Brave New Workplace: Designing Productive, Healthy, and Safe Organizations

Summary

After a period of tremendous upheaval, it is necessary for organizations to transform alongside their employees and welcome new ways of working. While it is impossible to predict which changes will be successful, it is crucial for leaders to now ask: what should work look like to achieve productive, healthy, and safe organizations?

In Brave New Workplace, Julian Barling argues that we should focus on creating environments in which employees can flourish, rather than relying on the resiliency of workers to withstand difficult working conditions. Synthesizing centuries of research from scholars such as Abraham Maslow, Fred Herzberg, and Richard Hackman, among others, Barling identifies seven elements that are key to building an exceptional workplace: high quality leadership, autonomy, belonging, fairness, growth, meaning, and safety. Throughout the book, chapters touch on pressing issues affecting today's organizations such as working through crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact of gender differences on people's experiences in the workplace. Barling illustrates that small changes make a big difference in the long term—perhaps especially during the most trying times—and that effective, evidenced-based interventions are needed to achieve productive, healthy, and safe, work.