Lockdown broke U.K.’s work ethic, former supermarket boss says

Lord Price, the former managing director of Waitrose who ran the U.K. supermarket from 2007 until 2016, has said Britain’s attitude to work has permanently changed since lockdown and Covid-era furlough schemes paved the way for a rising sick-note culture. Research from his think tank WorkL, which covered 100,000 companies across more than 100 countries, indicates that almost a fifth of people who said health was a major issue in their workplace were most concerned about sick pay. “We picked up lots of comments about ‘we want sick pay to be increased’ or ‘we want sick pay time to be extended’. And so there is something about ‘I want to be paid better for being off sick’,” he said of the research findings, adding “I just think that those Covid years found people being paid to be at home. And as a consequence of that and not working, I think there is a mindset switch about: well, the state will pay for us to be at home or not to work.”