The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want, Second Edition

Book description

This book is about employee enthusiasm: that special, invigorating, purposeful and emotional state that’s always present in the most successful organizations. Most people are enthusiastic when they’re hired: hopeful, ready to work hard, eager to contribute. What happens? Management, that’s what. The Enthusiastic Employee is an action-oriented book that helps companies obtain more from workers - the basic premise is that under the right kind of leadership, the more one side wins in a collaborative relationship, the more for the other side.   The book is heavily evidence-based (using extensive employee survey data) and lays out two basic ideas:  the “Three-Factor Theory” of human motivation at work and the “Partnership” company culture that is based on the Three-Factor Theory and that, by far, brings out the best in people as they respond with enthusiasm about what they do and the company they do it for.   Drawing on research with 13,000,000+ employees in 840+  companies, The Enthusiastic Employee, Second Edition tells you what managers (from first-line supervisor to senior leadership) do wrong. Then it tells you something much more important: what to do instead.   David Sirota and Douglas Klein detail exactly how to create an environment where enthusiasm flourishes and businesses excel. Extensively updated with new research, case studies, and techniques (they have added over 8.6 million employees and over 400 companies to their analyses ), it now contains a detailed  study of Mayo Clinic, one of the world’s most effective healthcare organizations and a true representation of the principle of partnership, as well as more in-depth descriptions of private sector exemplars of partnership, such as Costco.  Other new chapters include: how the Great Recession really impacted workers’ morale (bottom-line, it didn’t) and how to build a true Partnership Culture that starts with senior leadership.   They now debunk fashionable theories of worker “generations” (Baby Boomers, Gen X, Y, etc.) as mostly nonsense… clarify what they’ve learned about making business ethics and corporate social responsibility actionable… share what research on merit pay (pay for individual performance) tells us about its likely impact on school teachers and performance  (not good)…discuss the utility of teleworking (and the dust-up at Yahoo)…offer compelling, data-informed insights about women and minorities in the workplace, and much more. You can have enthusiastic employees, and it does matter – more than it ever has. Whether you’re a business leader, HR/talent management professional, or strategist, that’s the workforce you need – and this is the book that will help you get it.

Table of contents

  1. About This eBook
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication Page
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. About the Authors
  8. About the Second Edition
  9. Our New Website
  10. Part I: Worker Motivation, Morale, and Performance
    1. 1. What Workers Want—The Big Picture
      1. Blame It on the Young
      2. Myths About the Work Itself
      3. The Sirota Three-Factor Theory
      4. The Specific Evidence for the Three-Factor Theory
      5. Individual Differences
    2. 2. Employee Enthusiasm and Business Success
      1. Making the Connection
      2. Telling Us in Their Own Words
      3. A Few Leading Organizations
      4. “Enthusiasm” Versus “Engagement”
      5. Enthusiasm and Performance: The Research Evidence
      6. Building the People Performance Model
  11. Part II: Enthusiastic Workforces, Motivated by Fair Treatment
    1. 3. Job Security
      1. Specific Job Security Policies and Practices
    2. 4. Compensation
      1. Money as Seen by Workers
      2. Money as Seen by Employers
      3. Levels of Pay
      4. Recommendations
      5. A Note on Merit Pay for Teachers
    3. 5. The Impact of the Great Recession: Flight to Preservation
      1. The Survey Results
    4. 6. Respect
      1. The Heart of Respect
      2. The Specifics of Respectful Treatment
  12. Part III: Enthusiastic Workforces, Motivated by Achievement
    1. 7. Organization Purpose and Principles
      1. Elements of Pride in One’s Company
      2. Ethics in the Treatment of Employees
      3. Getting Practical: Translating Statements of Purposes and Principles into Practice
    2. 8. Job Enablement
      1. Ah, Bureaucracy! The Evil That Just Won’t Go Away
      2. A Management Style That Works
      3. Layers of Management
      4. The Benefits of Self-Managed Teams
      5. Telecommuting: Yahoo Bans Work-From-Home
    3. 9. Job Challenge
      1. Is This an Aberration, Are Workers Delusional, or Are They Lying?
      2. Given a Choice, Few People Volunteer to Fail
      3. Push and Pull
    4. 10. Feedback, Recognition, and Reward
      1. Do Workers Get the Feedback They Need?
      2. Guidance
      3. A Short Course on Giving Cognitive Feedback
      4. Evaluation, Recognition, and Reward
      5. What Makes for Effective Recognition of Workers?
      6. Advancement
      7. The Other Side of the Equation: Dealing with Unsatisfactory Performance
      8. Feedback Sets Priorities
  13. Part IV: Enthusiastic Workforces, Motivated by Camaraderie
    1. 11. Teamwork
      1. A Look Back
      2. Are We Doing Better Now?
      3. Socializing While Working
      4. Uncooperative Co-Workers Have an Exponentially Negative Effect
      5. Contentious Workgroups Are Drags on the Organization
      6. Building Partnership
      7. How Can the Misperceptions Be Uncovered, Confronted, and Corrected?
      8. Lay the Foundation Prior to the Workshop
      9. Establish Workshop Ground Rules
      10. A Typical Workshop Agenda
      11. Action Example: IT and Its Users
  14. Part V: Bringing It All Together: The Culture of Partnership
    1. 12. The Culture of Partnership
      1. Application to Other Constituencies
      2. A Cultural Case Study of Mayo Clinic
      3. Partnership in These Times
    2. 13. Leadership and the Partnership Culture
      1. The Critical Importance of Effective Leadership
      2. Trust
      3. Charisma
      4. The Nine Key Leadership Attributes
    3. 14. Translating Partnership Theory into Partnership Practice
      1. It Starts at the Top
      2. The Action Process
  15. Endnotes
    1. Introduction
    2. Part I
    3. Chapter 1
    4. Chapter 2
    5. Part II
    6. Chapter 3
    7. Chapter 4
    8. Chapter 5
    9. Chapter 6
    10. Part III
    11. Chapter 7
    12. Chapter 8
    13. Chapter 9
    14. Chapter 10
    15. Part IV
    16. Chapter 11
    17. Part V
    18. Chapter 12
    19. Chapter 13
    20. Chapter 14
  16. Index

Product information

  • Title: The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want, Second Edition
  • Author(s): David Sirota, Douglas A. Klein
  • Release date: July 2013
  • Publisher(s): Pearson
  • ISBN: 9780133249040