ABSTRACT
This chapter explores coping with the ‘new normal’ of work and life. It sets out the changing nature of how work is structured often stimulated by the challenges of the pandemic: working from home, the role of technology and the greater need for ‘digital fluency’, from employment to deployment, and from hierarchies to teamwork not forgetting the movement towards a four-day week. But perhaps the pandemic has also given us a ‘unique moment’ to reimagine the way we work. Giving us the opportunity to think about why we work in the way that we do. To move from the idea of work–life balance to work life integration. From this context different ways are explored that may help us to make this transition. This chapter discusses the ideas involved in relationship coping, empathic coping, the ideas of positive emotions and stress related growth branching into benefit reminding coping and even cyberloafing coping but also turning to specific coping strategies for managing the pandemic. It ends by exploring how this reconstruction of work now needs new managerial skills to give people meaningful work that engages their skills, talents, capabilities and emotions.
