Policy and Practice April 2019

book review

Workaches: The Neuroscience Guide to Surviving and Thriving at Work

I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Cohen a few years ago when she accepted an invita- tion to speak at an event sponsored by my organi- zation, which represents public-sector leaders in the health and human services field. As soon as I heard her speak, I was hooked. Through mastery of her field, the ability to trans- late science into actionable knowledge, and the will- ingness to share her own story with humor and vulnerability, Dr. Cohen helped spark a movement busy executives, including myself, to push the pause button and self-reflect on how we “show up” to work each day. I quickly found myself asking: Am I now underway in our field. Her remarks led

One of the key strategic partners in APHSA’s health and human services workforce initiative (Igniting the Potential), Dr. Beth A. Cohen, and her professional partner, Deborah Winograd, have published a new book entitled Workaches: the Neuroscience Guide to Surviving and Thriving at Work. APHSA’s CEO, Tracy Wareing Evans, received a sneak peak and shared her insights in the book’s foreword reprinted here. W hat keeps you up at night? I have asked that question—of senior executives, department direc- tors, field managers, and frontline staff—countless times over the course of my career in human services. While individual responses inevitably vary, concerns about the workforce—the very people we rely on to make work happen—are consistently top of mind across all organizational levels. In health and human services, senior leaders express this worry in terms of turnover rates and the struggle to recruit and retain the right talent. For field supervisors and staff, it mani- fests as stress and job dissatisfaction due to workload burdens, insufficient resources, and required tasks that detract from the reason he or she was drawn to the job in the first place. Inherent in both vantage points is the recognition that the workforce is critical to accomplishing the goals of any organization, and to excel, all employees from the front line to the board room must be healthy, well, and engaged with their work. Workaches helps all of us dig deeper to understand what underlies

walking my own talk, especially as to self-care? What is it that I need to be my best self at work and with others? Do I know enough about my own inter- actions at work to assess how the rest of the workforce is doing? I realized these were fundamental questions that I had too often overlooked. I became a willing student of Dr. Cohen, and by extension, her long-time professional partner, Dr. Winograd. Fast forward to today. Workaches provides powerful insights into what it takes to enhance organizational cultures and ignite the potential in others, starting with ourselves. In

these enduring challenges. Through clinical expertise, thousands of hours spent with staff at all levels, and a resolute focus on how our lived experiences—as well as our genetic inheritances—shape our interactions in the workplace, Drs. Winograd and Cohen shed light on why so many of us struggle to survive at work, rather than thrive. By connecting the incredible strides in what we now know about the functioning of the human brain (neu- roscience) with an insightful look at the evolving and highly complex world of work today, Workaches illuminates a way forward for all of us.

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Policy&Practice   April 2019