Endorsements

A delightful read that depicts with stunning accuracy the real life struggles, perils, and commons pitfalls of today’s workplace dynamics and the associated impact on leaders and teams. Equal parts helpful, illustrative, and therapeutic, Fixing Work provides a looking glass into how work can be: fun, engaging, dynamic, and autonomous, across various settings, particularly within large scale organizations filled with legacy systems, complex processes, and the best of intentions but endless competing priorities. An important and breezy read for the future of work.

Fixing Work is a corporate page-turner that draws you in immediately by capturing anyone who has ever worked in a business system. The authors highlight the typical dynamics at play that challenge even the most motivated employees to stay engaged.

They also spotlight what can happen when one leader is curious enough to seek help from an outside confidant and courageous enough to challenge the way things are, to trust their colleagues to find the answers and to ultimately to get out of their way so they can own their work.

The result is an easy-to-read and highly entertaining roadmap for change that anyone can follow to drive results by unleashing the human potential within their own team or organization. Bravo David and Thomas, thanks for giving workers hope and a way to create jobs they love.

WORK will never again be a four letter word thanks to this book!

Fixing Work could not have come at a better time. It’s a must read for executives struggling to redefine the employee experience, engender loyalty and create an engaged workforce. Kudos to Henkin & Bertels

It’s no secret that organizations are more productive and successful when workers can see how their efforts directly impact the company’s results, and when they feel part of a team that is empowered to improve the way work is done. Making this happen however is not easy. But if you want a compelling story of how to design a joyful, high-performance workplace, then Fixing Work is the book for you. Authors Henkin and Bertels, long-time experts in the field of work redesign, provide an easy-to-read, dramatic rendition of one manager’s journey from overwhelmed supervisor to transformation leader. If that’s a path that you too want to take, then the first step is to read this book.

In the emerging world of hybrid work, enlisting and engaging employees has become more important than ever. Designing jobs that employees love is going to be table stakes. Fixing Work will inspire you to take up this challenge with joy and verve.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with David Henkin for nearly a decade at Vanguard as we helped enable company growth through a people-first culture. Henkin and Bertels have written a must-read primer for anyone focused on employee engagement, motivation, productivity, and customer centricity.

As employees today, we spend most of our waking hours working, but if the pandemic taught us anything, it taught us that life and work can and should be integrated. It taught us the importance of family, friends and mental health. It also demonstrated, through the Great Resignation, that we all have choices in the types of organizations we decide to be part of.

Fixing Work: A Tale about Designing Jobs Employees Love is a recipe for attracting and retaining the best talent. It’s a handbook with respect to what work should be and what today’s employees demand – rewarding work filled with mission, purpose, and a true sense of belonging. Winning organizations of tomorrow will embrace the lessons outlined in this book as a catalyst for success.

The days of leaders “maximizing shareholder value” have waned and given way to enterprises who have noble missions, value client loyalty and create incredible experiences for their most valued resource – their people. Fixing Work is a must read for every leader struggling to build a thriving team enabled by an amazing employee culture.

Anyone who has had leadership responsibility in an organization will immediately recognize that David Henkin and Thomas Bertels feel their pain.  The authors share real and relatable world wisdom through the vividly portrayed story of people who have ‘been there’ and ‘done that’ in the daily struggle for integrity and relevance at work. This book is sorely needed. Read Fixing Work to better serve your company, colleagues and customers with distinction.

If you’ve worked in a large company, you know Jerry. The authors have effectively captured what’s broken with work environments similar to Consolidated Insurance. They masterfully introduce us to employees who work to implement well-intended, but often temporary fixes. Instead of focusing on the symptoms, much like anesthesia numbs pain, the authors guide us along a pathway that helps companies redefine what work should be for their teams – thereby eliminating the need for employers to create pain-management programs to sedate what’s broken – and allow them to turn their full attention to how work can be successfully executed.

’People, process, technology.’ This has been the business improvement mantra for decades, but usually with ‘Process’ elevated to pre-eminence and ‘People’ relegated to the lowest priority. If, instead, you like people and figure they’re the true key to business success, David Henkin and Thomas Bertels have authored the book for you. Written as an easy-to-digest business novel, Fixing Work  illustrates the principles of how improving the employee experience can, in the right hands, make companies more effective and competitive by making how work gets done more rewarding for the people who do it.

Fixing Work is for anyone who wants to understand the nitty gritty of the American workplace and how to make work more meaningful, motivating, and productive. Henkin and Bertels’ dialogues and stories make the future of work come alive.

Having worked with Thomas on several projects over the past 20 years, I am well aware of his strategic thinking and organizational design capabilities. The authors’ use of storytelling to introduce work design and employee motivation principles results in a thought provoking yet easy reading novel. Fixing Work is a must-read for any executive seeking to optimize workforce satisfaction while improving productivity.

What if we thought of work as a product, workers as customers of the product and managers as designers of the product? The result? More engaged and motivated employees, satisfied customers, and improved productivity. By imbuing work with purpose, autonomy, and feedback, designing work activity for entirety and variety, and ensuring that technology supports that work activity – Jerry Crawford successfully transforms his lackluster group at Consolidated Insurance into a high-performing Mojo Squad. Learn how you can do the same in your organization by reading his compelling transformation story in Fixing Work…today!

Fixing Work offers a roadmap for organizations to improve employee engagement, organizational effectiveness, and customer experience from vision through execution. To achieve these three goals simultaneously can be challenging, but Henkin and Bertels highlight that with sustained effort and a long-term commitment, it is possible to have a more engaged workforce, a more effective organization, and a better customer experience. This is a must-have for your leadership library, and an especially insightful tool for Chief People Officers!

I really enjoyed the Fixing Work. As someone who has implemented transformations involving the design of new jobs across multiple areas–the book portrayed a realistic journey and set of challenges to success. The ability to enhance service quality by empowering frontline workers to completely handle customer requests and align the organization to properly support that service delivery model, will always elevate performance. It also creates competitive advantage in your market, and a much more engaged workforce. 

I wish I had read Fixing Work before I took my journey, as it would have provided valuable insights about what to expect in driving this type of structural change.

 Thanks for contributing this story to the dialogue about job design!