This Working Life

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 Bureau of Statistics found that in the first 3 months of this year one point one million people without a job wanted one, with one million available to start within four weeks. Job application numbers per role are up as well. Employment website Seek found that in May this year job advert numbers were down 4.5% on May last year, and that applications per job advert have gone up 5.5% in a year.  

So what can we do if we need a gig? How do we prepare ourselves and our children for a rapidly changing world of work? 

Lisa digs into the data and goes hunting for answers for you. 

Guests: 

Hari Hara Priya Kannan - Chief Data Scientist at The Demographics Group 

Nic Cola - CEO of RMIT Online 

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You can find more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

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" to give you the tools to break the hex! 

Guest:

Dr Ruth Gotian: Success researcher, Associate Professor at Columbia University and Author of The Success Factor and the Financial Times Guide to Mentoring.

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You can find more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

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. 

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.  

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 Talya Bauer - Professor of Management at Portland State University 

Sarah McCann-Bartlett - Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the Australian HR Institute 

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You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

AI usage is on the rise, but its implementation within jobs and workflows is causing problems. 

Research shows there is a capability gap amongst Australian workers, and a lack of AI fluency and context-poor AI use is creating job strain. 

What can leaders do to turn this around?

Guests: 

Dr Rebecca Hinds, head of the Work AI Institute at Glean 

Dr Sean Gallagher, founder of Humanova and the former Director of Swinburne University's Centre for the New Workforce

Tying together what your team does within your organisation’s strategy is a key skill for middle managers and something workers at all levels can benefit from.  

Learn how a strategy is put together and ways you can work towards it. 

Guests:

Brandon Lee, Associate Professor at Melbourne Business School, consultant, researcher and executive educator   

Rebecca Murray, principal of strategy consultancy, Marlborough and Ferdinand 

If you’re always busy but feel as though you’re not getting on top of things, you may be experiencing cognitive and emotional overload. 

Liane Davey, the ‘Teamwork Doctor’, calls this “thoughtload” and offers ways to manage overwhelm and focus attention, to improve productivity and wellbeing in individuals and teams. 

Guest:

Liane Davey PhD organisational psychologist and author Thoughtload: Manage the Madness and free your Team to do great Work

Once you’ve made the decision to quit your job, it’s worth considering how to do it in a way that fits the situation. 

The researcher who coined the term, “The Great Resignation” shares his insights on different resignation styles, from the “grateful goodbye” to “bridge burning” and what managers can learn from the way employees quit.  

Guest:

Professor Anthony C. Klotz, UCL School of Management, author Jolted, Why we Quit, When to Stay and Why it Matters

Check out our companion episode Should you really quit your job?

The researcher who coined the term, "The Great Resignation", says most of us are only one event away from quitting our jobs. 

He calls them “jolts” and describes the one that led Oprah to quit her new job at 60 Minutes, and Jürgen Klopp to give up his successful role as manager of Liverpool FC. 

What motivates us to quit, what should we consider before we do it? 

Guest:

Professor Anthony C. Klotz, UCL School of Management, author Jolted, Why we Quit, When to Stay and Why it Matters

Look out for our companion episode Try This: how to quit in your podcast feed.