Nine Best Books on Employee Engagement

“Best books on employee engagement” are the source of knowledge and new skills, which may help you to excel in this field. In modern day, technology is playing great role in affecting the way, human resource professionals are planning their activities in different spheres, including employee engagement. Latest technology tools like “PODCASTS” and “TED Talk Recordings” are really of great help.

However, the significance of books cannot be underestimated. A survey was conducted among HR professionals and it emerged that 42% of them preferred reading books and then deciding the line of action, while taking strategic decisions. It provided them with the appropriate confidence in doing their job well.

There is a large number of books available on employee engagement. The author has made an effort here to select nine best books in the field, based on their impact and usefulness as well as his own assessment.

Book 1: First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently By Don Clifton

According to Don Clifton, the excellence in any HR function including employee engagement may be achieved by the following methods:

• Orchestrate the existing people to get the maximum performance.
• People’s talent should be mapped followed by putting it to the work, whichever work area needs it. It means deployment as per talent after talent mapping.
• The author also discusses the things you cannot change in a person.
• The leaders must learn to manage around weaknesses of their people.

The book may help you to think differently in almost all spheres of HR including employee engagement. Thinking differently is the key to success.

Book 2: 50 Top Tools for Employee Engagement

(A complete tool kit for improving motivation and productivity), By Debbie Mitchell

Some salient points mentioned in this book are:

• 83% of people are not engaged in any organisaton and they should be given maximum attention for raising their level of performance. How to do this is clearly mentioned in the book.
• The book offers an ample number of tools to help employees being engaged.

Book 3: Managers Guide to Employee Engagement, By Scott Carbonara

The author talks of igniting three Ps, namely “Passion”, “Purpose” and “Productivity” in every member of the organisation. A successful leader is the one, who can help the employees to give their best. A manager only giving orders is bound to fail.

Book 4: Employee Engagement for Dummies, By Bob Kellefier

The book contains 19 chapters, which are really well written. The author clearly spells out what is required to be done for effective employee engagement.

As per the book, engagement is not a program. It is a journey, which must be traversed. It is not a destination, which is fixed, rather a destination, which needs changing, as you go up the ladder and improvements galore.

Book 5: Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Employee Engagement With The Principles of Respect, By Paul L. Marciano

The author is of the opinion that reward and recognition may not be able to succeed, as they primarily go in favour of employees, who are already highly engaged and giving high performance. Instead, “RESPECT” should be the basis for improving employee engagement.

Book 6: The Coaching Habit: Say Yes, Act More and Change The “Way You Should Lead Forever”, By Bungay Stainer

Main points of the book:

• Asking the right questions, not working harder, is the secret to success and having more impact on employee engagement.
• Poses 7 questions, the answers to which will provide a better guide to engaging employees.

Book 7: Employee Engagement for Organisational Change: The Theory and Practice of Stakeholder Engagement, By Julie Hodges

The author successfully examines the role of engagement with organizational change (OC) is a complex, multidimensional, emotional process, which has a great impact on workplace. OC engagement is a new concept, defined for the first time by the author. This is an excellent book for academia, as well as industry practitioners.

Book 8: Employee Engagement for Everyone, By Kevin Kruse

Kevin Kruse, a New York Times’ bestselling author proposes the following for effective employee engagement:

• Unlock the happiness at workplace and make efforts to engage employees.
• Emphasis is given on driving your own engagement, along with the style to drive the engagement of others at workplace.
• 4 drivers of happiness and engagement are provided, along with 5 daily engagement questions.

It is one of the best books for those, who want to enjoy their job and remain happy at workplace.

Book 9: Measure What Matters, By John Doerr

The author proposes the concept “Objective Key Results” (OKR) to be followed for effective employee engagement. This consists of the following:

• Define clearly the business objectives and goals of the organizations, as well as the key results, which you want to achieve.
• Assign the clearly defined action plan for the above pre-defined business objective and key results, to people across the organization from the lowest worker to top CEO.
• Make it open and transparent. Let each and everyone from the bottom to top know what work to be done by whom, along with the specified time limit.

As per the author, the advantages of OKR are:

• Regular monitoring will foster employee engagement from top to bottom.
• It will take care of all the employees including the section of not engaged employees, which constitutes 83% as per Gallap (2012).

Ripples Learning has implemented this OKR, for each and everyone from bottom to top in their workplace.

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