Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement

During the past two decades, few pursuits have captured the passion of American business as fervently as the quest to unleash the power of people. While some of those pursuits have been fruitful, significant employee engagement remains largely untapped. In this captivating tale, author and consultant Les Landes offers a new path to the promised land of extraordinary employee engagement. It begins with a thought-provoking premise about the essential differences between human beings and other living creatures—imagination and free will—and how those two qualities are inseparably linked. That premise opens the door to a fresh understanding and appreciation for human nature in the workplace, and it sets the stage for a breakthrough in optimizing employee performance. The book tells the story of two principal characters: Tom Payton, a human resources and employee communications manager who’s looking for insights on employee engagement as well as a promotion, and David Kay, an enigmatic consultant who guides Tom on a journey of discovery. Over the course of the story, their conversations run the gamut from the silly to the sublime, from the humorous to the serious, from the novelty of Barney the purple dinosaur to the elegant wisdom of Henry David Thoreau. Together, Tom and David explore essential topics related to employee engagement, such as continuous improvement, performance development, and communication. They also challenge mistaken notions about people in the workplace, and the ideas captured in their dialogue offer approaches to employee engagement based on insights from historically significant thinkers. This unique business fable shows how tapping into the power and purpose of imagination and free will can help you create the type of organization where employees love to work and customers love doing business.