Title: A Busy Manager’s Guide to Employee Relations Excellence

Author: John W. “Wes” Spence:

ISBN 1-4107-7041-9

The following review was contributed by: Roger E. Herman

The author of this book is a Certified Management Consultant and a Senior Professional in Human Resources. He certainly has the credentials to write a thorough, broadly instructive book on effective employee relations. From that perspective, this book was disappointing.

There is a lot of information in this short book, but the view is wide and shallow. Each of the topics addressed could have been more thoroughly explored, adding value for the reader. However, for the reader looking for a decent overview, the book could be a valuable tool. The book’s title suggests that it’s designed for busy managers, but even busy managers need more than the quick look they’ll get in these pages.

The publisher didn’t do this book any favors. I was distracted by poor design—it’s hard to separate the page headings from the text, grammar and spelling problems, and a sans-serif type with an unusually large amount of space between the lines. It appears that the publisher was trying to make a short manuscript appear longer by adding a lot of extra white space.

I found myself wishing that the author had invested more time in developing his manuscript and/or the publisher had asked for more content. The index is a mere one page in length—and in a different type style than the rest of the book. The value of the book is diminished by the poor production values.

Unfortunately, this publication is a light-weight entry into a field that is crying for heavy-weight content. Perhaps the author will invest more time to create something more than a quick-and-dirty look with a sales message. I was hoping for much more than I got.