Eugenie Harvey knows all about being disillusioned with working for a large company. So much so, she left financial PR company Brunswick in London to compile Change The World For A Fiver, a bestseller that gave 50 tips on how to help society, which was endorsed by celebrities and politicians including UK chancellor Gordon Brown.

Now the 37-year-old Australian is turning her focus to helping big corporations make their employees feel their work is meaningful. Harvey's latest book, Change The World 9 To 5, gives employers and their staff 50 simple actions to improve the world from the workplace.

"Whenever I talk about Change The World For A Fiver at companies, staff events or conferences, there is always a queue of people who approach me afterwards and say they don't feel fulfilled working for a big company," Harvey said. "Unless companies find a way to give their staff a meaningful experience in their working life, they will lose good people.

"Companies should be pursuing volunteering initiatives, thinking about how to enable employees to have a voice, thinking about their work practices, and changing the culture of the organisation. Also, employees should believe in what the company stands for publicly."

Corporations are feeling the pressure to improve their reputation both in the public eye and among their employees. Last month, UK supermarket giant Tesco unveiled plans to create a £100 million (€145 million) environmental technology fund that it will use to find more sustainable sources of energy for its 1,900 British stores.

However, sceptics said the supermarket chain announced the measure because of protests about its high share of the UK grocery market and that Tesco's "green" investment is a drop in the ocean for a company that has £3 billion worth of capital expenditure this year and has earmarked £250 million alone for setting up stores in the US.

"People accept that companies have to make a profit, but they are less accepting of obscene profits and can read whether or not a business is doing something for the right reason," Harvey said.

Change The World 9 To 5, due to be launched in September, gives employees and employers alike 50 ideas on how to improve their working life and the environment. These include: praise people at work; speak rather than e-mail; give as you earn; be nice to temps; introduce "bring your children to work day"; blow the whistle on workplace bullies, and start a car pool.

"The western world has a spiralling epidemic of mental health. People need to get control back of their lives and to get a perspective on things," Harvey says of the book's tips on how to create a more relaxed and enjoyable working environment.

Far from being miffed at Harvey's departure from Brunswick, the company's founder, Alan Parker, set out to help her and her new cause. He gave his former employee free office space in Brunswick's basement and brought her to meet David Robinson, the head of Community Links in London's East End. From Brunswick the two started the We Are What We Do movement, aimed at inspiring people to use their everyday actions to change the world.

"More and more, we are coming together around big brands and companies, supporting them through our consumption," Harvey said. "So we wondered how we could learn from the world of marketing and branding. We came up with We Are What We Do."

More than 70 creative people, such as illustrators, designers and artists, worked for free on putting the movement's 50 simple everyday actions that can save the world into a book.

The publishers and distributors of Change The World For A Fiver didn't charge the movement for their services, so it could keep the retail price at £5. The book's tips range from smiling at someone, giving blood and reading a child a story to using fewer plastic bags and turning off the tap while brushing your teeth.

The book was launched by Gordon Brown in 2004 and has since sold more than half a million copies. Companies such as Coca-Cola, Accenture and Morgan Stanley bought copies and gave them to their customers. Standard Chartered even paid the cost of printing more books when the movement ran out of cash following the publication of the first 50,000 copies.

Ms Harvey is looking for similar help from companies in the Republic to publish the Irish edition of Change The World 9 To 5. She will be in Ireland on May 11th to conduct a keynote speech at the chq corporate social responsibility conference at the IFSC.