Given this blog's focus on how employee retention tips and other people practices lead to a more productive workplace culture – and how leadership strategies such as succession planning reduce dependency of the business on key people if they leave or are otherwise taken out of the equation – a reader might conclude that decisions made in the C-suite matter less now than they once did.

This conclusion would be wrong, however, argues Tyler Leverty, assistant professor of finance in the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business.  According to this Newswise article, which references Leverty's paper "Dupes or Incompetents: An Examination of Management’s Impact on Firm Distress," some CEOs significantly improve a firm’s performance, while others hurt it.

Writes Newswise,

[Leverty] found ... good CEOs can remove their firms from regulatory scrutiny 8 to 16 percent faster than a poor manager.  And in insurance companies that are going out of business, a more talented CEO can get a better return on the firm’s assets by up to 10 cents on the dollar.

The takeaway is that events and other learning opportunities that deliver a good ROI for leaders are worth the investment – even in tough times.  This is why Winning Workplaces is excited to partner with Inc. Magazine to host the Creating Competitive Cultures (C3) Conference in Denver on October 27-29, 2010.  As Inc. says on their C3 website, CEOs and other attendees can expect to learn "the newest leadership strategies for developing the best possible company culture, one that results in a loyal, motivated, inspired, and focused team."

Click here to learn more about this event.  You'll want to register by tomorrow, August 31, to get the early bird rate, a $300 savings.

I don't yet have it in my hands, but I already know I'm going to like the latest book from workplace generational expert Neil Howe, Millennials in the Workplace.

According to StreetInsider.com, Howe "turns [the] downbeat message [from the media on Millennials, aka Generation Y] on its head."  Taking the position that Millennials are an asset and opportunity rather than a lazy (insert other adjectives here) liability, the website writes, Howe's new book serves in part as a resource for employee engagement and team building strategies to find and keep them.

Providing a sample of the employee retention tips Howe shares in Millennials, StreetInsider.com links to this pdf from Howe's company, LifeCourse.  At its core is the following list of recruiting and retention strategies tailored to this young generation that, some reports say, became the most pervasive one of all this year: 

1. Treat them like VIPs
2. Co-recuit the parents
3. Find them early
4. Look after them
5. Offer structure and teach them the basics
6. Provide tight cycles of feedback
7. Don't offer a "McJob"
8. Make them part of the group
9. Be active in the community
10. Take an interest in their success

I really like that the pdf includes a section on "What To Do" under each of the above strategies to take them from the world of the ambiguous to the practical.

Given the Millennial workforce's size and its stature as the dominant generation in the work world for years to come, it's no surprise that our Top Small Company Workplaces are already using many of the above strategies to help them tackle pressing issues from process and supply chain improvement to sales lead cultivation and delivery.

Related: Read my 4 reasons why Millennials may be the ones to pull us out of our troubled economy.

As Inc. Magazine's profile on our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award winner PortionPac Chemical Corp got a lot of attention in terms of showing the payoff of employee engagement at a manufacturer – an industry that has been especially hard hit in this economy, and which is not typically known for great workplace practices – today I wanted to share a bit more about another manufacturer: NewAge Industries, one of our 2010 award finalists.

Specifically, I wanted to enlighten you on five practices that leadership of this Pennsylvania-based provider of disposable pharmaceutical processing systems uses to increase competitive advantage.  For 56-year-old NewAge, one solidly quantitative way to define "competitive advantage" is their share price increasing 219% since 2005, while those of their two biggest, publicly traded competitors dropped substantially over the same period.  In addition, the company has never carried debt.

Here are five of NewAge's staff engagement activities that stand out for their revenue-generating and employee retention potential – again, particularly with respect to what other manufacturers are doing right now:

1. Bring on temporary producton employees for up to three months before hiring decisions are made.  This helps NewAge determine if someone is the best cultural fit for the organization, especially when viewed through the lens of employee leadership development potential.
2. Use tough times like these to launch an educational initiative aimed at helping employees understand and address their personal finance concerns.  At NewAge, the CEO in coordination with the accounting department recently hosted five, one-hour sessions with all staff on this.  As a result, many workers have closed the gaps in their personal finances.  This ultimately benefits the company because less financially stressed employees are more productive.
3. Weave cross-training firmly into employee practices and the workplace culture.  Leadership's goal here is to avoid over-hiring in busy times and rampant layoffs in slow times.  They fundamentally believe that this cycle that's so typical of companies is flawed, and they have the numbers to show that their steadier approach works (2009 was their sixth record-breaking year in a row for profits).
4. Pay workers for referrals.  NewAge employees receive a $1,000 bonus for any successful referrals they make.  Management has found that this practice helps to reduce hiring costs and results in higher quality applicants, since employees value the work culture and don't want to be responsible for spoiling it.
5. Put a twist on your tuition reimbursement program and subsidize both work- and non-work-related learning.  NewAge reimburses each employee up to $2,500 annually, and the tuition can be used for any type of learning, whether or not it is directly related to one's job.  Leaders' rationale is that the act of learning anything new and different can spark innovation – not to mention foster employee loyalty.

What people practices, in addition to those mentioned above, do you think directly impact and boost competitive advantage?

Last week I attended the webcast "Changing Engagement Challenges: The New Deal to Engage Talent."  Workforce Management sponsored the event; Ilene Gochman of the global professional services company Towers Watson was the presenter.

Here are the slides for the session.  I thought it would be helpful to you, from an employee engagement and workplace culture-building perspective, to guide you through them with my top takeaways on the research and best practices that Gochman presented:

1. Employers clearly still have an advantage on the talent front in a down economy, especially those based in the U.S.  Slide 5 shows that the U.S. is second only to Germany in the number of employees who work for only one organization.  However, the U.S. has the most people who report working for 2-3 firms.
2. While employees understand that they're much less likely to get their way when it comes to getting significantly higher pay in this economy – 74% say this is important, but only 22% believe it's achievable in their organization – the disparity is much lower when it comes to taking on a wide range of positions and work experience: 55% say this is important, and 37% of those folks think it's achievable where they currently work (Slide 6).  This suggests that employee leadership development can be among the strongest employee retention tips.
3. Slide 11 makes clear that the payoff of employee engagement practices starts with the leadership team and the workplace culture they create; Slide 16 reinforces this especially for leadership related to research on top engagement drivers done in late 2008 and throughout 2009.
4. Towers Watson found in its 2010 Global Workforce Study that while competitive pay, paid time off, and healthcare benefits are top recruitment drivers, leadership and the prospect of career development are most responsible for long employee tenures/low turnover (Slide 31).
5. Slides 33-35 should be even more helpful to small business leaders, as they describe, in descending order, the most common drivers of attraction to a company for those in Generation Y and Baby Boomers, as well as high potential candidates.

What are your top takeaways from the slides for this webcast?  I invite you to share them by commenting below.

You might not know it based on their visibility and reach, but the satirical newspaper and website, The Onion, is a small business.

Founded in Wisconsin in 1988 and now headquartered in New York City, the 160-employee publisher has been in business longer than over half of Winning Workplaces' 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces finalist organizations.  Not only that, in an era in which the viability of the traditional newspaper is being questioned, The Onion has grown its market share through successful forays into book publishing and web video broadcasting.

Last week The New York Times interviewed The Onion's CEO, Steve Hannah.  Asked about his top leadership lessons, Hannah offered employee leadership development and employee retention tips that were far from satirical.  In fact, what he talked about echoes the experience and advice we hear from our award-winning small firms and others in our network that understand the transformative power of smart people practices.

For example:

• CEOs who look after their employees soon find that loyalty is a far more powerful motivator than fear.
• "Listen to the people below you because they are on the front lines."

Read Adam Bryant's full Corner Office Q&A with Hannah here.

A trend of extremely small businesses – those with fewer than 50 employees; the majority of American employers – is that they have historically been underserved compared to their larger peers.  This, in fact, is a primary reason why Winning Workplaces was founded in 2001 – to equip leaders of these firms with effective, bottom line-enhancing people practices.

Despite this disadvantage, however, on Small Business Trends today, Case Western Reserve University Entrepreneurial Studies Professor Scott Shane shares research from ADP which finds that while the number of people employed in organizations with 50 or more employees has fallen compared to the percentage in December 2000, that percentage is over 100% for firms with 1-49 employees.  In other words, as Shane writes, the jobs trend is better at very small establishments.

This is why groups such as the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation have been urging policymakers to put more support mechanisms in place for very young businesses.  Based on past recessions, it's a fact that many people who have been laid off, and/or who elect to leave their employers in a "Who's next?" workplace culture, will form new businesses to strike out on their own.  Right now we're also in a climate in which, spurred by parental support and advances in technology translating to low overhead, an unprecedented number of young people are forming small ventures.

When you combine ADP's research with the SBA's findings that over the last 15 years, small businesses have generated almost two-thirds of the net new jobs, it seems imperative to support the formation of startups, as well as their growth.  Winning Workplaces is focused on the latter as it pertains to activities for employee engagement and employee retention tips for leaders and managers.

Related: In February, when the economy was looking a lot more sluggish on the jobs front, I reported that over 50% of our Top Small Workplaces were hiring. See which ones here.

After effective employee retention tips for workplace team building, the main need we hear right now from our small business network is access to credit.  It just so happens that late last year, Winning Workplaces became affiliated with Biz2Credit, a New York-based firm that addresses this need by acting as an intermediary between small businesses looking for credit and available, affordable financing solutions.

That sounds great on paper, but what difference is Biz2Credit making in the real world?  The short answer is, a lot.  They sent me a case study today showing the ROI a small (40-person) medical practice, also based in New York, saw from their involvement with the company.

The Issue:

A 15-year-old medical practice in Manhattan doing around $15 million in annual sales approached Biz2Credit to replace an existing, high cost $1.9 million term loan with a low cost alternative, as well as to get a $1 million Line of Credit (LOC) for business expansion.

The Response:

• Biz2Credit analyzed the managing doctor's current and past business and personal tax returns as well as personal financial statements.
• It concluded that the medical practice would be best suited to replace the loan with a lower cost fixed interest rate loan while the line of credit could be arranged against accounts receivables, which could be floating interest rate product with an interest rate cap.
• In addition, Biz2Credit helped the firm increase their business credit score on D&B, which helped them to get better pricing.

Impact:

• The medical practice was able to lower its interest cost from 8% to 4.99% on the term loan.
• The line of credit was sanctioned at US prime plus 1 (4.25%).
• The business has been set up for further increases in LOC every 6 months.
• It has been able to add another 5 jobs from the time it got the low cost funding.
• Due to a lower debt servicing ratio, the business has become eligible to get another $500,000 in funding.

Biz2Credit provides this type of assistance to small firms all across the country.  It may be well worth your time – particularly if financing options near you are still out of reach – to engage employees in your business to check them out.

Learn more about Biz2Credit and get a phone number for one of their case managers here.

Winning Workplaces is not alone in serving as a source of workplace culture best practice information on employee engagement and team building.  In fact, the organization of one of our Best Boss award winners, St. Louis Staffing, echoes many of the best ROI practices we share.

I was reminded of this from an email the Missouri-based professional services firm sent me yesterday.  It pointed me to this column on their website on techniques to become an expert business speaker – something I think even seasoned leaders with decades of C-level experience at one or more companies can improve upon.

This, in turn, prompted me to take a step back and read similar articles that appear on St. Louis Staffing's website homepage.  They also address employee referrals, how HR departments can show their worth (a growing concern in HR circles), and why leaders should take a step back and consider the long-term impact of excessive layoffs.  (We have been a strong advocate, especially, of the latter point.)

So, leaders, the next time you're burning the midnight oil after all your people have left for the day and are looking for practical, road-tested employee retention tips – or even just some good inspiration – pay this website a visit.  (And if you're located anywhere in the Midwest – especially if you're a manufacturer, distributor, or service provider – St. Louis Staffing can also provide direct assistance on the talent front.)

Related: We named their President, Keith Jacob, as a Best Boss in 2006.  Read about what makes his firm a Winning Workplaces in our Success Story on it.

Last month I wrote about several studies which support the meme that there are better motivators out there than cash to effect employee engagement strategies focused on rewards and recognition.

Well, on Tuesday Forbes lent its support to this notion, courtesy of an insightful commentary by Rockefeller Foundation VP of Strategy and Evaluation Zia Khan, and Booz & Company Senior Partner Jon R. Katzenbach.  The leaders argue that not only is money better for short-term – as opposed to long-term – motivation, but an overreliance on it as a reward incentive actually erodes employees' emotional commitment to an organization.

Read the full article here.

When you think about the most effective employee retention tips, where do you rank reward programs?  And where do you stand on cash versus other types of incentives?

Last week I argued strongly in favor of hiring for attitude and fit over skills, every time.  To which, frequent guest blogger and entrepreneur Emily Lonigro tweeted her agreement.

But what goes into hiring for fit?  I can tell you that one of the factors our honored small firms pay close attention to and try to assess most is emotional intelligence.

It just so happens that two new articles have cropped up to help you think more on this topic when it comes to your workplace team building and employee retention strategies.  Check out:

• The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Small Business Owners by Vera Raposo on Small Business Branding
• Ten secrets of Emotional Intelligence by Dan Bobinski on Management-Issues

In addition, we'll soon be putting our own stamp on emotional intelligence, with the help of guest writer Gail Sussman Miller.  Gail is "Chief Obstacle Buster" at Inspired Choice, which helps executives and others – you guessed it – overcome business obstacles.

To read Gail's upcoming article for Winning Workplaces on emotional intelligence (part of our April IDEAS newsletter) sign up for it free here.  Registering will also enter you in this month's drawing to win a business book.

Image credit: Social Work for Mankind

There's an interesting new article over at HumanResourcesJobs.com that weighs investing in your workplace through employee education versus through perks like an on-site fitness center – and even bonuses.

While this piece concentrates almost entirely on the educational (tuition reimbursement) side, and therefore is not balanced in terms of listing the pros of company perks, I still think the writer makes a strong case.  By paying as much as $75,000 to help an employee earn a college degree, "The organization gets to keep and nurture an existing employee, making them more productive, useful, and loyal, and avoids the need to use recruiters or search firms and then assimilate a new employee."

The payoff of employee engagement and increased competitive advantage factor into the writer's final summation on the value of a company's educational investment in its workforce:

Organizations that are positive, encouraging, and supportive of employees who are trying to better themselves will have lower turnover rates, make more money and have a better public reputation than those who don’t.  The cost of tuition reimbursement programs is small compared to the benefit and a more liberal approach to tuition reimbursement and on-going education, especially when recruiting new college grads, is a powerful recruiting tool.  It’s a way to differentiate your organization from others.

The cost here is indeed small.  The over half of our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award applicants that offer educational assistance reimburse tuition per employee by an average of just over $2,500 annually.  What they get from this and their other investments to create a productive workplace includes:

• Average annual reveue of $21 million
• Average revenue growth of 151% over the last three years
• Average annual turnover of 14%

(Source)

I think when you consider two of the chief cons of company perks like that fitness center that the article above mentioned – investment to educate that it's there, and more substantially to track its usage/ROI – the benefit of educational assistance makes even more sense.

How does education factor into your people practices spending?  And what impact has it had on retaining top talent?

Will this be the decade in which the employee engagement activity of flexible work arrangements becomes systematized and pervasive across companies and countries?  2009 gave us a nod squarely in that direction, as human capital strategies consultant and author Dr. Sandy Burud writes on the Sloan Network Work and Family Blog today.

In both 2009 and 2010, four out of five of our Top Small Company Workplace award applicant firms report flexible work arrangements among their employee benefit offerings.  To provide you with some solid employee retention tips, check out these 18 top, specific flex work practices our 2010 applicants are using:

1. Employees can adjust schedules to leave early to accommodate childcare pick-up or attend evening classes.
2. Offer weekend work to allow hourly employees to earn extra hours if they missed a day but have used up all their personal time.
3. Managers can telecommute and/or work evening or weekend hours to accommodate personal responsibilities.
4. Religiously observant employees can opt to work a company holiday and take their own religious holiday off with pay.
5. Host our own IT services such as VPN servers, email, webmail, and intranet with a focus on "any user" "anywhere" "anytime" so that users have full and easy access from all remote/mobile locations.
6. Flexible arrival and departure times allow employees to arrive late or leave early with notice to supervisors in order to attend to personal matters.
7. Variable lunch hours.
8. Allow employees to split duty in divergent job descriptions in order to satisfy their personal needs for challenging work.
9. 100% telecommuting option.
10. Mothers and/or fathers with infants are able to work from home up to 80% of the time.
11. Average full-time employee work week of 30-35 hours.
12. Job-sharing including a reduced work schedule and cross-training to cover team members on "off days."
13. Flex Fridays in the summer during which employees may leave the office at 1 pm on Fridays after working a compressed schedule earlier in the week.
14. Three shifts available to work.
15. Pets are allowed at work.  Children are allowed in certain instances and in case of need.
16. Managers are trained to accommodate flexible work arrangement requests, and systems for accountability and communication are in place to facilitate successful flexible work arrangements.
17. Offer laptops and mobile phones with email to support people working where and when they need to so they can prioritize family/personal time.
18. Staff is allowed to work four, 10-hour days due to weather, travel or family/personal conditions with approval from the leadership team.

Related: Two Winning Workplaces Best Bosses shared how flexibility factors into their strategies for a more productive workplace in this webinar.

If you're reading this, you probably understand and place stock in the link between great employee engagement and a thriving, productive workplace culture.  Great people practices can maximize a company's internal performance.

But then there's that pesky, all-important external performance – particularly against larger competitors that can outspend you in everything from advertising to inventory to recruiting.  What's a small business to do?

Luckily, there are tried and true ways to beat back bigger competitors.  Our friend Becky McCray shared four of these this week over at Small Biz Survival.

Her second one centers on the intrinsic value of a cohesive work culture:

You have a better connection with what your people want, how they like to be treated, and what touches their emotions than any big company can.

Becky's right.  As we have seen time and time again with our Top Small Workplace award winners, a highly effective culture has powerful implications on employee retention, which directly affects customer retention and satisfaction – two factors that often drive the bulk of revenues for small firms.  (Just look at our 2007 winner Gentle Giant Moving.)

Incidentally, the effectiveness of Becky's #1 and #4 methods can be enhanced when #2 (culture) is firing on all cylinders.

Related: This post explains another benefit of top tier work cultures: increased likelihood of surviving multiple economic downturns.

My congratulations to Brett Farmiloe on the release, today, of his book Pursue the Passion.  The title is shared by Brett's company, a venture that for the last few years has focused on helping people – especially Millennials – "think differently about career paths."

Why this focus?  The truth is, with Millennials (also known as Generation Y) becoming the largest generation in the workforce this year – and with as many as 70% of them considering leaving their current employer when the economy improves, according to a recent survey in Newsweek – employers have an opportunity obligation to learn how best to engage employees and spur team building in this age group.  This book provides insights from their perspective on how best to do this.

I was first introduced to Brett and PTP in 2007 when I designed an ad for my brother, Dan, who speaks to young people about networking and job hunting, for placement on the PTP site.  I've been impressed with their work and growth ever since, especially their ability to whip up a crowd on Facebook.  So beyond young employee retention tips, I think PTP – the book and the company – offers social media marketing lessons for small business leaders.

Order a copy of Pursue the Passion for yourself, or as a gift for someone you know, here.

If you missed Winning Workplaces' annual conference last October in Chicago, you can get a taste of what attendees experienced by watching the video below.  Especially noteworthy from an employee engagement research perspective is the section from :37 - 1:48, which describes the nomination, application, and judging process we undertook to select the 15 Top Small Workplaces that were honored at the event.

Check it out (if you can't see the video in your blog feed, click here):

In terms of the payoff of employee engagement activities, I love Bernie Dyme of Perspectives Ltd's definition of the ROI of a great workplace (starting at 5:38):

When people are so engaged in what they're doing and their employer that they want to be there no matter how bad the economy or the situation.  They're going to be there even when things are good after they're bad.

When it comes to employee retention tips and other strategies for greater workforce effectiveness, what would you like to see us cover in an event format this year?

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?

I enjoyed this BNET article by Silicon Valley marketing and strategy consultant Steve Tobak on the top 10 lies managers tell themselves.  While many of them involve customers and executives above them in the company, Tobak's #5 lie deals with employee engagement best practices.

He says a common misconception is that subordinate employees "love" their managers.  This might be the most destructive falsehood on Tobak's list, as it's widely accepted that while employees don't necessarily quit companies, they definitely quit people.

The other part of the equation, in my mind, is that managers are already incredibly burdened – some would say overburdened – in their workplace role.  They're like a candle being burned at both ends: from below if a company is mediocre to poor on employee retention, which means more training and retraining on their part; and from above with owners and leaders relying on them heavily to execute core activities to keep the business in the black, or to keep growth strong.

Managers owe it to their sanity as well as their and their company's performance to get the best read possible on what their subordinates are thinking.  This includes their treatment of them and how well they seek and act on subordinates' good ideas from the latter's perspective.

This retention quiz Winning Workplaces developed a couple years ago is a good way to get started along this path.   We have other solutions for you, too – ask us about them by giving us a shout out.

So remember, one of the best employee retention tips out there is for managers to engage employees to get a better pulse on what they think about them.

When you think about both recruiting and employee retention tips to attract and keep top talent next year, who is the most common job candidate you're bound to meet or manage?

Signs point to a female Millennial (or Generation Y – born between the mid 1970s and the late 1990s).

As these two articles note, 2010 is a turning point for both Millennials and women, who are set to become dominant in the workforce.

On a related note, currently women are not the dominant gender among applicants for Winning Workplaces and Inc. Magazine's 2010 Top Small Workplaces competition.  As of today, the firms are 43% female : 57% male employees.  But there's still time for this to shift: the application deadline is January 22, 2010.

We don't ask about employee age range in our application so we don't have any data to share on that.

What are you doing as part of investing in your workplace to cater to young, female employees who will likely be most dominant in the workforce next year?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

I was reminded of all the tools at small business' disposal that are often essential to screen for problem employees when I came across this article from the latest issue of Professional Carwashing & Detailing.  (One of Winning Workplaces' 2009 Top Small Workplaces is a carwash based in Indiana.)

Attorney Lester Rosen lists the following as screening measures that businesses in this industry should take to avoid needing to spend more down the road in recruiting and retraining – which can apply to firms in any industry:

• Screening for criminal records, often outsourced to qualified firms
• Social security number traces
• Driving record traces
• Checking federal and/or state civil records
• Resume verification, including contacting past employers

These are all important in today's recruiting environment where, as Rosen shares, as many as 30% of resumes contain falsified information.  But one measure that costs nothing more than time may be your most effective one.

Many of the small businesses that Winning Workplaces has named as Winners and Finalists of our Top Small Workplaces award use their small size to their advantage at a pivotal moment in recruiting – when the final decision needs to be made on a job candidate from the short list after skills tests are completed and multiple hiring interviews have been conducted.

For example, as Bailard Inc. CEO Peter Hill told me in an interview I did with him last week for our upcoming Success Story on the 2009 Top Small Workplace, they have a hiring committee made up of employees from all areas of the company.  He said that all committee members must be in agreement on a candidate before an offer is made.  One "Nay" vote and the process slows until everyone eventually comes together around the right person for Bailard's workplace culture of communications team building.

This, of course, defines the first part of the recruiting mantra I've mentioned before, "Hire slow, fire fast."

Do you require a unanimous team decision before making an offer in your organization?  What other employee retention tips do you recommend?

While it's easier said than done financially, at the end of the day it's an ROI no-brainer: One of the best employee retention tips is to pay workers over the minimum wage.

This is going to come across as a "duh" statement to many business leaders reading this.  After all, you found this blog by searching for "team building," "workplace culture," or a similar term, which means you're very likely already drinking the Kool-Aid of the payoff of employee engagement – an assumption of that being paying people fairly.

But there is still a need to say this.  One reason why is because wage theft is incredibly rampant, even in a time of increased scrutiny of businesses and a wealth of legal resources for employees who can prove they've been shortchanged.  This post on Today's Workplace, for instance, charts the number of wage theft incidences just in Chicago.

Some time ago, Winning Workplaces Chairman Ken Lehman weighed in on the need to always pay above the minimum wage in an editorial.  Here was his justification:

Employers owe it to their workforces to show their commitment to them by paying them a sufficient living wage.  Many workers, especially low-income workers, are only one paycheck, one health care episode or one bad experience away from losing everything.  If one of those situations occurred, who could blame a worker for not having his or her mind be totally on the work?  The result would be a loss of productivity for the enterprise.

Therefore, paying workers a decent wage is not a zero-sum game.  Instead, it's a win-win scenario that improves employees' peace of mind and, consequently, the bottom line of organizations.

Echoing Ken is Ross Blake of workplace consultancy Employee Retention Manager.  In this post, Blake calculates the savings of only a 5% increase over the federal minimum wage, in terms of the turnover cost incurred, as almost $2,200 per employee!

So if you want to attract and retain top talent, and enjoy the competitive advantage you'll have from those folks working for you and not for your peers, purge "minimum wage" from your vocabulary.

What's your perspective here?