Content
12 tells the story of a dozen managers selected from Gallup's global database of 10 million interviews with managers and employees. Each of the chapters in 12 is based on one of the "Q12" statements that emerged from Gallup's meta-analysis comparing employee attitudes with workgroup performance. These range from employee's "knowing what's expected" and having the needed "materials and equipment" to more emotional assessments such as whether employees feel their opinion counts and chances to "learn and grow." The story of each manager profiled in the book is interrupted mid-chapter to describe the psychology behind the particular question Gallup asks in its employee surveys.
The most controversial of the statements, write Wagner and Harter, is the tenth: "I have best friend at work." The authors claim friendships, in combination with the other "elements," create better customer scores, better retention, better safety, and higher productivity and profitability. "In the battle between company policy and human nature, human nature always wins," states the book. "Companies do far better to harness this kind of social capital than to fight against it."
The book also includes a chapter on compensation. The authors assert that pay is such a "status-laden, envy-inspiring, politically charged monster" that it cannot be measured in the same way as the aspects that make up the bulk of the book. Being based in research on how people react in real life, rather than in theory, 12 is a mainstream application of behavioral economics.
The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.
Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include manpower, labor, labor-power, or personnel.
A performance appraisal, also referred to as a performance review, performance evaluation, (career) development discussion, or employee appraisal, sometimes shortened to "PA", is a periodic and systematic process whereby the job performance of an employee is documented and evaluated. This is done after employees are trained about work and settle into their jobs. Performance appraisals are a part of career development and consist of regular reviews of employee performance within organizations.
Recruitment is the overall process of identifying, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, and interviewing candidates for jobs within an organization. Recruitment also is the process involved in choosing people for unpaid roles. Managers, human resource generalists, and recruitment specialists may be tasked with carrying out recruitment, but in some cases, public-sector employment, commercial recruitment agencies, or specialist search consultancies such as Executive search in the case of more senior roles, are used to undertake parts of the process. Internet-based recruitment is now widespread, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Job analysis is a family of procedures to identify the content of a job in terms of the activities it involves in addition to the attributes or requirements necessary to perform those activities. Job analysis provides information to organizations that helps them determine which employees are best fit for specific jobs.
The Great Monkey Trial is a book on the Scopes Trial by L. Sprague de Camp, first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1968. The book is a non-fiction account of the trial, as well as its social and political context and impact. This history of the trial was based on the archives of the A.C.L.U., assorted newspaper files, correspondence and interviews with over a dozen of those present at the trial, books and magazine articles written on the trial, and a couple of visits to Dayton. The book also contains several political cartoons published at the time of the trial. Several critics have referred to the book as the definitive or comprehensive account of the Scopes Trial.
In Search of Excellence is a book written by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. First published in 1982, it sold three million copies in its first four years, and was the most widely held monograph in the United States from 1989 to 2006. The book explores the art and science of management used by several companies in the 1980s.
An employee handbook, sometimes also known as an employee manual, staff handbook, or company policy manual, is a book given to employees by an employer.
Employee engagement is a fundamental concept in the effort to understand and describe, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees. An "engaged employee" is defined as one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and so takes positive action to further the organization's reputation and interests. An engaged employee has a positive attitude towards the organization and its values. In contrast, a disengaged employee may range from someone doing the bare minimum at work, up to an employee who is actively damaging the company's work output and reputation.
Gallup, Inc. is an American multinational analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C. Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the company became known for its public opinion polls conducted worldwide. Gallup provides analytics and management consulting to organizations globally. In addition the company offers educational consulting, the CliftonStrengths assessment and associated products, and business and management books published by its Gallup Press unit.
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose – often referring specifically to novels, novellas, and short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games.
Enterprise engagement is a sub-discipline of marketing and management that focuses on achieving long-term financial results by strategically fostering the proactive involvement and alignment of customers, distribution partners, salespeople, and all human capital outside and inside of an organization. Enterprise engagement is distinct from the traditional sub-disciplines of financial management, marketing, sales, operations, and human resources in that it seeks to achieve long-term success by integrating these various traditional business disciplines to consistently focus the organization on identifying and meeting target audience needs. Enterprise Engagement is related to brand engagement, a term developed in Great Britain in the 2000s to describe an integrated external and internal marketing approach to achieving long-term success for a brand. Enterprise Engagement applies similar principals to the achievement of an organization's overall financial objectives.
Power of 2 is a book written by bestselling author Rodd Wagner and Gallup World Poll leader Dr. Gale Muller. It describes the authors’ five years of research on collaboration and partnerships. The book is a mixture of advice to the reader, stories of prominent partnerships, and discoveries from various disciplines such as primatology, neuroscience, game theory, and behavioral economics.
Employee retention is the ability of an organization to retain its employees and ensure sustainability. Employee retention can be represented by a simple statistic. Employee retention is also the strategies employers use to try to retain the employees in their workforce.
Is Geography Destiny? Lessons from Latin America is a book written by John Luke Gallup, Alejandro Gaviria, Eduardo Lora and published by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which documents an advanced step of the rediscovery of geography by economists initiated by Paul Krugman in the early 1990s, however in another, more deterministic direction.
Tom Rath is an American consultant on employee engagement, strengths, and well-being, and author. He is best known for his studies on strength-based leadership and well-being and for synthesizing research findings in a series of bestselling books. His books have sold more than 5 million copies and have been translated into sixteen languages.
Donald O. Clifton was an American psychologist, educator, author, researcher, and entrepreneur. He founded Selection Research, Inc., which later acquired Gallup Inc., where he became chairman, and developed CliftonStrengths, Gallup's online psychological assessment. Clifton was recognized with a presidential commendation from the American Psychological Association as "the father of strengths-based psychology and the grandfather of positive psychology".
Jim Clifton is the chairman of Gallup, a global analytics and advice firm. Clifton served as the CEO of Gallup from 1988 until 2022, and is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller It's the Manager, the bestseller Born to Build, The Coming Jobs War, and writes The Chairman's Blog. He is the creator of the behavioral economic framework, “The Gallup Microeconomic Path,” a metric-based economic model that establishes the linkages among human nature in the workplace, customer engagement and business outcomes, which is used by over 500 companies worldwide. His father was psychologist, educator, and author Dr. Donald O. Clifton, who founded of Selection Research, Inc. (SRI). Under Jim's leadership, SRI acquired the Gallup Organization in 1988.
Japanese Bankers in the City of London: Language, Culture and Identity in the Japanese Diaspora is a 2000 nonfiction book by Junko Sakai, published by Routledge. This book describes the lives and cultures of employees at Japanese companies working in their London offices, mostly within the City of London, and includes Japanese and British employees.
The Employees is a novel by Danish writer Olga Ravn published October 1, 2020. The novel has since been translated into English by Martin Aitken. The novel details the interactions between human and android crew members aboard a futuristic spacecraft as they encounter and react to a series of mysterious alien objects.
