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The Enthusiastic Employee

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The Enthusiastic Employee

How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want

Wharton School Publishing,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Motivate your employees by giving them what they`ve been asking for: equity, achievement and camaraderie.

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Just about anyone who supervises other people would benefit from reading this book, which reports the findings of three decades of research involving some 2.5 million employees in 237 companies. The book's research-based motivational strategies are immediately applicable to your company's morale and productivity. Authors David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind and Michael Irwin Meltzer deliver revealing statistics, useful definitions and illuminating case histories in pretty accessible prose, given the book's survey-driven foundation. The one lack is that they do not set guidelines for distinguishing legitimately dissatisfied employees from the few workers who will never have a good attitude - no matter what you do. And, as the authors make clear, some managers are set in their ways, habitually act superior to their workers and will not tend to employee motivation. For such managers, this book - and most others - will prove useless. However, if you have an open mind and genuinely want to improve morale and productivity, getAbstract.com recommends this thorough work on motivation.

Summary

Equity, Achievement and Camaraderie - The Three Motivators

Some managers ask why they must bother to motivate their employees. What difference does it make? First, basic humanitarianism requires you to treat people well. However, compelling business reasons also exist for doing so. To succeed, your company needs "enthusiastic employees" who identify with its goals and pour extra energy into their work. The result is happier customers and higher productivity. Across the board, companies with high morale outperform their competitors by roughly 20%. In contrast, discouraged employees tend to withdraw their energy and do only enough work to get by, so their companies' results suffer.

As a manager, you've probably heard many theories about how to motivate employees, if only informally, in such statements as, "Being paid well should be enough for them." In fact, the concept of "transactional management" believes that work is an economic exchange, so just paying your employees should be sufficient to motivate them. Many theories of this nature focus on some single factor, such as salary, environment or communication, and claim that addressing that one pivotal issue will solve...

About the Authors

David Sirota, founder and chairman emeritus of a private consulting practice, has a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan. Before joining Sirota's practice, Louis A. Mischkind was program director of executive development for a major company; he has a Ph.D. in organizational psychology from NYU. Michael Irwin Meltzer served as general counsel for Sirota's firm for 20 years before becoming its managing director in 2001.

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