Employee Leadership Development

The comments are coming in fast and furiously to Wally Bock's latest post on his Three Star Leadership Blog.  That's not surprising given his topic: first-line managers.

Bock cites a blog post by Tom Peters in which he goes so far as to call these managers a "peerless strategic opportunity" for innovation and growth.  Expanding Peters' case, Bock explicitly links nurturing these integral staff to more desirable outcomes in engagement, turnover, and, yes, profitability.

In addition to Bock's "boss's bottom line" that employee leadership development helps a company grow even as its key players do, he provides value in these three qualities to look for in first-line managers to assess their longer-term leadership potential:

• They talk to others about behavior and performance,
• They make decisions, and
• They enjoy helping others succeed.

I hope more leaders read the advice of Peters, Bock, and other respected authorities who are pointing to this pivotal cog in the machine of small business – and business in general – as one that can easily be improved, for the benefit of their bottom line, and ultimately everyone through the job growth more thriving enterprises create.

Related: We wrote an editorial a few years ago on the importance of new manager training to more robust (and productive) employee engagement and people practices, and it still holds up today.  Read it here.

Consumer confidence is down – no doubt in large part because one in 10 Americans is still without a job.  That combined with mostly inaction from Washington has created a climate where entrepreneurs must (with due credit to Jack Matson) innovate or die.

Adam Toren wrote a great post on the YoungEntrepreneur site last week on this necessity.  Perhaps the most powerful of the five tips he shares to "keep your fire burning strong" is to guard against negativity.  As I've written here before, negativity results in employee stress, and that can wreak havoc on your ability to create a productive workplace culture.

Picking up and running with Toren's point on ridding your workplace of negativity, here are three road-tested strategies you can use to get there.  Use them in tandem for best results:

1. Hire slow.  Don't be afraid to bring prospective hires in for interviews with staff they would report to, as well as decision makers in other departments or areas.  Doing this will greatly increase the likelihood that they're the best person for you and, on the flip side, that you're the best organization for them.
2. Communicate with employees often, and give them a voice in how the company operates.  Frequent all-hands meetings and annual or semi-annual employee surveys are great action steps under this strategy.
3. Invest in employee leadership development.  We've seen that while some leaders think paying to advance workers' career development will lead them to jump ship, by and large they show their appreciation for their employer's commitment to their growth by staying put and instead looking for growth opportunities from within.  In turn, this helps keep your knowledge base strong and also saves on recruiting and training costs.

When you engage employees, do you do anything in addition to the above measures to make your organization a positive place in which to work?

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."

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.

This post from last week on Canada's Axiom News site caught my attention.  In it, Jennifer Higgs cites the Vermont Employee Ownership Center – and our 2007-09 Top Small Workplaces – in making the case that companies that are employee owned have "disproportionate excellence" relative to their peers that are not.

Higgs' evidence to support this case includes the fact that a third of our winners the last three years thrive with the help of a true culture of ownership, and that, at least in Vermont, employee-owned firms have tended to win more awards.   She also cites employee engagement research compiled by the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) which finds that, as we've shared here, employee-owned firms "tend to grow faster and are more profitable with higher productivity than non-employee-owned companies."

But, while desirable, do these business outcomes equate to "disproportionate" excellence, or success?  One firsthand perspective I can offer might shed some light on this question.

This year I had the opportunity to read and score a batch of our Top Small Company Workplaces applications.  I looked at the following factors for success, as assessed in our extensive application:

• *Business structure & growth
• Employee metrics
• Benefits
• Learning & development
• Workplace culture & people practices
• Impact of people practices
• Employee participation
• Impact of economy & company response
• Fostering community & collaboration
• Goals & sustainability

I put an asterisk (*) next to the first bullet above because this is the area that asks about employee ownership.  It is only one of 10 areas I, and the rest of our reading teams, are looking at.  I personally put as much or more weight into applicants' benefit offerings, employee development strategies, and responses to the essay questions that make up the last six areas listed above as I put into their business structure/growth.

For me and surely for others now reviewing applications, employee ownership by itself is not a guarantee of moving on to the next round (where our judging panel – of a caliber on par with our 2009 roster, TBA – will select the winners that will be featured in the June issue of Inc. Magazine).  Because employee ownership has historically been viewed similarly relative to many other success factors by our final judging panel, you get the majority of our winners over the last three years that are not employee owned.  This includes such excellent organizations as Healthwise (2007 Winner), Lundberg Family Farms (2008), and Anthony Wilder Design/Build (2009).

So in terms of addressing the claim that employee ownership equals "disproportionate excellence," I stick by what I wrote here last month: While employee ownership is not essential for creating a Winning Workplace, it is often tied to the ability to do so.

How much weight do YOU give employee ownership, as compared with other factors, to achieving excellence (defined as long-term success and sustainability)?

At some point, your CEO will want to step down.  Then the question, possibly for your board of directors, will be: Do we hire someone from outside or promote from within to fill this role?

Hiring CEOs from within has been the pinnacle of the employee leadership development strategies of the small businesses Winning Workplaces has honored with our Top Small Company Workplace award.  In fact, among our almost 500 award applicants for 2010, close to one in four job openings last year was filled from within.

As Administaff's HRTools site reports, new research from Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business finds that this tack when it comes to filling the CEO position is better for businesses in the long term, versus tapping a qualified candidate from outside.

Here's how this looks in terms of outcomes, according to HRTools:

[A]fter three years, it’s clear that inside CEOs fare better than outside CEOs....  As tenure increases, obvious opportunities for cost cutting and divestment dry up.  Inside CEOs, because of their deep knowledge and root in the firm, are more likely to initiate and implement strategic changes that can build the firm’s long-term competitive advantage....

One of the researchers involved in this study of close to 200 CEOs over a five-year period went so far as to warn company boards that hiring a CEO from outside poses "greater risks" to the firm's performance.

Related: Read what we have to say on succession planning as part of employee engagement at work by accessing our relevant posts here.

Are you looking for a (new) job?  Do you want to work for a company that places as much of a premium on building employee engagement, workplace team building, and employee leadership development as on growing revenue and profits?

Well, spurred by this post on The Talent Buzz (providing links to the job pages of the 2010 Fortune "100 Best Companies to Work For"), I revised the Google Map of Winning Workplaces' 45 Top Small Workplaces I last shared here to include applicable links to the employment pages on their websites.  Check it out:

For your convenience, here's a list of the companies we've honored each of the last three years that currently have job openings.  You can use the map to zoom in on your state and click on the "Job Openings" link provided to apply to any relevant positions.

2007 TSW Winners Hiring:

• Exactech (FL)
• Healthwise (ID)
• Restek Corporation (PA)
• Summit Aviation (DE)

2008 TSW Winners Hiring:

• ATA Engineering (CA)
• Decagon Devices (WA)
• Integrated Project Management Company (IL)
• JA Frate (IL)
• King Arthur Flour Company (VT)
• Lundberg Family Farms (CA)
• New Belgium Brewing (CO)
• Phenomenex (CA)
• Rainforest Alliance (NY)
• Resource Interactive (OH)
• The Paducah Bank & Trust Company (KY)

2009 TSW Winners Hiring:

• Analytical Graphics (PA)
• Censeo Consulting Group (DC)
• HCSS (TX)
• Mike's Carwash (IN)
• Radio Flyer (IL)
• Root Learning (OH)
• Skyline Construction (CA)
• Steppenwolf Theatre Company (IL)
• Tohono O'odham Nursing Care Authority (AZ)
• Woodmeister Master Builders (MA)

Would this post benefit someone you know who's seeking employment?  If so, click the Share button below to email it to them, or to post it on your social networks.  Here's the short permalink for this post to paste in your email or status update: http://bit.ly/bK8NP5

This new article on CNNMoney.com profiles six companies on Fortune magazine's 2010 "100 Best Companies to Work For" list that have never had a layoff.

I'm guessing six is the total number on Fortune's 2010 list, or this article would have touted and profiled more firms.  A 6% no-layoff (ever!) rate is indeed pretty impressive, especially considering this list encompasses midsize and large companies – which due to factors such as more complex bureaucracies and, in public companies, the need to appease shareholders can be more prone to layoffs.

We have our own no-layoff stats to share among our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award applicants, which I think are equally impressive.  One disclaimer before I get into the actual numbers below: our application only assesses involuntary turnover for the last three years (2007-2009), not over all time as Fortune's seems to assess.

Still, here's what we know:

• From 2007-2009, 44 (8.9%) of our 497 applicants for 2010 had no layoffs.
• In 2009, 87 (17.5%) had no layoffs. 

The following chart shows the percentage of applicant firms with 0-10 layoffs in 2009:

If you add up all the percentages here you'll get 74% – meaning that 3 out of 4 organizations had 10 or fewer layoffs in 2009.  This data point, I think, shows that employee engagement in terms of recruiting and ongoing employee leadership development can have a huge impact on keeping "A" players at the top of their game, and making more highly engaged employees from "B" and lower-level players.

All of this, of course, increases positive outcomes such as greater productivity and profitability, and also decreases negative outcomes such as having to let someone go, which is no fun for anyone involved, in any economic environment.

Benchmark your company against our 2010 small business award applicants: How many layoffs did you have in 2009?  Over the last 3 years?

Here's a quick tip based on real-world experience – mine.  If you're on the fence about creating a Facebook page for your business, or keeping one up compared to your time spent promoting your business on other social networking sites, ask yourself two related questions:

• How well does my product/service resonate with my target demographic within Facebook (here's a link that shows a breakdown of users by generation, for starters)?
• Is even heavily veiled marketing of my product/service via my Facebook page – ie, status updates; new photos or video – going to be perceived as too hard of a sell?

I bring this up because as an Admin for two Facebook pages – the one for Winning Workplaces and a newer one for my wife's recently formed, Los Angeles-based production company, title3 – I've noticed striking differences in such desired metrics as the rate of increase in new fans and the number of interactions, or any time someone comments, likes, or shares a page update or comments on the page's wall.

To see how this tip plays out, consider:

• The Winning Workplaces page is about: workplace people practices that create better work environments in small businesses.
• The title3 page is about: artistic works that are innovative and provide opportunities for women in the arts.

Here's how many fans each of these pages attracted in their first month.  Keep in mind that more work went into the Winning Workplaces page over similar timeframes.

Yes, these pages are in wildly divergent industries and have different target audiences.  But it is also true that the title3 page has a more visceral product (staged and filmed works) offered under a mission statement that appeals to more people (a good share of the 5 million women in LA County, at least).

One more thing: Your answers to the questions I posed above have implications for employee engagement training and employee leadership development.  It may well be a better use of your and your workers' time in the marketing/sales area to focus less or not at all on reaching Facebook users and converting them to paying customers, and more on reaching them via more traditional channels.  Do more of what works best, after all.

I've blogged several times to make the case – because I don't think it can be stressed enough – that using people practices that may seem "squishy," with the goal of producing more highly engaged employees, is in fact a productive long-term business strategy.  Here's one recent example of this.

InnovationTools is one of the most recent resources to underscore this case.  This quick read on the site by strategy expert Roy Luebke argues that something as simple as management's persistent effort to show their supervisees respect (one of our six building blocks for creating a Winning Workplace) can improve a company's innovation.  Greater innovation, of course, fuels customer satisfaction and growth, leading to higher revenues and profitability.

The small organizations that just finished applying for our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award bear out this case in the real world.  Of the record-setting 496 firms that completed an application this year,

• 450, or 91%, were profitable in 2009
• They had average 2009 revenues of $28.3 million
• They grew revenues 12% over 2008 – in a very tough economy!

How do these impressive business results tie back to respectful employee engagement?  When I review these applicants' answers to our qualitative questions that run the gamut from unique workplace culture practices to employee leadership development strategies, the word "respect" came up 331 times.  That averages out to two-thirds of a reference per company.

So it's obvious that creating a culture of respect is top of mind for these firms, and they actively design their trust building activities to support the attainment of key organizational goals.

What are your thoughts on the relationship between respect in the workplace and achieving desired bottom-line outcomes?

I hadn't thought about the childhood saying "Finders keepers, losers weepers" since, well, childhood.  I was reminded of it again today when I came across this post on the Assessment Competency blog by business strategy consultant and leadership speaker Gregory P. Smith.

The expression is an apt one when it comes to companies' efforts to engage employees to increase employee tenures and reduce turnover to boost competitive advantage.

Deftly addressing the trials and tribulations of leading a multi-generational workforce and assigning hard costs to turnover, Smith provides a baker's dozen employee retention tips that your organization should consider adopting ensure the right people are "on the bus":

1. Hire the best and avoid the rest.
2. Provide flexible work schedules adapted to the needs of the individual.
3. Get rid of the slackers and whiners.
4. Soft skills are becoming the hard skills.
5. If they can't "move up" they will "move out."  (A case for employee leadership development.)
6. *Create an early warning detection system.
7. *Create an alumni program.
8. Look for triggers.
9. Take the temperature of your workforce.  (We offer one way to do this here.)
10. Complete an Individual Retention Plan on your best employees.
11. Focus on the family.
12. Identify and weed out poor managers.
13. *Adopt your employees.

I placed an asterisk (*) next to practices that are particularly innovative and "outside the box."  Who knows – they might work best for your workplace.

Are you using any of these engagement activities in your firm?  If so, which have delivered the best ROI?

It's my impression that the hospitality industry is ahead of the game compared with some others in terms of realizing and acting on the connection between better employee engagement and higher customer satisfaction.  Because companies in this space deal with customers face to face more often than others, they were on the leading edge when the economy tanked starting a little over a year ago, and they had to make some changes in how they dealt with them or risk losing them, since they deal in "nice to haves" and not "must haves."

So therefore I was happy to see organizational and workplace culture consultant Gene Ference explain how companies whose leaders adapt to foster greater workplace team building will be more successful this year, on Hospitality Net.

Specific people practices Ference points to include:

• Taking more time in hiring to make sure the right people are on board
• Seeking and providing more feedback to employees
• Create more nuturing environments for employee leadership development

Here's how he describes what ideal employee engagement looks like, and the business benefits that occur as a result:

The key to a peak-performing organizational culture is engaged employees who are invested in their work.  As in Star Wars, effective leadership develops cultures in which people « feel the force » rather than merely collect a paycheck.  Clarity about the organization’s vision, mission and values allow employees to embrace that spirit and make it their own.  ...  Put another way, leaders need to make sure employees understand the brand and their roles in helping to build, energize and sustain that brand.

Talented employees who are fully invested in their jobs provide huge payoffs to the bottom line.  They increase productivity, reduce turnover and generate higher employee and guest satisfaction, all of which result in more profit for the organization.

Related: Winning Workplaces written Success Stories on three hospitality companies and the practices they use to strengthen their bottom line.  Check them out:

• Emmett's Tavern & Brewing Co.
• Kahunaville Management, Inc.
• Zingerman's

Check out this bold post that deals with employee leadership development by Amy Bermar, Founder and President of Corporate Ink, a PR firm for the tech industry based in Massachusetts (and one of our Top Small Workplaces).

Continuing the theme of transparency that is common among winners of Winning Workplaces' small business award, Bermar explains that you won't be able to reach her staff via email on Wednesday afternoons because they've carved out that time specifically for "thinking, learning, and making the creative space to come up with new ideas."

Longtime readers of our content on human capital strategies for small firms know that Corporate Ink is not the first organization to take this type of step.  Our board member and Best Boss, Michael Mulqueen, who formerly led the Greater Chicago Food Depository, told us that he actually eliminated internal emails during his tenure there so his workforce would be forced to talk to one another, which spurred greater innovation.

I find it refreshing that in an era – especially post-CES – where technology seems to have fewer and fewer limits by the day, a decidedly non-tech move like this can turn heads and, most importantly, have a real and lasting impact on the bottom line.

In your customer or employee engagement, have you ever consciously shunned technology in pursuit of greater returns than your peers who embraced it?

Late last year I shared a grid that shows the nine most common employee development initiatives used by our 2009 Top Small Workplaces.  One of these employee development strategies is a mentoring or coaching program.

Over 80% of these winning organizations use this practice to spur greater innovation and productivity among their management team, and over 70% do the same for all their salaried employees.

But what shape do these programs take?  In response to this question by a journalist this week, we answered as follows:

Broadly defined, we see two different kinds of mentoring programs.  The first is the mentoring of a brand new employee – they might refer to this as onboarding.  Companies that have great people practices make sure that new employees are "indoctrinated" right away.  Because their workplace culture is so important to them, they don’t want to risk the wrong acclimation.  Instead, they purposefully and proactively assign the new person to one or two leaders in the company.  The majority of the time, the leader/CEO is involved in some way because it is so much about the "tone at the top." 

The second kind of mentoring we see is the more traditional approach of connecting a senior person with a junior person for the purposes of helping the junior person be more successful.  Though we don’t see it in all our finalists and winners, it isn’t unusual.  This setup is the perfect example of what smaller companies can do without spending a lot of money.

Some pitfalls to consider:

• Not having clear goals for the mentor/mentee relationship.
• Not choosing partners who have the right chemistry.
• Not building the groundwork necessary for a productive relationship (building trust and rapport so they can really work well together).
• Not providing true organizational support to set up the partnership for success.  In other words, not treating the relationship as a priority including letting too many other priorities override the time that was set aside for the relationship.

What's the state of mentoring in your organization?  How does it improve your bottom line?

What have your fellow readers found most helpful when it comes to the workplace culture strategies covered here?  On the last day of 2009, I can share with you the following posts, in descending order of popularity.  Enjoy, and see you in 2010....

1. 20 Proven Workplace Team Building Strategies
2. Friday Nugget: Transparency is a Business Model
3. Three Benefits of Virtual Team Building
4. Google Employees Can't Get No Satisfaction?
5. Inclusiveness, Multiculturalism, Employee Engagement the Norm at Phenomenex
6. 12 Ways to Save on Your Holiday Party This Year
7. 30 Reasons Jack Welch is Wrong on Work-Life Balance
8. 10 Ways to Motivate Employees
9. Top 10 Influential Small Business Thought Leaders
10. 10 Small Business People to Follow on Twitter
11. Six Ways to Measure the ROI of Employee Engagement
12. 30 Employee Development Strategies to Boost Productivity
13. Fair Treatment of Employees Counteracts Fear of Pro-Labor Bill
14. Two Inspiring Stories of Team Building
15. Toyota Leads Again, This Time in Team Building During Down Times
16. 10 Best Practices: Offering Vacation Days
17. 10 Company-Building Lessons Learned by a Successful Entrepreneur (Plus 2 Bonus Lessons)
18. Rackspace's Graham Weston: 'No Voicemail Jail for You!'
19. The Crisis of Employee Engagement Among Top Performers
20. 10 Team Building Strategies of the 2009 Top Small Workplaces Finalists

There's a saying my dad got from somewhere, which my brother, Dan, put in the book on networking for young people he wrote a couple years ago when he was in college:

Even the Super Bowl champions the previous year go back to training camp to work on the fundamentals.

Going back to basics also factors prominently in one of my favorite books, Zen Guitar.  (That's my playing on all our Top Small Workplace leader videos.)

As we look back on 2009 and prepare to turn our ideal 2010 into reality, including in the people practices realm, going back to square one bears repeating in business news outlets.  I recommend, for example, you check out this article on the Financial Post.

To help you when it comes to assessing and tweaking your team building and employee engagement best practices, here are a few recommended posts:

• Two Employee Development Strategies from a 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces Applicant Firm
• Six Ways to Shake Up Your Leadership
• Seven Sets of Company Core Values to Adapt for Your Business
• Nine Resources for Becoming an Employer of Choice
• 10 Company-Building Lessons Learned by a Successful Entrepreneur (Plus 2 Bonus Lessons)

Image credit: e-gineer

(This post was inspired by this article on TheStreet.com)

Since I have often pointed to our small business honorees like Guerra DeBerry Coody and Lundberg Family Farms that play up their family-friendly employee engagement practices, including benefits, one might come to the conclusion that Winning Workplaces favors small companies that put employees with children ahead of those without them.

While we like to see small firms walk the talk when it comes to family-friendly benefits, we also recognize that these firms should be equally mindful of those workers without children.  See for instance, this list of benefits that we ask whether companies have in place in our Top Small Company Workplaces award application – benefits that in many cases can be better suited to recruiting childless employees:

• Medical insurance
• Health savings account (HSA)
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Employee assistance program (EAP)
• Life insurance
• Long-term disability
• Short-term disability
• Long-term care insurance
• Domestic partner benefits
• Employee stock purchase or other shared ownership plan
• Retirement plan
• Pre-tax spending benefits
• Transportation assistance
• Paid time off/vacation/holidays/personal time
• Sabbaticals
• Educational assistance
• Employee wellness/fitness program

Digging deeper: I thought you'd find it interesting to see the percentage of applicants* for our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces competition that use each of the above benefits as part of their retention and employee development strategies.  Click on the thumbnail below to open a pdf (2.7 MB) showing the breakdown of "Yes" vs. "No" answers to our online questionnaire:

*Among firms that have completed the application as of Dec. 29, 2009.  Application window closes Jan. 22, 2010.

How does your organization compare for each of these benefits?

You've seen me say here many times some form of the statement, It's important to use employee engagement to keep morale high, to boost productivity and ultimately profitability.  This is all well and good, you may be thinking, but you might also rightly be wondering, OK, but what are the steps involved to do this?

I came across a good (read: short and easy to adopt) set of tips on MSN, via the Who Needs Employees Anyway? blog to answer this question.  Citing workplace thought leaders, Toddi Gutner, a writer on career management issues for The Wall Street Journal, shares the following suggestions which have helped many companies raise morale:

• Spend time with employees
• Implement recognition programs
• Provide meaningful performance feedback

Related: Want to dig even deeper under these three ideas?  Check out our post on 30 employee development strategies to boost productivity – all in use right now at the 35 organizations that were Winners and Finalists of Winning Workplaces' 2009 Top Small Workplace award.

Based on what Winning Workplaces is seeing among applicants for both Top Small Workplaces 2009, which was held in the first quarter of this year, and Top Small Company Workplaces 2010, for which we're seeking applications by January 22, 2010 – plus employee engagement research and news I've written about here this year – here are 10 workplace trends to watch for in 2010:

1. Generation Y (aka Millennials) replaces both Gen Xers and Baby Boomers as the dominant generation in the workforce.
2. Managers will be expected to continue to do more for the same or less pay, on smaller budgets.
3. The number of workers who telecommute will continue to increase dramatically.
4. More non-monetary employee recognition for above-and-beyond service.
5. Alternatives to employer-paid medical insurance to fill the traditional health component of employee benefits.  Includes wellness initiatives and gym membership reimbursement.
6. More companies adopt the ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) approach used most visibly by Best Buy.
7. CEOs are more visible, both internally to boost camaraderie and productivity, and externally to sell their brands.
8. Cautious acceptance of social media sites at work.  Currently, according to a widely reported study, over 50% of businesses completely ban employees from using these sites.  But the lure of using this technology for customer acquisition and satisfaction will convince leaders on the fence to give it a try.
9. Greater focus on employee leadership development of the current workforce vs. recruiting new talent.  While concurrently...
10. More recession-bruised employees look for jobs at new companies so they can make a move once the economy improves.  One study in Newsweek estimated that as many as 7 in 10 Gen Y employees (see #1) will do this.

When you think about getting employees engaged next year, what trends make your top 10 list?

I read with interest Marisa Keegan's guest post last week on Fistful of Talent, a Workforce Management blog.  Keenan is Culture Maven (what a great title) for Rackspace Hosting, whose chairman Winning Workplaces named a Best Boss, and who has since spoken at our annual conference highlighting employee engagement best practices.

Keegan's post makes the assumption that adding one more HR policy to the mix creates too big a maintenance and oversight headache for small organizations.  I think this misses the point.  The real issue/question is, how are HR policies communicated?

In our ongoing study of the most effective small workplaces in North America – based on such factors as high productivity; profitability; stable growth in revenue, employees, and wages; employee leadership development practices; and low absenteeism and turnover – we see that the companies that rise to the top of our annual ranking do not think about how many HR policies they have to manage, but about how they're collectively communicated to all employees.

At the high level this means a relentless focus on making sure the company's core values are highly visible and understood by everyone.  But at the lower level this often also means weekly, biweekly, or monthly, all-hands meetings to review policy changes and the formation of employee reward programs based on exemplifying or going above and beyond a specific policy.

I have seen anecdotal feedback from a number of employees of firms that have applied for our Top Small Company Workplace award, who serve in an HR role, that policies are adjusted less and less over time as the number of employees who live by them and can recite them increases.  Our staff discussed in a webinar last year just how these enterprises are able to make something as seemingly dry as HR policies come to life for workers, so that they understand why they're in place and how they relate to job satisfaction – which impacts company productivity at the macro level.

When you think about the policies that have helped create your workplace culture, how do you answer the question that's the title of this post?