Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go. But unless we are the perfect employee in the perfect job, or unless it’s Aloha Friday we could all probably benefit from some good advice about our working lives. Your neighborhood library
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go. But unless we are the perfect employee in the perfect job, or unless it’s Aloha Friday we could all probably benefit from some good advice about our working lives.
Your neighborhood library brims with resources on how to conduct a job search, write a resume and ace an interview. But that’s just the basics. Your library has so much more. In celebration of Labor Day this week and in honor of all those who work for a living, Book Buzz features books of techniques, technology, and tactics in support of workers and the working life.
Happy reading.
Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work
By Carol Fishman Cohen and Rabin
650.14085 Co
This comprehensive and inspirational step-by-step guide to workforce reentry is also a compendium of the issues, trade-offs and opportunities that moms recommitting to a professional life will encounter. Told through interviews with more than 100 women from a broad career and economic spectrum who remember the difficulties of relaunching their careers after hiatuses from 18 months to 20 years.
The First-Time Manager
By Loren B. Belker and Gary S. Topchik
658.302 Be
New edition of a classic covers all the fundamentals you need to success in hiring, firing, leadership, motivation, time and stress management. It shows how to build trust and confidence, be an active listener, manage a diverse group of individuals, and conduct performance appraisals.
Flat Broke in the Free Market: How Globalization Fleeced Working People
By Jon Jeter
306.3 Je
Impassioned storyteller, Jeter, provides a moving account of what poverty looks like around the world. He eloquently analyzes how globalization and free trade have transformed many of the world’s manufacturing hubs. The ghetto is in its ascendancy, he writes, challenging free trade orthodoxy and its ability to reduce poverty. He analyzes nations like Chile which have rethought their attitudes toward globalization and are moving toward new strength and independence.
Fitting the Human: Introduction to Ergonomics
By Karl H.E. Kroemer
612.042 Kr
This updated classic reference describes mental and psychosocial ergonomics in detail and provides quick access to the ergonomic information that professionals need when engineering workplaces, machinery, offices, computers, and lighting. The author organizes detailed knowledge regarding body size, strength, and mobility, as well as motivation, perceptions, and acquired skills.
Four Secrets to Liking Your Work: You May Not Need to Quit to Get the Job You Want
By Edward G. Muzio et. al.
650.1 Mu
There are many guides to finding the right job out there, but few others teach us to make the most of our current situation whether working at home or in a more traditional environment. This no-nonsense guide provides practical, simple tools to evaluate job dissatisfaction, understand human interactions, and honor diversity in the workplace. As valuable to an employer trying to maintain high-functioning teams as it is to an employee who is feeling dissatisfied, this book helps create work lives that are happier, and emotionally enriching.
Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children and the Clinicians Who Treat Them
By Bryan E. Robinson
155.232 Bo
This guide sheds considerable light on a topic that mental-health professionals often don’t recognize. It explores the various beliefs, motivations and fears that propel people to overwork. The author provides worksheets to help you recognize whether you or someone close to you is a work addict. Case studies demonstrate workaholic ways of thinking, and treatment methods that involve the entire family. The book serves therapists and the many people affected by the disease equally well.
Hire the Best …And Avoid the Rest
By Michael W. Mercer
658.3112 Me
How do you know which prospective employees will perform successfully on the job and which will not? This guide removes much of the uncertainty and inefficiency from the hiring process by making the most of the three key tools: interviewing, testing, and reference checking.
Motivating the “What’s In It For Me?” Workforce: Manage Across the Generational Divide and Increase Profits
By Cam Marston
658.314 Ma
All generations are not alike. Younger workers care little for tradition, placing a higher value on individuality, personal freedom, professional flexibility and creativity. The promise of climbing the company ladder no longer has motivational force. Younger workers are less loyal to their organizations, quicker to adapt and more possessive of their free time. The author reveals how to diffuse the conflict between managers and employees showing managers how to deal with differing generational expectations.
The One Life Solution: Reclaim Your Personal Life While Achieving Greater Professional Success
By Henry Cloud
650.1 Cl
Many career-inhibiting problems can be attributed to a breakdown of boundaries between work life and personal life, especially as technology makes it possible for individuals to be on-call every moment of the day. Using real world examples the author leads readers through a plan for regaining control of themselves, their work and their lives with easy-to-follow activities. From conducting an audit of your time, to developing a policy of who you are and what you stand for, to learning how to overcome a paralyzing inability to say no, Dr. Cloud provides strategies and scripts for moving toward a unified life that fully encompasses work, family, and spirituality. Along the same lines try A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What You Were Born To Do by Thomas Moore.
One Year to an Organized Work Life: From Your Desk to Your Deadlines: The Week-by-Week Guide to Eliminating Office Stress for Good
By Regina Leeds
600.1 Le
Leeds presents simple steps to getting more done: clear your desk, stop procrastinating, organize your files, prioritize your schedule, deal with e-mail overload, beat office burnout, make meetings more efficient, handle difficult colleagues, ease business travel and achieve your long-term goals.
The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn’t
By Robert I. Sutton
650.13 Su
The modern workplace is beset with those who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who focus their aggression on the less powerful. They poison the work environment, decrease productivity, induce qualified employees to quit and therefore are detrimental to businesses, regardless of their individual effectiveness. Direct and punchy, the author’s rule shows how positive self-esteem creates a more productive, motivated, and satisfied workforce. Just reading Sutton’s analysis brings calm relief, empowerment, and reassurance.
The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong
By Peter J. Laurence
658.00207
Answers the question: Why is incompetence so maddeningly rampant and so vexingly triumphant? The author coined the eponymous law that “in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level if incompetence. This classic cornerstone of organizational thought is still charming and challenging readers since it was first published in 1969.
Smart Policies for Workplace Technologies: E-mail, Blogs, Cell Phones & More
By Martin Schram
362.86097 Sc
Use this guide to create or update your workplace policies for technology use, protect trade secrets and privacy, and prevent employee mistakes and misuse.
Why Unions Matter
By Michael D. Yates
331.88097 Ya
A comprehensive and readable introduction to the history, structure, functioning and the problems of U.S. unions. The author uses simple language, clear data, and engaging examples to explain why workers need unions.
This list features non-fiction titles but whereas fiction can be an equally effective teacher you could also try the following working life novels: The Flowers by Dagoberto Gilb, Empire Falls, by Richard Russo, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris and Incendiary by Chris Cleve.
• Carolyn Larson, head librarian at Lihu‘e Public Library, brings you the buzz on new, popular and good books available at your neighborhood library. Book annotations are culled from online publishers’ descriptions and published reviews.
