Synopses & Reviews
"Avoiding the current obsession with IT, Martel has taken as his brief that most important component of any business endeavor: human capital. Martel's book is one for the new millenium; entertaining, instructive, with a refreshing emphasis on the practicalities of finding and, more important, keeping good staff." --John R. Reid, chairman emeritus, Australian Graduate School of Management
"Leon Martel's book is essential reading for business leaders who take their key role seriously-finding, motivating, and developing the business leaders of tomorrow." --Niall W. A. FitzGerald, chairman, Unilever
"As leaders in all three sectors focus on performance as the essential element for personal and organizational success, along comes High Performers to support this leadership imperative." --Frances Hesselbein, chairman and founding president, The Drucker Foundation
"Useful, practical, and helpful, this survey and analysis prods the practitioner and provokes the complacent towards the best way forward. Nothing teaches like the lessons of experience. Leon Martel has captured and summarized what we need to know. Now it is over to us to make the difference that his suggestions offer. He provides us the opportunity to significantly impact people in our organizations and raise their contributions by applying the best practices." --John D. Hofmeister, director, human resources, Royal Dutch/Shell Group
"Leon Martel's book provides useful and practical insights on what successful companies do to be successful. This 'insider' perspective should stimulate new ideas for those executives who want their companies to be among the very best." --S. H. Lee, vice president, human resources, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. (TSMC)
"I commend Leon Martel's book to CEOs, managers, and professionals whose businesses and operating environments have become global--and people more diverse, cosmopolitan, and international--in their common pursuit of honest, noble, and excellent performance." --Loh Meng See, senior vice president, human resources, Singapore Airlines Limited
Review
"This is a thoughtful wise book..." (Financial Executive, June 2002)
"...overall, High performers is a useful addition to the literature on comparative company practice..." (People Management, 25 July 2002)
"The book covers a lot of ground." (Across the Board, August 2002)
Review
"Challenging times test even the BEST on their people skills. Leon Martel's research is a critical and timely reminder for all management." --Alfred C. DeCrane, retired chairman and CEO, Texaco, Inc.
"The unique insight of this book is that it focuses on two major changes affecting business everywhere-the changing nature of work and the changing values of workers. In clear and entertaining writing Martel tells us what these mean and how we have to respond to find and keep the employees we need." --C.R. Shoemate, retired chairman, president, an CEO, Bestfoods
"The author's long experience managing research programs at the Hudson Institute and The Conference Board serves the reader well. The useful practices he discovers and concisely describes will aid employers in every field." --John R. Hall, retired chairman and CEO, Ashland Inc.
"This valuable book tells you how great companies produce great employees. Asian readers will especially profit from this book because of its global approach. Martel takes us inside a wide variety of companies located in different regions of the world, showing how they motivate and reward high-performance people." --Washington SyCip, founder, The SGV Group
"With workforce growth slowing in most industrialized countries, including many in Europe, while demand for high performers continues to rise, Dr. Martel's book is essential reading. All companies can benefit from what he has learned from the best of them." --Vittorio Tesio, Corporate University, Fiat Group
"Leon Martel's book is a unique opportunity for all HR professionals to fully understand how to develop the new values, the potential and motivation of their companies' most valuable assets: people." --Hilmar Kopper, chairman of the supervisory board, Deutsche Bank
"Every great leader knows that the key to success is surrounding yourself with talent. Committed, engaged, and appreciated employees are essential for businesses to succeed in the post-industrial area. Leon Martel provides a practical roadmap for hiring, retaining, and maximizing the potential of the folks who will determine the success or failure of your organization." --Norm Coleman, mayor, St. Paul, Minnesota
"This is what we should be told, but rarely hear. Business leaders will benefit from the key principles--many of them counterintuitive--the author has drawn from the practices of the best companies of America, Europe, and Asia." --Rahul Bajaj, chairman and managing director, Bajaj Auto Ltd.
"Practices that work, not theory, is what distinguishes this book. HR officers everywhere will find the author's examples and conclusions both useful and insightful." --Sharon Douglas, vice president, human resources, Chief People Officer, AFLAC Incorporated
"We all know there is no silver bullet on keeping the best and the brightest. High Performers gives you an entire arsenal of ideas on how to make it happen." --Bruce W. Ferguson, chief people officer, Exult, Inc.
"An insightful review of the current issues facing our workforce and opportunities to make significant strides in understanding how to nurture, support and retain high performers." --Kathryn E. Johnson, CEO, Health Forum
"Profitability is closely tied to the quality of your staff-and will become even more so in the future. Martel has cast a wide net, and with it he has captured a multitude of insights essential to any manager wanting to hire and keep the best." --Stephen McElfresh, president and founder, HR Futures
"Leon Martel's richly researched book proves both statistically and ancedotally that all companies can achieve peak performance only when they engage the passion, talent, and power of the people who work for them. If you manage people, read this book." --Martha I. Finney, author, In the Face of Uncertainty: 25 Top Leaders Speak Out on Challenge, Change and the Future of American Business
Synopsis
In High Performers Leon Martel--a senior fellow with the prestigious Conference Board--has identified twenty-five organizations from the United States, Europe, and Asia that have been named by the Financial Times and Fortune as the best places to work and are also recognized by the Wall Street Journal as leading financial performers.
Based on extensive research and interviews with senior managers, Leon Martel shows that companies with exceptional practices in core human resource areas produce both superior performance and create an outstanding workplace environment. This much-needed resource shows human resource professionals how to put in place the same winning HR practices that create a workplace environment that attracts and retains high-performing employees.
High Performers offers a comprehensive review of all the relevant human resource practices that contribute to a successful work environment where employees can thrive, including how to:
* Make work meaningful and workers feel they are valued
* Identify, recruit, and hire employees in high demand in a changing workforce
* Use compensation and benefits to promote performance and build loyalty
* Create education and training suited to today's knowledge-related work--and expected by today's most valuable workers
Throughout the book, Martel offers human resource executives a practical guide filled with valuable information for putting new HR theories about human capital and intellectual capital into practice.
Synopsis
Ein praktischer Leitfaden f r Personalleiter und F hrungskr fte im Personalwesen.
Hier erfahren Sie, wie Sie leistungsstarke Mitarbeiter an Ihr Unternehmen binden und ein gutes und erfolgreiches Arbeitsumfeld schaffen.
Mit einer F lle praktischer Beispiele, u.a. zu Anwerbung, Einstellung und Training von Mitarbeitern.
Die Beispiele stammen von 25 Unternehmen, die von der Financial Times und dem Fortune Magazine unabh ngig voneinander zu den besten Arbeitgebern gek rt wurden. Nach einer Analyse des Wall Street Journal handelt es sich bei diesen Unternehmen um Spitzenunternehmen mit einem Top-Finanzergebnis.
High Performers bietet wertvolle Informationen, wie man neue Theorien des Personalmanagement sinnvoll mit der allt glichen Praxis verbindet.
About the Author
Leon Martel is a senior fellow at The Conference Board, where he served as senior vice president, first for research, managing the Board's extensive studies program, then for international programs. Previously he was acting president, executive vice president, and director of the research management council of the Hudson Institute, and a tenured member of the faculty of Hofstra University. He is the author and coauthor of several books, including The next 200 Years (with Herman Kahn and William Brown) and Mastering Change, named one of the year's Ten Outstanding Business Books by Best of Business Quarterly. A retired captain of the U.S. Naval Reserve, he holds a BA degree from Dartmouth College and MA and PhD degrees from Columbia.
Table of Contents
Foreword (Richard E. Cavanagh).
Preface.
Acknowledgments.
The Author.
1. The Twenty-Five Best Companies and What They Understand.
2. Work Content and the Work Environment.
3. Recruiting and Hiring.
4. Compensation and Benefits.
5. Education and Training.
6. General Principles and Key Themes.
Afterword.
Appendix A: Companies Interviewed.
Appendix B: Population Projections.
Notes.
Index.