Improving Employee Morale and Changing Corporate Culture - A real "how to" book.

If This Book Doesn’t Help, It Might Be You

Lesson Compiler: Douglas W. Brooks, M.Sc., Organizational Development and Leadership.

Publisher: self-published, 2013

Improving Employee Morale and Changing Corporate Culture is not for the faint-hearted. It takes persistence, creativity, compassion, consistency, and above, all role-modelling.  But it can be done. While Douglas W. Brooks shows you how, he tells you it doesn’t happen overnight.

Instead of being divided into chapters, Brooks divides his collection of what he calls ‘morning motivations’ into 52 weeks.  And each week is divided into six sections that can be used by you to increase your own morale or to improve the morale of your employees as well as the corporate culture of your organization.

A typical week in the book consists of a section called, “Words Build Worlds” where you the reader identify the issues or topics you want to discuss or deal with during that particular week. This is intended to focus on addressing the number one most common complaint of staff about their company – that is, inadequate communication and feedback to employees.

Ethical Decisions and Dilemmas are also sections within weeks that show up several times.  Another repeated section (although always from a different perspective) is one Brooks calls “Modes of Mastery” although you would be hard pressed to find any section in any chapter that does not help you to master what is important to you, your team, and the organization. The book combines top motivational topics to provide the reader (and his/her organisation) with the ability to lead a daily motivational session. In addition to those mentioned above, his intention is “to discuss important topics in the workplace, address common workplace issues, inform employees how to develop personally, provide an easy way to motivate and stimulate employees . . . (and) end with a daily quote.”  He succeeds.

The author also makes a lot of customer service. He gives you very practical aids for dealing with it. These hints alone are well worth the price of the book.

The various individual and group exercises in the book are challenging and interesting. I personally can’t wait to use some of them in my own work. Most enjoyable and appreciated (and definitely usable) are the pithy quotations (hundreds of them) from well-known individuals scattered throughout his book. He has great stories (some of them humorous as they stem from his years working in the islands – mainly Jamaica) that get the message across very clearly.

The book is a great manual to follow as he prescribes or use it to address all sorts of topics as you scan the table of contents. You can be sure they’ll come up at work. Alternatively, the quotes and ideas (used with proper credit) will give you lots of material for your own communications– be they written or verbal, formal or informal.

Highly recommended for those that believe low employee morale can be conquered. And few would argue with me when I say, with the author – “it needs to be”.

n  Ken B. Godevenos, President, Accord Resolutions Services Inc., Toronto, Ontario, October 26, 2019, www.accordconsulting.com

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