Thank God It's Monday!: 14 Values We Need to Humanize the Way We Work

Can you imagine how rewarding it would be, each day, to truly enjoy going to work? Most people spend the better part of their waking hours in jobs they do not enjoy. The happiest, most productive employees are those who have either found a job they truly enjoy, or found ways to make their current jobs more enjoyable. If we can get more pleasure and satisfaction from our work time, it would immeasurably improve the quality ofour lives. For more than 30 years, authors Joan Goldsmith and Kenneth Cloke have worked with teams and employers to create positive work environments in which communication between all levels is respectful, creativity is encouraged and people are acknowledged and supported. Thank God It's Monday! provides real-world examples and exercises to stimulate employees and employers into creating better work lives. Thank God It's Monday! identifies 14 core values that will make any work more stimulating and satisfying, including: Inclusion of everyone; Celebration of diversity; Open and honest communication; Risk taking; Opportunities for personal growth; Thank God It's Monday! will be valuable to employees seeking to increase satisfaction in their current jobs, displaced employees searching for the work situations that are best for them, and employers and organizational leaders looking to keep their best employees by creating energetic and vibrant workplaces. Thank God It's Monday! provides scores of ready-to-use activities, worksheets and exercises that will help transform the workplace into a second home that everyone wants to return to each day.

From their experiences as management consultants and specialists in conflict resolution over the past three decades, Cloke (Mediation: Revenge and the Magic of Forgiveness) and Goldsmith (coauthor with Warren Bennis of Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader) address "the human side of change." Whether called "reengineering" or "downsizing," the dislocation caused for those catapulted into the change process, note the authors, is reason for concern. They ask, "Why is the human side of the change process the last element... thought out?" They offer well-articulated strategies and methods to encourage industrial democracy to work, for team advancement to not be in conflict with individual success and for public- and private-sector organizations to promote ownership in a different, humanized kind of workplace. There is much of interest here, particularly for those involved in organizational change or who are dissatisfied with their work situation.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the authors' view, there is a profound difference between having to prove yourself to your boss and having the capacity to express yourself in the workplace. That difference is their central focus. We learn that people create themselves through their work, and they all have the ability to learn, to grow, and to reinvent themselves through what they do and how they do it. Cloke and Goldsmith define work as the relationship between an individual and productive activity, and their mission is to show us how to create a workplace that is productive as well as pleasurable. They present their analysis of work against the backdrop of widespread corporate downsizing and other cost-cutting measures that have taken their toll on the human side of an organization. Fourteen ways are offered in which to humanize work, including collaboration, use of teams and networks, celebration of diversity, and risk taking. They believe that well-treated employees in humane companies translate that condition into greater profitability and productivity. Mary Whaley

Reengineering has become an inevitability for millions of employees, and those who survive it must perform their jobs differently tomorrow from the way they perform them today. Invariably, change causes stress, negatively affecting work performance. Consultants Cloke and Goldsmith have prepared a textbook for those managers who are seeking a humane, and less stressful, implementation of organizational change. Although the authors are unabashed advocates of workplace democracy, and a few of their recommendations will strike some as extreme, e.g., having the management role rotate among employees, their book nevertheless offers valuable advice and assessment exercises for changing organizations.?Andrea C. Dragon, Coll. of St. Elizabeth, Convent Station, N.J.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.