The Joy of Work?: Jobs, Happiness, and You

Are you happy at work? Or do you just grin and bear it? We spend an average of 25% of our lives at work, so it’s important to make the best of it.

The Joy of Work? looks at happiness and unhappiness from a fresh perspective. It draws on up-to-date research from around the world to present the causes and consequences of low job satisfaction and gives helpful suggestions and strategies for how to get more enjoyment from work. The book includes many interesting case studies about individual work situations, and features simple self-completion questionnaires and procedures to help increase your happiness. Practical suggestions cover how to improve a job without moving out of it, advice about changing jobs, as well as how to alter typical styles of thinking which affect your attitudes.

This book is unique. The subject is of major significance to virtually all adults - people in jobs and those who are hoping to get one. It is particularly distinctive in combining two areas that are usually looked at separately – self-help approaches to making yourself happy and issues within organizations that affect well-being.

The Joy of Work? has been written in a relaxed and readable style by an exceptional combination of authors: a highly-acclaimed professor of psychology and a widely published business journalist. Bringing together research from business and psychology – including positive psychology – this practical book will make a big difference to your happiness at work – and therefore to your whole life.

Peter Warr is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield. Formerly Director of the Social and Applied Psychology Unit in that university (the world’s largest research institute in its field), he has undertaken research and consultancy in hundreds of organizations.

Guy Clapperton has been a freelance business, technology and media journalist for 15 years. In 2008 he became a BAFTA juror, and is published regularly in the Sunday Telegraph, Guardian, Times Independent and Financial Times. He also broadcasts on the BBC World Service and on BBC Radio London, and has edited a number of books on employment practices.