About the book - Personalization at Work
Work is broken. If our work was an item of clothing, for many of us, it would be a straight-jacket. Or at best an ill-fitting suit. Modern working practices are failing us - constraining rather than amplifying our diverse skills, strengths, passions and interests. No wonder globally over 90% of us aren’t engaged, excited and energised about our jobs.
We customise all aspects of our lives - our cars, our clothes, our coffees - yet one area of our lives we don’t proactively personalise is our work.
What if we started to tailor work around people, rather than expecting people to tailor themselves around their jobs? What if we took a more personalised approach?
Personalization at Work shares a new approach to working called job crafting that enables people to customise, shape and design work around their individual talents, strengths and passions . The research into job crafting is compelling. It boosts innovation and agility, nurtures health and wellbeing and amplifies meaning, purpose and productivity.
Full of practical advice and case studies from companies who have already seen the benefits of a personalized approach to work including Virgin money, Widerøe airlines, Logitech, Google and Connect Health, Personalization at Work is essential reading for all HR professionals and people leaders wanting to improve staff engagement, retention, productivity and the overall people experience. With expert guidance on how to encourage job crafting and a personalized approach to work for employees through everything from job titles, role descriptions and benefits packages through to working patterns, flexibility and work environment, this is a book that HR and people professionals can't afford to be without.
A personalised approach to work supports key HR and people priorities including: enabling performance; embracing diversity and inclusion; lifting engagement; boosting wellbeing and nurturing agility and creativity.
Personalization at Work shares:
How to enable people to bring their whole and best selves to work each day to help organisations thrive
How to create a closer fit between the work people do and their purpose, passions and strengths
How to boost creativity, curiosity and nurture a job crafting mindset within workplaces
How to reframe, amplify and enrich social connections and build high quality relationships
How to build a personalised people experience
Endorsements and reviews
Personalization at Work through job crafting is a unique and innovative book. For too long we have heard HR professionals say ‘our most valuable resource is our human resource’, but that should translate into helping employees personalize their work to enable them to get good balance in their lives—but hasn’t in the past. This is a must read for those concerned about enabling their people to thrive
Professor Sir Cary Cooper, ALLIANCE Manchester Business School, University of Manchester
The world of work is in a more dissatisfied place than in any previous generation. Job-crafting represents a massive opportunity for any of us to achieve a personalisation revolution in our work. Finally this could be the way to make our jobs more rewarding and joyful than ever before.
Bruce Daisley, author of The Joy of Work and VP - Europe, Twitter.
This book is a valuable asset to Human Resource Managers, workplace leaders, organisational scholars, and, most importantly, to anyone who wants to have a thriving career. Rob Baker provides us with a compelling reason to personalise our work and helps us to more clearly understand the factors that prevent us from doing so. The chapters on job crafting offer practical ideas for how workplaces can organise jobs to provide choice, opportunity and energy. Given the amount of time people spend at work, Baker’s invitation to craft jobs in ways that foster thriving is powerful. His book will herald a new way to work and it couldn’t come soon enough. This is a must read!
Professor Lea Waters (PhD), Organisational Psychologist, Positive Psychology Expert and author of The Strength Switch.
Personalization at Work is published by Kogan Page and comes out on 3 March 2020. Further information about the book is available here.
About Rob
Rob is a specialist in bringing positive psychology to life within organisations. He is the founder and Chief Positive Deviant of Tailored Thinking, a leading and award-winning evidence-based positive psychology, wellbeing and HR consultancy who were named HR Consultancy of the Year 2020 by the CIPD.
Rob is world-leading when it comes to enabling and encouraging job crafting within workplaces. He is a TEDX speaker and author of Personalization at Work by Kogan Page, a practical and evidence-informed guide to applying job crafting which was a finalist at the 2021 Business Book Awards. His work, ideas and research on how people can personalise and bring their whole and best selves to their jobs have been presented at academic and professional conferences around the globe.
Rob is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD and a Chartered Fellow of the Australian HR Institute. He has a first-class Masters in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Melbourne and continues to research and collaborate with academics from the University’s Centre of Positive Psychology.
As a senior HR leader and consultant, Rob has delivered sector-leading and award-winning people initiatives and business transformation projects working with companies across sectors ranging from multi-national banks to digital start-ups.
An avid runner, Rob has previously competed on the international stage, having represented Great Britain in mountain running and orienteering. These days, Rob runs and cycles purely for fun and reflection and enjoys outdoor (mis)adventures with his young family in Durham.
About Job Crafting
A model of job crafting used in Personalization at Work.
Job crafting enables individuals and teams to actively shape and personalise their work. It is an evidence-based approach to encourage people to bring their diverse, whole and best selves to work each day. People job craft by tailoring how they act, interact and think about their work based on their strengths, passions, values and interests.
The evidence into the benefits of job crafting is substantive with over 130 empirical and peer reviewed research papers being published from around the world by the end of 2019. Job crafting has been positively linked to increased levels of resilience, wellbeing, performance, career progression, personal development and engagement.
The impact of job crafting has been investigated with employees from the Australia, Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Vietnam. In total, studies of job crafting have included the combined investigation of over 46,750 employees.
Job crafting has been empirically explored in a variety of different contexts, settings and industries ranging from cleaners and call centre operatives to change architects and chief executives, public to private sectors and from automotive manufacturers to zoos.
Further information about job crafting is available here.
Downloads
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