Book Brief: The Enthusiastic Employee

The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Employees What They Want

By David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind and Michael Irwin Meltzer

Wharton School Publishing, Jan. 2005
400 pages, $26.95

If after looking at the subtitle you concluded that the authors are crazy, you would not be alone. Most people would say that if you give employees what they want—huge salaries and ridiculously expensive perks—they will bankrupt your company. But millions of interviews with employees show that what workers really want has more to do with working conditions than anything else, say the authors (Sirota and Mischkind are consultants; Meltzer is a lawyer). Workers want to be treated fairly, do work that matters, and maintain good relations with their coworkers. None of that costs much, and the payoff, the authors contend, is tremendous.