Mark Harbeke

Hi there!  My name is Mark and I am the Director of Content Development here at Winning Workplaces.  It's my job to provide you with relevant and timely content highlighting the best practices on employee engagement and team building to help your small organization improve your work environment.  Why?  Because research shows that stronger work cultures are better for people, businesses and society at large.

Please note that the views expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Winning Workplaces or of any other staff or board member.

Most companies look at national holidays as simply a paid or unpaid day off for their employees – and also as top sales day, if you're a retailer and it's New Year's, for instance.

But as we noted in our Success Story on them, 2008 Top Small Workplace The Redwoods Group (TRG) is not like most companies.  Two things that make them unique, our judging panel concluded, was their significant efforts to decrease risk for their insurance industry clients, as well as their almost unheard-of commitment to funding nonprofits with approximately 50% of their pre-tax profits.

TRG is also unique when it comes to their approach to national holidays and employee engagement/team building.  As employee MJ Pearle shared with us today,

Each year, TRG holds a special Martin Luther King Jr. celebration.  This year we had a week of activities.  One activity featured performances by our Redwoods Choir (organized for the first time for this event).  There was some pretty amazing music from a bunch of insurance folks!  We also sent a group of employees to the opening of the new International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, NC (a 45-minute drive from our office), and afterward they reported on the experience to their colleagues.

Here's one of several videos of their choir TRG posted on YouTube – in this case, singing "Oh Happy Day":

Does your company do anything special on or around national holidays that emphasizes or leverages your unique workplace culture?

My friend Emily Lonigro, a Chicago-based branding and web design specialist who recently co-founded new media consultancy The Web Farm, has an upcoming event I wanted to alert you about.

On February 23, 2010 at OfficePort Chicago, Emily and her Web Farm co-founder Keidra Chaney will present Web Analytics 101.  You can read the learning takeaways of this event and register for it here.  It's only $20 to attend, which includes free wine.  A pretty sweet deal.

Related: If Emily's name sounds familiar, you may remember her from the following guest posts she's written for us, which focus on the external results of great workplace team building and employee engagement: improved vendor and client relationships/outcomes:

• A Small Business Owner on Finding and Retaining the Best Clients
• Professionals vs. Friends (or Friends of Friends) As Your Vendors
• Demystifying the Creative Process, One Brief at a Time

Here's a sobering set of statistics for your Monday concerning employee engagement practices for workers with disabilities:

• Contrary to the opinion of many business owners that the costs of accommodating disabled employees are too burdensome, a Job Accommodation Network study (referenced here) finds that 20% of the cases examined involved no costs.
• In the remaining 80% of cases, the median cost was only $200.

Now, here's an interesting point of comparison: Among the nearly 500 small organizations nationwide that completed an application for our Top Small Company Workplaces award this year, those that provide educational assistance provide an average annual, per employee tuition reimbursement of $2,550.

So if your company is among the 4 out of 5 that end up paying to accommodate a disabled employee, the amount you'll spend is only 7.8% what an average company pays to better educate each employee, according to Winning Workplaces' latest employee engagement research.

In other words, accommodating a disabled worker is highly manageable from a cost perspective.  I think that this, combined with their above-average job performance (based on a 30-year DuPont study – see this post), should finally put to rest the fallacy that employing these workers is a cost center and does not lead to a more productive workplace.

Your thoughts?

If you have not checked out Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Blog – one of my recommended small business/entrepreneurship blogs – you really need to click here and add his latest posts to your reading list.

In Wally's latest weekly digest of independent business blogs, he links to our post on how our employee engagement research shows that a CEO who serves a long time in a company combined with a turtle's approach to managing growth can lead to powerful long-term business results.  Here's his comment on my post from Monday:

Growth is an American business mantra.  But sometimes limiting growth is best.  Quick results are what we demand of CEOs.  But sometimes slow and steady is better.

Yes, sometimes the best approach is a slow and steady one – something to keep top of mind in this economy that demands, as the mainstream business press meme goes, lightning speed in all tasks.

I want to thank Wally for our inclusion in his weekly recommended blogs list, as well as for also urging his Twitter followers to follow us there.  Thank you, sir!

Related: Expanding the "slow and steady" narrative further, here are three of our other posts that link employee engagement and team building strategies to better long-term bottom-line results:

• Slow and Steady Wins the Race When It Comes to Hiring Interviews
• Adding to Seth Godin's Thoughts on the Pros of Slow
• What Traffic Can Teach About Doing Business

In the last few days, as the extent of the problem with the brakes on Toyota's Prius and other popular models has become widely known and finally acknowledged by the company, the media has rightly critiqued the automaker for its failures in leadership and public relations management.

What's been talked about less is how Toyota has dropped the ball in its customer service.  I found this segment by Prius owner and CNN reporter Jessica Yellin quite revealing.  It shows her struggle to first reach a real, live person to state her case, and then to get some accountability and next step recommendations.  Check it out:

As usually happens when a customer is also a member of the mainstream media, once Yellin told a manager that she was with CNN, she started getting some answers – and an acknowledgement of the problem by Toyota.

But what about the "little guy" (or girl) who doesn't have the clout that comes with a press pass?  I liken the customer service experience of regular Toyota customers in this situation to the Titanic not having enough lifeboats for every passenger.

Not having enough reps in place, and not equipping the ones that are with sufficient, actionable information for the customer – on a normal basis and especially in a massive recall situation like this – is not just Toyota's problem.  It's a persistent issue for most big companies.

Consequently, when smaller companies provide enough people or improve their processes so this hurdle is removed, they greatly increase their competitive advantage in customer satisfaction.  This, in turn, has a profound effect on new customer acquisition and revenue from repeat customers.

At our annual conference last year, the chairman of midsized company Rackspace Hosting, Graham Weston, called their main phone number to show attendees that they, in contrast to Toyota, do have enough "lifeboats" in place to keep everyone afloat, in good times and when disaster strikes.  Check out the video of this compelling demonstration:

The Bottom Line: Small businesses have an inherent workforce effectiveness advantage over their larger peers when it comes to communications team building/employee engagement innovation so that when crises hit, they're ready to continue providing excellent service.  This preparedness can mean only a negligible impact on sales and reputation.

Linking to this article on BNET, which talks about how Apple's Steve Jobs motivates his employees, SmartBrief on Leadership advises, "To fire up employees, give them an enemy."  ("Enemy" in this case refers to one of Apple's chief rivals, Google.)

I don't know if I agree with this assessment.  While it's certainly important to watch what the closest competitors in your space are doing, after taking in marketing lessons from the likes of Seth Godin I liken business much more to sports like golf, where ultimately you're competing with yourself, than to football or basketball.

Whether managers are assessing their supervisees' performance relative to their goals, or everyone comes together in a regular meeting to open up the books to see how the company is doing on expenses and revenue compared to the benchmarks leadership has set for the company, competing with yourself can be just as good a motivator.

Employee engagement and workplace team building certainly factor into this question.  For one thing, competing against yourself in the ways I mentioned above can prevent the business from having to deal with possible litigation that might arise from brand vs. brand sniping via advertising, or even from employees dropping unfounded, negative comments about their rivals on review websites like Yelp.

Next Step: Read the full BNET article on Steve Jobs' leadership style where competitors are concerned, and then drop me a comment below with your thoughts.  I'm very interested to see what you think 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

As someone who earned a journalism degree when the paperless office was just starting to be discussed as a cost-effective workplace/operational model (circa 2001), I read with interest yesterday's blog post by Max Chafkin, an editor at Inc. Magazine.  Inc. is Winning Workplaces' media partner for our Top Small Company Workplaces competition.

Chafkin links to a slideshow of photos of their snazzy new office space.  So why are they closing up physical shop and going virtual for a month?

He writes that this experiment is a way to walk the talk when it comes to the businesses they write about that have gone space-less and made it work.  This includes the desire to chronicle firsthand the related cost savings.

But Chafkin also says he and his fellow staffers want to find out how virtual team building affects the overall workplace culture.  With him and his staff leading a regular dialogue with Inc.'s blog readers over this month-long trial focused on their collective lessons learned (and, surely, avoided), I'm eager to see the takeaways this experiment yields.

To contribute to and learn from this dialogue, you can add the Fresh Inc. blog to your list of bookmarked websites.  If you subscribe to blogs in a feed reader, here's the link for their RSS feed (and here's our blog's RSS feed to add, too, if you don't already subscribe to it).

With all the people I talk to who are not in Southern California and are experiencing heavy snowfall or some form of bad weather right now – probably 85% of my contacts – our current Web Poll has special meaning.

We're asking how your employer handles missed work due to inclement weather.  Currently most respondents (59%) say days missed are paid as normal work days.  In this economy where employee benefits are often the biggest casualty, I find this show of respect related to pay a small ray of hope.

Thirty-two percent of respondents report that when bad weather prevents them from coming in to work, they must use benefit time.  Nine percent say they must make up the missed time.

I welcome your perspective.  Please vote in this poll today.

Does your organization use reacting when bad weather hits a jumping-off point for greater workplace team building and employee engagement?

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?

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?

Two themes Winning Workplaces has identified among past winners of our small business award are a president/CEO who leads the firm for a long time, relative to his or her peers, and purposely keeping growth manageable by cautiously approaching such variables as product/service and facility expansion as well as adding employees.

These two themes can be (and often are) combined, invariably leading to long-term growth.  Such growth is not particularly glamorous, but it nonetheless ensures the stability of the firm and, just as important these days, the continued employment of its workers, the livelihood of their families, and the vitality of their communities.

For example, one applicant for our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award with Inc. Magazine says they've implemented an employee cap – in addition to walking away from opportunities that could mean a big payday, but which could prove unmanageable and, therefore, could lead to a souring of the company's reputation, a decreased sense of workplace team building, and undue employee stress.  Here's how their account manager puts it in their application:

We aim to never grow past seventy-five people, as we appreciate the benefits that come with operating a small company.  We don't want to lose our intimacy, and at a maximum size of seventy-five employees we know we can accomplish a tremendous amount without losing the culture that has made us so unique.

The CEO of this organization has been in this role since its founding 9 years ago; the average CEO tenure among all our 2010 award applicants is almost 11 years.

Some of the business benefits that have accrued as a result of this firm's embrace of these two themes are:

• Three-year revenue growth of over 240%
• Profitable over at least the last 3 years (both of the above statistics in an especially tough economy for their industry)
• CEO-led employee engagement has contributed to a strong average employee tenure of 4 years

Related: Another benefit that comes with long-term CEO leadership is more time to implement an effective succession plan.  Two of our honorees discuss their experience here in this webinar recording.

One of the more colorful exercises I was privy to at a recent meeting of Winning Workplaces' Board of Directors was the think-outside-the-box practice of encapsulating our organization as a person as well as a car.

While group consensus on both of these is still up in the air as we do some homework on our overall strategy, one thing I remember about the person part of the exercise was that beyond his or her look, we talked about the tone that this person took when giving our elevator speech, or saying anything else.  Here we did reach some consensus: the tone is that of a trusted advisor who shares wisdom in a reassuring way – and in a manner that is not overwhelming for the person talking with us.

Since that meeting I've had this tonal quality in the back of my mind and have carried it over to my writing here.  I hope someone who is knowledgeable, trusting, caring, and eloquent comes through when you read our posts.

This endeavor got me thinking about how, at least to some extent, our honored small businesses have their own human-like tone – whether or not they're conscious of it.  A few examples from my perspective:

• 2009 Top Small Workplace Radio Flyer – a friend or neighbor who's ready to step in to encourage your child's imagination and ensure their safety.
• 2008 Top Small Workplace King Arthur Flour Company – the MacGyver of the kitchen, who's eager to share tips and also has a sense of humor.
• 2007 Top Small Workplace NRG Systems – an excellent math and science student who has grown up to use this knowledge to green their lifestyle, and who's there to help you do the same.

How does this exploration relate to team building and employee engagement activities?  Well, defining (or redefining if you've done this before) how your company would speak and come across to others in the world if it were a person is an excellent opportunity to bring your people together and learn from group consensus.  In turn, any changes to your tone that come about from this process can inform your workplace culture.

In one sentence, what's your organization's tone?  Does it mesh with your mission and products/services?

Photo credit: GuitarSam.com

Since we had just under 500 small organizations across North America complete applications this week for our and Inc. Magazine's 2010 Top Small Workplace Award, I thought two interesting pieces of aggregate data to share with you from this small business survey sample would be their prevailing industry and current marketplace conditions.

As in this instance, once again I'm boiling down tens of thousands of words in applicants' responses to these two questions to tag clouds (created with Wordle) so you can get a quick read on where they stand.

Click on both of these images to view a larger version of the tag cloud:

Prevailing industries (applicants selected from a list of 31 industries, or they specified "Other"):

The business conditions in their industry over the last three years (2007-2009), and their performance compared to their industry:

Surprised to see "growth" and "revenue" factor so prominently in applicants' feedback here?  This becomes more understandable given this workplace trend that they lead, and this trend on the customer side – though there are certainly many more factors at play.

Stay tuned, as I'll soon be sharing with you more tag clouds like this that aggregate applicants' answers to qualitative questions that get at their workplace culture practices and how they measure the payoff of employee engagement.

I was pleased to hear President Obama in his first State of the Union Address last night devote some of his remarks to the small business job growth that is not getting a lot of attention in the media, but which is happening nonetheless.  As the President acknowledged and used as the lead-in to his proposal to allot $30 billion of the repaid TARP money to spur lending by small, community banks, it's important to monitor and promote small business job growth because they provide most of the net new jobs.

And right now, we need all the jobs we can create.

While small businesses across the board are creating jobs – the President highlighted several that have in 2009 thanks to government funding – those whose leadership practice strong workplace team building and employee engagement tend to do so at a faster clip.

Here are three sources that support this:

1. The North Jersey microsite of Monster.com currently lists six open positions at SmartPak, the provider of horse and small animal supplement packs that Winning Workplaces Best Boss Paal Gisholt leads.  Clicking on any of them shows a bio for the firm that touts 28% growth for the business in 2009.
2. Another Winning Workplaces honoree, Top Small Workplace Gentle Giant Moving, put out a press release this week in celebration of its 30 years in business.  It notes that "Despite unfavorable economic challenges to the moving and storage industry in recent years, Gentle Giant’s initiatives for 2010 include ... creating employee growth opportunities...."
3. And most telling because of the number of organizations involved, our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces applicants have had the need to fill 35% more jobs over the last two years (on average, 27 in 2009 vs. 20 in 2007).

What success stories are you hearing about when it comes to job growth of small companies where you live?

Image credit: City of Eagan, Minnesota

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 was pleased to see that our blog was cited on the Event Manager Blog authored by Anne Thornley-Brown, President of Executive Oasis International.  Anne pointed to this post, where I discussed three benefits of virtual team building, as exemplified by our Top Small Workplace Point B.

Note the reference to yours truly on LinkedIn – I am a member of her group there, the International Business Team Building Alliance.  It contains some good food for thought when it comes to team building activities for the workplace.  I urge you to check out that group.

For more on using employee engagement practices to manage employees virtually, read these selected posts.