Keywords
Citation
Morris, A. (2000), "Staying Healthy at Work", The Electronic Library, Vol. 18 No. 6, pp. 448-469. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2000.18.6.448.12
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
This short, easy‐to‐read book is aimed at giving advice to managers on how to juggle the pressure of demanding schedules, colleagues and commitments. It contains seven chapters. The first chapter examines health awareness, the mind/body concept and self‐help techniques to enable people adopt healthy lifestyles. Next is a chapter on stress, how you can manage it, and its relationship with health and work. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 provide case studies about people that have complaints about their physical or mental health. These include people complaining about some bodily ache or pain; people that are confused about their professional and personal relationships and about why their current behaviours are not getting the job done; and people whose behaviour does not convey their intentions, giving rise to unexpected reactions from others. The book teases out the choices you would make and the strategies that could be adopted to solve the problems in each case. Chapter six explores six areas of mind/body health that are considered important to the overall wellbeing of managers: psychological outlook, social support, diet, physical exercise, alcohol consumption and other behaviour and concerns. The final chapter is very short and emphasises the need for health planning; making personal health objectives and goals and keeping them.
As with other books in the Gower Lifeskills series readers are expected to complete exercises every few pages to get the most benefit. Spaces are given for the answers. Because of this, it cannot be recommended for purchase by libraries. The book gives sound, if not original advice, and is an interesting read. My main gripe is that the title is a little misleading. Much of the book is really about adopting a healthy lifestyle generally and some topics that might be expected to be included, given the title, are missing, for example, information overload and the relationship between health and good workplace design.