About Us.

We’re Jane and James. We’re based in Edinburgh, Scotland, but work around the world. We have a small team and associates sometimes help us too. We all love helping to improve the world of work.

Our Goal.

The World of Work Project is striving to shape a world of work that is better for everyone.

We are working towards a world where work is more fulfilling for individuals, where teams are more effective at what they do and where organizations are more responsible, having a more positive impact on the wider world.

Our Approach.

Collaborative

All the work we do, whether it’s training or consulting, is done in an active and collaborative way.

Our workshops and development programmes are highly activity based, even when online, and we see our strengths as facilitation and group engagement. We add value to groups and teams by helping them explore new subjects, challenge their ways of working, refine their thoughts, move forward quickly and achieve significantly more than they would on their own.

When we support consultation and change programmes, we always strive to co-create our approach with employees in the organizations we support.

Learning Led

At The World of Work Project we believe that everything we do best as humans is Learning Led.

This means every activity and interaction we create is intended to help us and our participants learn. We bring our own love of learning to everything we do, which helps inspire the people we work with to continue to learn and grow even after we have finished working with them.

This learning led approach helps us get the best out of ourselves and those we work with, whether we are delivering learning and development initiatives or supporting culture or organizational change.

Kind

We are always kind in our interactions with our clients, who are often going through complex and challenging periods of change.

We work hard to be aware of the systems, context and other team dynamics that may be affecting those we work with, and we are always considerate in our efforts to help people think in new and different ways about the immediate tasks ahead, and the longer-term future they are transitioning into.

At the end of the day, we want to improve things, and being kind, inclusive and considerate is part of this.

Critical & Plural Views

We are passionate about approaching all theories and ideas with a critical eye.

We think debate and discussion is important in the learning and development journey and we encourage our participants to do the same.

We work as a team in much of our material to encourage participants to see different perspectives and views and to challenge their own assumptions as well as ours.

Who We Are.

We are a Community Interest Company based in Edinburgh, Scotland. We have contributions from many brilliant people around the world who have written articles, contributed to podcasts, provided coaching, training, facilitation, consulting or speaking services or who have simply provided support along the way. You can read more about the excellent individuals who are supporting this project in various places on this website.

All these efforts are curated, coordinated and shepherded by James Carrier and Jane Stewart, who started working on this project in 2018 in Edinburgh. You can read more about James and Jane below.

James Carrier.

James is a coach, trainer and facilitator who really enjoys helping people to create better experiences at work for themselves and for their colleagues. He believes that when we do this, that performance also improves.

Before being part of the World of Work project, James worked in Financial Services as a chartered accountant and project manager. He’s also run a bar/restaurant and he started his career as an Auditor. His best job was probably working in a video shop.

Outside of “work” James loves a good meal and going running. He also likes to travel when he can and he spends far too much time reading political and business news on the internet.

Laura Fairley.

Laura is the newest member of the World of Work, having joined the team at the start of 2023 as our business development manager. She is passionate about encouraging people to be their best self in the workplace and believes that when teams work collaboratively, amazing things can flourish.

She has a varied background having started out as an office junior for a Solicitor’s upon leaving school. More recently, she worked within Financial Services for almost 14 years and held various Finance roles before taking a career break in 2021 to raise her young family.

When she isn’t working or being ‘Mum’, Laura enjoys running, walking and anything else which involves being by the sea!

Jane Stewart.

Jane is a facilitator, coach, mentor and leadership and strategy development consultant.

As well as her coaching, leadership development and strategy experience, Jane has twenty years experience leading organisations and teams and has a master’s degree in organizational psychology.

Jane spent the majority of her career creating and delivering successful change programs in membership sports organizations and charities, and now coaches and consults for a range of clients, primarily from the third sector.

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