The Eos Life~Work resource centre
Eos life~work themes
(page updated 19 October 2010)Eos specialises in life-work psychology. We encourage people to look at total situations - past, present and future, and work and personal life. This approach is based on work psychology but uses experience from other subjects and professions (using eclectic, holistic and open systems ideas). It gives us and the people we work with deeper insights into complex problems, more options in changing situations and encouragement to turn crises into opportunities.
This section lists the most common themes and issues that people discuss with us in our career programmes. We hope some may be useful to you, your family, friends or organisation. Your comments on these and similar themes are welcome on the Eos Life-Work Forum.
Many career issues cross the life~work boundary. A good job can give confidence and money to make the most of our personal lives. Happy, healthy people are likely to be more reliable and productive at work. Stable societies have a healthy life~work balance with successful organisations in strong communities. These could be found in many pre-industrial cultures and in parts of some countries. But the drive for ever increasing productivity driven by commercial and political forces in the 1980's - 90's has placed heavy demands on employees with severe consequencies for social life, health and productivity. Employees with high life-style aspirations, or severe debt from economic recessions face serious compromises between quality of life and career success. At last this is being recognised by some employers and parts of Government in the UK.
We learn as much from our clients as we pass on. We seek new ways for individuals to survive and thrive in a turbulent work environment. This also gives us early warning of hazardous employment trends e.g. onset of the Recession in 1990 and increasing pressure for long working hours in the UK despite the EU Directive in 1998. We also see changing attitudes to employment e.g. growing independence among younger, high-income professionals and networking needs for the self-employed. Several other organisations also produce regular reports on changing work patterns (see our professional and research links).
Understanding individual life-work situations helps us to advise managers on ways of employing and developing staff more effectively, and to advise related professions on employee crisis situations.
One of the most exciting areas we cover is the potential for personal development and group innovation after periods of trauma or change, in work or personal life (transition psychology and human responses to change). We work directly with 50-100 people per year and reach many more by promoting awareness of life-work hazards and opportunities through clients and media reports.
These are some of the life~work themes we have developed over the last 13 years. They provide a framework for our consultancy advice to employers and individuals, and dialogue with other professionals and researchers. Topics available on this site are highlighted with blue links.
Career developmentCareer crisis and change
- Personality, motivation and individual performance
- Personality, interpersonal style and team performance
- New patterns in career management
- Career planning in a changing environment
- Education & training as investments in the future
Life~work boundaries
- Survival issues in the career jungle
- Career First Aid
- Managing staff in crisis
- Workplace stress: personal and management issues
- Managing stress and change in schools
- Fun without fear - healthy relationships at work study written in 1998, updated 2006. PDF file
Transition management
- Life roles - work in life context.
- Managing the life~work boundary
- Check your own life~work balance with updated Eos time chart interactive Excel chart
- Safe and dangerous organisations
- Life stages and changing career priorities
Other strategic issues in employment
- Transitions: managing personal and organizational change
- Life events and career change: transition psychology in practice
- Life-line exercise PDF file
- Human responses to change (strategic management issues)
- Eos transition management services for organisations
- New Surviving and thriving: How Transition Psychology May Apply to Mass Traumas and Changes - synopsis of Chapter 27 in the new Handbook of Stressful Transitions Across the Lifespan, editor Professor Thomas W. Miller. Springer NY, 2010.
- Organisational health and performance
- Social impacts of employment practices
- Unemployment and misemployment
- Long term effects of the Recession
- Changing work patterns and values
- International employment trends and contrasts
These themes reflect some of the most common issues we have worked on with individual and corporate clients. We update our advice to clients regularly in response to changing conditions. But to offer career and organisation planning advice we have to anticipate the potential effects of technical and economic changes as well. These have strategic implications for public policy and professional practice.
We have promoted awareness of these themes through presentations to professional groups, postgraduate lectures, workshops, conferences and the media. We will be adding some of these in further Eos Briefing Notes on this site over coming months.
Other employment & life-work research sources
We recommend other websites covering employment and life-work (or work-life) themes including:
- The Institute of Employment Studies
- The National Work-Life Forum (old web page, archive copy)
- The Institute for Personnel and Development
- The Work & Wellbeing Bulletin (old web page, archive copy)
Click here for further links to professional networks and and research sources. Please contact us if you would like to recommend other websites or publications.
Thank you for visiting the Eos life~work resource centre.
You can email Dai Williams at eosuk@btinternet.com© Eos Career Services 2010
page updated 19 October 2010
Return to top of pageintro I for you I for your organisation I specialist services I professional networking
career first aid I community projects I lifework forum