Eos Life-Work

A gateway to the world of
Work, career and community psychology

Site updated 14 February 2009

Welcome! This site offers a summary of Eos services for individuals and employers and a resource centre with reports and internet links for our clients and professional network contacts.

If you are looking for personal career advice in South East England see details of Eos Life-Career Planning programmes. Employers, Human Resources, Occupational Health and other professionals are also welcome to use the site for briefing notes on a range of life and work issues or to request Occupational Psychology services see For your organisation and Professional networking sections.

The Eos Life-Work website offers ideas and practical information about getting the most out of life and work. It also explains ideas from work and community psychology that raise challenging issues and opportunities for employers, researchers, governments and the media.

Dai Williams started Eos in October 1986. To celebrate our 22nd anniversary we are offering a special discount for private and corporate clients, and a free upgrade pack to former Eos clients. Contact Dai for further details.

Free career briefing notes include two files in the Life-Work Themes section - an updated version of our get-a-life time chart to check your life-work balance, plus Fun without fear - notes about safe and dangerous relationships at work including bullying and emotional relationships. The Career First Aid and Transition management pages may be relevant in many organisations - particularly in the Finance sector - in the psychological aftermath of the Sub-prime crisis in the USA and the consequent Northern Rock crisis in the UK

Surviving and thriving in times of trauma and change: The Community Projects section includes includes psychological aspects of political changes. In view of the global financial crisis I have added a collection of reports about Psychological Effects of the UK 1990's Recession (added Oct 2008) that may be important in the uncertain economic outlook for 2009. Other sections are relevant to recent elections in the USA, Israel and other countries and to the first year leadership transition period for new national leaders and governments. Similar mass transition periods may also apply to whole communities or nations after wars and natural disasters. Previous reports also included psychological aspects of ongoing global security concerns for the airline industry UK airport security crisis . And it covers health and safety issues and psychological aftermaths in war zones (eg Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Israeli / Lebanon conflict ) relevant to aid workers, peacekeeping forces and media crews as well as civilian communities. These are directly relevant to recent or ongoing conflicts e.g. in Georgia, Sri Lanka and Gaza.

Career and personal development and change

Eos aims to help individuals and organisations
- to survive and thrive in the world of work, and
- to balance work performance with personal development and quality of life.
The site offers practical information for people about work, study and life issues. We also cover new developments in work and community psychology that raise challenging issues for employers, researchers, governments and the media.

The Life-Work themes section contains articles about some of the most frequent hazards and opportunities our clients discuss with us. These include career development, coping with career crises, trauma, change and seeking a healthier work-life balance. e.g. Career First Aid, Safe and dangerous organisations and Managing Life-Work Boundaries. These may be of interest or encouragement to individuals and employers, or to people who are concerned about a friend or relative in crisis with their work or study. Working long hours? If you have Excel on your computer click here to check your own work life balance.

Services for employers

Eos mainly works with private individuals but several employers who intially referred staff in crisis to us have seen the value of using career and personal development techniques for developing talented staff and in senior management. See Organisation Services for examples and latest updates for international trauma support contacts.

We often work closely with Human Resources and Occupational Health professionals and exchange ideas and information, contacts and action research through Professional Networking between different professions, between pratitioners and researchers including e.g. the UK Forum for Organizational Health and with health and employment specialists in other countries.

We welcome interest in Work Life Balance in the UK in recent years. This subject goes in and out of fashion for political parties and the media. But maintaining a healthy balance between personal life and work demands is a major issue in many industries and many countries. Key issues are described in Managing the Life-Work Boundary . Over 11% of UK staff work over 60 hours a week (plus travelling time). The physical and mental fitness of staff is far more important to their productivity than the hours they work.

Gradual changes have enabled organisations to develop healthier working practices instead the outdated long hours culture. Talented senior staff in strategic roles are quitting organisations that make excessive demands on their time. Long hours working increases stress, fatigue and the risk of serious errors - from strategic errors by top executives to work and driving accidents for other staff. Healthy organisations are likely to be more effective and safer. See Safe and Dangerous Organisations. These hazards apply to many Government organisations (e.g. health and education) as well as to commercial organisations - and to Government itself.

The economic downturn of 2000-2003 challenged many organisations and countries. It required different thinking strategies from the economic growth of the late 90's. Stock markets have gradually recovered since 2003 but UK employment rates remains unstable. Recent anxieties in international financial markets may create new anxieties for people with large loans or mortgages. Eos career assessments with hundreds of people shows that different personality types have very different ways of coping with change e.g. some people seen as misfits or mavericks in old organisations may have new insights into surviving unstable business conditions. We suggest new ways of working to individuals and can offer briefings and consultancy advice to employers who are managing change.

International networks

Internet users from 144 countries have visted the Eos Life-Work website since December 1999. Welcome back if you have visited before and greetings if this is your first visit. To read the site in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese or Korean go to Babelfish translation, enter the Eos URL http://www.eoslifework.co.uk and choose your language.

Communities in crisis

Since 1993 I have used some of the practical techniques that help individuals to manage loss, stress, and change to study how communities, politicians and governments cope with trauma and change. See the Community Projects section for studies about the UK, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, USA and Afghanistan. Early projects included working with self-help groups coping with unemployment during the last UK Recession (see CSGU Handbook for support group leaders). And the Professional Networking page includes links to international Trauma Support organisations.

Over the last 6 years I have been considering the likely psychological aftermath of the traumatic and tragic events of the September 11th attacks in the United States and the War on Terrorism. The concept of transition is a powerful factor in understanding how humans respond to trauma and change see Human Responses to Change. It is essential in career psychology and for employers managing organisation change. The same process may be vital to governments and countries affected by terrorism or war. This is considered in the report Psychological Aftermath of September 11th - is there a 9-11 Transition? including reflections from a visit to New York in September 2002.

Some of these issues may be relevant to employers managing the indirect consequences of 9-11 for people in many other countries e.g. working in American companies overseas, or in countries disrupted by the war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, or may indirect effects of conflicts such as mass movements of refugees. These issues may be very important for employers sending expatriates on assignments in recent or new combat zones.

In view of the tragic and continuing violence in the Middle East the Community Projects section contains two papers which analysed psychological aspects of the Balkans war in April 1999: Rising global tension and Fear and violence in stressed populations . Both papers are still relevant in the unstable international climate, especially in the Middle East and south Asia since 2001.

In 2004 we added a new topic Living with fear & trauma - psychological aspects of global terrorism. This includes a presentation to the IATA AVSEC 2004 aviation security conference in Vancouver on psychological effects of terrorism on airline passengers and staff. These topics became relevant again in July 2005 with the 7-7 terrorist bomb attacks in London. These events are important for the public and for employers and staff in all organisations affected by terrorist attacks in London in July 2005. The aviation security issues came up again with reports of new terrorists threats against flights between the UK and USA on the 10 August.

Transition psychology appears to be a natural process that usually enables humans to survive and thrive after major trauma or change. This offers hope and encouragement to many communities that experience major crises. Some may suffer sudden traumas - from terrorist attacks and wars to natural disasters like floods, tsunamis and hurricanes.

Other communities in crisis may have suffered lingering traumas from epidemics like Foot and Mouth disease for UK farming comunities, or the SARS outbreak in Asia. Longer term disruption also comes from economic disasters e.g. Recession and unemployment.

Community psychology is not recognised as a distinct field of practice or research in the UK. But many psychological theories and technques from other fields e.g. Occupational Psychology can be applied to analysing community needs and supporting community recovery and development of healthy communities. The disastrous effects of Hurrican Kristina on the city New Orleans and neighbouring communities illustrated the importance of Community Readiness programmes as part of disaster response strategies. The chaos and disruption that actually occurred in New Orleans in 2005 was equivalent to the Eos worst case scenario for potential hazards of the Y2K Millenium bug scenario in December 1999. The Eos Community Readiness principles suggested then are equally relevant in other large scale community disaster scenario planning.

We hope this website may give encouragement and practical advice to individuals and employers in similar situations around the world. We would like to exchange ideas with other researchers and professionals that help individuals and communities to cope with periods of trauma and change, and to harness these for personal and community development.

Awareness of transition psychology may help rural and urban communities in crisis to find new hope for recovery and growth. People who are still coping with trauma and loss may find new hope and energy when some other major change affects their lives. Emotional support and economic security are key factors to psychological recovery after traumas and change - see Life Events and Career Change. But these factors are desparately scarce in poorer countries and communities traumatised by war or natural disasters. Some more powerful countries deliberately sustain fear and poverty in victim countries - not realising that these will only extend the experience of crisis and breed the most violent long term consequences as proposed in the Power or Peace project.

Health and safety in war zones

Occupational psychology includes aspects of Occupational Health and Safety as well as trauma and change. 17 years in the oil and construction industries has made me alert to toxic materials and curious about health problems faced by troops and civilians involved in combat zones, particularly since 1991 e.g. Gulf War Syndrome. In February 2002 I added a study on potential health and safety hazards associated with suspected uranium weapons for civilians, troops and expatriates in Afghanistan. These potential hazards are important for international employers and aid organisations and countries involved in a series of Post-Conflict support programmes and International Peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. The report Mystery metal nightmare in Afghanistan? was particularly intended for Occupational Health professionals and UN and other international aid agencie.

Many of the new weapon systems used in Afghanistan were also used in the second Gulf War in Iraq in 2003 and in ongoing operations in Iraq e.g. Fallujah and in Afghanistan. Until environmental contamination, and the medical condition of troops and civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq are investigated these hazards raise serious health, safety and legal responsibilities for employers and governments. This new threat was explained in Hazards of suspected Uranium weapons for Iraq (Sept 2002) in the Community Projects section. This analysis plus recent findings from the US Patent Office and preliminary medical test results for Afghan civilians were published in a second report Hazards of Uranium weapons for Afghanistan and Iraq (October 2002). In view of recent concerns about US weapons used in Falluja a new downloadable version of this report was added in Nov 2005.

These issues were debated in the European Parliament on 12 February 2003 in Strasbourg and a resolution calling for an moratorium on these weapons was passed. A new slide show summarises recent investigations and potential radiation hazards from new US weapons for civilians and troops in Iraq. Two weeks later a briefing in Westminster was offered for UK MPs, Peers and NGOs to these hazards).

The start of the Iraq war despite widespread international concern placed immense strains on international relations and the world economy. It involves specific health and safety concerns for civilians, troops and other expatriates in Iraq, with major public and occupational health implications. Each new crisis in an already unstable world is a challenge and an opportunity for community, peace and political psychology. A first post-war assessment (March 2002) considered key issues for United Nations uranium testing plans in post-conflict Iraq. To date (April 2004) UN testing in Iraq has still not been allowed to start.

In July 2006 the latest Israeli/Lebanon conflict started another post-conflict trauma cycle for communities in the Middle East. Unfortunately many of the weapon systems used were similar to those used in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq - with similar potential long term health, safety and environmental hazards. On 30th August 2006 these concerns were discussed UN priorities for investigating uranium and other suspected illegal weapons in the Israel/Lebanon conflict. I visited Lebanon in September, described in the Eos weapons study in Iraq, September 2006 - interim report and again in November 2006. These studies led to a number of discussions with UN staff and NGOs in Geneva and other concerned organisations groups in Switzerland, Austria, UK and the Middle East. A combined Lebanon report is also available.

Other Eos pages list trauma support resources and the powerful transition periods that follow major traumas (such as natural disasters, wars and terrorist attacks like 9/11) described in the Community Projects index. We hope these may be useful for traumatised communities in both Israel and Lebanon, and for aid programmes working with them.

About Eos

Eos Career Services is named after Eos, the Greek goddess of dawn and symbol of hope. It is an independent consultancy based in Surrey, UK. It was set up in 1986 by Career Consultant Dai Williams, a Chartered Occupational Psychologist. The Eos Life Work project aims to increase awareness and to offer practical advice for topical issues in the world of work. It covers our action research and international networking activities via the Internet. We liaise with other specialists in work and organizational psychology, human resource management and occupational health. We offer comprehensive career management, personal development and career crisis support programmes.

Using this site

This site has many internal and external links. Click "Back" on your browser to return to previous pages or sections. You can use the Site Guide on the left to explore different areas, or start by clicking the box below that suits your interest. To Print a page without the Site Guide click once anywhere on the page you want and set your Print options to "print selected frame":

For your life and career	For your organisation	Personnel / HR & Occupational Health
Life~work themes	Community projects	Professional networking

To contact Eos

Dai Williams, Chartered Occupational Psychologist
Eos Career Services
32 Send Road, Send
WOKING, Surrey GU23 7ET, UK

To Email your comments or questions
to us click here > eosuk@btinternet.com

Phone within UK: 01483-222017 outside UK: +44-1483-222017
[Click here for local area map - provided by Multimap.]

Public domain and copyright

Eos Life Work is a division of Eos Career Services which retains copyright for all information on this site excluding links to other organisations and references to other authors. It is offered as public domain information - free to individuals, education, academic research and community organisations provided Eos copyright is acknowledged. Prior permission is required for commercial use or publication.

page updated 14 February 2009. Copyright © Eos Career Services 2009

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