Brave new workplace

Brave New Workplace argues that organizations should focus on creating environments in which employees can flourish, rather than relying on the resiliency of workers to withstand difficult working conditions. Author Julian Barling outlines 10 elements for a healthy and productive workplace--leadership, autonomy, meaning, belonging, growth, fairness, clarity, recognition, safety, and physical environment--and illustrates how these elements can be readily implemented and how they can increase levels of work performance and employee well-being.

Brave New Workplace argues that organizations should focus on creating environments in which employees can flourish, rather than relying on the resiliency of workers to withstand difficult working conditions. Author Julian Barling outlines 10 elements for a healthy and productive workplace--leadership, autonomy, meaning, belonging, growth, fairness, clarity, recognition, safety, and physical environment--and illustrates how these elements can be readily implemented and how they can increase levels of work performance and employee well-being

After a period of tremendous upheaval, it is necessary for organizations to transform alongside their employees and welcome new ways of working. While it is impossible to predict which changes will be successful, it is crucial for leaders to now ask: what should work look like to achieve productive, healthy, and safe organizations? In Brave New Workplace, Julian Barling argues that we should focus on creating environments in which employees can flourish, rather than relying on the resiliency of workers to withstand difficult working conditions. Synthesizing centuries of research from scholars such as Abraham Maslow, Fred Herzberg, and Richard Hackman, among others, Barling identifies seven elements that are key to building an exceptional workplace: high quality leadership, autonomy, belonging, fairness, growth, meaning, and safety. Throughout the book, chapters touch on pressing issues affecting today's organizations such as working through crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact of gender differences on people's experiences in the workplace. Barling illustrates that small changes make a big difference in the long term-perhaps especially during the most trying times-and that effective, evidenced-based interventions are needed to achieve productive, healthy, and safe, work.

"Brave new work! If that has a familiar ring, it is no doubt because of Aldous Huxley's Brave new world . Published in 1932, Huxley's classic novel depicted a dystopian society based on the principles upon which Henry Ford's assembly line was built: Efficiency, mass production, conformity, predictability and mass consumerism. Brave new workplace could not be more different. At its essence, Brave new workplace presents an optimistic picture of a post-pandemic work environment that is productive, healthy, and safe. And each of the words, Brave new workplace, convey something very different about this perspective on work."