Research on the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of quantum systems has so far produced important statements on the thermodynamics of small systems undergoing quantum mechanical evolutions. Key examples are provided by the Crooks and Jarzynski relations: taking into account fluctuations in non-equilibrium dynamics, such relations connect equilibrium properties of thermodynamical relevance with explicit non-equilibrium features. Although the experimental verification of such fundamental relations in the classical domain has encountered some success, their quantum mechanical version requires the assessment of the statistics of work performed by or onto an evolving quantum system, a step that has so far encountered considerable difficulties in its implementation due to the practical difficulty to perform reliable projective measurements of instantaneous energy states. In this talk I will outline a proposal [1] based on quantum phase estimation to extract quantum work statistics without the need to resort to projective measurements. In addition I shall discuss an experimental collaboration which has successfully implemented the proposal in an NMR setting [2]. I will also comment on some future extensions and directions on the theoretical side. [1] R. Dorner, S.R. Clark, L. Heaney, R. Fazio, J. Goold, and V. Vedral. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110 230601 (2013) [2] T. Batalhão, A.M. Souza, L. Mazzola, R. Auccaise, I.S. Oliveira, J. Goold, G. De Chiara, M. Paternostro, R.M. Serra. arXiv.org:quant-ph/1308.3241v1 (2013)