Building Teams In The Workplace

Winning Workplaces feels almost like a parent when it comes to Seventh Generation, the company of our Best Boss Jeffrey Hollender.

Hollender's environmentally responsible household products business had annual sales of less than $50 million when we honored him in 2006, at a time when SG's progressive people practices were not widely known; by June 2009, when he named his successor as CEO, that figure had grown to more than $1 billion.  SG recently started airing national TV spots, showing that they're definitely here to stay.

And that's a good thing when it comes to not only green consumerism but sustainable business practices.  Hollender has waxed on the latter topic for some time on his Inspired Protagonist blog.  Now's he's bringing his leading-edge thoughts to the masses through his new book The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win.

I just received an advance copy of the book and am looking forward to digging into it.  You can read the first chapter of it for FREE by visiting Hollender's website.

Related: The forward in The Responsibility Revolution is by Peter Senge, a highly respected author in the area of how to improve employee engagement and workplace team building.  We referenced Senge in the Executive Summary of our 2007 Top Small Workplaces Data Report – see page 5 of this pdf.

Time is money, and in a down economy you might as well double whatever you think your – and especially your stakeholders' – time is worth.

So I really appreciated freelance copywriter Denise McGill's 5 time-saving tips for small business owners that appear on Small Biz Survival.  These run the gamut from things you're likely already doing if you place a premium on communications team building (put your full contact info in all email signatures – automate this and you're done), to less-used but no less powerful tactics like deleting or archiving outdated electronic materials on your computer.

In the spirit of saving you time, I'll keep this post short and conclude by sharing two more related tips:

1. File under startups, legal considerations: employees = payroll service (thanks to Paula at Workplace Fairness).
2. File under work/life balance: outsource your more tedious household responsibilities.

Do you engage employees in discussions of saving everyone time and, thus, your company money?

Today Winning Workplaces is formally announcing our partnership with a new, Chicago-based startup called Tix4Cause.

The brainchild of consumer products industry veteran Kevin Nemetz, Tix4Cause is the realization of Kevin's very cool idea: benefit charities of people's choosing with the up to 60% of season tickets that go unused, while at the same time getting those tickets to folks at fair market prices and providing ticket donors with a tax deduction.

Why is Winning Workplaces joining other charities on Tix4Cause's roster such as Heritage YMCA Group and Ronald McDonald House Charities of Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana?  Because we're a nonprofit and our mission to equip small and midsize businesses with proven, practical, and affordable team building and employee engagement activities is as needed as ever, as our president explained on her blog last week.

So let's connect the dots here:

• Your donation and/or purchase of event tickets through Tix4Cause...
• Helps support our fundraising efforts, which go toward...
• Three primary initiatives designed to help small organizations create a more productive workplace: our consulting and training services, our Top Small Company Workplaces recognition project, and our free employee engagement best practices information for company leaders and employees.

Here's our affiliate link to register (free) on Tix4Cause, after which you can donate your unwanted or unused tickets to our cause and purchase tickets for ours or other causes.  Thank you in advance for any help you can offer!

In my last post I mentioned the employee satisfaction level (45%) recently reported by The Conference Board and concluded by asking "whose fault is this anyway?"

When I've asked similar questions, I get a range of answers.  Some are adamant that it is the leader's fault.  Some say the employee should switch jobs if they are so dissatisfied.  Others can't come up with an answer.

Here's the answer: It is the leader's fault and the employee's fault.  In organizations with an effective workplace culture, all parties have a sense of ownership. 

In creating a culture of ownership and in turn a productive workplace, we often write about what leaders should do.  I'm going to look at the flip side of the coin and point out what leaders shouldn't do if they want to contribute to a culture of trust, employee engagement, or team building.

1. As your organization's leader, DON'T be so intensely focused on results that you forget people are your most important means of getting to those results.  A quick story: Years ago, during the first six months of becoming a CEO, I learned this the hard way.   I overused the phrase "I expect" and the majority of my interactions with my team were about what they were doing to deliver the numbers.  Thank goodness a combination of my own experience, an executive coach, and feedback from a couple people on my team helped me realize that the intense focus on results was backfiring.  Clearly, a productive workforce requires building engaged employees. 
2. DON'T ask for input and then ignore it.  This approach squashes open communication in the workplace.  This approach says "I don't care about your ideas or expertise."  Without communication and caring, building trust is unlikely. Guess what?  Poor communication + minimal trust = less than optimal results.
3. DON'T decide that you are going to launch an initiative (large or small) to improve employee engagement unless you plan to follow through.  Not surprisingly, this reinforces a perception that you as the leader really don't care about employees and you can't be counted upon to do what you say you will do.  And that goes back to one of my beginning points: In a great workplace, the culture of ownership contributes to results. 

This list of "don'ts" is endless.  Have you been on the receiving end of a don't?  As a leader, have you learned a valuable lesson from a don't?  Those of us at Winning Workplaces would love to hear your story.

Last month in The New York Times, Peter S. Goodman wrote about "the new poor" – a growing segment of the U.S. population slipping out of the middle class due to falling or nonexistent unemployment benefits at the same time that sluggish economic growth is keeping companies from adding jobs for which they could apply.

Goodman warns that this phenomenon may be a factor for years.  Yet, the Hitachi Foundation is following the old life-lemons adage and taking this opportunity to provide assistance to young entrepreneurs whose missions align with helping this very population.

Triple Pundit, a site that writes on the triple bottom line of "people, planet, profit," shared the details of Hitachi's Yoshiyama Award.  It's for entrepreneurs aged 18-29 – the demographic of the Upstarts that Donna Fenn writes about.  Hitachi is offering six winners up to $50,000 over two years to help support their work.

If you know someone in that age range who runs a business aimed at helping America's poor, tell them about it by using the Share button at the bottom of this post.  And tell them to hurry if they want to apply for 2010: the deadline is March 22.

Related: All social entrepreneurs should get in the habit of doing a "social audit."  There's a story in today's Wall Street Journal on this topic which profiles The Redwoods Group, a specialty insurance provider that Winning Workplaces honored in 2008 for their incredible team building and employee engagement best practices.

Just as employees crave recognition, organizations covet it, too.  In fact, that was the theme of my post yesterday on PrintingForLess.com.

I just heard that Winning Workplaces was named to the FastUpFront Small Business Blog's list of the Top Free Government Business Resources.  This designation joins others on our "mantle" including being named a Top HR Influencer for 2007 by HR World, and this blog being named a Top 100 Leadership Blog last year by BestUniversities.com.

We thank the FastUpFront Blog and the other two entities mentioned above for introducing more folks to us and our mission to equip small business leaders with proven, practical – and yes, FREE – team building and employee engagement strategies to improve their workplace culture and productivity.

In celebration of this recognition of our efforts, I offer these selected blog posts that will help you reward and recognize your employees, with minimal effort and cost:

• (Employee) Love Don't Cost a Thing*
• Employee Recognition on the Cheap
• How Important is Employee Recognition? Leading Book on It Gets Second Edition Makeover
• All Employee Recognition Roads Lead to Greater Company Productivity
• 10 Team Building Strategies of the 2009 Top Small Workplaces Finalists
• Nine Resources for Becoming an Employer of Choice

I was thinking about the title of this post this morning.  We've been hearing since at least late 2008 about rising unemployment, and even though it's leveled off, we're still not at a stage of job growth.  We're just not losing as many (relatively speaking) jobs per month.

Two other employment trends have been making headlines lately.  There's underemployment, where because of hour and pay cuts by employers so they can keep their doors open, people aren't making as much as they did before the recession.  Compounding this issue is the fact that often their employers are demanding more from them, leaving these folks with less time to look for a new job that would provide more pay.

Then, there's the tendency of businesses, especially small ones, to replace laid off full-time employees with temp workers.  The benefit for organizations is that they can manage current and even emerging job functions (as markets improve and they see the need) by paying someone less than they paid a FTE, and with less of a commitment if it turns out a temporary hire is suddenly not needed.

My fear is that if, as many econmists are predicting, economic/job growth is extremely slow for the next year or two, these three employment factors – unemployment, underemployment, and the rise of temp workers – will impede the adoption and cultivation of the qualities of a productive workplace.  These qualities, or hallmarks, include many of the workplace team building and employee engagement best practices we talk about on this blog.

You may ask, what's the harm over the next few years if this scenario does, in fact, play out?  For one thing, less cohesive workplace cultures – those that, for instance, don't rein in toxic managers – very often increase supervised employees' stress levels.  On a macro level, studies have shown this hurts our GDP to the tune of $300 billion annually.

This, of course, doesn't even begin to address costs such as absenteeism, turnover, and recruiting/training that could become even less manageable under this scenario.

Do you agree or disagree with my assessment?  If you agree – how do you think should firms, especially small ones, should respond?

Every day I hear another story that indicates so many leaders don’t get the strong connection between people and results.  When I first moved into a CEO role, I admit I didn’t always see the connection as clearly as I do now.  I was so focused on results, I neglected to pay as much attention to people.  Now that I have seen the research and gotten to know dozens of extraordinary companies who have great workplaces, I am ramping up my focus on employee engagement. 

Our mission here at Winning Workplaces is to inspire and assist organizations that want to create great workplaces that are better for business, better for people, and better for society.   These organizations have workplace cultures that include open communication, trust, team building, and...fun!  

Given the results of the recent Conference Board study, I’d say Winning Workplaces still has a lot of work to do.  In fact, that is an understatement.  The Conference Board reports that only 45% of employees are satisfied with their jobs.  Moreover, I was astounded to learn that the employees rate the best part of their day as the commute.  Yes, the commute.

As more and more baby boomers retire, I wonder if dissatisfaction will increase.  Why?  The most dissatisfied generation is Generation Y. 

Clearly, this situation says we have not only a lot of dissatisfied employees but, in turn, a productivity level that isn’t nearly where it could or should be. 

So whose fault is this grim situation?  The leader's?  The boss's?  The employee's?  More importantly, what do we do about it?  These will be the topics of future blogs. 

Let me know what you think.

I'm excited because I just tweeted with Mark Hirschfeld, the co-author of the new book Re-Engage: How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort Through Extraordinary Engagement, and we're getting a copy that I'll review for you in an upcoming issue of our IDEAS newsletter.

I learned about Hirschfeld's book through his blog, Engaged Employees, Remarkable Results!  His latest post contrasts "dirty, rotten scoundrel"-type leaders – if you close your eyes, I'm sure you can picture at least one that qualifies – with those at the opposite end of the spectrum who leave highly engaged employees in their wake.

He says these leaders are similar in that they:

1. Use their personal power to engage and are committed to creating a great workplace,
2. Inspire confidence in their decisions and direction,
3. Build trust through their honesty and integrity,
4. Practice open, two-way communication,
5. Shun the temptations of executive greed and strive to pay fairly,
6. Genuinely value employees as people, and
7. Lead with respect, not coercion, control, fear, or intimidation.

This list sounds a lot like our building blocks for creating a Winning Workplace, doesn't it?  That's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to digging into this book when it arrives....

Related: Check out the key business results our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award applicants have seen by embracing the leadership traits Hirschfeld writes about and ramping up their team building in the workplace.

LEED certification by the U.S. Green Building Council can be a tough caveat for small businesses.  However, I think the benefits of acheiving this designation for your facility far outweigh the costs involved.

Here are just a few of the benefits:

• Cost savings – most typically in reduced water and electricity consumption.
• Local and national recognition, exposing your business to more potential customers.
• Increased ability to attract top talent who value eco-friendly (and generally employee-friendly) workplaces.
• Greater perception of "walking the talk" when it comes to the carbon footprint of your organization and its products/services.
• Maybe most importantly in this business climate where some CEOs are making headlines by using profits to fund lavish lifestyles that are out of touch with what most Americans are experiencing right now – writing a new narrative for the media in which the CEO is a hero for dumping profits back into the business in a way that benefits not only the company, but its employees and the greater community.

Winning Workplaces Best Boss Nicolas Thomley is enjoying all of these benefits based on the LEED Gold certification his company, Pinnacle Services, announced last week.  You can read their press release on it here.

Related: Read how employee engagement and team building strategies factored into the workplace "greening" of three other organizations in our network.

Attention readers – especially the 3% of you from Massachusetts: On Wednesday, April 28, you can network with Winning Workplaces Best Boss Trish Karter, CEO and Co-Founder of Boston-based Dancing Deer Baking Company.

That's when One Family, a nonprofit whose mission is to end family homelessness in Massachusetts, will honor Karter with their 2010 One Family Founders Award.  The ceremony, part of One Family's Mothers of Inspiration 2010 event, will take place at Westin Copley Place in Boston.

Why is Karter receiving this award?  For the past 9 years, through Dancing Deer's Sweet Home Project, the "deers," as they're known, have donated 35% of the retail price of their Sweet Home goodies to One Family's initiatives to end family homelessness.  Their efforts here include Karter's 1,500 mile bike ride last year from Atlanta up to Boston, which I blogged about.

In total, she and Dancing Deer have donated over $230,000 to support One Family.  Their Sweet Home Project is a textbook example of using workplace team building and employee engagement to achieve a double bottom line – doing well for the company and the community at the same time.

In fact, if you choose to attend the Mothers of Inspiration 2010 event, you will help to advance One Family's work: $93 of the $150 ticket price is tax deductible.

For more info on this event and to register, click here.

In today's business communication climate, because of time management and privacy concerns (including ORM), the ability to opt out is perhaps more important than opting in.  This is especially true of social networking sites, which by nature should be highly user focused.

Therefore I was annoyed to learn today, after months of trying to close my account through phone calls, emails, and website form submissions – which all went unanswered – that the businesspeople-focused social networking site Spoke actually has a pay wall on closing your account!

According to this post on Spoke's general forum, in which "woozoom" registered the same complaint I did, "If you are not a paying customer, you cannot cancel your subscription."

I'm sure Spoke is saving money by not performing this function, but it is certainly not customer focused.  And I don't think it's ultimately the best practice for their long-term financial success, since restricting free users in this way basically ensures that they will never convert to paid users – and, worse, that many of them will, ironically, use other social networks to tell their families, friends, and colleagues to avoid Spoke.

I am doing that with this blog post, in fact.

Admittedly, this doesn't directly relate to workplace team building or employee engagement.  Yet, it's something to think about for your staff who perform a customer service function.  You may not run your own social network, but you can apply the same principle to your phone, email, and snail mail contact lists.

In brief, make it just as easy, if not easier, to opt out than to opt in.  Invest to do this for non-paying contacts and you will see returns through a top-tier customer service reputation from your contacts that convert to paid customers.

Related: I noted above that my attempts to contact Spoke went unanswered. I wrote last year that I think every inquiry deserves a response, even if it's just an automated one.

How do you create a business that profits from the payoff of employee engagement and team building (and more importantly, does so even in a down economy)?

The magazine Remodeling wrote on this in their February 2010 issue.  Profiling our 2009 Top Small Workplace Anthony Wilder Design/Build, Victoria Downing engages both their leader, Liz Wilder, and ours, Gaye van den Hombergh, in a discussion of how Anthony Wilder's embrace of the building blocks of a Winning Workplace have contributed to bottom line results including:

• 9% revenue growth in 2008,
• Turnover in 2008 of 3%, and
• Average employee tenure of 6 years.

Read the full article

Related: I posted a video podcast here that MSNBC did on Anthony Wilder shortly after we announced their Top Small Workplace award last year.

*Hint: As Dan Bobinski wrote on Management-Issues last week, you can't.  However, you can control your communications team building culture and the mechanisms therein to greatly increase the chance that your people will choose to listen.

The key is that they must make the choice to listen.  Once you get them over this hump, employee engagement – and with it, commitment and productivity – will be much enhanced.

The three overall strategies Bobinski shares represent a good starting place.  To help you go further with specific action steps, I've compiled a list of some of the listening tools the small businesses we've honored use, which I've written about before:

• Clearly communicate departmental objectives, and solicit input from your employees on what they can do to help achieve them.
• Ask employees for advice in areas where they have expertise.

(Source)

• Create a committee of employees at different levels and areas of responsibility that has "New Ideas" in its title – and as its objective.
• Same as above, but with the title/objective of creating and implementing workplace team building activities.

(Source)

• Implement "lunch & learns."
• If your firm is small enough – have your CEO conduct one-on-one career advancement meetings with those interested in a leadership role.
• "90 percent solution" – give employees 90% ownership in each project.
• Do 10-minute daily stand up meetings in departments.

(Source)

Are there innovative ways, in addition to the ones listed above, that you succeed in getting employees to tune in to your leadership and your mission and goals?

Could small businesses go the way of the dodo bird?  That's what readers of this new Washington Post article may be left thinking.

Citing the pervasiveness of big-box retailers and a U.S. legal framework that for a generation has nurtured big business while undercutting small business, New America Foundation Senior Fellow Barry C. Lynn concludes that

Many of our most gifted entrepreneurs remain under siege by rivals armed not with better products or better business models, but more money.

This may be true, but I think it a stretch to go further and frame big business as a thriving species like humans, and small business as something akin to polar bears.  There are just too many data points in the employee engagement research on startups and entrepreneurs which show – to use another ecological metaphor – that we're actually at an unprecedented high tide.

Consider:

• Recognized small business expert Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends described the current sheer size of the small biz market in a piece for Google's knol site, based on SBA data.  There are approximately 27 million small businesses in the U.S., representing over 99% of all employer firms.
• In 2008 the U.S. Census Bureau predicted that by 2042, current minorities including Latinos and Asian Americans will become the majority.  As a result of this population trend, we're already seeing sharp growth in business creation rates from these segments, as the Kauffman Foundation reports.
• Young people are showing – and acting on – an interest in entrepreneurship in record numbers.  In her book Upstarts!, Donna Fenn reports that college and university entrepreneurship courses have increased over 400% in the past decade, and Belmont University entrepreneurship chair Jeff Cornwall is quoted as saying that 4 in 10 of their incoming freshmen already have a business.

I think this and other evidence that's out there roundly refutes the WaPo implication that small business is an endangered species.

Related: The above-mentioned Fenn spoke with us recently and, among other things, made the case that there's a revenue opportunity for colleges and universities in equipping their students with a foundation in workplace team building strategies to supplement their education in the numbers side of starting and running a business.

The recent actions of big players in some industries have helped sour business' overall reputation.  I'm referring to the likes of Goldman Sachs and WellPoint, who are awarding themselves with, respectively, record bonuses and rate hikes while consumers continue to languish in this economy.

When big business' rep takes a dive, employees who work for them, and even workers in small businesses that partner with them, can become disenfranchised.  Disenfranchised, of course, is another way of saying disengaged, and when this happens, productivity suffers.

Greg Hakim, a new employee of our Top Small Workplace Corporate Ink, wrote on this on their company blog this week.  He starkly defines the differences in business outcomes when leaders engage employees as merely numbers, or business assets, versus as the dynamic, innovation starters they truly can be when workplace team building is similarly dynamic and innovative.

A workplace culture that doesn't place any value on job meaning produces siloed work, customer or client dissatisfaction, and turnover that's often above the industry average.  On the other hand, companies that demonstrate through their people practices that they respect their workers and also invest in employee leadership development enjoy more and better innovations from collaborative work, which make customers/clients happier and also make it much more likely that workers won't bail, keeping your recruiting/training costs under control.

Related: Helping to instill a sense of meaning in your workforce doesn't have to be expensive.  This post reveals ways to do employee recognition "on the cheap."

Last month I wrote that two small banks that we've recognized for their exemplary employee engagement and team building strategies are on the popular "Move Your Money" list.

This month we're endeavoring to dig deeper into this movement, which appears to be gaining traction among consumers.  We want to assess their understanding of it, as well as adoption for personal and/or business purposes.

Please take our short Move Your Money survey today

Your feedback will inform an article I'm writing on this topic for our next IDEAS newsletter, which will go out in early April.  (If you're not yet on our mailing list, you can sign up free for IDEAS here.)

Thanks in advance for your valued input!

Who will be responsible for choosing which of our almost 500 applicant organizations will be named as 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces in Inc. Magazine this June?

We just posted our panel of judges this year on our website.  Those who will be making the final determination in early March as to which firms best showed the payoff of such productive workplace factors as team building and employee leadership development include:

• Elaine Brodsky – Former Co-Owner of CitiStorage, LLC
• Dan Denison – Professor of Management and Organization at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland
• Craig Hickman – Author of The Oz Principle and other bestselling business books
• Bart Houlahan – Co-Founder of B Lab
• Ken Lehman – Winning Workplaces Founder and Chairman; former Co-Chairman of Fel-Pro Inc.
• Bill Marshall – President and CEO of Top Small Workplace Phelps County Bank
• Julie Silverstein – President and COO of SmithBucklin Corporation
• Kevin A. Trapani – President and CEO of Top Small Workplace The Redwoods Group

Related: This post shows the company success factors our award application solicits data on, which our judges will take into account in making their decisions.

Due to my workload, one of my Winning Workplaces New Year's resolutions – being a more active discussion moderator here on our blog – has been on the backburner since January 1.  I'm happy to report, though, that I've shuffled some things around and have also placed more of a premium on being present when you take the time to comment on one of our posts.

To catch you up and hopefully spur more dialogue where it's already been started on workplace team building and employee engagement, here's a list of posts where I've most recently commented on someone else's thoughts.  I'd love to read your take on the following:

• Employee Engagement - It Takes Two to Tango
• Paid Sabbaticals Less Radical
• Don't Be Afraid to Expand Employee Training to Include General Career Advancement Skills
• Stanford Prof Reinforces Theory: Poor Employee Engagement Will Lead to Talent Exodus
• Bob Sutton: Don't Cut Bottom 10 Percent of Workforce as a Knee-Jerk Reaction
• Who's in the Wrong Here: Employee or Company?
• What 'Tabatha's Salon Takeover' is Really About
• '60 Minutes' Reveals the VA Benefits Backlog is a Leadership Problem
• Nonprofits and Blogs Were Made for Each Other
• Ingredients Common to Business Success Involve Employee Engagement

Here's a silver lining for small businesses in this economy: trends more typical of big companies, including automating customer service functions and employing fewer customer service representatives per (potential) customer, mean that the bar is often set fairly low for you to "over-deliver."

I speak from experience on this.  Check out this feedback we just received from a company that completed our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award application:

I especially appreciated the quick response to an email I sent to customer service.  Technical support responded within 24 hours, thanked me for pointing out the mistake and assured me the problem would be fixed.  I was surprised to receive a response at all.

While we pride ourselves at Winning Workplaces on delivering excellent service across all our employee engagement activities, that last sentence in the applicant's feedback wouldn't have materialized if someone they dealt with before us didn't under-deliver.  Consider that in your employee engagement and team building initiatives that involve your customer service staff.

While we're on the topic of customer service, have you ever wondered what the optimal ratio of reps to customers should be?  It varies, of course, but you could use as a baseline what our ratio ended up being while assisting this year's TSCW applicants.

We had 3 FTE reps to a little over 600 customers.  Or a ratio of 1 to 200.

How does this compare with your current ratio?  And have you seen feedback from your customers that affirms a low service bar set by your competitors that your people practices help you surpass?