The Joy of Work: The No.1 Sunday Times Business Bestseller – 30 Ways to Fix Your Work Culture and Fall in Love with Your Job Again

Let's face it; it's called work for a reason, but it doesn't have to be as painful as it has become. This book is filled with some concise and meaningful ways to create a better place to work that will create better outcomes. We need to get back to focusing on effectiveness and not pure efficiency.

There are a lot of business books. A lot.Most focus on driving success factors such as performance, productivity, efficiency, growth.Very few focus on whether any of it makes us any happier.This is that book.Better than that, it provides plausible, real-world ideas that you can employ in your own workplace to make things more fun. Layer in on top of that the fact that the ideas come bound with a convincing level of evidence behind them and the fact that the whole thing is written in a very accessible style and you find yourself beliveing that you CAN deploy these concepts in your environment.Daisley does bring the back-up that all of this can lead to additional performance gains and business benefit, but you sense that isn't his primary mission here. The competitive gains are a consequence not the momentum. He actually believes work can be a better place. If you check out his background and his podcast history, it looks like he's pretty well qualified to make this case - he's a successful guy and he's done his homework on this subject, interviewing some of the world's foremost work-psychologists, gurus and researchers.I can’t say I will be able to implement all of his recommendations (there are plenty), my organisation isn’t ready for all of it (yet), but I have already made use of several elements of his 'New Work Manifesto' and I can vouch for the fact it isn’t just theoretical.Without question the best business book I’ve picked up in many years.

Pacing around a square, smoking cigarettes for the first time in 10 years. At 8:55 making the way to the office. Putting on a 'game face', and pressing the button on the lift repeatedly to get the desk in the open plan hell hole for 10+ hours of hell.The joy of work shows a different path. In this book, Bruce Daisley synthesises years of academic research into incredibly practical ways to improve your own experience (recharge) and the team you are in (or run) (sync and buzz).Followers of the podcast Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat (also by Bruce) will recognise many of the stories, but what Bruce has done is consider these studies again, and developed pragmatic ways of implementing them. What the book does is to turn interesting ideas and findings into concrete actions that do not require senior manager approval to implement. In this way (particularly the sync and buzz sections) this book has the promise of improving work straight away.I would be amazed if anyone who read this book didn't change something about how they work, or the way the team they are in works. I have literally created a checklist of things to do over the next 6 months after reading this over the course of a weekend (not recommended - I should have read this in work time). Also - there will be copies of this book making their way to my colleagues desk. I cannot recommend it enough.

The book title's awful, the style chatty and lightweight, the format rather unstructured and it looks like a 'tips and tricks' book. But there are some chapters which are really counter-cultural, dig deep into the realities of human behaviour, and end up being really rather profound. This book punches above its weight and really gets to the heart of many business issues like the truth about meetings, remote working and open plan environments. I would recommend

The Joy of Work is a delight to read (and indeed to listen to, with Bruce Daisley narrating the audiobook). I enjoyed the Audible audiobook so much I bought myself a hard copy to refer back to.Such sensible (yet never boring) advice about how to get your work life on track. Using 3 key themes (Recharge, Sync and Buzz) The Joy of Work breaks down the lessons Bruce Daisley has learned throughout his career, with added ‘science bit’ back up by research.You don’t have to have fallen out of love with your work to find this book useful. If anything it made me realise how fortunate I am to work in an organisation and team where we already support many of the ways of working Bruce suggests. If anything this book made me more determined to make sure we never stop learning and growing.I have my fingers crossed that Bruce Daisley will be a future speaker at Comms Unplugged, a development retreat for public sector communiticators in need of some wisdom and wellbeing... away from WiFi!

Bruce Daisley may be the boss of Twitter in the UK, but despite being a fully paid up member of the digerati he has written a book on work culture that is relevant to any organisation, digital or otherwise. It is a very easy read, full of wisdom and definitely not written by a millennial out to change the world. Essentially the book consists of 30 tips to make life at work better: tips on performing better (take lunch, don't always be in a hurry, focus, wear headphones...), tips on teamwork (enforce a tea break, get people laughing, make an effort with inductions...). and tips on getting energised (admit your mistakes, ban phones from meetings - yes please!, keep teams small...). It's common sense and I agreed with absolutely everything he says (except perhaps the headphones bit, but maybe that's just me). Read this book. More importantly, buy it for your boss.