The drama-free workplace
By Patti Perez
Patti Perez has produced a book for the modern workplace focused on, as the subtitle demonstrates, preventing unconscious bias, sexual harassment, ethics lapses and inspiring a healthy culture. That is a lot for one book to do, but it does it well.
At around 250 pages it uses short, concise chapters to cover each topic. Starting with identifying the root causes of workplace drama, Perez builds up this tome of tips with advice and strategies to tackle unconscious bias, anticipating drama, persuasive communication, rule-setting and workplace training. Each chapter is easy to read and can be digested in short, timely pieces.
A detailed appendix and index allow for easy location of any given topic. This is especially valuable if you want to address a particular issue without wading through the whole book. The appendices also include examples of forms and language upon which to build your own form of internal investigations.
Overall, this is a useful handbook to provide a manager with ideas for improving a workplace that may have issues relating to toxic culture, employee discipline or a history of staff complaints. It can also be preventative, by utilising Perez’s advice to put in place barriers to any of those negative traits from occurring, while having an effective system to deal with them if they do.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
