Reworked: Putting Health and Happiness at the Centre of Your Career

“When you are happy, healthy, safe and engaged, you can give work the right amount of energy and time and not feel a clash with your home life,” according to this tired program. Psychologist Fitzgerald (The CBT Workbook) draws on her background in neuroscience to describe how workers can feel better about their jobs. Extolling the importance of reducing stress, she explains that it activates a “fight or flight” response in the sympathetic nervous system and that to restore equilibrium, readers should exhale slowly. Workplace stories (it’s unclear if they’re invented or from clients) illustrate shallow takeaways, as when Fitzgerald tells of a factory worker who chose not to remind a coworker to put on his safety glasses, fearing that doing so would draw the attention of their cruel boss, only for the coworker to burn his eyes, leading Fitzgerald to exhort readers not to “rely on others to make us feel safe about speaking up.” The advice largely consists of platitudes (“Authenticity is our superpower”), and Fitzgerald’s scolding tone (“It’s not your manager’s responsibility to manage your mental health”) has little to offer employees whose “health, happiness, safety and engagement” are compromised by unfair working conditions outside their control. This doesn’t make the grade. (Dec.)