'What keeps me up at night is worrying about what we don’t know': Elysia McCaffrey on running the GLAA

Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority chief Elysia McCaffrey’s connection to the civil service started at a young age. She talks about rooting out exploitation of workers, getting the GLAA to pass the Ronseal test, and the power of yoga

By Civil Service World

13 Oct 2023

Elysia McCaffrey believes in destiny. As chief executive of the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, she leads the foremost investigative agency for labour exploitation. Her previous roles include interim director of the Government Equalities Office, and more recently she was at the Cabinet Office. An impressive career path – and one she believes she was always going to take. 

“Both my parents were civil servants. They were in the Home Office and I even went to a Home Office play scheme as a child in the summer holidays,” she says with a smile. “I think I was destined to end up in civil and public service in some way.” 

McCaffrey joined the civil service as an administrative assistant when she was 21 and got her first senior civil servant job at 29. Her advice to those starting their civil service career is to throw yourself in: “If you put your hand up, say yes, go for things and take every opportunity, you’re going to learn something. There’s a massive span of different jobs you can do here – I’ve been really blessed.” 

Even so, she says she never imagined she’d be running an arm’s-length body, “but I love it; I love it so much”. McCaffrey took the reins of the GLAA in July 2021. She describes her role as a privilege. “It sounds really trite, but to make a real difference in people’s lives and to set the direction of an organisation… it’s a really wonderful opportunity. It’s fantastic,” she tells CSW.

But alongside the highs come the inevitable lows. Exploitation and abuse of workers is widespread across the UK economy, with mistreatment ranging from human trafficking to forced labour and wage theft. She often loses sleep, she says, worrying about how best to protect vulnerable and exploited workers. 

“The things that keep me up at night are worrying about what we don’t know. Where is that vulnerable person we don’t know about? What is this new pattern of behaviour we don’t know about?” 

The GLAA takes enforcement action when it finds evidence of modern slavery in England and Wales – an occurrence that is disturbingly common. Between January and March this year, 4,746 people were referred to the Home Office as potential victims of modern slavery – a rise of more than a quarter compared with the same period last year.

The victims, including children, work across many sectors, from agriculture and construction to garment manufacturing and food packing, and in places such as nail bars, car washes and in people’s homes doing domestic work.

“We predominantly deal with people who are coming to the UK to work,” McCaffrey says. “We should be looking after them. We should have high standards and be an attractive place for people to come. But some of the stories you hear, the things you see, are absolutely horrifying.”

One such story sticks in her mind: “There was a case, probably one of our most prominent, where a chap had been held in a shed for 40 years.” The victim was living in a six-foot wooden hut and forced to do manual work for as little as £10 per day. “That level of exploitation, the fact that it happens in this country in this day and age, really troubles me,” McCaffrey says.

GLAA investigators rescued the victim, then 58, after receiving a tip-off to a confidential helpline. The agency relies on reports received this way, as well as intelligence from its inspections and other government departments. It also runs a licensing scheme to regulate businesses in certain sectors, and it partners with the police and the National Crime Agency to target organised crime across the UK. 

Plenty to be getting on with, but McCaffrey isn’t about to stop there. As a senior civil servant, she is also trying to solve the eternal Whitehall conundrum – how to do more with less.

“We’re doing a big piece of work at the moment where we look at our processes and say: can that be done more efficiently? Do we need to do that? Are we doing that because we’ve always done it that way? Or could we change that without introducing risk to the process?” McCaffrey says. 

“Since I’ve been in post, I’ve been trying to introduce that as a mindset – don’t just do things the way we’ve always done them; actively challenge the status quo and constantly look for efficiencies. They’re always there to find.”

“I’ve been trying to introduce that mindset – don’t do things the way we’ve always done them; actively challenge the status quo”

The GLAA is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Home Office, so budgetary pressures loom large. Is there a point at which those pressures becomes damaging?

“Luckily, we’re not at that point,” McCaffrey says. “But if we face cuts next year, and the year after, and the year after – at what point do you have to say to your sponsor department: ‘We just can’t deliver the work’?”

Fortunately, thanks to her previous roles in policy, strategy and analysis across government, McCaffrey is used to juggling priorities. Top of her pile at the moment is the exploitation of workers in the care sector. “Exploiters find a business model that works for them, they then grow it,” she says. “What we need to do in our response with other bodies, is make it a model that doesn’t work for them and set that expectation that we will come and find you. If people report you to us, we do take it seriously and we are effective at investigating these things and at taking action.”

“Our starting point is the protection of workers. How do we make sure they are safe and not at risk?”

Prevention, of course, is better than punishment, and McCaffrey is keen to cut off opportunities for labour abuse at the root. “We think about the victim, the person, making sure they’re not vulnerable in the first place. Our starting point is the protection of workers,” she says. “The UK needs people to come over. We want to see people doing these jobs that need to be done. How do we empower them to make sure they’re safe and not at risk when they’re here?”

One answer is education. “We worked in partnership with the Skills and Education Group, a non-profit organisation, to develop a qualification [that teaches people about] what they’re entitled to, and how to speak up and ask for what they deserve,” McCaffrey says, explaining this is part of the proactive approach she favours for the future of the GLAA. “There’s the hard edge where we get custodial sentences for exploiters. But enabling people not to fall into that situation in the first place is where we’d prefer to spend our time.”

It’s clear McCaffrey sees the work as a team effort, citing the “grit and determination that we have in the organisation” as instrumental in keeping her going. “I’ve got a group of people who get things done, who don’t stop until things are dealt with,” she says proudly. The GLAA has a real camaraderie, she adds. “They’re all united behind this vision of doing the right thing for vulnerable people. And that gives me heart.”

McCaffrey is determined to maintain these standards, and keeps a close eye on the GLAA’s recruitment practices. “What I want is that right mindset, that care and passion. You can teach somebody how to conduct an investigation, or how to decide whether or not somebody should have a licence. But that caring, that genuine interest in the human on the end of this – that’s what I’m looking for. And I know my managers think that way as well.”

So who is applying for GLAA roles? “In our investigatory teams, we’ve tended to hire former police officers because they’ve got that skill and a huge amount of experience, and they tend to come ready to go,” McCaffrey says. “But across the wider organisation, we’ve tried to take people from different backgrounds to make sure we’ve got really good diversity of thought in the organisation.”

Despite the healthy team dynamic, there’s no escaping the fact she’s dealing with a harrowing subject matter. It’s something she admits she struggled with at first. “I used to allow myself to be quite consumed, but that’s really bad for your health. So I forced myself to do something else.” And that turned out to be yoga. 

“It helps that my husband is a yoga teacher,” she says, well aware that advice to practice any form of relaxation is very on trend. “People say ‘oh, you should do yoga or that mindfulness’ and it’s all a bit buzzwordy. But actually, it works. We have to do something because otherwise, we just burn out. A lot of people in public service work long hours and are passionate. But the old adage of ‘You can’t pour from an empty cup’ is right – you’ve got to look after yourself.”

It’s a lesson McCaffrey says she’s learnt the hard way, and one she’s determined to pass on to her staff. “We do lots of wellbeing activities” – her husband even came in to teach yoga to staff – “we’ve got mental health first aiders, and we really promote ‘time to talk’ sessions.” 

All of which is much needed, as the GLAA is a surprisingly small set-up. “We’ve got just under 120 people in the whole organisation, which, given the scale of the challenge, is quite tricky,” she says. “We cover England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We have slightly different powers in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but we cover the whole gambit.”

Resources are scarce but McCaffrey recognises that everyone across public service is competing for a limited pot. “We focus on what can we do now with what we’ve got. If we have the opportunity to bid for more, we will do, and we’ll use it effectively.”

For now, McCaffrey’s main aims are to keep the plates spinning and get the GLAA noticed. “My day tends to be a mix of running the organisation – ensuring we’re making decisions on licensing, and prioritising our resources in the best way to stop labour exploitation and modern slavery where we can,” she says. “And then making sure we’re known.” Not something the GLAA can confidently claim at the moment, she concedes.  

“We have a slightly complicated name, which doesn’t necessarily pass the Ronseal test, so there’s a lot I want to do on raising awareness of what we do and how we can help people,” she says, describing her ambition to get the general perception of the GLAA to the point where it does exactly what it says on the tin. “I want people to know where they can come when they’ve got problems.”

It’s this chance to makes a difference in people’s lives that first drew McCaffrey to the GLAA role. “That’s what floats my boat. Knowing that some of the most vulnerable people who have nowhere to go… by getting it right, we can really help them and improve their outcomes. That’s the biggest privilege.” 

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