foreword

For the past quarter century, I’ve had one of the truly great jobs in journalism. My beat has been the workplace—specifically, great workplaces. It’s been my lucky lot to visit and write about companies that employees rave about in a variety of books and magazine articles. For the past half-dozen years, I’ve worked with my fellow journalist Milton Moskowitz to identify and write about the “100 Best Companies to Work For in America” for Fortune.

These companies represent the spectrum of the business world and have ranged from extremely familiar names like Google and Cisco to relative unknowns like Plante & Moran and Griffin Hospital. Regardless of the industry, size, age, or location of the companies, I’ve noticed that employees of these terrific workplaces invariably talk about how they feel treated as individuals, that they feel respected, that they feel the management recognizes their contributions to the organization.

As I’ve looked more closely at these companies, I’ve learned that it is no accident that employees feel so positively about their employers. Great workplaces are the result of the attitudes and actions of management. At the core, the management of these companies sincerely believes that the employees are the ones who are primarily responsible for the success (or failure) of the enterprise. As a result of this attitude, management sees the need to constantly recognize the value of the employees. They see positive recognition as part of their jobs, not as something that occurs once every five years when it is time to hand out the employee recognition awards.

Even in a bad workplace, it would not be surprising to find an individual manager who is good about showing appreciation toward employees. But how can this happen throughout an organization? This is precisely what Make Their Day! is all about—how to make employee recognition part of the fabric of an organization.

It is a great pleasure to recommend this newly revised and expanded version of Make Their Day! as this is no ordinary management book. Cindy Ventrice has done her homework. She has looked at a variety of companies and interviewed dozens of managers to look beneath the surface. There are many books on employee recognition, but this one is by far the best. Most books on this subject give examples of best practices in the field—in some cases hundreds of such examples. The idea seems to be that to improve employee recognition, managers should copy the policy or practice used by another organization.

The problem is that each company is unique. Each one has its own distinctive culture and history. What works in one company may completely backfire in another. But the approach of many managers simply ignores this seemingly obvious fact. Imitate what Company A does and you, too, will be successful.

That’s where Make Their Day! can be so useful. Ventrice’s book is full of lots of useful and provocative examples. But she goes beyond merely reciting cases. Using her in-depth interviews with managers at a variety of companies, Ventrice explores the deeper issues involved. Many of the companies she cites have made our Fortune list, and I can testify that she has captured what’s special about how these companies recognize employees. She puts her finger on the all-important question of trust. How can you recognize people in such a way that trust is built? She points out that it is a question of relationships, not techniques. She shows that genuinely recognizing people means doing it all the time, not just on special occasions.

This book offers precisely the kind of insights that any manager interested in creating a great workplace should read.

ROBERT LEVERING                        

Robert Levering is coauthor of Fortune’s annual “100 Best Companies to Work For in America” and cofounder of Great Place to Work® Institute.