Stuck in a job that’s boring you to tears? Slogging away at a business that’s never quite taken off? Still can’t decide what you’d rather do? It’s time to say ‘enough’.

The world has changed. It’s now possible for anyone to make a living from doing the things they love. The only problem is that no one has shown you how. Until now.

Based on life-changing ideas and tools proven with tens of thousands of people over the last decade, F**k Work Let’s Play is your blueprint to create a work-life full of fun, freedom and creativity; something more like play than work.

Packed full of stories from people who turned a passion into a living – or even a multi-million-pound business – you’ll discover 10 secrets to transform your working life, starting today.

There’s no need to suffer unfulfilling work a moment longer. Whether you want to start a business, create your ideal job, or change the world, F**k Work, Let’s Play is your guide to doing what you love and getting paid for it.

Bringing together contributions from international scholars, this book explores the changing nature of young people's transitions and challenges assumptions about pathways from education into employment in contemporary society.

This book investigates the extent of gender inequality in the division of labor in the modern household. Through comparisons of the time allocations of single couple families without children, couple families with children and lone parents, a comprehensive account of the evolution of gender inequality over a typical lifecourse is presented.

Machines dominate our lives, from alarm clocks that wake us up in the morning to radios that lull us to sleep. Most of our interactions with automated machines and computers are problem-free, but more often than we would like, they can be irritating and confusing. This is frequently harmless, such as a VCR recording the wrong show, but when it involves a critical system like an autopilot or medical device it can be a matter of life or death. Taming HAL seeks to explain these miscommunications between humans and machines by exploring user interfaces. Degani examines twenty-five different systems for human use, including watches, Internet applications, automobiles, medical equipment, and autopilots onboard commercial airplanes. Readers will discover why interfaces between people and machines all too often do not work and what needs to be done to avoid potential tragedies.

Today's workforce represents individuals of various backgrounds and experiences. The influence of such individuals is becoming an important component in the workplace and researchers continue to explore the challenges of understanding the connection between employee profiles and the overall success of a company. Impact of Diversity on Organization and Career Development brings together a reflective discussion on the previous approaches and strategies of companies in relation to the paradigm shift in workplace equity of today's workforce. By examining both old and new strategies, the research included in this publication will present a unique approach for future company enhancement and employee success. This publication is an essential reference source for researchers, practitioners, managers, and students interested in the effects of multicultural representation on both a company and its employees through professional growth and advancement.

Flexibility has become a key concept in discourses on developments in working life. However, it is an ambiguous concept in several ways, and theoretical clarity is lacking. Further, large parts of the literature are prescriptive and ideological rather than empirical and analytical. This book contributes both theoretically and empirically to expound the importance of clearer concepts in the national and international debates on economic systems, labour markets, work organisations, and experiences of work.

This volume provides a Europe-wide comparative analysis of the role of civil society organizations active in the field of unemployment and precarity. It illustrates how crucial civil society organizations are for the inclusion of the young unemployed, mainly in two ways: by delivering services and by advocating policy.

Corporate Social Performance In The Age Of Irresponsibility - Cross National Perspective is authored by a range of international experts with a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives and provides a collection of ideas, examples and solutions on CSP implementation in the time of irresponsibility. Although Corporate Social Performance (CSP) has become important part of the management agenda of many enterprises and many companies adding socially responsible statements to their websites and mission statements some firms behave irresponsibly while at the same time acting positively on some dimensions- "corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) and responsibility can exist at the same time in the same firm." (Gonzalez-Perez, 2011). This volume is aimed at presenting Corporate Social Performance concept from distinct cultural perspectives with the reference to responsible and irresponsible practices of various entities from different parts of the world.

Has COVID-19 ushered in the end of the office? Or is it the office's final triumph? For decades, futurologists have prophesied a boundaryless working world, freed from the cramped confines of the office. During the COVID-19 crisis, employees around the globe got a taste of it. Confined by lockdown to their homes, they met, mingled, collaborated, and created electronically. At length, they returned to something approaching normality. Or had they glimpsed the normal to come? In The Momentous, Uneventful Day, Gideon Haigh reflects on our ambivalent relationship to office work and office life, how we ended up with the offices we have, how they have reflected our best and worst instincts, and how these might be affected by a world in a time of contagion. Like the factory in the nineteenth century, the office was the characteristic building form of the twentieth, reshaping our cities, redirecting our lives. We all have a stake in how it will change in the twenty-first. Enlivened by copious citations from literature, film, memoir, and corporate history, and interspersed with relevant images, The Momentous, Uneventful Day is the ideal companion for a lively current debate about the role offices will play in the future.

The definitive guide to eliminating the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations. Find out why Adam Grant says "If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place."

Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, The Friction Project by bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao teaches readers how to become “friction fixers.”

Sutton and Rao kick off the book by unpacking how skilled friction fixers think and act like trustees of others’ time. They provide friction forensics to help readers identify where to avert and repair bad organizational friction and where to maintain and inject good friction. Then their help pyramid shows how friction fixers do their work, from reframing friction troubles they can’t fix right now, so they feel less threatening, to designing and repairing organizations. The heart of the book digs into the causes and solutions for five of the most common and damaging friction troubles: oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams.

Sound familiar? Sutton and Rao are here to help. They wrap things up with lessons for leading your own friction project, including linking little things to big things; the power of civility, caring, and love for propelling designs and repairs; and embracing the mess that is an inevitable part of the process (while still trying to clean it up).

In Leaning Out, respected journalist Kristine Ziwica maps a decade of stasis on the gender equality front in Australia, and why the pandemic has led to a breakthrough. As the historic 2020 Women's March attests, a generation of younger women are speaking truth to power and changing the way we think of women in the workplace. This is the third book in The Crikey Read series from Crikey and Hardie Grant Books. For ten years Australian women have been sold a dazzling promise: through sheer 'will' and individual self-empowerment they could overcome decades of gender inequality in the workplace. The hard, structural work didn't need to be done; all the solutions could be individual. Yet leaning in, power-posing and speaking up (and being spoken over) at the boardroom table have made very little difference for the great majority of women, still underpaid and overworked compared to their male colleagues. The COVID-19 pandemic has shockingly revealed the fragile foundations of women's working lives. It's also given us a rare opportunity for a reimagining. But Australian women are still being told to 'Lean In' at precisely the moment when so many are 'leaning out'. With the majority of all jobs lost in the pandemic being held by women, and successive governments unable or unwilling to address the 'gender issue', we are at crisis point. Leaning Out is a manifesto for what we can - and should - do with this moment. From Crikey and Hardie Grant Books, The Crikey Read is a series that brings an unflinching and truly independent eye to the issues of the day in Australia and the world.

The increasing globalization, the battle for talents, and global trends are changing the work patterns in organisations around the globe. Enterprises are working across country and cultural borders alongside complex supply and demand networks. Global incidents such as the financial crisis in 2008 and the recent COVID-19 pandemic have forced global organizations to find innovative ways to continue to connect globally and maintain a competitive advantage. Therefore, innovative enterprises have established global and virtual organisations including members of the value chain on supply and demand side. This book outlines these new work and leadership styles, and agile organisations, which are necessary to work virtually and globally. It provides case studies and experiences from different global organizations in different industries and sectors with a focus on value-adding processes and services.

Emotional Abuse and Neglect in the Workplace tackles the big questions: How does emotional neglect of employees affect an organization? How can management effectively manage while restoring an organization's health? When trust is gone, only reliable behavior by senior managers can help - and this takes time. The author explores striking similarities between the symptoms of ailing organizations and abusive or neglectful families. This book explores not only a new theory of neglected organizations, but also a set of methods enabling OD practitioners to restore employees' trust. It also provides diagnostic tools and guidelines for change agents who confront organizational neglect head-on and includes case studies and real-life experiences of OD practitioners.

The #1 New York Times Bestseller From the bestselling author and columnist behind The Atlantic's popular "How to Build a Life" series, a guide to transforming the life changes we fear into a source of strength. In the first half of life, ambitious strivers embrace a simple formula for success in work and life: focus single-mindedly, work tirelessly, sacrifice personally, and climb the ladder relentlessly. It works. Until it doesn't. It turns out the second half of life is governed by different rules. In middle age, many strivers begin to find success coming harder and harder, rewards less satisfying, and family relationships withering. In response, they do what strivers always do: they double down on work in an attempt to outrun decline and weakness, and deny the changes that are becoming more and more obvious. The result is often anger, fear, and disappointment at a time in life that they imagined would be full of joy, fulfillment, and pride. It doesn't have to be that way. In From Strength to Strength, happiness expert and bestselling author Arthur C. Brooks reveals a path to beating the "striver's curse." Drawing on science, classical philosophy, theology, and history, he shares counterintuitive strategies for releasing old habits and forming new life practices, showing you how to: - Kick the habits of workaholism, success addiction, and self-objectification - Meditate on death-in order to beat fear and live well - Start a spiritual adventure - Embrace weakness in a way that turns it into strength. Change in your life is inevitable, but suffering is not. From Strength to Strength shows you how to accept the gifts of the second half of life with grace, joy, and ever deepening purpose.

A "riveting and powerful" (Gretchen Carlson, cofounder of Lift Our Voices) insider's account on Wall Street-an updated Liar's Poker-where greed coupled with misogyny and discrimination enforces a culture of exclusion in the upper echelons of Goldman Sachs. Jamie Fiore Higgins became one of the few women at the highest ranks of Goldman Sachs. Spurred on by the obligation she felt to her working-class immigrant family, she rose through the ranks and saw it all: out-of-control, lavish parties flowing with never-ending drinks; affairs flouted in the office; rampant drug use; and most pervasively, a discriminatory culture that seemed designed to hold back the few women and people of color employed at the company. Despite Goldman Sachs having the right talking points and statistics, Fiore Higgins soon realized that these provided a veneer to cover up what she found to be an abusive culture. Her "engrossing" (Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro, authors of Power, for All) account is one filled with shocking stories of harassment and jaw-dropping tales of exclusionary behavior: when she was told she only got promoted because she is a woman; when her coworkers mooed at her after she pumped for her fourth child, defying the superior who had advised her not to breastfeed; or when a male boss used a racial epithet in front of her, other colleagues, and clients without any repercussions. Bully Market "exposes the #MeToo movement's unfinished work on Wall Street" (Meighan Stone, author of Awakening: #MeToo and the Global Fight for Women's Rights) sounds the alarm on the culture of finance and corporate America, while offering clear, actionable ideas for creating a fairer workplace. Both a revealing, extraordinary look at the industry and a top Wall Streeter's explosive personal story, Bully Market is an essential account of one woman's experience in a flawed system that speaks to the challenge and urgency for change.

This book contains a clear message: Every boss wants an effective worker to do what most needs to be done without having to be asked. Simple? Perhaps. Easy? Not on your life. But thanks to Bob Nelson, employers and employees everywhere will be empowered by this vital message, and in the process achieve their goals and create a mutually rewarding experience.

As brief, to the point, and inspiring as his previous best-selling titles, Nelson's commonsense advice can be applied to any situation, from the mailroom to the boardroom, and is illustrated with a wide array of examples and anecdotes from real life, such as:

When Amy's Ice Cream in Austin ran out of application forms, an employee handed each applicant an empty bag with instructions to do something creative with it. This brainstorm allowed the applicants to be creative and entertain others -- important job attributes to the company. The bags quickly became a standard part of the company's interview process.

Helping readers tap into their own intelligence, resourcefulness, and pride, Nelson demonstrates how acts of initiative both big and small can make an enormous difference in the way an employee is viewed -- and rewarded -- by his or her boss; he also shows how the effects of those actions benefit the entire organization. It's a perfect "first day on the job" book; a useful resource for any HR department; and a worthwhile investment for anyone who wants to learn more and go farther in a job, in a career, and in life.

Traditional notions of work are transforming rapidly as we enter into the global workspace. Through interviews with leading experts, The Worldwide Workplace gives readers a practical understanding of how to prepare for and capitalize on changes to the working environment.

The way we manage organizations seems increasingly out of date. Survey after survey shows that a majority of employees feel disengaged from their companies. The epidemic of organizational disillusionment goes way beyond Corporate America-teachers, doctors, and nurses are leaving their professions in record numbers because the way we run schools and hospitals kills their vocation. Government agencies and nonprofits have a noble purpose, but working for these entities often feels soulless and lifeless just the same. All these organizations suffer from power games played at the top and powerlessness at lower levels, from infighting and bureaucracy, from endless meetings and a seemingly never-ending succession of change and cost-cutting programs. Deep inside, we long for soulful workplaces, for authenticity, community, passion, and purpose. The solution, according to many progressive scholars, lies with more enlightened management. But reality shows that this is not enough. In most cases, the system beats the individual-when managers or leaders go through an inner transformation, they end up leaving their organizations because they no longer feel like putting up with a place that is inhospitable to the deeper longings of their soul. We need more enlightened leaders, but we need something more: enlightened organizational structures and practices. But is there even such a thing? Can we conceive of enlightened organizations? In this groundbreaking book, the author shows that every time humanity has shifted to a new stage of consciousness in the past, it has invented a whole new way to structure and run organizations, each time bringing extraordinary breakthroughs in collaboration. A new shift in consciousness is currently underway. Could it help us invent a radically more soulful and purposeful way to run our businesses and nonprofits, schools and hospitals? The pioneering organizations researched for this book have already "cracked the code." Their founders have fundamentally questioned every aspect of management and have come up with entirely new organizational methods. Even though they operate in very different industries and geographies and did not know of each other's experiments, the structures and practices they have developed are remarkably similar. It's hard not to get excited about this finding: a new organizational model seems to be emerging, and it promises a soulful revolution in the workplace. Reinventing Organizations describes in practical detail how organizations large and small can operate in this new paradigm. Leaders, founders, coaches, and consultants will find this work a joyful handbook, full of insights, examples, and inspiring stories.

Work-life balance isn't about where or how you spend your time. At least not solely. It's about where and how you use and replenish your energy. Work matters. Life matters. Work-life matters. As we start to navigate life during and after the pandemic, employers and employees are increasingly re-evaluating how work can be made more sustainable and more fulfilling. Many employees - particularly Gen X and Gen Z - are seeking a new psychological contract with their employers. Putting these trends into context and offering practical solutions, this book takes a deep dive into why work matters as part of a healthy and fulfilling life. The authors present a new and different way of thinking about the matter of balance, arguing that there is no hard divide between 'work' and life' because 'work' takes place entirely within 'life' and you can't balance two things when one is a subset of the other. To achieve the balance required for a healthy existence, we need to recognise that there are activities in all parts of work-life that drain our energy and others that give us a buzz. Rather than trying to solve the drain of hard work by living it large at the weekend - or compensating for an unfulfilling home life by working like a demon, we need to create balance at work and balance at home. Now is a golden opportunity to re-examine the world of work and job-craft to make them more satisfying, less draining and more energising. The ideas in this book provide a practical guide to help that process.

Introducing the first macro-sociological perspective on the concept of creativity this book includes a review of ten domains which have studied creativity. It also explores the results of a six-year on-going research project comparing students' ideas on creativity with employers' and industry professionals' views.

At a time when companies face increasing cost pressures, offshoring IT work to India not only offers the opportunity to reap factor cost savings, but also to industrialize the IT delivery process. "Intelligent IT-Offshoring to India" is a roadmap approach which enables organizations to discuss and organize the 'India option' in a learned manner.
The book opens with an explanation of offshoring, industrialization, and the role India plays in this context; it considers offshoring as a lifecycle and explores how it can help to achieve a company's business and IT priorities. Providing a framework for assessing the organizational and technical offshore readiness as well as the risks involved, the book moves on to suggest a practical and lean provider selection process, which is centered around successfully running the offshore project by managing the relationship with the provider. This requires adopting a stringent construct of measures to improve the offshore link.

Anyone who has ever had a job has probably experienced work-related stress at some point or another. For many workers, however, job-related stress is experienced every day and reaches more extreme levels. Four in ten American workers say that their jobs are very or extremely stressful. Job stress is recognized as an epidemic in the workplace, and its economic and health care costs are staggering: by some estimates over $ 1 billion per year in lost productivity, absenteeism and worker turnover, and at least that much in treating its health effects, ranging from anxiety and psychological depression to cardiovascular disease and hypertension.

Why are so many American workers so stressed out by their jobs? Many psychologists say stress is the result of a mismatch between the characteristics of a job and the personality of the worker. Many management consultants propose reducing stress by redesigning jobs and developing better individual strategies for coping with their stress. But, these explanations are not the whole story. They don t explain why some jobs and some occupations are more stressful than other jobs and occupations, regardless of the personalities and coping strategies of individual workers. Why do auto assembly line workers and air traffic controllers report more job stress than university professors, self-employed business owners, or corporate managers (yes, managers )?

The authors of "Work and Mental Health in Social Context" take a different approach to understanding the causes of job stress. Job stress is "systematically "created by the characteristics of the jobs themselves: by the workers occupation, the organizations in which they work, their placements in different labor markets, and by broader social, economic and institutional structures, processes and events. And "disparities" in job stress are "systematically" determined in much the same way as are other disparities in health, income, and mobility opportunities.

In taking this approach, the authors draw on the observations and insights from a diverse field of sociological and economic theories and research. These go back to the nineteenth century writings of Marx, Weber and Durkheim on the relationship between work and well-being. They also include the more contemporary work in organizational sociology, structural labor market research from sociology and economics, research on unemployment and economic cycles, and research on institutional environments. This has allowed the authors to develop a unified framework that extends sociological models of income inequality and status attainment (or allocation) to the explanation of non-economic, health-related outcomes of work. Using a multi-level structural model, this timely and comprehensive volume explores what is stressful about work, and why; specifically address these and questions and more:

-What characteristics of jobs are the most stressful; what characteristics reduce stress?

-Why do work organizations structure some jobs to be highly stressful and some jobs to be much less stressful? Is work in a bureaucracy really more stressful?

-How is occupational status occupational power and authority related to the stressfulness of work?

-How does the segmentation of labor markets by occupation, industry, race, gender, and citizenship maintain disparities in job stress?

- Why is unemployment stressful to workers who don t lose their jobs?

-How do public policies on employment status, collective bargaining, overtime affect job stress?

-Is work in the current Post (neo) Fordist era of work more or less stressful than work during the Fordist era?

In addition to providing a new way to understand the sociological causes of job stress and mental health, the model that the authors provide has broad applications to further study of this important area of research. This volume will be of key interest to sociologists and other researchers studying social stratification, public health, political economy, institutional and organizational theory.

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This text offers a detailed and entertaining analysis of the daily interactions between managers and employees in creative knowledge intensive organizations. Based on vivid examples, it shows how both managers and employees entertain contradictory understandings of their mutual commitment.

As more people choose to work from home, the challenges for both the home worker and traditional management increase. Many questions arise regarding how to appraise the remote worker, the logistics of home working, and productivity. The authors focus on developing the right skills to cope with this new environment and stress the importance of knowing what the homeworker needs.Other issues addressed are finding the right balance between the office, home and client sites, dealing with the creation of workable home office environment, and technological and legal issues.