Read our posts about work

26Jan

4 Things I Wish I'd Known When I Started Working

Fergus O'Connell

career, stress

Work

In the UK, work-related stress is deemed the biggest cause of sickness in the country, with over 105 million days lost to stress each year. Thankfully, there are some things you can do to alleviate this stress or even to not get caught up in it in the first place. Projects, presentations, meetings and sales are all common reasons people are feeling stressed at work. But the one which I’d like to address here is bosses. A strained relationship with an employer can be one of the biggest causes of stress at work, so here are four things to bear in mind if you are...
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26Nov

How To Succeed in a Job Interview

Michael Parker

career, university

Work

One way to succeed in a job interview is to treat it like a pitch. Michael Parker, author of It's Not What You Say, It's The Way You Say It!: How to sell yourself when it really matters (Vermilion) shares some tips to help you succeed: The principles are the same for the interview and the pitch in that both call for you to perform under pressure. Your stage may be a platform, or a seat across a table, but the impact of your words on your audience comes mainly from your tone of voice and body language. The common error when faced with the spotlight is that we tend...
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10Nov

Coping with Depression at University

John Servante

depression, student, university

Work

“I can’t be the only thing that makes you happy anymore”. Those were the last words my ex-girlfriend said to me just three weeks in to starting my degree at university. What was she talking about? I wasn’t unhappy. What an odd thing to say. She made it sound like I was hiding from something. I wasn’t hiding from anything… was I? At university, I was formally diagnosed with mental health conditions. You see since about the age of 12, I had battled with depression and anxiety. But I didn’t admit I had any problems: when I was a teenager, I couldn’t handle going...
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29Oct

Finding your University Identity

Terri Apter

identity, self, university

Work

In Beck Varley-Winter’s excellent piece Surviving University, I was struck by what she says about  Freshers Week: “Freshers Week suits extroverts. If you are not one, you will find socialising in massive groups can be stressful”. Many of the students I address each October would find resonance in Becky’s words.  Indeed, some would find the term “stressful” far too moderate a word to describe their experiences of a new environment, glamoured by history, by hope and by parental pride. As young people leave their families, they face a transition period in which...
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17Sep

How to Get Out of a Career Rut and Start Living

Marina Gask

career, psychology, wellbeing

Work

Do you dread going into work in the morning? An incredible half of us in the UK believe our choice of career was a mistake.Given the fact that half of Britons spend their days doing something they describe as "meaningless” and “too stressful”, there's a heck of a lot of misery out there. All too often the dreams we harbour of running a tea shop, changing careers or writing novels, fall by the wayside because the bills won’t pay themselves. What's more, re-training is hard, changing track is risky and sometimes it feels like we’re better with the devil we know. However,...
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10Jul

Don't Judge Me For Not Getting Drunk With Work Mates

Claudine Levy

career, friendship, self, society, university

Work

I realised that binge drinking wasn’t for me during my Fresher’s Week at university. This is the infamous time in every young adult’s life which consists of masochistically getting bladdered repeatedly, in the hope of forming some lasting bonds of friendship with a group of petrified fellow students. All so that we could LOL about our collective hangovers and embarrassing hook-ups of the morning after the night before. Of course the natural antidote to our terror about being alone was to glug as much poison as humanly possible. Away from home, and far from the...
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09Jul

How to Manage Your Online Presence

Anne Wilson

career, self, society, university

Work

Your professional reputation matters. What you say about yourself online, what others say about you, the comments you make, the opinions you express - all these can influence whether or not colleagues trust and respect you, give you business, a promotion, or a job. It’s vital to take control of your online presence and make sure that the spaces you inhabit, and what you do and say in those spaces, fits with the image you want to project. And here’s the key - consciously thinking about how you want to appear to your professional peers. Do you want them to see you as...
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19Jun

Surviving Redundancy

Marina Gask

money, redundancy

Work

The devastation of being made redundant can leave you freewheeling emotionally for months – even years. It’s very natural for people facing redundancy, regardless of whether it was expected or not, to go through a process of grief similar to bereavement. In his book, Winning Through Redundancy, Steve Preston describes the five main impacts. 1. Shock, denial and anger – why me? 2. Fear of the unknown – will I get another job, and can I survive financially? 3. Loss of confidence and self-esteem – do I have any value? 4. Loss of self-control – now the...
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16May

How to Enjoy Work More

Tim Robson

career, stress

Work

There are roughly 250 working days in a year, meaning a 40-year career looks like 10,000 days of doing work of some description. 10,000 seems a big number, until you realise 140+ of those days have already passed since you sat eating turkey at Christmas. Just pause for a moment. What have you done with the first 140 days of your working year and how would you assess the results they’ve created for you?  Which version of you showed up to work? It’s easy to focus on organisational structures, corporate cultures and operational protocols and convince ourselves...
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28Apr

5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Writing at Work

Anne Wilson

career, empathy

Work

Writing is a craft which you can learn, get better at, and improve throughout your working life. No matter how well or badly you think you communicate in writing, you can improve your clarity and effectiveness by working on these areas: Empathise with your target audience I mean REALLY put yourself in their shoes. Think hard about what they want and need to know, not just what you want to tell them. Decide what style is most appropriate for what you want them to think or feel - but remember, even formal documents benefit from a sparse and simple style.  Consider...
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