Customer Reviews

The Invisible Employee: Realizing the Hidden Potential in Everyone

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2 star:		(1)
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I came across the co-author Chester Elton at a seminar last year. He is very entertaining but most important, his message is one for all managers. It's up to managers to make their employees feel rewarded and recoginzed. The Invisible Employee tells us that this concept is one of the easiest and yet most overlooked aspects of our jobs. Using a fable format the authors drive home the point that happy employees do in fact perform better and contribute more. A great read for every manager!

The Invisable Employee makes a valid point, but its certainly not a groundbreaking one and it doesn't address the problem promised in the title. The premise of The Invisible Employee is that most people don't feel appreciated and that corporations take good work for granted. Since this is true, and its also true that expensive turnover can be avoided by noticing the good work of employees--and letting them know you notice, this book makes a good, if not ground shaking, point.

The execution of the book is poor. A number of chapters are written in a strange, corny parables that soon become excrutiatingly boring. If you really love playing Zelda or Final Fantasy, you might like them..but probably not.

The Invisable Employee gives almost no practical advice on how to address the issue of discovering hidden potential in companies that do not exist in a video game style fantasy. The problem of invisable employees is huge and its too big to be solved with praise alone. Many corporations barely know their people beyond the resume submitted when they hire them. They hire them, assume they can do only what they were hired for, lay them off a few years later while hiring other employees who are less experienced in company matters. Why does this happen? In happens in part because the employees are invisible and no one bothered to develop a skills database or consider the potential of employees to adapt and learn new things. The problem is heartwrenching and extremely expensive.

Unfortunately this book won't do a thing to attack that problem.

Like the previous carrot books, this book gives great advice to help manage your employees. This is a must read for any manager wanting additional pointers to help in the difficult process of keeping your people motivated and engaged. As the head of HR for a major corporation I think this book can help all managers at all levels.

Six books were delivered each from a different vendor. The books were in excellent condition.

Read the book whether you manage 10 or 100 employees. The data out there is phenomenal and it will make you think. Excellent book.

Especially, a must have for every IT manager in India that hires 1000s of people by the year.

Gostick and Elton have captured the essence of good management. They have given their readers clues to what makes employees tick and highlighted the dangers of not rewarding exemplary behaviour. This book makes a great companion to my book, "Always Remember: If it ain't fun, it ain't worth doing!" which also provides managers with the keys to making good employees out of virtually every staff member. Well done Adrian and Chester! Wayne Kehl

I am a huge fan of Chester and Adrian and my hat is off to them for writing a great New York Times Bestseller. Parables are huge these days and business people love 'em.

If you want an enjoyable read that is heart warming and informative this is it. And what's more, you might just learn something about how NOT to treat people who work for you.

Please understand I am biased in my opinion because if have gotten to know Chester Elton as a fellow author and he is simply a "stand up guy." You don't find people in this business like Chester, class all the way.

Mick Hager, author of MONKEY BUSINESS
7 Laws of the Jungle for Becoming the Best of the Bunch!
A Short Tale of a Company That Gets It! Gibbs Smith Publisher, March 2007

fantastic reading, clearly written in a jovial manner that gets the point across without confusing the reader. I urge everybody in a management position of any kind to read this book and discuss it with staff at your meetings. If every manager read and implimented a fraction of what is in this book, what a fantastic workforce America would have.

Thanks for a fantastic product.