What Victorians taught us about work culture

By James Saville, Partner at Goldbug. James leads media and press strategy across PR campaigns.

It’s a lyric from country singer Merle Travis’s classic ‘Sixteen Tons’ (made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford and later, Johnny Cash).

It’s about a miner who, at the end of a tough day loading coal, had less money than when he started.

Its chorus has the famous line: “I sold my soul to the company store.”

Company stores were common in America’s first mining towns in the late 1800s. Instead of money, workers were paid in coal scrip – a currency useless anywhere but the town’s only shop…owned by the coal mine.

So, you slogged all day to simply become a customer – and often end up in arrears – to your own boss.

How grim.

This era of hard-nosed bosses, beaten-down workforces and company entrapment was mirrored in Victorian Britain – and became a well-trodden theme for Charles Dickens.

There were plenty of jobs to go round but wages were pitiful. The balance was in favour of employers, crooked or not.

It’s intriguing to remind ourselves that this was only a few generations ago.

The average person reaching retirement age in Britain will have great grandparents who were out there working in Victorian times, in or among the workhouses.

New laws came in to keep people safe at work and give them rights, bringing the ability to change work culture overnight.

It’s unsurprising, amid the wake of the industrial revolution, that the Victorians were the first to identify stress at work…and even the need for work-life balance.

This warning is from Scottish psychiatrist and neurologist, Dr James Crichton Brown.

While that could just as easily be a modern-day LinkedIn post, he said it 100 years ago. (The eminent doctor died in 1938…aged 97!)

More recently, Professor Sally Shuttleworth of Oxford University led a study backed by The European Research Council into the uncanny similarities between Victorian-era concerns and modern anxieties.

The ‘Diseases of Modern Life’ study (2014-2019) delves into literature, science and medicine to explore parallels between reactions to ‘progress’ in the 19th and 21st centuries. It takes its title from a book published in 1876 by Benjamin Ward Richardson, an English medical reformer.

She added: “Financial services and other professional employees began commuting to their offices in London and taking work home with them. Worse, the arrival of the telegram meant that stockbrokers were always on.

“Information began to flow from Asian markets early in the morning and those who clocked off before the New York stock exchanges closed risked losing their shirt. Instead of waiting weeks for a ship to arrive with goods and pricing information, they were bombarded all the time.

“Information was now communicated in an instant via telegraph. Cases of suicide among bankers were widely publicised.

“The literature shows that doctors frequently diagnosed stress and recommended that their patients take six months off to recover.”

It would be silly to think that little has improved in work culture in a century. Amid the growth of service industries and technology, it’s a completely different beast.

But are some of those deep-seated Victorian-era work values and employer expectations of a previous generation still taking time to slip away?

Today we’re in a massive state of transition. Not just because of our experiences during Covid but due to macro changes in the way we want to live our lives on this planet.

The pace of that change is accelerating.

Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave a fascinating speech in May this year at the Policy Exchange on AI and security.

Understandably, people are looking for more security, at home and at work, more empathy and more trustworthy news and information than ever.

The emphasis is being put on what employers can offer employees, rather than the other way round.

And while the modern-day Matthew Marryots might be tempted to throw money at employees to retain talent, breed loyalty and promote security, this is not the answer.

A new UK report into what motivates employees most in the workplace shows that money is low down on the scale. First place is “Identity”, second is “meaning”, third is “social”, fourth is “enjoyment”. Money is in fifth place. And that’s despite the cost-of-living crisis.

It is the reason that the employee engagement team sits inside the comms department and within arm’s reach of HR teams – and not in the finance department.

Employees need to know they are valued. They need to know they are heard. They need a sense of purpose and they need to know their employer shares their concerns.

It pays dividends for companies who get this right. It creates a virtuous circle for recruitment, retention and business growth. For, in return, employees want to be loyal and are happy to play an active ambassadorial or ‘influencer’ role for the brands they work for.

We live in a landscape where the number of big businesses without a literal shop front and face-to-face, human customer service is growing. And yet, people expect to see more humanity from the brands they buy from.

It’s becoming increasingly vital to show customers and stakeholders what happens behind the curtain. Stories of social mobility, EVPs, perks and compelling workplace initiatives are becoming of more interest to journalists. They want real-life employee stories because their audiences want to know about better and new ways to live and work.

Just like the Victorians did.

Today, research from Goldbug and Opinium shows that 54% of 18-34 year olds have to feel an emotional connection with a brand before they buy its products or engage with it on a regular basis.

This ‘emotional connection’ amounts to human engagement. Six in ten 18-34 year olds say they’ve bought a product or signed up to a service after it was recommended by a customer in the media.

What happens in external engagement is echoed in employee engagement. If a piece of content at work features someone they know or work with, 82% of young people say they’d be more likely to engage with it.

This really emphasises the value of employees, beyond the actual work they do day-to-day. It’s a lesson in how they have become your most powerful business asset.

Brands that are going the extra mile in employee engagement. Brands that are working with their own employees to show off what happens in the business. Brands that understand their employees are their most valuable assets.

They’re the ones who will strike gold in 2025.