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DENTON, D. KEITH. Recruitment, Retention, and Employee Relations: Field Tested Strategies for the '90s. Westport, CT: Quorum Books, an imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, 1992. Pp. xiv + 212. $42.95
Copies of Fortune and Business Week, once browsed, go in a pile in the attic. Some day, I have said to myself, I will use all the articles I've marked as illustrative cases in a comprehensive survey of human resource practices which I'll begin writing next year or maybe the year after next. However, this burdensome responsibility has now been lifted from my shoulders. D. Keith Denton has visited my attic and done the work for me. The result is Recruitment, Retention, and Employee Relations.
In the Preface, Denton clearly lays out his purpose: "To help you use human resources as a competitive weapon," the "you" being human resource managers. He further states that the book "is packed with powerful and proven strategic tools for improving performance through recruitment, retention, and improved employee relations."
The book is, unabashedly, a compilation of paraphrased clippings of contemporary people practices at the great companies. Denton strikes the central theme in Chapter 1. It is a positive theme: Many American organizations today are using a variety of human resource practices that are helping them attract, involve, and hold onto people. In the 17 chapters that follow, these practices are cataloged. There are chapters, for example, on recruiting, selection, job redesign, flextime, employee involvement, "multiskilled" teams, team building, recognition, and compensation.
In each chapter, anywhere from one to a half dozen or more examples are cited to illustrate positive human resource practices that address the chapter's topic. The examples range from one-liners to more detailed treatments running several pages. Most sources are the magazines in my attic, but also include internal company documents, Harvard Business Review, and others; wherever a particular practice at a particular company has been described in print.
Longer treatments are given examples with which most human resource specialists are familiar, such as Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation's program for educating and involving all its employees in the financial side of the business, General Electric's widely publicized workout program, and American Express's performance tracking process, among others.
If...