Title: The Great Workplace – How to Build it, How to keep it and Why it matters
Author: Michael Burchell and Jennifer Robin
The Great Workplace sets out to explain how working in a “great” place adds value to business results. The book is written by Michael Burchell and Jennifer Robin – founding consultants at the Great Place to Work Institute and designers of the popular survey that is published worldwide and draws on decades of research using case studies and anecdotes. Academic and statistical data is used to build their business case. Their comparison between the “Best “100 companies and the Standard and Poor 500 says it all; the 100 Best achieved 6.8 percent annualised stock returns compared to an average of 1.04 percent S&P.
The book tells a good story with case studies from many US companies. They don’t neglect Europe – in their Global Perspectives chapter, we get some comparison data – the 100 “best” European companies grew at twice the pace of the 100 lower, the 100 best received twice as many job applications, the 100 Best increased revenue by 23% but staff increased by only 11%. This is powerful data and all illustrates “why it matters”.
They pinpoint the enhancing of trust, pride and camaraderie as the central task of effective leadership and use anecdotes and case studies bring this to life. There are many detailed examples and case studies with some inspiring individual stories.
Some of the suggestions offered may seem fairly obvious – such as “a verbal thank you can go a long way” along with “benefiting from profit sharing” in relation to rewards and yet we know that this often doesn’t happen in the workplace so perhaps it still needs to be said.
It could be argued that there is nothing new in this book to add to existing body of knowledge. John Kotter made the case for creating adaptive cultures in the mid 90’s with powerful data correlating the results of empirical analysis of 200 companies to their stock price. One of many research publications – the MacLeod report on employee engagement in 2009 – also builds the business case for engaging with employees.
It would have been useful to have seen an examination of the bottom 100 companies and some insights into what drives leaders in these organisations, so that there was an opportunity to compare and contrast different approaches. The companies who are in the “best 100” are there because they already respect and value their staff and want to be surveyed!
I wonder whether this meticulously written book would inspire company leaders in that bottom 100 to engage with their employees differently. The final chapter outlines actions to create a great workplace and cites a Microsoft manager – “You have to listen to people. You have to. People will tell you what’s right, and what’s wrong. You have to be willing to get out there and hear what they have to say”. How we grow and develop managers and leaders to work in this way is a question that I would have liked to seen explored.
So who should read this book? Well, the authors do clearly answer the question that they set out to answer “what is the business value of creating a great workplace” and their findings are supported with evidence. The Great Workplace provides plenty of material for any individual or organisation that wants to achieve their potential and is useful for anyone wanting to build a case for organisational change. The stories and checklists provide practical advice, and many examples, so all in all a worthy title to add to an existing library for consultants, academics and business managers.
- The reviewer this time was Meg Peppin
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