Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Is Drinking No Longer an In-crowd Kind of Thing?
Join Janet Hadley and Darren A. Smith in an all-new podcast episode on the British drinking culture. Hear why the British drinking culture has changed in the 21st century and its impact on how leaders encourage inclusivity in the workplace. Learn other cool things like the origin of beer and statistics on the leading cause of absenteeism and fights in the workplace.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Darren A. Smith:
Welcome to S***s and Giggles with HR. We are with the lovely Janet Hadley. How are you?
Janet Hadley:
I’m very well, thank you.
Darren A. Smith:
We’ve entitled this podcast or video if you watch it by video — this was Janet’s idea — the Elephant in the well-being room. Is that right?
Janet Hadley:
That’s correct. Okay.
Darren A. Smith:
I’m intrigued and I’m going to ask you more about that. But firstly, before we move on, why should we talk to you about drinking culture? Because that’s what I know our topic’s about.
Janet Hadley:
So the reason why you should talk to me about drinking culture is because I am on a mission to create a drink-safe workspace without killing the boss and that is what we do here at Choose Sunrise. I guess what brought me here is my own personal experience. I’ve worked in large corporations since all my jobs apart from my pay ground have been in large corporations basically.
Darren A. Smith:
Right.
Janet Hadley:
I’ve always been a big drinker. Those two things go very nicely together actually as it turns out. So I was a big drinker at school actually, from the age of 14. A big drinker through sixth form, a big drinker through university. I thought, do you know what? I’m going to have to calm this down a bit when I get my first proper job. I was wrong.
I had to dial it up a bit because when I joined the trading floor of a large supermarket whose head office is based in Leeds, I was quite shocked actually. It was such a boozy culture. So it suited me down to the ground at the time. We would be out from 4:00 PM till 4:00 AM on a Friday.
Darren A. Smith:
Oh. That’s heavy.
Janet Hadley:
It’s probably heavy, isn’t it? I never saw anything wrong with it. It was almost a culture where you had to be part of that in-crowd in order to be considered for promotion.
Darren A. Smith:
Right. Okay.
Janet Hadley:
I do remember there being a couple of pregnant, well, not pregnant women. Well, there were pregnant women or people who were recently back from maternity leave who I feel so guilty for now knowing I was in this. But they weren’t part of the in-crowd. They weren’t ever out in the pub with us, and they were passed up for promotion.
There was a real culture of, well, they’re only part-time and they’re not really serious about their careers. It’s a horrible toxic culture actually for someone to work in who has a young child. I actually do feel incredibly guilty now looking back on it and thinking about how I was part of that.
Actually, I mean, fast forward to a couple of years ago when I decided to stop drinking, which I’ve obviously missed out on. It’s a huge amount of story.
I really only saw for the first time how much the drinking culture in the workplace had influenced me. I would never say it was my employer’s fault that I developed a problem with my drinking. But it certainly didn’t hurt. If you wanted to create a culture where someone would develop a drinking problem, that would be it.
Darren A. Smith:
Okay. So there’s a hell of a story there from heavy drinking. Now, you haven’t had a drink for two years.
Janet Hadley:
Two and a half years. Nearly three.
Darren A. Smith:
Okay. You were by no means an alcoholic. You were just part of the drinking culture.
Janet Hadley:
Well, this is a very interesting question because there is no formal definition of an alcoholic. So I don’t really use the term alcoholic. People tend to think that there are normal drinkers and there are alcoholics and there’s not a lot in the middle. And the truth of the matter is that most drinkers are somewhere in that grey area in between those two ends of the spectrum.
Actually, sometimes what happens is, like, in my case, I had some really devastating news. So people do face death and bereavement and trauma and serious illness and things like that as they get into the forties generally.
Darren A. Smith:
Yeah.
Janet Hadley:
It can really, be for someone who’s always turned to alcohol at the end of every stressful day or at every Friday night, or for every celebration and commiseration ever for their whole life. When you get some news like that, you end up drinking. My relationship with alcohol really changed, became much darker and it started to be a kind of drinking-to-forget relationship with alcohol rather than a drinking-to-have-fun relationship with alcohol.
I think that’s, well, it is very common. There are all kinds of reasons why people find themselves in trouble with alcohol. And there doesn’t have to be a reason, let’s face it, it’s an addictive substance that we are subjected to marketing on a daily basis. Active marketing, passive marketing, it’s just everywhere.
It’s no wonder really that some people find that they’re having trouble controlling it. So I’m not sure about the word alcoholic. I’d almost argue that anyone who drinks regularly probably is something of an alcoholic because they keep drinking.
Darren A. Smith:
Okay. Alright. I’m intrigued by something particularly you said so far. So you said drink safe workspace.
Janet Hadley:
Yeah.
Darren A. Smith:
I’ve heard that before.
Janet Hadley:
Yeah. So that’s a phrase that I’ve coined to describe what we do here at Choose Sunrise. I’m not in the business of telling people to stop drinking and to have teetotal workplaces. I am in the business of making the workplace a place where people can find support if they need it. I’m in the business of making the workplace more inclusive for people who choose not to drink.
I’m in the business of making the workplace somewhere that is psychologically safe for people to speak the truth about how they feel about their drinking and their relationship with alcohol. I run a peer support group called the Sober Curious Society in the workplace.
Darren A. Smith:
So Curious. Yep.
Janet Hadley:
Yep, yep. That is a safe space where people can explore their relationship with alcohol, with no judgment in the workplace, with all the people who are their colleagues and peers, perhaps, you know, there’ll be some senior leaders in there, there’ll be some very junior people in there. Everyone’s in there for the same reason.
They’re interested in exploring their relationship with alcohol and potentially doing something to change it. They get all the resources that they need to do that if they wish to. There is no pressure for them to go sober or do anything other than turn up and listen and chat.
Darren A. Smith:
So, it’s not as if you’re a vegan society trying to stop the meat eaters.
Janet Hadley:
Exactly. It’s about giving people a different perspective. When I was growing up, my heroes were people like Zoe Ball and Sarah Cox. I was a proper nineties ladette drinker, and all my role models were drinkers. My parents were big drinkers. All my relatives, like my friends, my everyone was a drinker. I never ever had any sober role models. I think that’s true of a lot of people my age.
I think going into the workplace and being a sober role model and actually sharing stories about the journey to deciding to stop drinking in a workplace setting can be so important and inspiring for people. I get emails on a fairly regular basis saying, I saw one of your talks six months ago, nine months ago, two years ago, and it’s only now that I’ve decided to stop, but I just wanted to say thank you because you were the first person I’d ever come across who like just told their story about stopping drinking.
It’s so relatable for so many people, but it’s become quite a taboo subject and people find it very difficult to say, I need some help with my drinking.
Darren A. Smith:
I get that. Well, we’re seeing more and more sober October, Dry January.
Janet Hadley:
Yeah, February. Yeah.
Darren A. Smith:
I read the other day something like, there’s a high percentage of millennials who don’t drink. I got that right?
Janet Hadley:
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. There really are. One of the big factors that affect that is the rise of social media. So there is a real fear amongst younger people of drunk photographs appearing on social media and that has been an important change. You know, let’s face it, if there’d been social media when I was that age, I don’t think I would’ve had a career.
Darren A. Smith:
I would’ve gone out. Yeah.
Janet Hadley:
No, exactly. So there’s that enough, but also you can’t get served under 18 anymore. You need ID to get served everywhere. That certainly wasn’t the case when I was that age. Young people are much more health conscious. I’ve got teenage daughters and they go climbing and bouldering, they go to coffee shops, they go into town, they go shopping, but I don’t stop them from drinking. They’re allowed to drink. They just choose not to.
Darren A. Smith:
That generation, they seem much more aware than we were. They’re aware of the planet, they’re aware of what they’re eating, aware of diet, that they’re drinking water. I don’t think I drank water until I was 35. Yeah. They seem much more educated. They know what they want.
Janet Hadley:
Yes, I agree. I think they’ve got the heads screwed on better than certainly I did at that age.
Darren A. Smith:
Feels like it. I’ve got a list here of questions. So we’re going to do a quick fire round if that’s alright. There’re questions that people type into Google and they want to get the answer from an expert. I think you’ve told us you’re an expert, your journey, why you understand this, and you are trying to do sober curious society. I love that. So sober curious society. Let’s start with when did the drinking culture start, do you think?
Janet Hadley:
Well, in the UK.
Darren A. Smith:
Yeah.
Janet Hadley:
There is one theory which I think really rings true, which is that it’s kind of al always been there since we started to ferment something called small beer to use as a drink because the water wasn’t safe to drink. This very sort of weak fermentation was a very, very weak beer, was what everybody drank. But it almost gave Westerners a tolerance to alcohol. What happened in the east in Asia, southeast Asia in particular was that people made tea, they made green tea to make their water safe.
Perhaps over the centuries, genetically the western world has become more accustomed to drinking alcohol. There are certainly some differences genetically between different nationalities in terms of their actual speed that they process alcohol. So I think that’s kind of the origin of our drinking culture.
Darren A. Smith:
Interesting. So when you were talking about that, I was thinking about gin was giving us a shot, not shot, but something to kids in Victorian days, wasn’t it?
Janet Hadley:
Gin was?
Darren A. Smith:
It was like water, wasn’t it?
Janet Hadley:
Yeah, I think there was a story, Mother’s Ruin.
Darren A. Smith:
Yes.
Janet Hadley:
Gin was kind of called Mother’s Ruin because there were obviously really, really high rates of infant mortality in impoverished areas in Victorian and pretorian areas. The grief and bereavement and loss and sorrow that the mothers suffered from, what tended to happen was they made homemade gin to literally drown the sorrows.
Yea, I think it may even have been encouraged or subsidised at one point which was, I think retrospectively a bit of a scandal given that what really needed to happen was they needed to make the conditions in the slums better so that they weren’t suffering from all these bereavements in the first place. But, yeah.
Darren A. Smith:
I get you. The second question is, which country has the best drinking culture?
Janet Hadley:
Oh, the best as in by whose standards?
Darren A. Smith:
I think what they’re asking is best in terms of positive, maybe low alcohol or no alcohol, or maybe the opposite to the UK.
Janet Hadley:
Yeah. Well, any country that is a strict Islamic country would be teetotal. So you’ve got all of the, yeah. There’s an awful lot of countries that would fall into that category. Yeah, I had a great holiday in Morocco, actually, I have to say, where there’s just no pressure to drink whatsoever. Just lots and lots of mint tea everywhere. Wonderful.
Darren A. Smith:
What culture has the highest rate of alcohol in some?
Janet Hadley:
It’ll be kind of Russia and surrounding areas. It’s not actually Russia that has the highest rate but it’s those kinds of Eastern bloc and all of the countries around there where they’ve got very heavy vodka-drinking culture, there are some really high numbers.
Darren A. Smith:
Right. Okay. We’ve answered what cultures don’t drink. Why is drinking so ingrained in our culture? I think you’ve partly answered that going back to the fermented beer. Okay. So the beer I’m particularly interested in is if I’m an HR manager and I’m listening to this podcast and coming back to drink safe workspace, what can I do to help?
Janet Hadley:
So there’s a few easy zero-cost things that you can do. So send an email to the leadership team that you look after and say before you buy everyone a bottle of wine or champagne for Christmas, have you asked them if they’d prefer a gift that doesn’t contain alcohol?
Darren A. Smith:
Okay. Yep.
Janet Hadley:
So that’s an easy one. As you are planning your work’s due or any kind of event at work, do some drinks matching alcohol drinks for non-a alcohol alternatives. So if you’re serving beer, have no alcoholic beer available. If you’re serving champagne, have a no-secco or go for the Thompson and Scott Naughty personally, that is the best one. But there are so many low-alcohol, zero-alcohol alternative drinks on the market. There is no excuse for not having them.
Darren A. Smith:
Okay. I guess there’s this peer pressure of going out on a work’s due feeling as though I’ve got to drink. Got to be part of the in-crowd that you mentioned.
Janet Hadley:
Yeah. So I run a webinar called Sober Shaming in the Workplace, and it’s really about supporting people. It runs through some lived experience stories that people have been kind enough to share with me and they’re spoken by actors where they’ve suffered real peer pressure and what’s happened as a result of that and how it’s made them feel. Then it offers alternatives. It kind of basically brings everyone up to the same standard of saying, look, that’s not acceptable at any of our workplace events.
And instead, if someone says that they’re not drinking this is how to behave. Actually, if somebody has confided in you that they’re not going to drink, that might be a buddy to them, how to be a good buddy to someone who’s perhaps in recovery and they don’t want everyone to know that.
Darren A. Smith:
Yeah. Yep.
Janet Hadley:
So how to be a good buddy to them. That type of thing. So yeah, there’re a lot of things that HR managers can do a lot. There’s also a really big piece about leading from the top. I specifically really do enjoy actually going in to speak to the senior managers in the workplace about the culture that they’re setting and how their behaviours impact the entire organisation and what messages they’re sending out. Because that’s actually sometimes the only thing that needs to change.
Darren A. Smith:
I just want to explore for a moment. It feels to me there’s a parallel between the drinks companies and drink responsibly and the energy companies who want us to buy more, but we shouldn’t buy more. This drink responsibly thing, when did that start and how does that feature in this?
Janet Hadley:
Yeah, so Drinkaware is a body that is funded by the alcohol industry. So on the face of it, it appears to be a great place to go to get advice about reducing drinking. It isn’t.
Darren A. Smith:
Okay.
Janet Hadley:
So that’s quite a controversial viewpoint. It’s funded by the alcohol industry. They will encourage you to continue drinking and moderate anybody who’s reached the point where they’re looking on websites for advice to help with drinking has already tried to moderate and they haven’t been able to moderate. So it’s not the right advice for those people. It’s really, in my view, quite dangerous.
Actually, I would say specifically that the advice on Drinkaware kept me stuck for a long time and prevented me from asking for help because I just couldn’t understand why I couldn’t follow the instructions on it, why it wasn’t working for me.
I would really advise anybody who is trying to follow that advice and struggling with it to look elsewhere and go and get some help from somebody who’s been there, done this, got the t-shirt and has actually stopped drinking because you can live your life alcohol-free and be happy. Drinker Wear will never tell you that.
Darren A. Smith:
Interesting.
Janet Hadley:
They will never ever tell you that and that’s the message that you need to hear.
Darren A. Smith:
It’s a bit like British gash telling you to turn your gas off, I suppose they never will.
Janet Hadley:
Exactly. I actively do not recommend it.
Darren A. Smith:
Okay. So you would recommend obviously your website. So just tell us your website and some other places we can have a look.
Janet Hadley:
Yeah. So I do recommend Alcohol Change UK by the way. I think the advice on there is excellent. I actually work as an associate for Alcohol Change UK as well. So you can book one of my webinars, which is called Sunshine Sobriety through Alcohol Change UK, which is exciting. Y
ou can visit my website, which is choosesunrise.co.uk and from there you can access my program 101 Days to Sober which is available for individuals or to bring into the workplace and you can access from there. You can read more about all of the other services that I offer to HR professionals, well-being professionals, and the workplace in general.
Darren A. Smith:
Alright. So we’ve talked about what HR managers can do. We’ve talked about the leadership team, and what they can do. If I’m an individual and I’ve got this question going on, do I drink too much, or do I not? How do I know when my relationship with alcohol is left rather than right?
Janet Hadley:
You know, because the question to ask yourself is, am I happy with how much I’m drinking? If you’re happy with how much you’re drinking, then that’s great. Carry on. It’s not really about how much you’re drinking, it’s about whether or not you’re happy with it.
If you are unhappy with the amount you’re drinking, and that quite often manifests itself as drinking more than you intended to, promising yourself you won’t drink tonight and then drinking. Waking up saying, I can’t live like this anymore, I’m going to stop, I’m going to make changes and then not being able to stick to the rules you put in place. Those for me are the signs that we can help you.
Darren A. Smith:
That makes sense. That makes sense. Certainly, for me, some years ago, every weekend we’d go out with friends and then sort of write off Saturday or Sunday. I said, really? Is this what I want to do? Yeah. So we stopped the binge drinking. It answers your question. Am I happy? Yes. I think I am. I wasn’t happy with writing off a whole day because I’ve decided the night before I’d just go for it.
Janet Hadley:
Yeah. Do you know what? That’s great because I do meet a lot of people who used to be heavy drinkers and they decided they were not happy with that and they now are successful moderators. There is nothing wrong with that. Actually, to be fair, to drink aware, that is actually something that’s possible for some people.
Darren A. Smith:
Right now.
Janet Hadley:
There are a lot of people out there and you know who you are who don’t have an off switch and they try and moderate and they just can’t because it’s all or nothing. I can’t eat one biscuit either. It has to be a good six, I’d say. Some people don’t have an off switch and yeah. If that’s you trying to moderate an addictive substance is just going to be exhausting. Open your mind to the possibility that you might be happier without any.
I know you don’t believe me right now, but I always say to clients at the start of the program, the 101 days to sober, it starts before you stop drinking. The first six modules are all about preparing to stop. Then you stop for 101 days, and the last six modules are about what’s next and whether you decide to go back to drinking or not is entirely your choice.
So it’s really more like a six-month program with the 101 alcohol-free days in the middle of it, and potentially continuing on from that should you choose to. What I do find is a lot of people, they do the 101 days, they go back to drinking and then they go, I don’t like it. I don’t actually like it anymore.
It’s not worth it. What it’s giving me isn’t worth what it’s taking away from me. Now that I’ve had that taste of getting up on a Saturday morning and going for a run and feeling fresh every day and being clearheaded, I’ve tried going back to it and I just don’t want to anymore. They genuinely don’t want to drink anymore and it’s brilliant. That’s what we’re looking for, really.
Darren A. Smith:
I like that because you’re sort of giving them the opportunity to then decide, which is great. You’re not saying rah, rah, to it will all be sober. What you are saying is try this, see what you think. Look at what you’re getting in the plus column, the minus column, and figure out the way forward.
Janet Hadley:
Exactly. Yeah. It’s all about choice. All about choice. Yeah.
Darren A. Smith:
My last question for you is, the title of the podcast is The Elephant in the Wellbeing Room. Why did you choose that as the top? I think I know.
Janet Hadley:
Yeah. I believe very strongly and firmly that alcohol underpins every single pillar of well-being, no matter which model you look at. If you think about physical health, mental health financial health, your relationships with other people, and spirituality, all of the classic aspects of well-being are impacted by your relationship with alcohol. If you are drinking more than you’re happy with all of those other well-being cornerstones if you like, they will be out of kilter.
It can be very difficult for somebody to get to grips with feeling good overall if they’re in that place with alcohol. And yet I could count on one hand the number of employers who I think have got this right and have really got a brilliant provision in the workplace for this. There’s a real tendency for employers to see this as something that the employee assistance program will do.
Darren A. Smith:
Yep.
Janet Hadley:
I used the employee assistance program at the place that I worked, and it was a brilliant employee assistance program, very well-funded, and had been used successfully for lots of other things for people in my team and for me. All they really offer was an online kind of quiz course thing, which wasn’t much help and told me to moderate, which I already knew. Signposted me to AA.
I have private healthcare insurance as well with the job that I was doing then and I dialled into that. I was told that rehab was an exemption. I was like, I don’t need to go to rehab. I’ve found an alcohol-specific counsellor who I wanted to go and see. They said, no, it’s classed as rehab. You can’t see that counsellor. You can see a general counsellor.
So I went to see a general counsellor who in the first session told me that she drinks far more than I do and not to worry. So I ended up just.
Darren A. Smith:
[inaudible 27:15].Janet Hadley:
I know. They think that they’ve got it covered and they just haven’t because you need specialist help. I would never, ever advocate getting help from a drinker with drinking. They’re not going to be able to help you. You need to go to someone who has stopped drinking and knows what it’s like and that’s a specialist.
You may very well find if you are an HR professional, go and check what the exclusion clauses are on your private healthcare insurance. Go and actually check what the employee assistance program offers. Walk through it as if you’re someone who’s worried about their drinking, you might be surprised how rubbish it actually is.
So I self-funded my therapy and counselling in the end and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. Best money I’ve ever spent.
Darren A. Smith:
As you said if you want to go and ask someone who needs to be someone who’s got the T-shirt.
Janet Hadley:
It really does. If someone wants to grab it, you need to go and speak to an old lush.
Darren A. Smith:
I get that. Alright, I’ve got one more question for you before we close. If we wind forward 10 years and we’ve got a workplace that is doing this well, would you describe it? How they’re doing it? What’s happening, and how it’s different? Probably too many questions there.
Janet Hadley:
So the culture would be very inclusive. What I mean by that is everybody would be made to feel welcome at all workplace events. Some of the workplace events would have alcohol like them and some would not and drinking the alcohol would be very much optional. There would be services for HR managers and well-being professionals in that workplace to help them understand what the needs are of somebody who’s in recovery.
There’ll be the right policies and processes in place to deal with issues as they arise. Those policies and processes would be compassionate, confidential measures that could be taken to support somebody as well as obviously protect the employer. There would be services for the whole organisation which would showcase sobriety in a positive light and give people sober role models so they could see that there is an alternative to having a heavy drinking lifestyle.
There would be a peer support group, a sober curious society-type set up in the workplace where people could come together to chat and support each other through resetting their relationship with alcohol. There’d be access to services for individuals so that they could get individual counselling and support if that’s what they needed. Then the final piece would be training for line managers on how to have those difficult conversations.
That’s obviously broader than alcohol. It’s something that all line managers need, the skills to be able to pick up and listen to be able to talk about taboo topics with confidence and to avoid the what are we going to do about Dave culture as I call it, where everyone knows there’s a problem and nobody knows what to do about it and gets kicked down the road. It’s kind of the opposite of that.
Darren A. Smith:
If I’m a leader and I’m thinking about the workplace culture, I’m running a business, profits are essential shareholder wealth, what’s in it for me?
Janet Hadley:
The absence rates, there’s probably about three to 5% of all absences is alcohol-related in the UK workplace. So around 20% of people in a survey, I think it was 2018, said that they’d had a hangover at work in the past month of which around 15% of those people admitted that they’d gone home as early as possible and done the least amount of work possible on that day in the last month.
Darren A. Smith:
Okay.
Janet Hadley:
So there’s a fair amount of productivity and absence gains to be made. There’s also a piece around attracting the right talent and retaining the right talent as our workforce becomes more and more diverse. Remember what we said about millennials not drinking?
I think employers are at risk of getting left behind on the changes that are happening already in society and the attitudes to alcohol. If they don’t reflect those changing attitudes in the workplace culture, they’re only going to attract an older, less diverse white sort of middle-aged workforce to be honest. So yeah, I feel like there’s more.
Oh, there’s risks as well. So if you think about the risk of workplace accidents and incidents alcohol is a major factor in all workplace accidents. Not, sorry, it’s not it. It’s something like, I read a statistic about this the other day, but it’s something like 30 or 40% of all workplace accidents, alcohol is a factor in them. It’s huge.
Darren A. Smith:
Wow. That’s big.
Janet Hadley:
I know. It’s really big, isn’t it? Then you’ve got grievances as well and the cost of that. So, many HR managers out there know that the busiest day of the year is the day after the work’s Christmas due when A has a fistfight with B, and C threw a chair through a window. I don’t know, there’re all sorts of grievances that happen. Sometimes there’s damages to pay to venues and all that kind of thing. It can be quite expensive. So yeah, that’s quite a few reasons.
Darren A. Smith:
That’s a lot of reasons. That’s good. That’s good. All right. We’re going to bring our podcast to a close. Is there any final takeaway you’d like to share with HR managers, particularly leading particularly listening and leaders of business? What would you like to share?
Janet Hadley:
I would just like to share one final piece, which is that as somebody who has been in a very dark relationship with alcohol, I was absolutely terrified of being labelled an alcoholic. I was absolutely terrified of telling anybody that I was going to stop drinking.
I was really scared and really, really lonely. I guarantee you that if you’ve got any reasonable-sized organisation, someone in your workforce is feeling like that right now. That’s good. The question I would ask myself is, how would I know and what support would they have?
Darren A. Smith:
Question. Wow. On that question, we’re going to wrap up. Janet, thank you very much. Thank you. Just a reminder of your website where these guys can go get help resources and maybe talk to you a bit more.
Janet Hadley:
Yeah. So, it’s Choose Sunrise — choosesunrise.co.uk
Darren A. Smith:
Okay. Thank you. We’ve been talking about the drinking culture and the title of our episode has been The Elephant in the Wellbeing Room. A big thank you to you, Janet. Thank you to Choose Sunrise and we wish you one.
Janet Hadley:
Thank you so much for having me.
Darren A. Smith:
Take care. Thank you.
Want more leadership tips? Check out our award-winning blog.
