A Great Place to Work: What Makes Some Employers So Good--And Most So Bad [Hardcover]

Robert Levering (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 12, 1988

"Good workplaces are worth examining if for no other reason than that they enrich the lives of the people working there. Everyone, after all, would prefer working in a pleasant environment to an unpleasant one. Since most of us spend the greater part of our waking hours at work, this is no small matter."

With this idea in mind, Robert Levering decided to depart from the usual approach – looking at what’s wrong with bad workplaces and how to fix it – and instead sought to discover what is right with truly great workplaces. To do so, Levering interviewed employees and managers at every level of "the best of the best" - the top 20 from his best-selling book, The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America.

In this groundbreaking book, Levering uses interviews and anecdotes from the best employers to:

- Show why the most essential ingredient of a great place to work is trust between employees and management

- Explain why conventional management practices make it difficult to create a good workplace environment

- Provide case studies of positive and negative transformations of workplaces

The inspiring message of this book is that any company can become a great place to work. A Great Place to Work helps employees interpret daily experiences at work and determine what it is possible to expect. But it also informs well-meaning employers with ideas and tips about how to improve the quality of a working environment.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Levering revisited 20 of the best and worst companies he featured in The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America to identify essential characteristics and dynamics that motivate employees, stimulate productivity and a sense of personal fulfillment. He contends that, apart from wages and special benefits, a great workplace, regardless of the type of product or service, results from a company's nonmanipulative approach as opposed to the mechanistic model of scientific management, the elitist "human-relations" psychological treatment of workers or the variety of mostly bottom line, objective-centered management theories of experts such as Peter Drucker and Tom Peters. The author suggests that the fact that companies with good workplace practices also have top market ratings may encourage an effort on the part of other management teams and labor pools to pursue quality in both products and employee relations. First serial to Self; Macmillan Book Clubs dual main selection.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Author

From the preface to the 2000 edition:

A Great Place to Work is one of those rare books that is actually timelier today than when it first hit the bookstores a dozen years ago.

Since its original publication, I’ve had an unparalleled opportunity to view changes in the workplace. With Milton Moskowitz, I have continued writing about some truly remarkable workplaces by updating our list of the "100 Best Companies to Work for in America" in a revised edition of our book in 1993 and, since 1998, as an annual article for Fortune magazine. During the past half-dozen years, I’ve also looked at the phenomenon of great places to work from a consultant’s perspective through my work with the Great Place to Work® Institute. This work has been especially fascinating as it’s enabled me to explore the dynamics of workplaces outside the United States, in companies located in such countries as Brazil, Canada, Korea, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.

While much has changed, everything I’ve seen has reinforced the basic concepts outlined in this book. This especially applies to A Great Place to Work’s major finding — that trust between managers and employees is the primary defining characteristic of the very best workplaces. Because this message remains as relevant today as it was in 1988, I am delighted that this book is being republished. I believe this message will continue to be relevant long into this century. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (July 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394557255
• ISBN-13: 978-0394557250
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,022,868 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent insights into what makes a great employer, March 5, 2000

By 

Vernon L. Bliss (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Great Place to Work: What Makes Some Employers So Good--And Most So Bad (Paperback)

Although some of the examples used are a bit dated, the insights and conclusions about what makes a good or bad employers are still valid. This is a well-written book that shows how some employers actively strive to generate trust between the company and employees. If you don't like the company for which you work, this book will illustrate some of the practices of companies that truly value employees as their most important resource instead of just paying lip service.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaged employees are happier and increase profitability, July 26, 2008

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Great Place to Work: What Makes Some Employers So Good--And Most So Bad (Paperback)

This book was published 20 years ago which makes it very special. The perspective is from the point view of the workers on their leaders; that is from the workplace.
From the workplace point of view the author describes three types of management: scientific management, manipulative management and management in the 100 companies that are "Great Places to Work".
According to the author Scientific Management is represented by Frederick Winslow Taylor, Lillian Gilbreth and Harold.B. Maynard. They believed that work should be studied by engineers such that workers could be told exactly how they should work in great detail and how long every task should take. In that way output could be defined precisely. Henry Ford was an early enthusiast andalso GE. The only motivation necessary was paying more for more output-"piecework". Apart from the incentive workers were considered like robots, like material resources.. The demarcation between management and workers was very strict. Management decides everything and workers obey. Having worked for Harald.B. Maynard this description is partially correct. It is true on the motivation side. One of the key points in the book is that a worker knows more about his job than anybody else. That is true. But that is also true of engineers looking at the job from another perspective. They know much more about new tooling, new systems, feasible changes in product design, and innovation. The different types of knowledge have to be combined in a collaborative effort as is done in modern industrial engineering.
Manipulative styles are represented by Elton Mayo, Peter Drucker and Tom Peters. The author thinks that all these management methods aimed to maximise profit for the owners, but giving to the workers the impression management was genuinely interested in their well being. The author makes some valid observations definitely worth reading, but is not complete. A lot was manipulative but not everything.
The author suggests as an alternative that management should be genuinely interested in creating happy workplaces. It is impossible to establish a relationship of trust between the workers and management when workers suspect that management is only interested in increasing profit. The author also presents several credible studies that prove that companies with employees that are enthusiastically working for realising the goals of the company produce substantially higher profit and growth performance. Studies made by Tower Perrin in 2007 show similar results.
Still to day Fortune and other magazines present every year the 100 best workplaces in different countries and industries, still based on the ideas in this book.This is a remarkable success.
The book is very much concentrating on "work places" inside the company. This is an integral part of the "stakeholder" concept, referred to as "Corporate Citizen ship", or "Corporate Social Responsibility" In these concepts trust is essential not only between employees and management but also between the company and customers and other groups is society at large.
The history of professional managers in "The rise and corruption of the managerial class" presents an intriguing analysis. Before shareholder activism, private equity and optimising shareholder values, top management was paid reasonably. The singular emphasis on shareholder value, according to the author, has led to compensation of professional managers as if they were entrepreneurs (and bad workplaces).