The 8 Values of Highly Productive Companies: Creating Wealth from a New Employment Relationship

Dr Tim Baker           

A must-have in any manager's library.
— Sergio Carlo Maresca, author of BREAKAWAY!

If you think you are doing it right, think again and read this book.
— Dr Roxanne Zolin, QUT

The employment relationship as we know it is a relic of the last century. Globalisation and heightened competition are challenging organisations to be more responsive to fluctuations in market conditions and trends. This book offers managers and professionals a new, research-based employment model that will alter the way employees and employers think about their working relationship, aligning the changing needs and interests of individuals and organisations to produce a sustainable, productive and profitable workplace.

About the Author

Tim Baker is an international consultant and Managing Director of WINNERS-AT-WORK, which specialises in assisting small, medium and large organisations to manage change successfully. Together with being an international consultant, Dr Baker is a published author, executive coach, master trainer, visiting university lecturer and keynote speaker. Dr Baker has conducted major consulting projects in Saudi Arabia, Finland, Canada, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia. His clients include IBM, Unilever, Nokia, Boeing, Singapore Airlines, Warner Brothers, Volvo and SAP. Dr Baker has degrees in education and psychology and was awarded a doctoral degree from the Queensland University of Technology in 2005, specialising in workplace culture. Prior to building his consulting practice, he held senior management positions in education, marketing and business services.

What business leaders
and academics are saying about this book

Dr Baker emphasises the values of highly productive companies and provides, in this latest publication, a practical application of the model that managers can use from Day 1 in the workplace to achieve improved productivity. As a student of his work, I can recommend the principles outlined in The 8 Values of Highly Productive Companies, and the understanding his work provides of the employer–employee relationship in contemporary management structures today. This is compulsory reading if you want to add value to your management activities and build successful productive organisations in both the private and public sector.
Alastair Dawson, BA, MBA, FAIM, MAICD
Chief Executive Officer, Rockhampton Regional Council

Since purchasing our business 5 years ago, and using Dr Tim Baker as our external organisation development consultant, we have seen a trebling of our turnover, a 5% increase in profit and practically no staff turnover. Many of the practices that Tim put in place within our business are written about in the book. Tim’s management training has been a major contributor to our success. I recommend this book to all business managers.
Terry Cubit
Managing Director, Queensland Thermo King

Every company, team, and individuals, has to rethink how we are engaging our employees and ourselves at the workplace to stay competitive and productive. In The 8 Values of Highly Productive Companies, Tim delivers a practical model and change process on aligning the changing needs and interests of individual and organisation. Tim has worked with several multinational companies in Singapore and all of them have found the model extremely useful and insightful in preparing them to further enhance their psychological contract with their workforce.
Dr Tan Bee Wan, PhD
Executive Chairman, Integrative Learning Corporation Pte. Ltd.

To create value organisations need values-based management. This book based on Dr Baker’s prior research on eight values of employee–employer relationship should be of great practical significance to modern managers.
Professor Milind Sathye
Deputy Head of the School of Business and Government, University of Canberra

Tim Baker writes frankly on the most important challenge facing businesses today: How to work together collaboratively, honestly and respectfully to gain the greatest value from our most important resource — our people. From TQM to Self-Directed Work Teams the failure of management techniques to deliver on their promises can be explained and predicted by this work. If you think you are doing it right, think again and read this book. And then consider: Can we solve the environmental challenges of our world if we do not resolve the human relationship challenges of our workplaces?
Dr Roxanne Zolin
Associate Professor, Queensland University of Technology

The 8 Values of Highly Productive Companies is an inspiring book with great practical value. Tim provides much more than smart ideas, he draws on his real world consulting experience and his academic knowledge to make a convincing case for a values approach to management which can enhance the productivity and sustainability of organisations.
Professor Hitendra Pillay
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

Through a refreshingly selective mix of reference material and his own experiences Dr Tim Baker has produced a comprehensive guide to managing our most important business resource — ‘our people’. The book has helped me to create a workplace environment where the staff are genuinely valued, appreciate each other and are proud of the business and their own achievements.
Mark Bunt
General Manager, Epicentre Trading, Brisbane, Australia

Tim’s book is a ‘must-have’ in any manager’s library. With scholarly thoroughness and contemporary case studies, you will learn of current trends in the workplace of the new millennium.
Sergio Carlo Maresca FAIM
International best-selling author of Breakaway! and Focus! or Fold!

Tim has managed to extract a concise understanding from the latest research on the new work area and influences. The chapter on ‘Them and Us’ provides an insightful background and by itself provides excellent guidance for practitioners. An excellent read for organisation specialists.
Hermias C. Hendrikse
Director of Organisation Effectiveness, Etisalat, United Arab Emirates

This book provides a new millennium understanding of the workplace environment and how to implement this paradigm shift in employee–employer relations. With this knowledge the reader will be equipped to rationalise behavioural trends and move to the forefront of organisational practice to create a company with exceptional human capital and productive value.
Steve Settle
Company Director and Senior Business Manager, Brisbane, Australia

Dr Baker’s book presents 21st century leadership in a form that all managers should read. In today’s world of cross-functional project teams and assignments, employers and employees need to operate with a strong values based relationship contract, guiding continuous learning and value creation. Such a partnership is the key to meeting the goals of employees and organisational flexibility and knowledge management.
Bob O’Connor
Director Corporate Education, Queensland University of Technology

This user-friendly, well-laid out book is a must read for anyone, such as academics, students, professionals, and managers, who are interested in obtaining a better understanding of the radical changes in workplace relationships between the employer and employee. Using an 8 values-based framework, Tim provides a road map to guide the reader through the process (including pitfalls) in handling the transition from the traditional relationship to the dynamics of the contemporary workplace. At the end of each chapter, using reflective questions, case studies, summary of key points, Tim helps to reinforce the concepts explored in the book and provides an excellent reality check.
Bill Synnot
Co-author of The Toolbox for Change: A Practical Approach

Excellent … A much needed resource for today’s airline industry management and employees!
Captain Saravanan
Airline Pilot, Singapore Airlines, Singapore

This book is certain to make a significant contribution to improving staff retention, recruitment and productivity of companies in a climate of accelerated change and uncertainty. Read and enjoy this very interesting book.
Brent D. Peterson, PhD
Author of Fake Work: Why People Are Working Harder Than Ever but Accomplishing
Less, and How to Fix the Problem

In The 8 Values of Highly Productive Companies, Tim Baker has provided an excellent model, useful for any organisation wishing to improve their productivity and effectiveness to accomplish significant improvement that will transfer directly to the bottom line. Dr Baker provides the guidance, plus sufficient background to understand why the guidance makes sense and will work, so that leaders can immediately put his ideas to work. The results will not be instantaneous, but signs of those results will appear in very short order. He points out many of the hurdles getting in the way of companies becoming highly productive, and provides clear solutions for overcoming those hurdles. In short, this is a book for organisational leaders to begin actuating positive results while they continue to learn more about to achieve those positive, bottom line results.
Joel S. Finlay, Ph.D., RODC
Editor, Organization Development Journal
President, KSYC Production Industries
United States of America

Table of Contents

PART I – The Workplace Revolution
Chapter 1 – The End of Them & Us
Chapter 2 – The Psychological Contract
Chapter 3 – The New World of Work

PART II — The Model
Chapter 4 – The New Employment Relationship Model
Chapter 5 – Learning & Earning: From Specialist Employment To Flexible Deployment
Chapter 6 – Customer Culture: From Internal- To Customer-Focus
Chapter 7 – Roles Replacing Jobs: From Job- To Performance-Focus
Chapter 8 – Managing Tribalism: From Functional- To Project-Based Work
Chapter 9 – Employee Engagement: From Dispirit & Work To Human Spirit & Work
Chapter 10 – Commitment Replacing Loyalty: From Loyalty To Commitment
Chapter 11 – Developing The Whole Person: From Training To Learning & Development
Chapter 12 – Conquering The Initiative Paradox: From Closed To Open Information

PART III - Applying The Model
Chapter 13 – Bottom Up Transformation: A Process of Change
Chapter 14 – The Roadmap: A Strategic Framework For Change

www.australianacademicpress.com.au

    RRP $39.95
    ISBN: 9781921513206
    AAP Item Number: 4-921513206
    236 pages softcover with Index
    First published 2009

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