In this podcast we will look at an issue which could influence workplaces and workplace wellbeing in the future: Universal Basic Income. Dr Mark Bryan from the University of Sheffield joins us to explain what UBI is, who is thinking about it and the potential implications for organisations, managers and HR leads.
Usually on our podcast we catch-up retrospectively with ways research has been used to influence workplace wellbeing. It’s important to base action on evidence and our podcasts like to offer that evidence to you. However, imagining how the future could be different is also important - it helps organisations prepare and potentially shape the future they want to operate in.
In this podcast we will look at an issue which could influence workplaces and workplace wellbeing in the future: Universal Basic Income. Dr Mark Bryan from the University of Sheffield joins us to explain what UBI is, who is thinking about it and the potential implications for organisations, managers and HR leads.
Usually on our podcast we catch-up retrospectively with ways research has been used to influence workplace wellbeing. It’s important to base action on evidence and our podcasts like to offer that evidence to you. However, imagining how the future could be different is also important - it helps organisations prepare and potentially shape the future they want to operate in.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:20
Helen Fitzhugh
Welcome to the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing Podcast. This podcast is part of a toolkit of free evidence-informed workplace wellbeing resources provided by the Workplace Wellbeing Research Team at the University of East Anglia in the UK. You can find the resources on www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org
Hi, I'm Dr. Helen Fitzhugh from the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing Research Team.
00:00:29:22 - 00:00:51:14
Helen Fitzhugh
Usually on our podcast we catch up retrospectively with ways research has been used to influence workplace wellbeing. However, today we're going to do things a little differently. We're going to look to the future and do some horizon scanning. In this podcast, we will look at an issue which could influence workplaces and workplace wellbeing in the future. Universal Basic Income.
00:00:51:16 - 00:01:14:07
Helen Fitzhugh
Dr. Mark Bryan from the University of Sheffield joins us to explain what UBI is. Who is thinking about it? And what might happen if it's ever introduced. So Mark, welcome to the podcast.
Mark Bryan
Thanks very much, Helen. It's a pleasure to be here.
Helen Fitzhugh
So would you mind introducing yourself your kind of usual research and how you started thinking about UBI?
00:01:14:09 - 00:01:42:05
Mark Bryan
Yeah, sure. So I'm a reader in economics at the University of Sheffield, and my main research interests are sort of at the intersection of labour, economics and health and wellbeing economics. So I was involved in the work centre for Wellbeing. My particular area in that was looking at transitions in work and how that affected people's wellbeing and vice versa.
00:01:42:11 - 00:02:09:12
Mark Bryan
I'm currently leading a project about to do with the disability employment gap, which is the gap in employment rates between disabled and non-disabled people in the UK. So that's my that's sort of my day job, which doesn't really have anything to do with UBI. However, I've also done research and I teach policy evaluation methods, so methods to statistically evaluate the effects of different policies.
00:02:09:12 - 00:02:39:22
Mark Bryan
So in the past I've done research about the effects of the minimum wage on employment, for example, and I first got involved in UBI because there was a group in Sheffield being set up called UBI Labs Sheffield, and now that's expanded into the UBI lab network. And so there's lots of UBI labs now. And the mission statement or the goal of the network is to explore the possibilities of UBI.
00:02:39:24 - 00:03:05:18
Mark Bryan
And one way we're trying to do that is to promote the running of pilots, UBI pilots, where a pilot is basically an experiment where you pay a group of people a universal basic income, and you see what happens. And because of my policy evaluation expertise, I originally came in as co-author of a proposal to do a UBI pilot in Sheffield.
00:03:05:20 - 00:03:33:24
Mark Bryan
So that's how I got interested in it. And now that pilot hasn't actually been run for reasons that we might discuss to do with cost and sort of political cooperation that's required, but that pilot still exists. And since then there has actually been a pilot launched in the in the UK, in Wales and a pilot that is testing the impact of a UBI amongst a group of care leavers.
00:03:34:01 - 00:03:57:16
Mark Bryan
And so young people who've just left the care system in Wales.
Helen Fitzhugh
Right. So I suppose at this point we ought to define what UBI is for the people who are listening and how close are we to it becoming a reality.
Mark Bryan
So there's the standard definition of UBI and it's a regular payment in cash to everybody. So it's universal.
00:03:57:19 - 00:04:25:11
Mark Bryan
Everybody gets it. It's not limited to a subgroup of the population and it's not conditional on anything. So in particular, it's not conditional on whether you're in employment or not or any other type of behaviour. So it's just an amount of money that everybody gets as a matter of right now, that's quite a general definition because it doesn't actually say it doesn't actually say how much it would be, which is people's first question.
00:04:25:17 - 00:04:55:00
Mark Bryan
Yeah, how much would it be and how would you pay for it? So in the UK, the sorts of amounts that people generally propose ranged between about £50 a week and somewhere above £200 a week for adults. And then there'd be similar amounts probably for children. So that's the kind of amount of that we're talking about. And then there's also various ways that it could be paid for.
00:04:55:00 - 00:05:15:06
Mark Bryan
So that's kind of the other side of the coin. And when you think about the effects, it's actually important to take account of both of those things, the amount that people would receive and potentially anything, anything they would have to pay in terms of extra taxation. Now, this might sound a bit outlandish and obviously, as I said, it's unconditional.
00:05:15:06 - 00:05:38:14
Mark Bryan
So it's not to do as work status. So on a podcast, we're only talking about work related topics it might seem a bit strange to be talking about UBI, but there are some elements in the UK that are a little bit like UBI at the moment. So if you think about, say, child benefit, that's a bit like a UBI for children.
00:05:38:16 - 00:06:04:06
Mark Bryan
If you think about, say, the state pension, that's a little bit like a UBI for people over pension age, especially going forward where it's a flat rate. So as long as you've got 35 years of contributions, you'd get the flat rate, that flat rate your state pension and then those things like the winter fuel allowance for people over pension age, which is a little bit like a mini sort of one off UBI in the winter.
00:06:04:06 - 00:06:31:00
Mark Bryan
So we have got some elements in the system that already function a little bit like a UBI. So maybe it's not as kind of outlandish as you might think. So maybe in a sense of how close is it to becoming your reality? To some extent, elements already exist, obviously a full UBI payable to everybody. So really Universal is is still something that we don't have in the UK.
00:06:31:00 - 00:07:02:14
Mark Bryan
It's a long way. I would say it's quite a long way off. Still, but we have got those elements looking internationally. There are a couple of UBI eyes that exist and so there's this two in the US actually. So there's one in Alaska. So there's something called the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is a fund that is that uses revenue from the oil, from all from oil.
00:07:02:14 - 00:07:25:05
Mark Bryan
So it's basically the royalties from oil that Alaska is entitled to go into a into this permanent fund. And they use that to pay a dividend. It's called through everybody who's resident in Alaska. It's about 650,000 people, I think. So every year they get a payment of it depends on the oil, the oil price. So it's between 1000 and $2,000.
00:07:25:05 - 00:07:58:21
Mark Bryan
Normally a year, they get it once a year. So that's like a universal dividend, right? So that's sort of like a like sometimes people call it a partial UBI or a dividend. And the other scheme in the US is in North Carolina amongst the eastern band of Cherokee Indians and on their reservation, they run casinos. And the profits when they set up these casinos, these casinos, they had this arrangement that the profits will be distributed to everybody.
00:07:58:23 - 00:08:26:21
Mark Bryan
So I think that's covering about 16,000 people, and that's a dividend of about four or $5,000 a year. And then it gets paid a couple of times a year. So there are those two schemes in the US which again look a bit like a UBI, a sort of partial UBI. Okay, so people are dipping their toe into this around around the world, but it's still perhaps far from a universal application, especially in the UK.
00:08:26:21 - 00:08:53:13
Helen Fitzhugh
But you did mention a Wales study there. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?
Mark Bryan
Yeah. So that's that's currently running and what they're doing is everybody it's young people who are exiting the care system in Wales and every young person who exits within a two-year period. And I think we're about six months into the two-year period, is entitled to take part in this pilot.
00:08:53:13 - 00:09:15:14
Mark Bryan
So it's voluntary. They don't have to, but it's actually financially quite attractive for them to do so because they actually get a UBI of actually much more than the amount of people are normally proposing. It's actually £400 a week lot. So if you work that out, it's actually quite in fact, I think this is how they calibrated it too.
00:09:15:14 - 00:09:37:18
Mark Bryan
It's actually almost the same as the minimum the national minimum wage at the National Living Wage. Right. Time for a full-time job. So they're going to get that for two years and then I presume they're going to compare those people with the one people who left just before this pilot started or just afterwards to have a comparison group.
00:09:37:20 - 00:09:58:00
Mark Bryan
I'm not sure about the details about that. That's why I think they'll probably do so. It's only that's that's that's a UBI that will last in the pilot two years. Yeah. And it's as I said, it's a very high UBI so we'll see what that what that gives. So no findings from that yet. No findings from that yet.
00:09:58:00 - 00:10:27:22
Mark Bryan
No. So we're going to have to wait I guess a few years. I don't know if they were released any early earlier findings. There are some issues with doing pilots. You don't really want to kind of publicize it too much during the pilot in case it disturbs the the conditions.
Helen Fitzhugh
So is there any research that has been issued that told us about UBI and, for instance, people's well-being all their lives, satisfaction or training prospects, for instance?
00:10:27:24 - 00:11:04:11
Mark Bryan
Yeah. So there are historically there have been quite a few pilots and the earlier the earliest ones were in the US and Canada in the seventies, sixties, late sixties, early seventies and since then, then it went into a bit of a sort of hiatus and it came back. It's come back in recent years. So especially since COVID actually there have been a lot of little pilots in the US, some of it using the COVID recovery money that states individual states have given and they have to spend it within a certain time.
00:11:04:13 - 00:11:29:23
Mark Bryan
And so some of that has been used to set up little pilots. So typically these are sort of pilots of quite small pilots of maybe 100 people. Okay. So the thing with UBI pilots is they're very costly because you have to pay the UBI. So, you know, if you think about a quite a reasonably generous UBI, so it was £200 a week, that's about £10,000 a year.
00:11:30:00 - 00:11:53:23
Mark Bryan
So that is expensive once you get into the numbers. So these are quite small pilots in the US. So there have been quite a number of those pilots and so a lot of evidence is coming out of that with this caveat that they are quite small numbers. Yes. So some of the evidence is qualitative, some of it is quantitative.
00:11:54:00 - 00:12:30:16
Mark Bryan
So what emerges from from those pilots and also some of the research on the Alaska on the the eastern band of Cherokee Indians pilot is that what we see is positive effects on wellbeing and in particular mental health. So there's a range of measures that people have looked at. It can be psychiatric symptoms, disorders can be life satisfaction, it can be sleep quality, it can be kind of self-assessed, quality of life stress, depression.
00:12:30:18 - 00:13:10:00
Mark Bryan
So essentially, on a range of measures, there's evidence that UBI increases mental wellbeing. There's also some evidence on sort of physical health, things like hospital admissions and measures of physical health and on some measures of physical health. There are significant improvements from UBI, less social stigma, more social participation. Now, again, you do have to sort of look at the context here because quite a bit of the evidence, as I say, comes from these small American pilots which tend to be targeted on disadvantaged groups.
00:13:10:02 - 00:13:38:11
Mark Bryan
Yeah. Okay. So it's often targeted on on. It's almost always they target the pilot on low income households. So maybe it's not surprising that given the stress of living on a low income and having to make ends meet, if you had a if you had some money and give people breathing space, it's maybe not surprising that you would get increases in improvements in mental wellbeing.
00:13:38:13 - 00:14:03:06
Mark Bryan
So I think that I think the evidence is quite good in quite convincing people that and evidence reviews and and concluded that I think if you did it on the whole population, maybe the effects will be smaller. Yeah.
Helen Fitzhugh
So that's something I think we have to we have to bear in mind and presumably as an economist, you're also interested in the kind of cost benefit.
00:14:03:06 - 00:14:39:17
Helen Fitzhugh
So, you know, so for how much is put in, are you getting enough improvement to make it justifiable?
Mark Bryan
Yes, yes, yes. This is true. I mean, there is a there is a recent study in the UK, a kind of simulation study where they're looking at the evidence of the effects of income on wellbeing and they're looking at if people's wellbeing, if we had a UBI and people's wellbeing increased by whatever, how much would that have?
00:14:39:22 - 00:15:06:02
Mark Bryan
Which is that worth in terms of quality adjusted life years. Oh yeah. So quality adjusted life is a what they use what nice National Institute for Clinical and Health Excellence uses when they evaluate new treatments on the NHS. So this is a way to evaluate the benefits of a new treatment. So obviously that that improves health. So here what we're thinking about is mental wellbeing.
00:15:06:08 - 00:15:32:02
Mark Bryan
How much would potentially UBI improve mental wellbeing and how much would that be worth in terms of quality, quality adjusted life years? And you can sort of loosely speaking monetize that. And so they're saying that it would actually say that the value of that will be in the tens of billions for the whole economy. So so in that sense, it, you know, it looks like a good deal.
00:15:32:04 - 00:15:53:12
Helen Fitzhugh
Yeah. Oh, that's really interesting research. I'd like to see how that progresses. I suppose we should move on now to our audience is is kind of made up of senior leaders, people in HR, People who are wellbeing champions. So they probably want to know what are the implications of this potential future of ubi for work as we currently know it.
00:15:53:14 - 00:16:18:19
Mark Bryan
One thing you asked about which i didn't mention was training. Oh, yeah. So there is there is there is evidence, right from the start actually from the UBI pilots back in the seventies in the US that and they were folk, they were focused on work because at the time people were worried that if you gave people a UBI then they stopped working.
00:16:18:21 - 00:16:40:11
Mark Bryan
So there's a kind of moral judgment that some people would argue that's not a good thing. But even apart from that moral judgment, which is obviously debatable, if people did stop working on a large scale, it would potentially undermine the tax base to pay for them. So they were they were focused on that. But what they found is almost no overall very little effect on work when they were saved.
00:16:40:12 - 00:17:15:00
Mark Bryan
UBI And where there was an effect, it was often because people were staying in education for longer. Right. And it tends to promote education. And also in some of the pilots that have been done, especially in developing countries, Kenya, India, Namibia, a pilot, then it stimulated entrepreneurship. So I would say in terms of one dimension of work is, you know, investing in and in work skills, starting businesses, etc..
00:17:15:00 - 00:17:48:07
Mark Bryan
So I think the evidence there is that it and that we have it. So it does encourage that general issues to do with work. Again, this is something that's hotly debated as to what the what the what the more general implications of a UBI would be for the labor market. This is something you can't probably properly test anyway in a small pilot because just giving a few people a UBI doesn't tell us what the overall effects of the like on the labor market might be if everybody had a UBI.
00:17:48:09 - 00:18:26:05
Mark Bryan
So one thing it might do is give people a bit more bargaining power, for example. Okay. And that might, if everybody got it, raise wages because you've got, you know, potentially less supply of labor. And but we don't know that until we wouldn't know that until we tried it. Yeah. So but this kind of debate on that and there's different schools of thought within the UBI community, would it give people more bargaining power because they've got this outside option even if they stop work, they still get this certain level of income?
00:18:26:07 - 00:18:50:12
Mark Bryan
Or would it mean that firms could subsidize low wages because people are getting the extra money? Well, those two opposing effects, yeah. And it's not clear which one would dominate. And I my my feeling is it would actually depend on the type of job in the sector. So there might be some jobs which are not very pleasant jobs where people really don't want to do them.
00:18:50:12 - 00:19:20:09
Mark Bryan
And they only do them because of the money. And if they had a UBI that would actually give them a bit of an outside option. So they might be more reluctant to do those jobs. And the wages would have to rise in those sectors to incentivize people to do the jobs. On the other hand, there might be some kind of jobs which are also quite low paid where, you know, maybe in sort of in the social sector some or the creative sector where people actually want to do the jobs.
00:19:20:13 - 00:19:49:09
Mark Bryan
And a UBI would actually they'd be more willing to do the jobs for a potentially for a low wage because they'd be getting the UBI.
Helen Fitzhugh
I suppose from my point of view, it's not just about the wage, it's also about how they treat the people, their employees, because we talk a lot about wellbeing and, you know, keeping people retention, being so much based on how you treat people that this their experience of work and their experience of the managers they work with.
00:19:49:11 - 00:20:16:12
Helen Fitzhugh
So I imagine that would also mix it up a bit.
Mark Bryan
Yeah, Yeah. So here, I mean essentially it's, it's, it's similar, it's a similar issue that potentially if someone's getting a UBI, you have to treat them nicely because you know, they might not cooperate with you otherwise, knowing that they have this, this outside option. Really interesting. So I think that's I think that's yeah.
00:20:16:14 - 00:20:46:21
Mark Bryan
And it's difficult to know how this will play out without until it actually happens. I guess one thing that some people have suggested is a UBI could go with a four day week. So there is a campaign for a four day week at the moment. And if they want a four day wait with no reduction of pay. But I think realistically, if there was a four day week, there would be some either reduction of pay or, you know, lower pay rises going forward kind of kind of thing.
00:20:46:23 - 00:21:17:01
Mark Bryan
And a UBI could actually complement that by by helping to compensate people. And it would and it would disproportionately compensate lower paid people. So you could have a UBI and a four day week kind of going together. And then the question would be what? How would firms manage manage a four day week?
Helen Fitzhugh
Yeah, interesting. I suppose it means that the picture on UBI is currently mixed in terms of what it could bring for managers and leaders in organizations.
00:21:17:06 - 00:21:37:08
Is there anything those people can do now to kind of be ready for the future?
Mark Bryan
I think just thinking about the issues, because I think it is a different way of thinking about things, because if you think about the way that what we're used to is that we most people go to work and get paid and that's that's where their income comes from, from their work.
00:21:37:12 - 00:22:01:12
Mark Bryan
And that's what everybody's focused on. Whereas this would be an additional income stream. So it's a different way of distributing what the economy produces. I mean, obviously there are some people who currently have an additional income stream at the moment because if you're an investor or you know, you've got you are you do have shares in companies you may get and you may get a dividend from that.
00:22:01:12 - 00:22:23:00
Mark Bryan
So in a way it's like generalizing. That's kind of situation where you have these multiple or this would be a kind of dual income stream that you would have. So it's a different way of conceptualizing the way we the way we do things and the way the economy works. And I think just thinking about those kind of issues would be, you know, would be would be very valuable.
00:22:23:00 - 00:22:41:08
Mark Bryan
I think a lot of you know, a lot of UBI, we've we've talked about doing actual experiments, but I think doing thought experiments around UBI is just as interesting in a sense, you know, having this in your mind that this might happen, but you have to think through it in those thought experiments gets you sort of thinking and ready if it does happen.
00:22:41:10 - 00:23:16:24
Helen Fitzhugh
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right. And are there any other kind of future of work topics that tie into this idea of UBI?
Mark Bryan
Well, one which is coming up at the moment is artificial intelligence. Okay. And obviously we in the academic sector are thinking about this quite, quite closely as well as in particular in relation to student assessments. But, you know, there is a there is a sort of school of thought that, you know, robots or AI and or are going to replace a lot of tasks and jobs.
00:23:17:01 - 00:23:49:19
Mark Bryan
And you've got some people in the tech community who are in favor of of paying a UBI. So Elon Musk has made pro UBI comments in the past. I think Mark Zuckerberg is in favor of UBI some woman who runs Openai, which is responsible for GPT. He wrote an article quite recently suggesting, well, basically saying I was going to change everything.
00:23:49:21 - 00:24:25:21
Mark Bryan
It would drive down wages to almost zero for a lot of jobs because people would be because people would essentially that their jobs will be replaced by AI, you know, including people like lawyers. And so he suggests that there should be a UBI to sort of compensate people for that. So he's suggesting a he calls it an American equity fund that would be financed by tax taxing the value of companies over a certain threshold and taxing land.
00:24:25:23 - 00:24:54:20
Mark Bryan
Okay. I mean, I should say that in the past, people have always said, you know, this is a constant refrain that technology destroys jobs. People have been saying this for the last, you know, 200 years. And by now we should be having full leisure time and Yes, and automation and suddenly. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, certainly before the pandemic, unemployment rates in the UK were at record levels.
00:24:54:22 - 00:25:18:04
Mark Bryan
It's gone down a bit now, but, you know, it may well go back up. So despite all the new technology, more and more people were in employment than ever before. So we'll see.
Helen Fitzhugh
Okay. So wrapping up, I mean, I found this absolutely fascinating. Mark, thank you. But if people only take one message from this podcast, what would you like it to be?
00:25:18:06 - 00:25:46:01
Mark Bryan
I think I'd just say think about it and be open minded about it. You know, it is a different way of thinking. It's a different way of distributing the proceeds of economic activity. It's something that seems outlandish at first. Maybe you, however, you could introduce it at a low level to start with and see how it goes. I think that's potentially how it will come in.
00:25:46:03 - 00:26:17:08
Mark Bryan
And yeah, just, just really think about, about it and the implications.
Helen Fitzhugh
Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much for that. It felt like it flew by because you've brought so much interesting information and yeah, thank you for joining us today. Okay. Thank you. And it's very interesting, very happy to talk about Please do visit www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org
00:26:17:10 - 00:26:19:05
Helen Fitzhugh
We look forward to seeing you next time.