This Working Life

ABC Australia

You spend so much time on work, why accept the status quo, when there are ways to do it better? Get expert advice, research and hacks that will crush your inertia.

Join Lisa Leong and other This Working Lifers as we experiment and explore the latest in the world of work.

We cover policy issues, like hybrid workplaces and remote work, employee wellbeing and organisational culture, the use of AI, employee surveillance, employee engagement, diversity and inclusion. We talk about progress on wider issues that relate to work, like work life balance, organisational change, restructures, and casualisation. On This Working Life our focus is on everything related to the people in a workplace too, including culture, individual experiences, performance management and career advice.

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31 episodes
weekly
Avg 25 min
English

Episodes 31

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Sunday · 25 min
What work is doing to your brain
How is your grey matter doing? Are you digitally overloaded? Spinning out even thinking about another notification? Our brains weren't designed to operate in the modern workplace and it is showing. Lisa dives into the cranial folds to figure out what your workplace is doing to your brain, and what you can do about it. Guest: Professor Selena Bartlett, Group Leader for Neuroscience at Queensland University of Technology and the author of multiple books. Her most recent is Thriving Mind
October 25 · 25 min
How to be better at conflict
What are you like with conflict? Do you relish it or shy away? Being uncomfortable with the fray may be holding us back at work and stifling our ability to work creatively. Lisa laces up her boxing gloves to enter the ring of confrontation and disagreement at work! Guest: Tim Duggan, Chair of the Digital Publisher's Alliance and the author of Work Backwards, Cult Status and Clear In Tension ====== You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job corr
October 18 · 25 min
Scoop! Why summer jobs are still hot
Believe it or not, it's almost summer! A lot of universities are finishing up and high schools only have a few weeks until exams. All of a sudden people need employment until March, it happens quickly! But the rise in casualisation and the cost of living mean there's more competition for temporary work and employers may not be as keen anymore on staff who depart with the leaves of autumn. Are you or someone in your life looking for a summer job? Do they still exist the way they used to
October 11 · 25 min
Workplace Physio: Protect Your Neck!
How's your neck feeling? Tight? Falling forward? You aren't alone. In the first edition of our occasional series Workplace Physio we look forward, with our heads held high, at the impact of 'tech neck'. Lisa steps on the wobbleboard and does her exercises to figure out what work is doing to our necks and how we can go about fixing it. Guest: Jennifer Callaghan, Specialist Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist and the Director of Callaghan Physiotherapy ====== You can binge more episodes of
October 4 · 25 min
Is AI killing entry level jobs?
Is AI coming for your job? Well, maybe not yet. But there are early warning signs that entry level jobs are getting squeezed and traditional career pathways are closing up. Research from Stanford Digital Labs in the US has shone a light on what actual impact artificial intelligence is having on employment, and it's not necessarily what the big tech bosses have been telling us! Lisa scales the corporate coalface to find out what's coming. Guests: Dr Bharat Chandar, Research Fellow and La
September 27 · 25 min
It's burnout season!
Are you burnt out ... again?! How does it keep coming round like clockwork? We're entering burnout season, and author Karl Treacher agues in his new book Built to Burn that you burning out is a feature of the system, not a bug. Are we facing an epidemic of burnout? What can we do about it? Lisa's picked up her hose and is running towards the burning building. Guests Karl Treacher, CEO of The Culture Institute, Executive in Residence at Griffith Business School and author of Built T
September 20 · 25 min
Wellness shortcuts do more harm than good
Are you drowning in digital? Are the company sponsored mental health tools helping you at all? They've become the norm as they're cheaper and easier to apply than traditional methods. But research is showing that these applications and online tools aren't always cutting the mustard when it comes to improving our mental wellbeing at work; especially when they're applied as a catch all. What makes you go ommmm? Lisa investigates. And the Radio National Top 100 Australian Books countdown
September 13 · 25 min
Simone Stolzoff wants you to be uncertain!
It feels like we’re constantly being asked to know things, to be rock solid in our information. But is this desire for control and certainty stopping us from making better decisions both at work, and about our working lives? Journalist and author Simone Stolzoff has a lot of ideas about our brains and how we go to work! He’s been circling the globe hunting out people who trying to understand doubt and uncertainty for his new book How to Not Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World That
September 6 · 25 min
You're being measured!
Do you measure up? Digital and AI tools coupled with an increased desire for productivity means we’re being marked more closely than ever before. New research shows that when we know how we're being measured we stop prioritising the work that isn't measured, especially if we think the systems aren't transparent or fair. Lisa gets stuck into the modern map of "metricisation" to see how to defend soft skills from a passion for measurement! The Radio National Top 100 Australian Books countdo
August 30 · 25 min
Fluorescent lights burning you out?
How does your office make you feel? Are you an open plan convert or dying under the halogen lighting? We spend a lot of time in our workplaces and the way they’re designed can have a huge impact on our mental and physical wellbeing. Psychologists and architects are worried we've sleep walked into a world where the standard office design is actively burning workers out quick smart. It's a problem for employees stuck in environments draining them of the will, and employers losing good staff to
August 23 · 25 min
What do you do in a crisis?
How do you react in a crisis? Are you fight, flight, fawn or flee? We all react differently to moments of panic and stress but one thing we all have in common is that they cause us to make rash and poor decisions. Are we stuck like this or can we re-train ourselves to respond to panic and act or lead with a clear head? Guest: Dr James Donald, Senior Lecturer in Work and Organisational Studies at Sydney University and co-author of The Clear Leader ======= You can binge more episodes of th
August 16 · 25 min
How to get hired in the AI age
Artificial intelligence use in the job hunt is happening so fast it's hard to keep track and applicants and employers are feeling harassed by the speed of the change. Candidates find themselves trapped in a paradox where they need to write applications that make it through the screening while also standing out when an application eventually reaches a human decision maker. AI interviews are increasingly popular as well for hiring organisations which job hunters are reporting can make the pro
August 9 · 25 min
We're too tired to work!
Are you just too tired to work? Australians feel exhausted. Eighty two per cent of Australian knowledge workers reported being on the verge of burnout last year, and businesses are scrambling to catch up with the cost of mental fatigue. But sleepiness can be a killer too and a major shift is underway in how Australian industries treat tiredness in the workplace. It's not a new phenomenon, people were talking about "brain fag" in Victorian England, but the way we think about fatigue and the
August 2 · 25 min
Is Gina Rinehart right about cash bonuses?
Australia’s richest person and long time supporter of Australian Swimming Gina Rinehart has been offering cash bonuses for Aussie swimmers at the Commonwealth games, $20,000 for a gold medal! It can be a nice to have after a huge challenge or a drawcard to make people work harder, but there can be a danger to motivating your team with extra dollars. So, Is Gina Rinehart right, do cash bonuses work? What actually motivates us? Lisa digs into the world of motivation and incentives to try and
July 26 · 25 min
The dangers of silence at work
Speaking out at work is hard. It's even harder in a culture of silence. To take the decision to break the quiet is an act of bravery, ands it's one many of us are unwilling to risk. But the dangers of a culture of silence are many, and they impact employers and employees alike. While it can be a scary thing to do, research has found that people staying silent to protect their own heath and wellbeing almost always have worse results for their mental health in the long term in a silent workp
July 19 · 25 min
Is it getting harder to find a job?
After the 100th email auto reply, the AI application screening and writing the umpteenth cover letter of the week, the job hunt can feel like a real drain. If you're feeling like it's harder to find a job now than last time you were looking you are not alone. A combination of people staying put, international forces and a tight economic market have all impacted the white collar worker world. And that's before we think about AI! Despite unemployment numbers remaining pretty flat the Australian
July 12 · 25 min
Is being good at your job holding you back?
Are you being asked time and again to be the one who gets everything done, is your reward for crushing it, just more “it” to crush? You might be paying a competence Tax! Research consistently shows that people who are seen as high achievers are stacked with more of the same rather than being given pathways to doing new things. it's a story a lot of people can relate to but it can be a very difficult trap to escape. Lisa is joined by a world expert in what she calls "the curse of competence
July 5 · 25 min
Take a break!
When you’re under the pump, it can feel like taking a break at work is impossible. But that can be habit forming, and bad for your physical and mental health. Learn the benefits of building breaks into your workday, and how to do it in a way that feels manageable.
June 28 · 25 min
How to avoid "Wellness Washing"
You may have heard of greenwashing, now experts are worried about wellness washing where workplaces paper over the cracks with wellbeing measures but leave the chasms underneath.
June 21 · 25 min
Why are we so bad at onboarding?
You're starting a new job but you don't have what you need, or you certainly feel like you don't! Why is this such a universal experience and why are employers so happy to leave people to sink or swim? We dive in to the good, the bad and the ugly of onboarding and try to figure out how we can be doing it better, for bosses and for workers. Lisa also checks in with the Australian HR Institute about new research showing the global "job hugging" trend has arrived on our shores. Guests: Dr

Showing 1–20 of 31 episodes