Chapter 2 #2
‘Mally.’ Izzy was now leading the conversation.
It was a poorly kept secret that Izzy Curtis was the person actually in charge of the day-to-day operational function of The Helix in the UK, not Ian.
As a natural fixer, she’d quietly worked her way up the management ladder ever since she’d started working here as a receptionist straight out of uni.
But when she’d returned from maternity leave a couple of years ago, the leadership pathway – which had previously been so clearly laid out before her – was suddenly littered with obstacles.
When I say ‘obstacles’, I mean mediocre men.
She’d been sidelined into executive assistant roles ever since.
Elle had told me on the sly that she was constantly trying to resign, but they kept paying her more to stay because she ‘knew too much’.
‘We need employees to vacate the office a week early to carry out some unplanned maintenance work,’ Izzy continued.
‘As you know, key editorial and commercial staff usually work from home between Christmas and the new year on a rota basis, but this year we’re asking those staff to commence their remote working slightly earlier than usual. ’
I took some more notes. ‘Okay, got it. What about the rest of us – I mean, the rest of the company?’
‘They won’t be required to work during the extended shutdown period.’
‘Right. But… they’ll still be paid?’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
Oh! This was big. And potentially… not good. There’d been tons of speculation in recent months about the long-term viability of such a large UK presence for The Helix , especially since commercial revenues had dropped off a cliff in the last couple of years.
The business had grown exponentially since the UK-based arm of the global online publication had launched back in 2007.
My own position had been created in 2016 as part of one of many waves of expansion as the website’s audience traffic – and commercial revenue – had soared in the years that followed.
Recruitment had tailed off recently, but the US-based owners had announced just this year that they had ‘ambitious plans for growth and innovation’.
But rumours had already been rife that all of this would come at the expense of the UK-based operation.
Surely news of this sudden office closure would only add more fuel to the gossip fire in London media circles?
I thought carefully about what to say next so I could end this meeting as soon as possible and get back to my desk to give my co-manager, Lauren – who ran our PR team – an urgent heads-up about this potential comms inferno.
‘Right, so – off the top of my head – it seems to me that maybe the message should be that everyone’s getting a fully paid extra week off before Christmas?’
‘Yes! That’s it, Mally.’ Ian suddenly had a bit of colour back in his face.
‘Well, I’m not sure I’d put it like that…
’ Izzy was rubbing her temples and looking at me in a way that suggested she was trying to communicate via telepathy.
I’m sure she was wishing it was Maggie in this meeting rather than me.
The two of them always seemed to untangle these largely male-made knots, but with Maggie out of action for the rest of the year having a hysterectomy, contacting her was out of the question.
‘No, this is perfect.’ Ian placed what he obviously believed to be a reassuring hand on Izzy’s shoulder as a signal that he was going to take over the reins of the meeting once more.
‘Okay, Mally. Let’s go with something like this: As a thank you for the exceptional efforts that employees have put in this year, we’re extending the annual festive shutdown for an extra week.
During this time, essential maintenance work will be carried out in the office ahead of our return in the new year. How does that sound?’
It sounds like a crock of shit, Ian.
‘Perfect, got it. So, returning to the office as planned on Monday 5 January?’
‘That’s the plan, yes.’
The plan? Oh God, our employees were going to be coming to all manner of conclusions about this paper-thin email.
The Helix ’s management had always opposed the unionisation of its staff, insisting that its ‘online start-up culture’ – despite its one-thousand-plus employees both here and in the US – meant that there was ‘no need’ for employees to rely on collective representation.
It left all of us vulnerable to the whims of management who lived the other side of the Atlantic, and inevitably resulted in a permanent frenzy of paranoia.
I caught Izzy’s eye furtively, eyebrows briefly raised, to indicate that I’d clocked her concern.
She nodded almost imperceptibly to confirm that she’d received my message.
‘Brill. Do you think we ought to link to some FAQs on the intranet to explain it all in a bit more detail?’ I asked.
‘Great question,’ Ian replied. ‘Izzy, what do you think?’
‘You already know what I think,’ Izzy retorted.
Christ, their working relationship was… intense. I couldn’t figure out if they hated each other, or had recently ended an illicit affair.
‘Oh, just ignore her: PMT strikes again!’
Izzy calmly pressed her laptop closed, smiled at me with tight lips and walked out of the room. Okay, she definitely hated him. And justifiably so.
‘See what I mean?’
I fixed my face into a neutral expression and said nothing. He gathered up his things and stood to leave. ‘Right, I’d better go and make amends before she reports me to HR!’
He seemed to have forgotten that I was HR – or 50 per cent HR, anyway. As internal communications officer, I jointly reported in to the head of communications – Lauren – and Maggie, the head of human resources, who I’d definitely be chatting to about this conversation in the new year.
Ian’s head appeared around the door as I read through my limited notes from the meeting.
‘Oh, and can you send me a draft by three o’clock? I need to leave at half three today for my youngest’s nativity, but it really needs to go out in the next day or so to give everyone as much notice as possible.’
I wondered whether Izzy was ever permitted to leave early for nativity plays, and concluded that – if Elle’s experience in editorial was anything to go by – she probably wasn’t.
‘Yup, I’ll get on it straight away. Enjoy the show!’
After checking he’d definitely left this time, I turned to a separate page and wrote down his sexist comment while it was fresh in my mind.
Keeping such notes was futile, but I did it anyway.
I knew from the experience of other female colleagues that trying to get the company to change its culture of toxic masculinity was like trying to get my dad to stop doing the Guardian crossword, my mum to stop dusting and Josh to stop pulverising goodness-knows-what in his Nutribullet.
Back at my desk, it took me about twenty minutes to put together an initial draft for the all-staff email. Lauren wasn’t around to consult, so I pasted the draft into an email to Ian and copied her in, marking it as ‘urgent’.
Urgh, I hated that word. The relentless pace of life at The Helix – ‘the world’s leading digital smoothie for content, correspondence and culture’ – had taken me the best part of a year to adjust to after I’d left the small south London children’s charity I’d worked for previously.
Both were internal communications roles, but communicating to an employee base of thirty – where a meme-based poster in the communal kitchen would usually do the trick – compared to a headcount in the hundreds, meant that the two jobs were poles apart in terms of what was expected of me.
In fact, any internal posters at The Helix wouldn’t only be ignored, they’d probably be defaced by some up-and-coming writer who walked around with an inkless fountain pen tucked behind his ear.
I read through my email one final time before pushing ‘send’.
I knew my boss well enough to predict that she’d stage a PR intervention before the internal comms about the sudden office closure went out.
But the vibe I’d got from the meeting was that it would almost certainly go ahead, regardless of how they spun and disseminated the news.
I wondered how the majority of employees would react to the prospect of an extra week of paid leave in the run-up to Christmas.
Presumably, most of them would be able to fill it with extra joy and merriment.
Presumably, most of them wouldn’t be spending it alone.