Short Example of General Information
Chapter 5. Employee Needs. What People Want From Work; The 12 Elements (This chapter is three pages in the book)
Guidance to better workplace behavior results from two men, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in their 1999 book First, Break All the Rules [1]. (Page numbers in parenthesis show where the quote can be found in their book). “This book is the product of two mammoth research studies undertaken by the Gallup Organization over the last twenty-five years. The first concentrated on employees, asking, ‘What do the most talented employees need from the workplace?’ “Gallup surveyed over a million employees from a broad range of companies, industries, and countries…” asking “them questions on all aspects of their workplace” and “…their working life, then dug deep into their answers to discover the most important needs demanded by the most productive employees.” (Page 11) “This book gives voice to one million employees and eighty thousand managers.” (Page 13) “in over 400 companies” (cover). Sifting the data they found 12 questions that “…measure the core elements needed to attract, focus, and keep the most talented employees.
(We show you these 12 questions and change them into declarative statements of employee needs). Here are a couple:
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Someone who talks to them about their progress
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Training and classes that allow employees to learn and grow
Buckingham and Coffman concluded that “If you can create the kind of environment where employees answer positively to all twelve questions, then you will have built a great place to work.” (Page 29).
You may be surprised that on that list of 12 important needs, there is no mention of monetary issues such as better wages, bonuses, or more benefits. You might think that these were not included in the study. But here is what the authors said, “Questions that we thought were a shoo-in-like those dealing with pay and benefits-fell under the analytical knife” (page 28). In other words, money-related issues were not as important as the 12 needs listed.
[1] Buckingham, Marcus and Coffman, Curt, First, Break All the Rules, What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1999