they accommodate it and I was sent to an occupational health therapist who's just a doctor that assesses you and I saw him and talked through how severe things are and he was like this is actually very debilitating um I'd recommend that you're registered as disabled to protect you from discrimination and thank god he did that um because 10 days later they called me into that meeting that I thought was talking about kind of my progression um and actually I was asked to sign a settlement package and leave immediately which came out literally out of nowhere.

6:01If she hadn't registered as disabled, they could have got rid of her without a settlement. But settle they did, because Molly says it was still easier than the alternative. I don't think it was particularly complex to unpick. I think, you know, I was one of about two or three women in a team of 100 men. There was absolutely no flexible working. That wasn't the norm. And if they accommodated me, then they would have had to accommodate other people. And I don't think that they wanted that precedent set. I think also, you know, now how much we've learned about managing distributed teams and flexible working, I don't think they were set up to be able to really support that both culturally and from a technological perspective.

6:45So I think it was just easier to get rid of me. And, you know, I can kind of understand the argument like I was I was one person. I was easy to replace. but from a personal perspective when I was 23 and that was my first kind of serious role after I'd been made redundant from Nomura when they got rid of like literally their whole equity submission it was my first role where you know I'd been in it for a long time so it mattered a lot more to me than it did to the business I think the business it was just business. Molly left the office and cried on a bench she got very unwell and spent two weeks in bed she gave herself words realizing she hated that job.

7:25She'd been doing it because she thought it was prestigious. She couldn't look for a new job until the settlement had been finalised. In the meantime, the deal for the property she was going to buy with her then boyfriend fell through because she didn't have an income anymore. It was a blessing though, she says, because it helped bring an end to the unhappy four-year relationship she was in. She would go on to meet her husband, the guy who went to Mexico with her and with the settlement money she was able to put down a deposit on a house of her own. Well played. And now she is more philosophical about the experience.

8:01I guess both my body failed me and I failed at being employed. If we're going to put it as a kind of failure. But yeah, I think I'm a believer that if you've tried as hard as you possibly can and you've given something your all and it hasn't fallen in the way that you expected it to or wanted it to then to some extent maybe that's the way that it's meant to be like I don't believe in fate necessarily but I try to take that out of some very bad things can come some good um so if you're yeah if you're in that two-week period or something has just gone totally tits up um just know that it will always get better and out of that kind of misfortune is likely to come something that will be even greater because you'll learn so much from it.

8:48Like in that period of time, I learned so much about, you know, it sounds cliches, but like I learned so much about myself, about my body, about my mind and about the world as well. Like ultimately you might feel like you're one very important person, but to a business of that scale, you're probably not. Molly learned she handles stress well mentally, but not physically. She also learned to be more cynical. Why wouldn't you? She has some great thoughts on how you can build an attractive place to work? First of all, think about what the right balance of in-person and remote is for your company.

9:23So I think the trouble with the discussions that happen around flexible working now is that everyone conflates it with being fully remote. So it's become a very binary discussion, or is actually the future of work, in my opinion, is each company and each individual finding their own right balance, whether that's once a quarter, a company does an offsite, And that's how everybody meets and gets together and brainstorms or it's once a month or it's once or twice or three times a week. So it's finding that, first of all, that balance of in-person and remote that will work for both the business and the individual.

9:56And that looks very different from person to person and individual to individual. So then my second piece of advice would be be totally transparent about that, because people have the right, I think, to make an educated decision about whether you're the right company for them. you know I would never apply now if I were looking for a job to a company that was like we're in the office every day nor would I apply to one that was fully remote because I wouldn't want to do that but my right balance is remote first where I can choose to go into an office so be transparent about it to hire a line talent and then my third piece of advice is trust your employees ultimately we're all adults we've been hired to do a good job and drive the business forward.

10:36And the most important thing for companies to remember that then is that you should empower your people to make decisions about how, when and where they best work around guidelines. You know, obviously, if you do people want people in once a week, then you expect them to do that. Molly's in a great position to teach founders about this because she's also a founder and she knows what the studies show. I love the people who are like the offices. We need to go back to office that's how people work best like the most widespread study was done by nick bloom who's a professor at stanford and that was on mixture of industries mixture of company sizes mixture of roles seniorities like it's a really reliable study and it showed that ultimately hybrid productivity is exactly the same as going into an office five days a week but it's cheaper and easier to hire talent retention is better engagement is better diversity is better and happiness is obviously better.

11:31With remote, there's a slight productivity decrease, but cost savings are absolutely enormous. So really it's a blend of what a different business prioritises at different times. You know, loads of startups start off remote because it's cheap and then they'll start being remote first, you know, one day a month, they're in a hybrid, one day a week or two. So it's not static either. It will evolve over time. Molly says startups have an enormous advantage if they can be flexible because they can attract people. Only 14 % of companies are fully remote and yet 54 % of people want to be fully remote.

12:07Similarly, with Remote First, around 36 % of people want it but only 25 % of companies offer it. Hybrid is basically the remainder with only 0.2 % of people wanting to go into an office every day.

12:26that was molly johnson jones on how you can create a great place to work i've been your host dan murray surta if you like this episode please subscribe or follow us and leave a review we love to hear what you think see you next time