Love 'Em or Lose 'Em

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Summary: People-centered leadership
Review: This is a book for the experience or inexperienced leader. While it is written as a set of get-well recipes, the author recommends to take one or two ideas, study the concept, and work these with your team. You will see the results fairly quickly, and you don't need to follow the recipe exactly, either. The book is common sense and is written in an easy-to-read style. It is required reading in our organization.

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Summary: A Good Read!
Review: Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans have written a clever, candid, thorough guidebook for managers who would like to keep good people in their employ. With no filler, and plenty of insightful stories, this well-organized book is divided into 26 chapters - each one named for a strategy that begins with a sequential letter of the alphabet. Illustrated with color graphics that carry the eye to sidebars and other informative tidbits, the book offers advice ranging from professional to personal. It makes plenty of sense. We [...] recommend this book to anyone who manages or supervises employees, and for employees themselves.

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Summary: Easy Does It!
Review: Readers who think this text is strictly for managerial types and/or upper-echelon executives should think again! As a high school teacher who manages a classroom, students, and curriculum, as well as administrative directives and state guidelines, I found the book an easy as well as an insightful read. First of all, the format is appealing. The 8 inch x 9-1/4 inch size makes the text easy to carry and to hold; the pages offer much white space framing as well as easy to read type, and consistent coloring of black/white/blue, all arranged attractively in terms of layout and shading. Readers can immediately determine major headings, sub-headings, details, examples, and practical suggestions. The clip art on the pages symbolically reinforces the organization and content while it focuses the eyes. Second, the contents are set up in an interesting fashion. Each chapter begins with a letter of the alphabet, focusing on a specific aspect of management and/or retnetion. For example, Chapter 1 is "Ask What Keeps You?" while the second chapter is entitled "Buck It Stops here." However, the Introduction to the text provides the focus for all chapters because it introduces readers to "A. J.," an hypothetical employee, "critical and solid," who has just submitted his letter of resignation listing a number of reasons for his impending departure. Then, as each chapter unfolds, readers again meet A. J., but, now, the meeting is in terms of one of his reasons for quitting. Here is where the information and anecdotes become insightful for "managers" in terms of how they can keep "critical and solid" employees: for example, ask why an employee is leaving, or, better yet, ask current employees why they stay. I particularly enjoyed this strategy because it personalized the content for me; I could envision an actual employee or employer experiencing frustrations in the workplace. Now, for non-managerial types like me, I had no problem relating the content to my teaching assignment. In fact, I was delighted when I came upon suggestions already a part of my "style." After all, students are more likely to succeed if teachers can "keep" their interest. I suspect the academic community would benefit from this "easy read," especially new or relatively inexperienced teachers, who have been inundated with educational theory, but who are essentially without practical approaches to handling people and information.

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Summary: Handbook for Boomer Managers working with Gen xers
Review: Times have certainly changed. A recent survey indicated only 1 in 100 new college hires can envision any circumstance where they will stay with a major company for 20+ years. At 53 I don't even look like the new employees father any more. I keep the Love ' Em or Lose' em book at hand, and when I occasionally revert to, "You kids are a bunch of whiners." I give my self a reading re-assignment and try to infuse some fun, participation, adventure, and challenge into our training.If retention is an issue I suggest you start with this book to understand the problem and consider remedies. I agree with the other 25 reviews. It's a useful book.

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Summary: Best Retention Resource I've Read
Review: Kaye and Jordan-Evans have done an incredible job of preparing a concise, readable, enjoyable book about retaining your star employees. It contains anecdotes, recommendations, To Do lists to help organize ideas, brainstorm lists, and "What If" stories which illustrate what could have been done to keep someone who ultimately left. This book provides concrete, practicable suggestions on how to keep your best talent and why the talent that leaves does leave.

Another reviewer complained that this bookw as self-referencing. I don't find that a problem at all. The worrisome modern trend in referencing everything you can find does nothing but turn scholarly work into a glorified literature review. Authors like Kaye and Jordan-Evans have something worthwhile to say and there is no reason to belittle them for not referencing everyone else. They do, however, provide a number of useful references at the appropriate points.

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Summary: good book for managers
Review: As a manager of a 40-person team, I found this to be a good book - full of good ideas on retaining employees. The only fault is that it's very self-referential ("Best way to train a manager? Buy them this book!")

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Summary: Comprehensive and readable!
Review: Kaye and Jordan-Evans have hit a real home run with this book. At a time when retention is the number one human resource problem facing many firms, they have come up with a comprehensive treatment of the problem--and one that people will enjoy reading. It is a perfect book to purchase in quantity to hand out to the managers in an organization. It is written squarely for managers, with helpful "to do's" and plenty of anecdotes that ring true. There is humor to keep the reader's interest and to sweeten the medicine, but the authors don't mince words when the truth about retention is at stake. This book will help you rethink the issue of retention and give you lots of tools to take action--and you'll like absorbing its lessons.

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Summary: It's Simpler Than You Think....."Love'em or Lose'em"
Review: Being a Human Resource professional, I was curious about what new compensation/reward plan or strategy this book could offer. What I discovered,that although there was some discussion about money and rewards, the emphasis was on one-on-one contact between management and employees.

A refreshing reminder that everything is not always about money, that people work for people, not necessarily organizations, and that you can have open and honest discussions about careers. It's that simple and it never gets any worse than the truth. Good book. Good reminder.

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Summary: Great approach to employee motivation
Review: This is definitely a home run. I particularly enjoyed the authors' approaches to dealing with the issues of employee retention and motivation. The solutions presented in this book are well thought out and easy to implement.

In addition to this book, recommend a companion book my company uses to encourage the best performance in people at all levels, manager/team member: "The Leader's Guide: 15 Essential Skills."

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Summary: I've always wondered what might change the workplace.
Review: For over two decades I've wondered (especially as a consultant to dozens of organizations) --- what will change them into kinder, gentler places to be? The economy has answered the question. Only the kinder, gentler workplaces and the leaders who manage at all levels in those workplaces will ultimately thrive and survive in our emerging economy.

Why? Because we are facing a shortage of people like one we've never seen before. A shortage of brilliant,educated minds and dedicated workers. The race is on to somehow recruit and then hang on to the best and the brightest -- at all levels in all kinds of organizations.

This reality inspired the writing of our book, "Love 'Em or Lose 'Em". Beverly Kaye, my co-author and I decided to tell it like we've seen it ---- and lived it. Managers truly have the greatest power and influence to hang on to their talent. The problem is, many of them don't know that (or don't believe it). Others need a reminder or a "tune-up" or sorts. So --- we've provided that -- in a user-friendly format of strategies, listed A to Z.

We hope you will enjoy it and learn from it. If you manage even one person, we hope you'll try a strategy or two --- see what happens, and then try another. If you're an employee --- check out how your boss is doing. Learn what you can and should expect from the new millenium manager!

And managers --- remember to Love 'Em --- care about your employees and demonstrate that caring ---- and you'll be much more likely to keep those talented people on your team and producing for you. Best of luck ---

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