Cat Mitchell

University lecturer and disability researcher, Cat Mitchell, discusses empathy, inclusivity and work-life balance.

Cat Mitchell is a Lecturer in Publishing and the Programme Leader for the Creative Writing and Publishing BA at the University of Derby. She previously worked in the publishing industry, including four years at Penguin Random House. She is currently researching disability in publishing, and in 2021 published the Access Denied report, which investigated barriers for disabled job seekers and employees in the industry.

‘I just thought, “This is it! This is where I want to be.”’

Can you start by telling us a bit about how you got into publishing? 
 
During my English degree at the University of York, I'd seen talks from people in the industry and I knew that publishing was the right one for me. When I finished that, I was quite ill and wasn't ready to commit to moving to London or to full-time work, so I worked at a women’s centre, Oxfam and my local library which was really good work experience for the industry. By the end of that year, when I was a little bit better, I got work experience at Penguin Random House – one of the first few that I applied for. Sometimes it's just pure luck. As soon as I went there I just thought, ‘This is it! This is where I want to be.’ It snowballed from there really and I was mostly at Penguin Random House in my publishing career, which was a dream.
 
How did you transition to your current role as a lecturer at the University of Derby? 
 
By accident! I was ready to leave Penguin for various reasons, including not wanting to live in London anymore. This was mostly disability-related with the exhaustion of the commute, and there wasn't an opportunity to work from home more - which is quite frustrating now that most workplaces offer more remote working opportunities! I did some freelance publicity work with Derby Book Festival and And Other Stories based in Sheffield - and then a last-minute teaching role came up at Derby Uni. It was just one module in marketing - I did that for six months and then a full time job came up. I still feel incredibly lucky to have stayed here and still be able to work in publishing in the Midlands - it’s been brilliant.  

‘We don't have to have perfectly productive days every single day.’

You’ve been such a huge voice against barriers in publishing, including disability and chronic illness. What are companies doing to advocate for people with disabilities in publishing? 

I think flexible working is brilliant. Core hours are useful, especially if it means you can commute at different times and potentially miss the rush hour - that was always a very useful accommodation for me. Some staff training has been introduced around disability and the introduction of staff networks is really important - I'm sure these things will help a lot of people. We're also seeing more companies offering days that you can just take off at the last minute when you're having a bad time with your mental health. Plus, remote work experience opportunities that did not exist before the pandemic have opened up the industry to so many more people. 
 
What more can they do? 

Companies should be reassessing sickness leave policies after COVID to encourage people to rest and take time off.  At most companies you’ll find that after three instances of absence in a year, you will possibly have a disciplinary meeting with HR. Most people don't know this because most people don't have that much sickness in a year. That’s not just a publishing thing. If companies really want to help disabled people and also employees more generally, they need to ask themselves, ‘Why does it matter if people are unwell and need time off?’ 
 
Working from home is brilliant, but a problem arises when people who are unwell are continuing to work through it because they don't have to commute and go to an office and they don't need to expend that energy. No one necessarily sees them unless they’re in a meeting. It can therefore sometimes reduce the opportunities we have for rest. As we've seen with COVID, if you don't rest, you could potentially end up with long term issues like long COVID. 
 
Another thing is the grace of flexibility. I think we need to reimagine working life more radically by doing away with the 9 to 5 completely. Everyone works differently at different times of the day. It doesn't just help disabled people; it helps everyone to have that flexibility and that level of trust between employer and employees where people can organise their own workloads. As long as they get stuff done, it doesn't matter what time of day they're working. 
 
We also need to start understanding the changeable nature of disabilities and chronic illness at work. Often if you disclose your disability and say what accommodations will help you and what you need, people make the assumption that you will be the same every day, and as long as you get those accommodations, you will be fine. It doesn't quite work like that. It changes every single day: how prominent your symptoms are, how bad your pain is, what your energy levels are. And again, we don't have to have perfectly productive days every single day. I think understanding that people's productivity and focus and energy fluctuate is really important, but that doesn't happen that much in the very structured world we live in. 
 
Publishers should also be offering mentorship opportunities and better training and support for managers, which came up a lot in the research that I was doing for my Access Denied report. Managers have sometimes been trained on disability, but they are still often quite anxious about it. Making sure those managers are supported is essential to creating a positive work environment.

‘It's fine to say I'm not a perfect person, but I'm trying my best and that's quite powerful on its own.’

As individuals, how do you think we can advocate openly for people in our teams with disabilities while respecting their boundaries? 

Always take the lead from the disabled person. There's a balance to be struck, because on the one hand, it's useful as a disabled person to be approached with help and not having to be the one reaching out and asking all the time, but you don't want to take it too far and be asking how you can help constantly because that can be a bit too intrusive. It can mark how disabled people are different from others in a really obvious way. It's hard because it's coming from such a nice, pure place, but it's worth being slightly subtle about it. So for me, it might be asking, ‘Do you want to take the last seat? Do you need help with bags?’ If they say no, just accept it and move on!  
 
A lot of people may choose not to disclose their disability because they know they'll be treated differently and they're worried about stigma and discrimination. When I was doing my research, I found that people liked it when colleagues would research their disability to understand it a little bit more. But some found that people couldn’t always recognise that everyone with that condition experiences it differently, which can be quite problematic too. Just being proactive in offering a list of accommodations is also really useful, because otherwise people might not know what they can ask for.
 
Can we pick your brains on what makes a great manager? 
 
Someone who is really easy to approach: you don't feel scared going to ask them for help. Someone who's quite open and honest about their own struggles, if they can be: when I started working in publishing a manager I worked with said to me, ‘Oh, you've got a chronic illness - so do I. If you ever want to talk about it, if you ever need anything extra or any support you can talk to me. I understand it from my own perspective.’ Just knowing that she was in a senior position and she'd gone through similar struggles to me was really inspiring. Good communication is essential to being a manager too. Moving the goalposts and being unpredictable can be quite challenging for employees. If you can't communicate what you need then how can you expect your team to know? 
 
What about being a leader as a lecturer? 
 
Empathy and understanding and kindness are always number one for me - coming to every situation giving people the benefit of the doubt. For me, that's now students. If a student hasn't handed in work, I'll email them to check in: ‘Are you OK? What's going on? What do you need?’ That gets a much better response. Often you find out there is something you can help with and you can get through the problem together. I always try to have empathy and respect for the fact that everyone is going through something all the time. You never really know exactly what people are dealing with. 
 
I’m also honest with what I struggle with. I get quite anxious about things like public speaking, and saying that to the students, and then them seeing me do those things successfully is much more powerful than pretending I'm perfect. When I sat on a panel at London Book Fair, I knew I'd be talking in front of 200 people. I was really scared about it and I said to my students, ‘I've got a lot of nerves. I'll probably lose some sleep. ’ Those students who are the same and might worry that that kind of personality and those anxieties might hold them back can see it doesn't have to, so they feel a bit more like I’m human and relatable. I think that's something people don’t realise about being a mentor and a leader: you don’t have to seem perfect and that you can do everything. It's fine to say I'm not a perfect person, but I'm trying my best and that's quite powerful on its own. 

‘I always try to have empathy and respect for the fact that everyone is going through something all the time.’

Something that has come up frequently with past interviewees is the power in being honest. What do you think this shift towards honesty throughout the workplace (especially with regards to mental health and workload) needs to be sustained and harnessed to make real change? 

There's got to be a route between that honesty and making real, structured changes, rather than it just happening at the whim of individual managers. I used to find this all the time: staff surveys would go round and people would say, ‘We're really stressed and overworked!’ and then either nothing would happen or it would be, ‘Here's some yoga workshops and talks on how to reduce stress.’ That's the problem, isn't it? Because that's not really listening to what people are saying, which is: ‘The way that this workplace is structured and the workload that we have is or isn't working for us.’ I think we need really structured routes towards actual tangible action, rather than just relying on a change in attitudes in a team. Transparent and detailed policies are really important, and I wish workplaces would make them transparent externally too, for people looking to join the company.
 
How do you keep your teaching realistic about the challenges of working in the industry whilst still supporting people’s career goals and remaining positive? 

It's really challenging. We set those expectations really early, so when people come to talk to us on open days or in interviews for our masters course, we will have a conversation about barriers in publishing like its London-centric nature. It's just so they're realistic about that from the start, because I would hate for someone to do the course and not be aware that that is the case. That can change people's attitudes to pursuing publishing as a career. We do always get conversations or questions about salary, often from parents - they want to know, ‘Will my child be able to support themselves?’ It’s a fair enough question and it's going to become more and more important as we go through the cost of living crisis. You have a really honest conversation: ‘This is what the average starting salary in London is like. This is what it's like to move to London. You might have to share a house with other people. This is how your career might progress.’ That’s where remote working opportunities come in. If people can work remotely, it removes lots of financial barriers, barriers for disabled people, barriers for people who have caring responsibilities. There's lots of reasons why people wouldn't be able to move to London, so more remote work opportunities are essential, and we've seen that it works. 
 
There’s a balance. In-person contact is being prioritised still. People make the argument that you get creative ideas from being around other people and collaborating in the office and having those spontaneous conversations, but don't always see how that can work so well virtually. Everyone is really keen to see people face-to-face, and so I think we'll maybe see an uptick of people wanting in-person meetings and so we will move away from some of the digital elements. A lot of people have Zoom and screen fatigue and don't want to be talking to their computer all day, which is also understandable. But how do we make sure people at home are prioritised the same way as people in the office? How do we make sure that people taking up remote opportunities have the same chances as people in an office to progress, to learn new things, to network with people? That is really hard but I think it's something that we should commit to doing as now is the perfect opportunity. 
 
What does the ideal setup look like to you? 
 
There’s not necessarily a perfect solution yet. I think it's going to work differently for every business and depend on the people who work for that business. At the university, we can work from home as long as we're not teaching a class or a student has requested to meet in person. We manage our own projects completely flexibly. We don't have a lot of oversight and people aren't breathing down our necks micromanaging us. It feels very empowering to me. Trust and flexibility is the way to get there, but it's going to be different for every business. I would prefer to work on campus, but getting up early to commute causes me energy and pain issues, so it's really a difficult balance. 
 
However, working from home is not perfect for everyone, and especially in publishing where the salaries aren't high, it's an expensive city to live in and a lot of people are working in cramped flats that aren't necessarily that pleasant. The same goes for disabled people too, as not all disabled people want to work from home. It’s dangerous to make this assumption, so companies don't feel the need to consider the accessibility of their office spaces. Over the next few years, people might stop considering how to accommodate disabled people because they think, ‘Can’t they just join virtually? We don't need to have a lift, access etc.’ It feels like pretending you're being inclusive and equal but not actually really making the effort in reality. When we're thinking about what the future of work looks like, you need to get a sense of what everyone at your workplace wants and not make assumptions about anyone. 

‘She changed my mind and made me feel like I could do anything.’

What book do you think everyone should read? 

The book I always recommend is called ‘A Still Life’ by Josie George. It is an incredible memoir about a woman who has an energy limiting condition so she is mostly at home. It's so powerful because it is all about the beauty you can find in the everyday, which I think is something that was important to all of us during the pandemic. It has a powerful disability narrative that resists the structure we expect from stories of someone getting sick: a clear beginning, a conflict in the middle, and at the end, they die or get better - but that's not always how illness and disability works. It’s much more complex. Often the publishing industry is quite resistant to publishing stories that don't follow that nice narrative structure, so I think it's quite groundbreaking. It was the first book I've read about illness and disability that I could really relate to and so that felt empowering to me. I'd love other people to read it and to understand what disability can be like, and that you can still have a big life in a small space. 

Can you tell us about another person in the publishing/books industry who inspires you? 

The biggest inspiration to me when I worked in publishing was Christian Lewis. She was publicity director at Vintage when I worked there - she was there for 19 years by the time she left and she's now freelance. She was such a huge support. Until that point in my life, I had always thought being disabled and chronically ill would be a massive barrier and I didn't know if I could be successful in publishing because of that. She changed my mind and made me feel like I could do anything.  It didn't matter that I had these problems and she didn't make a big deal of it. She encouraged us to rest and take time off and that was life-changing. The power of having an empathetic and understanding manager is huge. She was always on the ground with us assistants at the end of events when everyone else would go home. She was there packing up with us, offering us taxis and making sure we all got home. I learned a lot from her. That level of employee care whilst also being an absolute force in publicity is just inspirational. She changed my life and career.