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

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:
Acknowledgments    xi About the Authors    xiii About the Second Edition    xv Our New Website    xx Introduction    1 Asking the Questions    4 Asking the Right Questions    4 Questions Result in Data    6 After the Honeymoon    11 A Quick Look at “Old-Fashioned” Theories    12 Solid Theory, Research, and Management Practice to Which We Are in Debt    15 How This Book Is Organized    15 Part I  Worker Motivation, Morale, and Performance    17 Chapter 1  What Workers Want—The Big Picture    19 Blame It on the Young    20 The Lordstown Strike and Job Enrichment “Solution”    22 The Generation Gap Mythology Re-Emerges    24 Myths About the Work Itself    29 The Sirota Three-Factor Theory    32 The Specific Evidence for the Three-Factor Theory    45 How the Three Factors Work in Combination    52 Racial/Ethnic and Gender Differences    55 Individual Differences    62 Chapter 2  Employee Enthusiasm and Business Success    67 Making the Connection    67 Telling Us in Their Own Words    69 A Few Leading Organizations    74 “Enthusiasm” Versus “Engagement”    79 Enthusiasm and Performance: The Research Evidence    81 Building the People Performance Model    86 Part II  Enthusiastic Workforces, Motivated by Fair Treatment    93 Chapter 3  Job Security    95 Specific Job Security Policies and Practices    107 Chapter 4  Compensation    117 Money as Seen by Workers    117 Money as Seen by Employers    118 Levels of Pay    122 Paying for Performance    133 Recommendations    143 A Note on Merit Pay for Teachers    157 Chapter 5  The Impact of the Great Recession: Flight to Preservation    161 The Survey Results    165 The Role of Management    176 Chapter 6  Respect    181 The Heart of Respect    184 Humiliating Treatment    186 Indifferent Treatment    188 The Specifics of Respectful Treatment    193 Physical Conditions of Work    195 Status Distinctions    196 Compensation Status Is a Fundamental Distinction    200 Job Autonomy    203 Constrained Communication    206 Part III  Enthusiastic Workforces, Motivated by Achievement    213 Chapter 7  Organization Purpose and Principles    215 Elements of Pride in One’s Company    215 The Impact on Performance of “Doing Good”    219 Short- Versus Long-Term Profit Horizon    225 More About Purpose    231 More About Principles    232 Ethics in the Treatment of Employees    233 Getting Practical: Translating Statements of Purposes and Principles into Practice    238 Chapter 8  Job Enablement    255 Ah, Bureaucracy! The Evil That Just Won’t Go Away    262 A Management Style That Works    269 Layers of Management    274 The Benefits of Self-Managed Teams    278 Telecommuting: Yahoo Bans Work-From-Home    283 Chapter 9  Job Challenge    295 Is This an Aberration, Are Workers Delusional, or Are They Lying?    297 Given a Choice, Few People Volunteer to Fail    300 Push and Pull    302 Chapter 10  Feedback, Recognition, and Reward    313 Do Workers Get the Feedback They Need?    313 Guidance    315 A Short Course on Giving Cognitive Feedback    318 Evaluation, Recognition, and Reward    330 What Makes for Effective Recognition of Workers?    333 Advancement    340 The Other Side of the Equation: Dealing with Unsatisfactory Performance    343 Feedback Sets Priorities    347 Part IV  Enthusiastic Workforces, Motivated by Camaraderie    349 Chapter 11  Teamwork    351 A Look Back    352 Are We Doing Better Now?    353 Socializing While Working    354 Uncooperative Co-Workers Have an Exponentially Negative Effect    356 Contentious Workgroups Are Drags on the Organization    357 Building Partnership    362 How Can the Misperceptions Be Uncovered, Confronted, and Corrected?    364 Lay the Foundation Prior to the Workshop    367 Establish Workshop Ground Rules    367 A Typical Workshop Agenda    369 Action Example: IT and Its Users    370 Part V  Bringing It All Together: The Culture of Partnership    375 Chapter 12  The Culture of Partnership    377 Application to Other Constituencies    395 A Cultural Case Study of Mayo Clinic    396 Partnership in These Times    405 Chapter 13  Leadership and the Partnership Culture    411 The Critical Importance of Effective Leadership    412 Trust    414 Charisma    417 The Nine Key Leadership Attributes    421 Chapter 14  Translating Partnership Theory into Partnership Practice    431 It Starts at the Top    433 The Action Process    436 Endnotes    457 Index    479  

About the Author :
David Sirota has two abiding professional interests: organization behavior and survey research. Both of these interests took hold at the University of Michigan, where he received his doctorate, and where he worked at that university’s Institute for Social Research, a leading center for applying survey methods to the study of organizations. Upon receiving his doctorate, David was recruited by International Business Machines (IBM) to help initiate behavioral science research there. He stayed at IBM for 12 years in a variety of research and executive positions, leaving in 1972 to set up his own firm, Sirota Consulting, now simply Sirota. The firm specializes in the diagnosis and improvement of the relationships of organizations with all of their key constituencies: employees, customers, suppliers, investors, and communities. In 1996, David became chairman emeritus of the firm, after completing his own succession plan with key employees. He continues to consult with selected clients, primarily on matters of leadership, and collaboration and conflict within and between organizations.   Parallel to his career as a consultant, David has had an academic career, having taught at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations of Cornell University, the School of Industrial Administration of Yale University, the Sloan School of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.   David is married with two children and lives in New York City.   Douglas Klein is, likewise, steeped in survey research, with 25 years of experience in the field. Prior to joining Sirota, he worked for AT&T, building leadership assessment centers and conducting employee research, and then at Time Warner, where he conducted employee and customer satisfaction research. Doug brought his insights into employee and customer research to Sirota and helped launch its “linkage” efforts, statistically relating employee attitudes, customer attitudes, and “hard” business metrics. He managed the normative database for the firm for more than a decade (on which so much in the book’s first and second editions is based) and is seen by many as a real historian of employee attitudes. His current role as the firm’s chief leadership advisor allows him to apply his strong analytical skills and decades of client experience to issues of organizational values and culture and to the day-to-day problems faced by senior executives in the management of their companies.   Doug is an active advisor, speaker, and writer. (See his blog on www.sirota.com and search for the many articles he has authored or to which he has contributed.) He holds a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology from New York University.   Doug lives in Merrick, New York, with his wife Ilene and their two children.