Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 65 - May 2020): Employee Health and Wellbeing

This book is the first-ever authoritative work on the use and management of humor in the workplace. It is a practical guide for everyone involved: the humorists ('jokers'), the targets (sometimes 'victims'), the observers ('audience') and most of all the managers who have to 'set the tone' and encourage, control and manage humor.   Humor is part and parcel of every workplace. However, while it usually demonstrates and fosters a united, happy workforce, it can at times be deeply damaging and divisive.   The authors - academics with vast organizational experience and a research-based understanding of humor at work - bring together state-of-the art knowledge of the topic, making it fun, accessible and readable for all humor participants. The topics include how humor works, humor cultures in organizations, the many forms of workplace humor and their pros and cons, humor rituals at work, digital humor, workplace jokers, the 21st century issue of 'political correctness',  and both the 'bright side' of humor (assisting positive cultures, making work 'fun'), and its 'dark side' (where humor offends and humiliates).    With over 60  'real life' illustrative stories of workplace humor, a self-completion questionnaire to measure the Humor Climate in your organization, end-of-chapter 'takeaways' and an end-of-book summary advocating 'best practice', the book is a 'fun', how-to-do-it guide that will both inform and entertain. 

This book employs a multidisciplinary and multi-level perspective to understand how well-being and resilience can influence innovation in knowledge-intensive contexts. Building on the authors' work in the areas of innovation management, human resource management and the psychological aspects of employee well-being, rich empirical data is presented and analysed in order to develop a conceptual framework. An interdisciplinary and  insightful read for those studying HRM, innovation and psychology, this book is aimed at scholars who are interested in examining the relationships between micro- (individual) and meso-level (organisational and managerial practices) influences on innovation outcomes.

This book focuses on an emerging area of study in management: managerial humor and its impact on employees' outcomes. Drawing from theoretical work that advocates humor as a managerial tool and building on existing theory and documented evidence on humor, the book explores how managers can use humor to positively affect employees' short-term emotional states and long-term psychological resources at work, and thus reduce the likelihood of their leaving the organization.  First, the book develops a theoretical framework for humor events at work and provides evidence-based findings on employees' humor behavior within actual work contexts. Second, it explores how humor can be used to positively impact employees' emotional states at work. In doing so, the book takes a multidisciplinary approach to humor by integrating theory and findings from the emotions literature, Positive Organizational Behavior, and Broaden and Build Theory into the humor literature.  The book sheds new light on the consequences of managers' use of humor for employees. It provides practical guidelines on how managers can use humor as an effective tool at work to bring about desired employee outcomes.

If you want to get physically fit you start working out. But if you want results, you can't just do just any workout - you need one tailored to your own body's needs and personal situation. It's the same with wellbeing. What constitutes 'stress' to one person may be motivating, inspiring and focusing for another. Our capacity for resilience varies depending on individual circumstances and from situation to situation. What is consistent and universal is that we all struggle with stress and resilience, and we all need to be open to figuring out how best to effectively manage stress to create greater personal resilience that will itself help us to cope better. This book offers you an encyclopaedia of self-help options for you to adapt according to how you tick and to the circumstances you find yourself in at any given moment. It addresses 60 different issues, and for each one provides a short 'Spotlight' to understand the issue, 'Top Tips' for dealing with it, and an 'Action Plan' to put those tips into practice. Wellbeing is about managing the ebbs and flows of what life throws at us. It's a mindset, a personal commitment and an ongoing endeavour. But if we adopt a focused and sustained engagement with this journey, then we'll learn to embrace and reap the benefits of 'being well'.