What Are You Working For?: How to Make Work Work for You

An accessible and approachable guide to work and careers from a trusted and authoritative source. The Future-Proof Career looks at the new way of working in a post-pandemic world and shows you how to make work work for you, no matter what stage of your career you’re at.

Whether you’re the boss, the deputy or on your way up, the way we’re working in a post-pandemic world is forever changed and it’s important to make your work work for you. This is a book about how to do work differently, written by the host of the award-winning Financial Times ’Working It’ podcast. Packed with expert analysis and ahead-of-the-curve workplace trends, this book looks at the big ideas shaping the world of work today and the old habits we need to lose, examining these pressing topics in depth and bringing in expert opinion and personal experience, with key takeaways summarised at the end of each chapter.

This modern guide to the world of work can be used by everyone - both employed and self-employed, anyone working in new hybrid working practices, or to the many individuals who set up on their own after the pandemic and are navigating a new way of working. The book is split into two sections - Staff and Managers. This works for both groups, as most people are managed and/or aspire to be higher up and so can be dipped into for expert advice and guidance at any stage of your career.

Covering topics as wide-ranging as the four-day working week, bridging the workplace generation gap, making sure your company walks its diversity talk, quiet quitting and the great resignation, achieving workplace equality and even micro-dosing for creativity, The Future-Proof Career spreads the word about understanding modern workplaces so we can all have happier, more productive lives.

This book will help you to navigate the world of work now, tell you how it might change in future - and how you can prepare. Get ahead of uncertainty and take control of your career.

Isabel Berwick is the host of the FT’s award-winning Working It podcast and co-writes the weekly Working It newsletter. Isabel joined the FT in 1999 from the Independent on Sunday, where she was business editor. She held several senior editing roles on FT Weekend and the Opinion desk before taking up the role of Work & Careers Editor at the Financial Times, overseeing a department that covers management, leadership, working life, graduate careers - and the huge issue of the future of work. She is editorial co-lead on the 50/50 Equality Project, which works towards more representation of diverse voices in the FT, and is editorial lead for the FT Women in Business Forum.