Official Review: If Your Water Cooler Could Talk

[greenstripedgiraffe]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "If Your Water Cooler Could Talk" by Dr. Jim Bohn.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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Within every corporation exists a subculture of sorts. If one were to take a snapshot of multiple corporations, a viewer could see certain patterns. Despite differences in size, structure, and mission, employees the world over can speak of similar struggles and frustrations. For decades now, something known as "employee engagement" has become somewhat of a standard of how to measure "how are you doing" among corporations. The theory is that happy employees will be productive employees who are glad to spread cheer to customers; in short, happy employees will be good cheerleaders for the company and will create a domino effect resulting in greater profits. Human Resource (HR) departments have been tasked with finding what makes the employee happy and making "it" happen. Survey instruments have been created. Gallup has created one of the most commonly-used survey instruments. At first, employees were happy to take these surveys, and HR departments poured over the results. A simple search regarding job perks would show companies that allow dogs in the office, companies that have work-out rooms or free snacks. However, a strange fact exists that many corporations seem to have the same problems they had before rolling out expensive employee engagement programs.


In If Your Water Cooler Could Talk, Dr. Jim Bohn suggests that asking about the happiness of the individual employee is the wrong assessment. Instead of finding out "what can the company do for the employee," Bohn suggests that a true increase in productivity and profits will result when the organization focuses on what the employee can do for the corporation. He strongly suggests that organizations should focus on "we," not "me." Essentially, he argues that healthy corporations will have a strong focus on mission and will effectively communicate that mission to employees. Employees at weak corporations will not trust their leadership to appropriately reward employees; neither will employees trust the leadership to sustain the company through a downturn.

As a member of my company's research & analysis department, I was on the team that designed a survey tool to measure our company's employee engagement. Thus, this book was of particular interest to me! Not only am I already fairly knowledgeable about the principles behind discovering a company's employee engagement, but I have also seen positive changes made based on the research we did.

Dr. Bohn puts forth his arguments in a very logical manner. He lists potential "illnesses" of a company along with their symptoms as well as the cure. Dr. Bohn also takes the time to meticulously uncover what is wrong with measuring employee engagement. He does this so many times, it becomes somewhat pedantic. Next, Dr. Bohn walks the reader through the philosophy behind his proposed solution, which he calls "organizational engagement." Again, notice the emphasis on "we" instead of "me." What benefits the whole, should also benefit the individual. To some degree, this idea was a little off-putting to me, as our company has somewhat espoused the employee engagement model. The idea of satisfied employees performing quality work and naturally spreading their company loyalty is appealing. It struck me that focusing on "organizational engagement" instead of "employee engagement" might result in a loss of the positive changes that have been made over the last few years. However, the more I read Dr. Bohn's philosophy, the more I found that it, too, makes sense. It is true that what would benefit one employee might be a detriment to another. For instance, a focus on extensive health insurance is going to appeal most to a certain demographic. Another demographic might prefer additional money in their paychecks, rather than better insurance.

While Dr. Bohn lists out the different areas of content within his survey instrument, he does not provide the specific survey questions, as that is proprietary information. He does give his justifications for each category of questioning. Any research department, HR department, or other department tasked with creating a better company culture would benefit from reading this book. I feel that Dr. Bohn gave logical reasons behind his conjectures and believe that many would find his approach to be common sense.

Dr. Bohn clearly spent much time and effort to come up with his approach to creating healthier companies. As interesting and potentially helpful as the book is, I did question the validity of some of the research behind the statements. In at least one case, research consisted of reading various research studies that have been done on the topic. In other cases, Dr. Bohn conducted his own research. One research study involved his asking questions of 9 executives, 13 middle management, and 22 staff/academics (n=44). Statistically speaking, this small of a study has little overall value. While the findings were interesting, further large-scale research ought to be done to validate the study. My other complaint was a tendency to repeat concepts multiple times. While I understand the merit of restating certain information as an aid in keeping attention throughout what could be considered a tedious topic, the repetition helped to create this tedious quality. However, on the positive side, the book was edited extremely well. I found no mistakes throughout the entire book. Overall, since the book has valuable information and is fairly accessible to any reader, I would recommend this to any person seeking to understand or change their organization's culture. Overall, I give this book three out of four stars.

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If Your Water Cooler Could Talk
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[spencermack]

Sounds like an interesting perspective about workplace practises. The review was thorough and well written. Thanks!

[zhenya_reads]

This sounds like an interesting approach! I definitely agree that in order to make any conclusions studies should be done properly. For example, I remember reading The Power of Habit where there was an example of a company that focused solely on improving the safety of the workers, which resulted in an overall improvement. That happened to work for that one specific company but probably wouldn't work for many others.

Thank you for the review!

[Dannyphery]

I love your review...
Guess I'll give the book a try

[booksandmagicshop]

The title is so catching and definitely works in the book topic's favor!! I'm always up for an organizational read, so thank you for the review.

[GPM]

This sounds like an interesting approach! I definitely agree that in order to make any conclusions studies should be done properly. For example, I remember reading The Power of Habit where there was an example of a company that focused solely on improving the safety of the workers, which resulted in an overall improvement. That happened to work for that one specific company but probably wouldn't work for many others.

Thank you for the review!

I like your review.

[Rachel_Emmanuel]

I love this review. It is well written and very interesting. I agree with the author that organizations should ask what the employees can do for the company. These days during job interviews, organizations are looking for workers who want to do something to improve the company and not overly concerned about the pay.

I also would recommend the book to persons who would want to start a company some time in the future. All the information provided in the book would be helpful so as to avoid pitfalls that comes with employing workers.

[DEEPA PUJARI]

I personally think that if an employee is working only for the money, then its time to quit. An unhappy employee does more harm than good to an organization. This book sound informative.

[bookreviewmi1111]

Yes, don't ask an employee if he or she is happy about the company, but should ask the company what they can do. I used to be in employee in really terrible and selfish companies so I agree on this. And after I worked for a few months, many other employees (including me) quit the job and they were desperate for us to stay. Thank you for the review.

[Harty]

I am a kind of freak for everything HR so I'll check out this book on organization culture. Thanks for the thorough review.

[Rubbi]

The title of this book sounds intriguing and it piqued my curiosity. I think from that explicit review I could tell that its an informative book.

[Aan Granados]

I agree more on making the employees happy so that they will be more productive. I will give this book a try. Thanks for your review.

[Leen282]

A different perspective indeed to focus on the whole instead of on the individual. I find much value in both concepts, but am not interested enough to read the book and the arguments and explanations.

[Kaushiki Parihar]

The book entails about a unique concept related to organization's culture of which I'm not aware of. So, I'll be skipping this book. Thanks for the thorough review.

[Tars]

Certainly wasn't expecting that book will be labeled as non-fiction. Huge surprise, because according to title I envisioned some hilarious tale revolving around office gossips. I quite disappointed actually that reality does not meet the expectation, will have to pass, but still congrats on BOTD!