Human Capital Strategies

Today Winning Workplaces announces the 39 finalists for our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award, in partnership with Inc. Magazine.

We started our search in November 2009 for small and midsized organizations (750 or fewer employees) that engage employees and create a great workplace culture and, in turn, deliver improved business results.  Almost 500 firms completed our online application by the deadline in late January.

Our staff then pared these down to the 39 finalists that appear in the interactive map below.  Click on a marker to access a finalist's website, as well as to see when they were founded and their size and industry:

The next steps in the 2010 selection process include:

• Later this month our final panel of judges will choose this year's winners.
• These winners will be announced in the June 2010 issue of Inc. Magazine.
• The winners will be honored at Inc.'s conference in Denver on Oct. 27-29 (more info on this event coming soon).

If you know anyone interested in human capital strategies for a more productive workplace, I encourage you to share this post with them by using the button below.  Thanks!

Our former Top Small Workplaces judge Peter Cappelli, from the Wharton School's Center for Human Resources, was cited in a CNN article last week on lessons for U.S. bosses from their counterparts in India.

Cappelli provides a lot of good takeaways in the piece, based on his recent study of leaders and HR departments from close to 100 of India's biggest companies, but I think my favorite is:

A lot of U.S. companies in particular will say, 'We're not going to meet our quarterly numbers, so we've got to adjust everything in the pipeline to make sure we do.' That's a costly thing for the long term.

This falls under the Indian leadership lesson of taking the long view of growth and profitability – with average growth at a manageable 18% in 2009, it's a lesson our Top Small Workplaces share.  This strikes me as quite interesting, given that Cappelli's employee engagement research sample is the largest firms in India.

Other Indian leadership traits Cappelli advises American CEOs to embrace – which our Top Small Workplaces are already hip to – include:

• Have a social purpose
• Invest in employees through human capital strategies
• Trust your employees to tackle your biggest problems
• Act as "chief culture officer"

Related: We interviewed Cappelli when he came to our offices in 2008 to help determine that year's Top Small Workplace winners.  In the video below he shares some additional thoughts about a company can create a more productive workplace (click here if you can't see the video in your blog feed):

We've long argued, in part based on our own employee engagement research, that empowering workers to make on-the-spot decisions and to contribute to the strategic direction of an organization provides benefits for employees (increases their job satisfaction) and for companies (typically greater customer satisfaction because issues are resolved sooner and at a lower level; as well as increased employee loyalty and drive).

Here are two new sources that support this argument, for your reading and learning pleasure:

1. A review of multiple studies by The Cochrane Collaboration found that giving employees control over their work schedule improves their stress levels, quality of sleep, mental health, and alertness.  (HR Morning)
2. "HR Bartender" Sharlyn Lauby defines 7 types of power in a workplace culture and uses these traits as the basis for an exercise to help you pinpoint how you influence action from others.  (Human Capital League)

Related: Need more proof of the impact of this leadership practice?  Read this firsthand account by an employee of a 2008 Top Small Workplace (identified as a finalist in the post based on the timing of that year's winners announcement) on how it's changed his impression of a productive workplace.

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.

Yesterday and today I've been doing some serious number crunching to find trends in the employee engagement research Winning Workplaces does through our annual Top Small Company Workplaces recognition project – in this case, for the 2010 applicant pool that finished applying last month.

As a result, I can now tell you what a typical 2010 applicant firm looks like:

• Privately held
• S Corp
• $0-10 million revenue in 2009
• 21-50 employees
• In the Consulting industry
• In California
• In business for between 6 and 20 years (6-10 and 11-20 years, the largest segments in a range of years, have an equal number of applicants)

Benefits include:

• Medical insurance – company pays 73% of an employee's premium
• 401(k) retirement plan
• Educational assistance – tuition reimbursement of $2,550 per employee, per year
• Paid time off/vacation/holidays/personal time – for a one-year or longer-term employee, 24 days in a PTO plan

Stay tuned for more information soon on applicants' top human capital strategies, which you can adapt for your organization.  (Do you follow our blog?  Add it to your feed reader today.)

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?

Winning Workplaces is checking in with people – the majority of them CEOs – from the small firms that are applying for the chance to be named a 2010 Top Small Company Workplace in Inc. Magazine this June.  We're asking them how the process of completing our online application has helped them think about and further develop their human capital strategies to enhance their business strategy.

I've provided applicants' verbatim responses to this question in two recent posts.  But as an experiment, I wanted to see which words or terms stood out from the collective feedback on this that they've given us.  Here's a Wordle-generated tag cloud showing the results:

How does one interpret this?  Well, if I were to create an amalgamated answer to the question we posed to applicants based on this tag cloud, I would write it as:

This process helped in our thinking about how we can make our culture and work environment better for our employees.

A number of applicants report that what they learned from applying this year has turned into action steps to improve their employee engagement practices, so 2010 ends on a productive high note.  I love reading when this happens, as it's one of the benefits we intended when we worked extensively to improve the 2010 application over the 2009 version.

Want to increase your competitive advantage in your people practices area, too?  It's not too late to apply for 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces and reap similar value for your organization.  You can do so here.

On Friday Newswise reported on new employee engagement research by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) which puts some hard data behind the widely accepted notion that entrepreneurs thrive during hard times.

Among GEM's findings as part of its 2008 National Entrepreneurial Assessment for the United States of America:

• Total entrepreneurial activity increased 12.5% from 2007 to 2008.
• The ratio of those who started their business because of the opportunity vs. out of necessity is almost 7 to 1.
• "The United States continues to be at or near the top of the world's innovation-driven economies in terms of early-stage entrepreneurial activities."
• "Perceived opportunity is substantial despite a greater fear of failure."

The GEM study concentrates on early-stage entrepreneurs and young companies.  In order to build longevity and survive multiple downturns – whether they're macro or only industry related – a strong workplace culture characterized by solid and ever-retooled human capital strategies is needed.

With the theme of not just surviving but thriving in tough times in mind, I thought you'd enjoy these related posts:

• Engaging Employees Helps 18th Century Baking Company Become a 'Hot 100' Internet Retailer
• Local and Community Banks Doing Well, Thank You
• 'Team Building' Blog Roundup: Three Perspectives and Our Take

Photo credit: random theorist

Last week I hinted at something big coming on our website.  Well, today Winning Workplaces is excited to announce the launch of Top Small Company Workplaces 2010 with our new media partner, Inc. Magazine.

Learn all about this year's program in the FAQ that appears below.  If your company fits our criteria, we look forward to reading your application and helping you think about your human capital strategies in a more formal, centralized way.

What is the Top Small Company Workplaces competition?
Winning Workplaces and Inc. Magazine are seeking compelling examples of organizations with outstanding cultures for our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces competition.

Why this recognition?
The research is clear and compelling.  Organizations that build a productive workplace deliver better business results.  Organizations that invest in their people see the payoff of employee engagement through employees that are invested in and committed to the success of the business.  A winning workplace is better for people; better for business; better for society.

Is this the same award that was previously associated with The Wall Street Journal?
Yes.  Our media partner for the past three years was The Wall Street Journal.  Given our strong focus on small and midsize business we decided to transition our relationship to the premier publication for entrepreneurs and business owners, Inc.  We are thrilled to be working with the team at Inc. because we share a dedication to helping small to midsize business succeed.

What are the company eligibility criteria?
To be eligible, the organization must be:

• North American-based
• Independent, not part of a larger corporation
• Privately held
• Have no more than $500 million in annual revenue
• Employ no more than 750 people (full-time equivalents, exempt and non-exempt)
• Have been in business at least three years by January 22, 2010
• Not a past Winning Workplaces award winner

How can a company apply?
Visit https://tsw.winningworkplaces.org/ to get started.

What is the application timeframe?
Applications will be accepted online from November 16, 2009 through January 22, 2010.

Is there an application fee?
Yes.  The application fee is $100.

Why the fee?
The fee covers development and administration of the application, and allows Winning Workplaces to dig deeper to do meaningful assessment of applicant firms through a rigorous due diligence process of companies identified as finalists.

What is the prize for the winning companies?
The winners will be featured in the June 2010 issue of Inc. Magazine, on Inc.'s website, and on Winning Workplaces' website.  They will also get additional exposure through a widely distributed joint press release.

Will the winners be notified or the list be made public before the June 2010 Inc. issue goes out?
No.

What is the overall timeframe for the project?

• Completed applications submitted online by January 22, 2010.
• Finalists will be contacted no later than February 15, 2010 to provide further information for the judging process. This will include, but is not limited to, contact information for employees and a few customers.
• The final panel of judges will choose the winners in early March.
• Inc. Magazine will feature the winners in its June 2010 publication

What if I have further questions?
Contact Winning Workplaces at topsmallbiz@winningworkplaces.org or via phone at 847-328-9798.

If it's been a while since you've visited Winning Workplaces' LinkedIn group, or you've never checked it out, you should join (it's free) and give it a look-see today.  There's a wealth of news and discussion activity there to help improve employee engagement in your organization.  The group is also a great way to meet and network with folks who share your interest in human capital strategies that make for a more productive workplace.

Here's a sampling of some of the latest activity there:

Discussions:

• Featured: Michelle on CNN's reporting that 80% of jobs today are filled through personal referrals
• Paige on insights by Christina Randle on achieving your goals to finish out the year strong
• Steven on whether reward programs are worthwhile or miss the mark
• Kim asking what bosses can do to improve employee morale in downsized companies

News:

• Vahid recommends "5 steps to protect your Intellectual Property" and "How to be successful in small business," both from blog.bizcloud.net
• You'll also find select, informational tweets from our Twitter feed

Join our LinkedIn group today.  I look forward to seeing you there and benefiting from your contributions!

Click the image below to follow Winning Workplaces on Twitter, where I'll be posting periodic updates on the team building stories and human capital strategies that demonstrate the payoff of employee engagement, as they are dispensed at our ROI of Great Workplaces Conference this week in Chicago:

Also stay tuned to our blog for posts next week on the conference, including photos.

Yesterday our President, Gaye van den Hombergh, and the following two Chicago-based, 2009 Top Small Workplace leaders appeared on WTTW (PBS Chicago)'s Chicago Tonight program:

• David Hawkanson of Steppenwolf Theatre Company
• Robert Pasin of Radio Flyer

Chicago Tonight host Phil Ponce asked Gaye and the two business leaders about the human capital strategies and trust building activities of both organizations, as well as the related impact on the bottom line.

Watch the segment:

Related:

• In June, Pasin presented a webinar for Winning Workplaces detailing the team building strategies that 92-year-old Radio Flyer used to transform itself in the marketplace from a manufacturing firm to a product design company.  Access it here.
• Another exec from Steppenwolf, General Manager David Schmitz, will provide takeaways on engaging fresh, young talent in the workplace in our upcoming webinar on October 20.  Register for it here.

Today is the last day you can register online for Winning Workplaces' ROI of Great Workplaces Conference, which will be held at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place in Chicago next week on October 1 & 2.  Go here to see the programming we have set for you on human capital strategies that are good for the bottom line.

If you're looking for some testimonials as to the value and takeaways of this event for small business owners and leaders – and anyone interested in how team building strategies can improve employee and customer retention – check out the videos below.

I hope to see you at the Hyatt next week!

According to two new, independent employer studies – this one and this one – while more than half of employers are planning to hire full-time employees over the next year, over half also don't offer paid maternity leave (and those that do provide only around 50% pay, on average).

This recruiting/retention picture doesn't add up for me.  Companies that believe they're seeing light at the end of the economic tunnel should focus on pleasing their current workforce and getting employees engaged – especially if they've had to make some wage or other concessions since the beginning of the recession.  This is all part of sharing the recovery as well as the pain with workers.

This is not to say that companies that see more demand shouldn't hire more talent to meet it.  But while they make plans to do so, they should use this time as an opportunity to ramp up their benefit packages and other methods for improving productivity and commitment so their existing knowledge base is fully on board for the increased workload – and so they can serve as better ambassadors to acclimate new hires to the organizational culture.

Do you agree or disagree with my assessment that the above-mentioned studies represent conflicting human capital strategies?

Earlier this month I wrote that small businesses have an obligation, to their own knowledge base and productivity and to the U.S. economy, to turn to employee retention tips and other human capital strategies to keep their best performers from bailing to work for competing firms.

Well, the talent exodus puzzle is getting more convoluted according to HR blog Cheezhead.  It calls attention to a 2008 U.S. News & World Report article which found that "a large number of American citizens had already left for other countries and even more were planning to do so in the near future.  Many of those leaving the country are entrepreneurs...."

The drain of these workplace expats on U.S. payrolls is estimated to be $30 billion a year, the blog states.  It also explains how countries are becoming more conscious of this influx, with some making micro-investment visa and other offers to entrepreneurs to entice them to do business there.

Cheezhead ends its post with the logical question: What can recruiters and employers in America do to entice those in the workforce tempted to leave to stay?  I believe they need counter the chief appeal the blog notes for workers who are enticed to do this – the ability to climb up the career ladder faster than they could at home.

This means companies need to really hone their employee leadership development chops to provide the most opportunity for their current workforce.  Primary benefits for firms that succeed in this include lower recruitment spending, increased morale, and flexibility in covering job functions.

Here are some resources from our website that address internal leadership development to help stem the tide of workers seeking greener employment pastures in foreign countries:

• Webinar Recording: Growing Leaders from Within
• 2008 Top Small Workplaces Conference Session Coverage
• 2006 Best Bosses Conference Session Coverage
• Editorial: The Changing Face of Succession Planning
• Executive Summary: 2007 Top Small Workplaces Data Report

Photo credit: bugbog

I read in the Chicago Tribune's Red Eye today that Amazon has agreed to purchase Zappos.com with over $800 million in stock.

This struck me as surprising, since Zappos' reportedly shy CEO, Tony Shieh, has lately been decidedly extroverted when it comes to the subject of creating an employee culture of ownership.

We got perhaps our most detailed look at the employee engagement best practices of Shieh's successful, footwear-focused e-commerce company in Max Chafkin's profile of the CEO in the May 2009 Inc. magazine.  This, of course, followed on the heels of the great buzz and press Zappos received after one of the company's innovative human capital strategies – its $2,000 "leaving bonus" – was made public last year.

Many organizations in a variety of industries have since adapted this and other employee engagement practices in use at Zappos, which comes across as extremely casual and easygoing even though it's now clearly in the midsize category with more than 1,500 employees.  By comparison, Amazon, which is five years older than Zappos, has over 20,000 employees.

Now I'm not saying that more employees necessarily means poorer workplace effectiveness.  However, we know that one of the long-term challenges swift company growth brings is maintaining the standard of internal and external communication that helped fuel that growth.  For a company like Zappos, which has earned both sales and HR cred from creating highly engaged employees, joining with the much larger and more ubiquitous Amazon could dilute the "secret sauce" that has made its workplace culture so effective up to this point.

So how do you see this news?

• Bad for Zappos' employee culture (although Shieh says their leadership will place a premium on retaining their uniqueness)
• A cultural assist for Amazon (see Seth Godin's post on this)
• Somewhere in between these two views
• Other – if so please comment below!

Related: Members of our LinkedIn group responded to my question on whether they would adopt Zappos' leaving bonus.  Read their feedback here.

Between my tweets and posts here lately, I've realized I need to follow some more folks to enrich the variety and breadth of my writing.

I currently follow 80 blogs in Google Reader, a little over half of which I've shared in several posts.  I'm waiting to follow some more before I do another update of my picks for you to take a look at.

So if there's a blog you like that provides regular, rich information on things like trust building activities and human capital strategies to grow your business, I want to know about it.  Please drop me a comment with your picks below.

Thanks!

I enjoyed this interview with Kauffman Foundation President Carl Schramm that appeared in the June issue of Inc. magazine.  In it, Schramm shares this message based on their research of 2008 Inc. 500 and Fortune 500 companies: "Don't despair.  Good things grow even in the darkest times."

While "great" in the context of both the Inc. and Fortune competitions typically means fast, high growth, we know by studying those annual lists that human capital strategies that encourage strong workplace team building and employee engagement not only contribute to that type of growth, but pave the way for sustained growth marked by CEO longevity, low turnover, and year-over-year profitability.

Sustained growth was one of the factors the judges for our 2009 Top Small Workplaces competition with The Wall Street Journal looked for when they met here last week.  The Kauffman Foundation was represented on our judging panel, for the third year in a row, by their VP of Emerging Strategies, Judith Cone.

Once again this year, we conducted interviews with some of our judges, including Cone.  Check out her segment below, where she discusses the impact the tough economy had on her picks for this year's Winners (which will be announced in the Journal on September 28):

The last few days have been bad ones for those that believe that human capital strategies can turn decent organizations into truly exemplary ones when it comes to employee engagement ideas translating to lower turnover, greater retention, and higher productivity.

First there was this post by author Jonathan Fields that argued that great companies don't exist, which I addressed in my previous post.  And then, today, Tim Sackett of HRU Technical Resources wrote on Fistful of Talent that employee engagement is a "worthless metric."  Here's his justification:

Once a year we, the HR Dept., are going to justify our jobs for a month as we roll out our annual Employee Engagement Survey and then act like Nazis and throw pizza parties in the attempt to get everyone to fill one out.  Then spend [sic] the next month collecting all the data and making the largest PowerPoint presentation on the planet, so we can show our senior executive team the good, bad and ugly.  Finally, we add fat free pudding to the cafeteria menu as a response to our two month project.  Really!?  Is this adding value?  Lou Holtz said it best "Motivation is simple.  You eliminate those who are not motivated."

While I agree with the advice Sackett repeats from Lou Holtz, I take issue with the argument that employee engagement research is a lost cause and a waste of money.  Clients of our workplace consulting and training services certainly don't view it that way.  Check out these case studies of three of them on our website.  Outcomes from our analysis of what employees of these client firms were saying and subsequent assistance included, respectively:

• A huge uptick in the percentage of employees who feel that senior leadership took their feedback seriously
• Profitability after 13 months of declining revenues
• A better-functioning team with higher morale and a CEO who is a more effective leader

Need more evidence?  Read these posts on our blog:

• 30 Employee Development Strategies to Boost Productivity
• Six Ways to Measure the ROI of Employee Engagement
• Google Employees Can't Get No Satisfaction?
• Unorthodox Trust Building and Its ROI for the Company
• Great Employee Engagement Can Keep Jobless Claims from Climbing Even Higher

Still think employee engagement best practices are worthless?  Send me a comment and tell my why you think so.