Book Review: Reworked, by Dr. Stephanie Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald, S. (2023).?Reworked: Putting health and happiness at the centre of your career. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Summary

The employee should be at the center of the workplace and be happy, healthy, safe, and engaged. These four components are key to a thriving workplace well-being for both the employer and the employee.

This book has 15 chapters covering money, physical and psychological safety, stress, burnout, management, teamwork, workspace considerations, a chapter on quitting, and more. Dr. Fitzgerald prompts you to use the techniques outlined in the book to improve your well-being at work. “Keep close the knowledge of what works for you and how you reworked your work life to keep yourself happy, healthy, safe and engaged. Never settle for anything else” (p. 239).

Advantages

The book is easy to read, keeping concepts, tips, stories, and activities boxed out for the reader to notice easily. Take the time to read these. Reflect. Do the work. I especially like the chapter summaries. You will be inspired and prompted to move forward. While there is not a specific chapter on nutrition, the overall theme of achieving workplace well-being and the techniques presented can also be applied to how you nourish your body.

Disadvantages

Some advice may not be what you were expecting. For example, your mental health is not your employer’s or manager’s responsibility. Also, be ready to look in the mirror… maybe you are playing a dominating role in the toxic team energy.

The author’s expertise as a psychologist is in mental health, i.e., there is little practical information on improving nutrition or physical health. Generally, if you are happy, healthy, safe, and engaged, you can make good food choices at work and not self-medicate through food and alcohol, and your health should not negatively impact your work and vice versa.

Highlights

·???????? Page xvii, “We look to work to solve issues that are within our gift to resolve and which work simply cannot…We have to do the work on our own well-being, and if we do, then we will gain time, energy, focus, drive, ambition, and much more importantly, the health, happiness, safety, and engagement that we deserve, yet are missing out on.”

·???????? Page xvii, “Wellbeing approaches need to be personalized, and they need to be accommodating. Sometimes what we need from different people at different times can change on a daily basis. We cannot expect a company to be able to cover every aspect of our well-being and support us to an adequate degree. We need to utilize our own expertise in our own wellness. It needs to be a joint endeavor between you and your work.”

·???????? Page 11, “Research shows we become less productive the more hours we work.” In fact, anything over 55 hours becomes meaningless, with research showing that those who work an additional 15 hours (bringing their working week total to 70 hours) will achieve nothing further…Our brains need consistency, rest, processing time and the space to reflect. This allows us to problem-solve and perform at our best. Protecting your brain health is one of the most important ways you can achieve workplace wellness.”

·???????? Page 42, “True ikigai refers to our purpose, our reason for being, our life’s work. It is what gets us up in the morning.”

·???????? Page 50, “Remember the basic principle: you shouldn’t be harming work and work shouldn’t be harming you. If this isn’t the case, then this needs to be addressed.”

·???????? Page 76, “Presenteeism means we clock up our hours but are not being productive.”

·???????? Page77, “Leavism…is the practice where we will take annual leave, or paid time off, in order to catch up on our work.”

·???????? Page 96, “There are ways of using your stress response to your advantage, and these involve some simple reframing in our minds. Simply changing the way we view stress, and our response to it, means that we will change our physiological experience of stress.”

·???????? Page 123, “Burnout is defined by the WHO as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”

·???????? Pages 137 – 139, Five top tips for burnout recovery

·???????? Pages 164 – 165, Dealing with a difficult manager

·???????? Page 168, “People who have a ‘best friend’ at work are shown to be happier and healthier in the workplace and are also seven times more likely to be engaged in their role.”

·???????? Page 177, “Highlighting when biases occur through open and honest conversations is the only way to manage and eliminate them. But it doesn’t need to be confrontational, quite the opposite.”

·???????? Page 180, “We cannot change other people, but we can change how we interact with them to keep us happy, healthy, safe and engaged. We need to do the work to secure good relationships at work.”

·???????? Pages 194 – 195, Plan the work you do for yourself first. (1) write your to-do list before checking your emails; (2) do your thing first; (3) tune into what you need; (4) let others know your plans; (5) make sure you are on your to-do list.

·???????? Page 205, “Thirty-two percent of workers reported that their workspace negatively affected their physical and mental health, with 36 percent saying that they would be less likely to take sick days if their workplace was more inspiring.”

·???????? Pages? 236 – 237, Before you quit: (1) do the rework; (2) know why you are leaving; (3) check the essentials; (4) ask yourself: would anything make me stay?

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