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In recognition of the “negative emotional baggage” that can come after a relationship break-up, Ricardo Dublado, chief executive of Cebu Century Plaza Hotel in the Philippines, last year unveiled an unusual new staff policy: five paid days of heartbreak leave.

The time off, which can be taken annually provided the break-up is with a different person each year, was inspired by Dublado’s own experience. In the Philippines the idea is catching on: a parliamentary bill in February proposed that any worker going through a romantic break-up should be eligible for up to three days of unpaid leave. “Studies reveal the substantial toll break-ups take on individuals, affecting their emotional and mental wellbeing, leading to decreased productivity, absenteeism and higher healthcare costs,” said Congressman Lordan Suan.

Employers across the world have increasingly sought to make concessions for their workers’ personal lives, offering wellbeing days, flexible work and, in some cases, counselling services.

Some global companies may already encourage heartbreak leave under a different name. In the pandemic, employers introduced time off for wellbeing to differentiate themselves from competitors or give staff a discreet chance to look after their mental health or care for their families. Many continued, including software group Adobe, which offers six wellbeing days a year. Virgin Money gives five.

In the Philippines, Effel Santillan, human resources manager at Harbor Star Shipping Services, said employees suffering from lost love were generally allowed to take time off on a discretionary basis. “At the end of the day, the manager takes responsibility.”

UK employers including Tesco, the supermarket chain, and Metro Bank have targeted break-up support to families, signing up to the Parents Promise, created by Positive Parenting Alliance, an advocacy group. Employers make commitments to help parents who are separating from each other, including giving them a chance to work flexibly and helping them access counselling. In return, they receive support from the alliance.

Positive Parenting Alliance founder James Hayhurst wants “employers to recognise [separation] as a life event. If you’re going to separate, the employer can help you do it well.”

PwC, a signatory, said that while it did not have a specific divorce policy, working arrangements were designed to support big life events. “Everyone’s situation is unique, so we actively listen to our people to understand their needs,” Anne Hurst, the firm’s inclusion lead, said. “Our goal is to create a supportive environment that helps our people balance their personal and professional lives.”

In one 2023 study by researchers from the University of Minnesota, 44 per cent of respondents said going through divorce had a negative effect on work. People whose marriages ended reported an inability to focus or sleep and a tendency to break down in tears. “Crippling depression is slowing down my ability to socialise with my co-workers and supervisor,” said one.

However, a sizeable minority — 39 per cent — had a different experience, saying divorce was positive, freeing “up time and energy” and providing an opportunity for renewal.

The study suggested offering some help to people struggling with separation. Flexible scheduling or remote work, it said, may help employees manage “divorce-related appointments and also provide space to work . . . without placing an undue and unnecessary strain on emotional regulatory capacities”.

In the Philippines, meanwhile, Suan’s bill could face a tough hearing. Laws in the country do not guarantee time off for mental health problems on top of a statutory minimum of five days’ leave. The People Management Association of the Philippines, a professional body for human resources, has said that wellness leave is an “additional expense and additional interruption to business operations”.

Another question is whether heartbroken employees would take leave at all. Customer services worker Abigail Marquez, 27, said that in the event of a break-up she would not take advantage of the benefit as proposed in the bill, because it was unpaid. For some workers, protecting their income still takes priority over their heartache — or, as Marquez put it, “no money, no honey”.

Good morning. James Cleverly took a giant leap towards the final stage of the Conservative leadership contest yesterday. But who will join him, and should he try and game the outcome?

Pick your battles

James Cleverly won the third ballot of the Conservative leadership contest. The former home secretary secured 39 votes, pulling ahead of Robert Jenrick, who shed two votes between the second and third ballots, ending up with 31 votes, while Kemi Badenoch picked up two votes to reach 30. Tom Tugendhat, who got 20 votes, has been eliminated. Only two contestants will go through to a final vote by the party membership.

The vast majority of Tugendhat’s supporters will, if my contact book is remotely representative, swing behind Cleverly in the next round, while Jenrick and Badenoch are now in a close fight for the other members’ slot. Cleverly will have more than enough votes going spare tomorrow to choose his opponent. Which one should he pick?

On the one hand, according to both the ConservativeHome members survey and YouGov’s party members poll, Cleverly would beat Robert Jenrick but lose to Badenoch. One argument is that he should make sure he faces Jenrick because he is, on paper, much more likely to beat him.

I’m dubious about this one, though. In the past, both ConservativeHome and YouGov have overestimated the strength of the Tory right. I see no compelling reason to believe either survey has fixed that problem, and if Cleverly’s strength is being underestimated to anything like the degree that Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak were in 2019 and 2022, he will comfortably beat either Jenrick or Badenoch.

On the other hand, Jenrick’s campaign team has shown itself to be more aggressive, more effective and more willing to go into the gutter. Cleverly may well have more to fear from a month in which the former immigration minister’s slick campaign machine attacks him, than one in which Badenoch wonders out loud about which part of the British state she thinks is too flabby and too generous.

Cleverly’s leadership prospects will be better served if he defeats his more formidable rival, which, according to the polls is Badenoch.

I’m also dubious about this one, because it may be that YouGov and ConservativeHome have fixed their over-representation problem and that by picking Badenoch he is starting a fight he can’t win.

My general view: life is too short to play silly tactical games. Given the parliamentary party is not large, at 121 MPs, you can always end up in a situation where the campaign tries to lend votes to a preferred opponent, some individual MPs freelance and you end up finishing third in embarrassing circumstances. (In 1990, the organisers of John Major, Michael Heseltine and Douglas Hurd’s campaigns for the Tory leadership met up for dinner afterwards to compare the size of their various promises: they discovered that about a third of their colleagues had lied through their teeth.) When you only have 121 votes to play with, you’re better off just maximising your own authority, because if you win, you will need it.

Now try this

(Georgina) Yesterday Stephen and I saw the play The Other Place, which comes with the subtitle After Antigone. It grapples with death and the aftermath. In a taut 80 minutes, the reinvented tragedy excels at ramping up the tension as the characters move within a newly renovated, sorrow ridden house, but the pace partly leaves some of the more problematic family dynamics feeling a little forced and under-developed.

Runs to November 9 at the National Theatre.

Top stories today

• Crowd source | Immigration has driven the fastest UK population growth for half a century, according to official statistics that highlight the country’s demographic challenges. The ONS noted that deaths outnumbered births for the first time in 50 years, other than during the pandemic.

• Diving out | Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund has written off its investment in Thames Water in a blow to the government as it gears up to host a summit designed to attract big institutional investors to the UK.

• ‘MI5 has one hell of a job on its hands’ | Russian spies are on a “mission to generate mayhem” on Britain’s streets as Iran foments lethal plots at “an unprecedented pace and scale”, the head of the UK’s domestic intelligence service has warned.

• Reeves presses ahead on borrowing | Rachel Reeves is pushing ahead with plans to borrow billions of pounds extra for infrastructure investment, despite concerns about the rising cost of UK government debt, the Guardian’s Kiran Stacey was first to report.

What are we to make of the news the Financial Conduct Authority is to review consolidation in the advice market?

The regulator has written to advice and investment firm bosses noting an increase in the acquisition of firms or their assets over the past two years.

It warned that, while industry consolidation can provide benefits, various types of harm can occur where this is not done in a ‘prudent manner’ with effective controls to promote good outcomes.

The FCA says: “Where we receive notifications from individuals or firms to acquire or increase control in regulated firms, we will assess and challenge their suitability and the financial soundness of the acquisition.”

For the FCA to step in now seems a spectacular example of shutting the stable door after multiple horses have bolted

I think it’s a case of too little too late.

Back in November 2021, Money Marketing’s Lois Vallely penned a useful guide to consolidation in which she noted how its origins date back to the 1980s and 1990s heyday of DBS and M&E Network, which then bought Interdependence in 1999 to bring it under the Tenet umbrella.

In the early noughties, we also had Millfield, Berkeley Berry Birch and Inter-Alliance, several of them engaging in failed mergers with each other. None of these firms now exist in their present form, with shareholders – both individual and corporate – having taken a massive loss on their investments.

Undeterred by these exercises in value destruction, in 2005 Standard Life bought a 20% stake in the Tenet Group network. Tenet’s other shareholders – Norwich Union, Friends Provident and Aegon – each increased their stakes to around 20% in light of the deal.

Quite how anyone could have been remotely surprised by what had been screamingly obvious for years is anyone’s guess. Hundreds of ARs had exited Tenet in the years before it went under

As we know, earlier this year, Tenet went into administration. Its remaining 170-odd advice firms, numbering barely 350 authorised representatives (ARs), were offered the option of transferring to Openwork.

News that Tenet had called in the administrators was described in one story I read at the time as “shocking” – although quite how anyone could have been remotely surprised by what had been screamingly obvious for years is anyone’s guess. Hundreds of ARs had exited Tenet in the five years before it went under.

Even Tenet’s own review found the AR sector was subject to “significant change” from “external forces such as consolidation, increased regulation, digitisation, new technology expense and the broader inflationary environment”.

ARs themselves, meanwhile, will continue to be treated as disposable pawns on the financial advice chessboard

What these stories tell us is that providers and consolidators will always seek to buy or control product distribution or assets under management. Providers will repeatedly invest in the endlessly-failing dreams of senior executives at consolidators who tell them, yet again, things will be different this time round.

ARs themselves, meanwhile, will continue to be treated as disposable pawns on the financial advice chessboard. They either survive yet another round of takeovers or drop out, missed by no one but their clients – who receive a letter to say the business name has changed, or their adviser has left, or both.

We’re then offered an appointment with someone we didn’t choose to go to in the first place, providing a different service we didn’t ask for.

We put up with it because that’s just how it works

It happened to me 20 years ago. It’s happened to several of my friends, who are among many hundreds of thousands of clients with the same experience. And we put up with it because that’s just how it works.

For the FCA to step in now seems a spectacular example of shutting the stable door after multiple horses have bolted.

At this rate, I’m expecting the regulator to send out stern letters to chief executives saying it is determined to stamp out misselling of mortgage endowments and personal pensions. I can’t wait.

Nic Cicutti can be contacted at nic@inspiredmoney.co.uk

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