Lessons learned from three months paternity leave and how we can genuinely 'Build Back Better' - Mark Casci

It feels like a blinking of an eye since I last penned my weekly column but in reality it has been 15 whole weeks since I last wrote in these pages.

The last three months have seen me away from the captain’s wheel of The Yorkshire Post business desk and instead caring for my youngest daughter, who turned one this weekend just past. Being back at work again full-time in what is a demanding role is both familiar yet oddly alien.

The reason I have chosen to write about this state of being comes not from some manic self-obsession (well maybe a little, I am a journalist after all).

It is motivated more by the fact a return to work after an extended hiatus is going to be a reality for millions of people in the next few months.

The most up-to-date figures show that, as of mid-November, some 9.6 million roles are currently on furlough across the nation, impacting around 1.2 million companies.

This means that a group of people, equivalent figure to the amount of people living in New York City, the most populous city in America, is currently at home with their careers in stasis and having 80 per cent of their wage paid for by taxpayers’ cash – the cost of which will afflict our economy for many years to come.

I am fortunate to have a progressive employer as well as fantastic colleagues who fully supported my sabbatical and have this week welcomed me back with figurative open arms and friendly remarks.

I do hope that for all of the furloughed staff around this wonderful county that they will enjoy the same treatment in their return to work after what in some cases will add up to an entire calendar year. The need for employers to do the right thing has never been more acute.

These sentiments are, of course, directed towards the lucky ones who have roles to go back to. The tally of jobs losses from retail has been brutal in the last few days as once proud bastions of the high street fight for survival.

It is undeniably clear Covid has accelerated the decline of physical retail by many years and yet there are manifold signs that the future for independent retail may appear far more positive.

This past three months has been the longest period of my professional life in which I have been a consumer of news, rather than both a consumer and reporter of it.

When I began my leave we were being paid by the Government to eat out to support the hospitality industry. Within weeks those self-same hospitality businesses were forcibly required to close or operate with significant restrictions on their ability to trade as the inevitable and widely predicted second wave of infections began to sweep the nation.

The word farce is overused but entirely applicable in this situation. My heart goes out to the many thousands of people whose livelihoods are impacted. Every job lost is a tragedy.

When I wrote in late August that I was preparing to take Shared Parental Leave a reader on Twitter messaged me to thank me for ‘spreading the message’ that raising a child is not just a role for women. I was busy preparing for a week’s break in Wales when I read it and did not fully absorb or appreciate the meaning of what she had said.

It was not my intention to spread any kind of message, It just felt the right thing to do.

Seemingly every elected official from the parish councillor to the president elect of the United States has run on the banner of ‘building back better’, so much so that the phrase for me has already entered the realm of the cliché.

However, the sentiment behind it is one that should be embraced, not on a superficial level but in a manner which is innate and deeply ingrained in our thinking.

The Government’s management of the pandemic is correctly the source of much scrutiny but there is much we can do too, as employers, employees and citizens to help build back better,

We just need to do the right thing.

In closing let me say how wonderful it is to write for you all again. It is a privilege I do not take for granted.

It is so good to be back.