• 12 Tips for Making Your Telework Arrangement Succeed
• Confessions of an Undercover Working Mom
• The ABCs of Workplace Flexibility

• An Innovative, Cost-Effective Advertising Strategy (Bonus: It Builds Goodwill)
• There's Strength in (Offbeat) Numbers

A key building block of a Winning Workplace is people practices supporting a focus on Teamwork & Involvement (more about the other 5 building blocks we believe in, and have seen in practice among the great small firms we've studied and recognized, here).

This involves team building strategies, of course, but it also relates to the extent that an organization acts as a means to empower its employees to improve the communities in which they live, and supports them during crises.  Our recent Success Story on Van Meter Industrial, a 2010 winner of our Top Small Company Workplace award, addressed this in detail related to the historic flood that hit its headquarters city – Cedar Rapids, Iowa – in 2008.

We've just weathered an even larger-scale natural disaster – Hurricane Irene, which devastated many East Coast states this past weekend.  True to form, many of the small businesses we've honored with both of our awards are offering assistance to individuals and businesses that were affected by it.  Here's a snapshot of what they're doing:

1-800-GOT-JUNK? (2005 Best Boss - Brian Scudamore)
As their business is based on junk removal, they're doing what they do best and clearing out flooded basements and storm debris.  Their call center and website have been slammed, and their northeastern U.S. franchise partners tell them that their schedules are packed.  Luckily, they work directly with insurance companies, so it takes some stress out of the process of mopping up after such a destructive storm.

Bersin & Associates (2011 Top Small Company Workplace)
Since many of their employees work remotely from the East Coast – they're based in California – they've helped them out in several ways: 1. Paying for one employee's monthly rent increase while they move into a new neighborhood 2. IT staff is helping people get their computers back up and running 3. Offered to help each employee financially with power outage issues.

Dealer.com (2010 Top Small Company Workplace)
This Burlington, Vermont-based firm shared on their Facebook page (which as over 2,200 fans) that much of Southern and Central Vermont has been hit hard and is in desperate need of help.  They also shared a link to a blog that's been set up to help Vermonters assist their fellow citizens.

Dyn Inc. (2011 Top Small Company Workplace)
Tom Daly, President and CTO of this Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) company, provided a checklist on their blog to help ensure that company data centers are prepared for major weather events.  They then shared this on their Facebook page, which has over 4,700 fans.

Firespring (2011 Top Small Company Workplace)
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Firespring, a comprehensive marketing solutions provider, instituted a policy allowing any client to essentially "freeze" their account and suspend payments until they were able to get back to business as usual.  Yet, by their own admission, they failed to recognize that many clients were utilizing their online file transfer and job submission utilities that automatically purged old data.  Since many of their clients went without power for several months, they lost valuable data when Firespring's system did its job.  When Hurricane Irene hit last week, it affected hundreds of their clients.  For the past several days, they have been closely analyzing data to ensure that all of them are still able to access their files and are actively engaged using their other web tools.  They were prepared this time.  Their support staff is also reaching out to clients to see if there is anything else they can do to help them.

Northeast Delta Dental (2005 Best Boss - Tom Raffio)
This dental insurance provider has invited employees and their families without electricity to use their facilities, and they are prepared to initiate fundraisers through their Helping Hands program as they learn about employees whose homes were damaged.  They have also activated their ListServ capabilities for their board members, resulting in an exchange of offers to help one another within the tri-states, which has proven immeasurable for their colleagues in Vermont who experienced extremely high flood waters and washed out roadways eliminating access to even basic services.

One Call Now (2011 Top Small Company Workplace)
This Ohio-based enterprise, which delivers automated phone messages to improve communication between and among organizations, has emailed their customers in the states affected by the hurricane. They offered them free upgrades to their existing service, ranging from free texting for 30 days free weather alerts until November 1, when hurricane season is over.  In addition, organizations who coordinate relief for the affected areas can get free call credits added to their accounts to help with their work.

Seventh Generation (2006 Best Boss - Jeffrey Hollender)
The marketer of environmentally responsible household products is donating some of them to make 1200 green cleaning kits for hurricane victims.  They've partnered with the Vermont Foodbank to build and deliver the kits to communities most in need. And they shared news of this on their Facebook page, which has over 260,000 fans.

Next Step: Review the above examples – is there anything you can do or adapt from them to provide better value to your employees, customers, or local communities/states?  (Or get set to do for a future disaster affecting your area?)  And how can employee engagement be a catalyst, or improved, through these efforts?

Recently, by way of a left-leaning political campaign's online petition, I heard about the Protect IP Act.  The more I learn about this legislation in the U.S. Congress, however, it seems of concern to small business CEOs and CTOs regardless of their party affiliation or views of Washington.

This week CNET wrote a good summary of the original Senate draft of the legislation, and of substantial changes the House is looking to make to it before scheduling a vote on it (hearings on the act in the latter chamber are set to take place next month).  Basically, the act in both forms was drawn up to police and punish websites that have engaged in an increasing headache on the web: intellectual property infringement.  (Think illegal movie and music downloads.)

The problem is that, as the legislation is currently drafted, it could inadvertently result in the shutdown of a large swath of small business sites that are not actually engaging in IP infringement – without first giving them a means to challenge any such claims against them in court.  In fact, this happened to over 80,000 sites earlier this year.

Another potential problem if this act were to become law is the unfair burden that could be placed on small firms in terms of backing up online data, which could be a provision if companies are accused, vis-a-vis their Internet service providers (ISPs), of IP infringement.  In a column on this topic earlier this month, David Snead, an attorney who specializes in cases involving Internet infrastructure providers, says the 18 months of data protection and storage that's been suggested "would be particularly difficult for small businesses who don't have the resources to purchase additional servers and implement compliance programs necessary to protect this information."

Free speech and open Internet groups including Human Rights Watch and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have stated their opposition to the bill.  But so has American Express – no doubt because many of their small and midsize business customers' commerce could be affected if it passes.

Next Step: In addition to the links above, I recommend you visit, read, and share Wikipedia's summary of the bill with your CTO, if not your whole IT department or staff.  You could then kill two birds with one stone: educate your appropriate team members with an aim toward drafting a "disaster recovery" plan if it goes into effect (and if you think that could be detrimental to your business), while promoting workplace team building and employee engagement activity.

Business owners attribute competitive advantage to their business model, value proposition, innovation, as well as the "smarts" I mentioned in this post on Patrick Lencioni's session (among others) at our conference last month with Inc. Magazine.  But as a new special report by Workforce Management makes clear, employee engagement is just as much a driver of competitiveness – and thus, revenue growth, market share, and other desired results.

One of my key takeaways from Garry Kranz's great report is the two graphs he shares on the most and least engaged workers by sector, as researched and reported last month by GfK Custom Research North America.  Sectors with the highest levels of engagement, based on GfK's survey of over 5,000 employees, include:

• Construction
• Professional/Business Services
• Information Technology

And those with the lowest engagement (or, conversely, highest disengagement) include:

• Retail
• Real Estate
• Education
• Manufacturing

Is your sector among those above?  (If it is, hopefully it's in the high-engagement group.)

I was curious as to how the sector representation of the recent winners and finalists of Winning Workplaces' 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award, and the remaining applicants – some 350 firms in total – compare to GfK's high/low engagement sector findings.  Comparing apples to apples (the same sectors in both surveys) here's what I found:

Undoubtedly, part of what made this year's award winners and finalists competitive was that they came from more sectors with typically higher engagement, and fewer sectors with lower engagement, when compared to the remaining applicant pool.

Here's the really interesting thing, though: despite our company research sample's small size relative to many of their marketplace peers – firms eligible for our award have no more than 500 workers – and, therefore, their more limited budgets for employee development strategies, in many cases they are still outperforming their often larger competitors.  For some people practices insight into how they accomplish this, see what Kenexa Research Institute Exeucutive Director Jack Wiley says in the Workforce Management report:

[S]ome organizations say they have managed to sustain engagement levels during the prolonged recession.  Typically, those employers systematically gathered feedback from employees, analyzed responses and implemented changes as needed, Wiley says.  "They measure engagement with the same rigor they apply to customer service or financial data."

This tendency is definitely in effect among the small firms that rise to the top of our award evaluation process each year – not just based on their engagement activities, but on the bottom-line results they bring, including lower turnover and higher average employee tenures.

One more thing: As I discussed in this post based on new university research, spending to cultivate more highly engaged employees is not truly working for you unless it is used to build a career path for them, especially for your top performers.  You should check out this revealing, related research I came across today via WorldatWork.  They share Right Management's new survey finding that 75% of organizations lost high-performing employees they did not want to lose during the past year.

Pay special attention to the last paragraph of the WorldatWork write-up: a Right Management senior exec cited supports the case of providing a career path for top talent to avoid losing these critical assets (at this critical time!).

Although we consider ourselves extremely vocal when it comes to promoting the link between staff engagement activities and long-term company growth, Winning Workplaces is by no means the only organization shouting this from the soapbox.  Just last week, SJF Institute (with whom we've previously collaborated to produce content to help you improve your people practices) released a massive, 155-page report exploring this link in stunning detail.

While this report, Employees Matter: Maximizing Company Value Through Workforce Engagement, would be noteworthy in any case, we appreciate that over a third of the 24 companies profiled are Winning Workplaces honorees.  They include:

• Advanced Circuits
• Dancing Deer Baking Company
• Graniterock
• Namaste Solar
• New Belgium Brewing
• PrintingForLess.com
• Red Door Interactive
• SmartPak
• The Redwoods Group

Before delving into the full report, I recommend checking out page 3 of SJF's 4-page Executive Summary of the report.  There you'll find a breakdown of 10, Winning Workplaces-approved worker engagement strategies which fall under the areas of HR practices, culture formation, and broad-based involvement and ownership.

We congratulate SJF Institute for undertaking the research, writing, and production to make available this valuable report.

What are your takeaways from the report, or other thoughts on it?  Let us know in the comments.

I love LinkedIn.  I've blogged before about its value, especially considering it's free except for your time (though there are fees if you want to post jobs there).  In the past I've used the business-themed social networking site to gather opinions on Zappos' "leaving bonus," and I referenced its Group feature as a lead-driving tool.

One of the best ways to use LinkedIn is to ask and answer questions.  I particularly enjoy going to the Small Business and Organizational Development sections and seeing what company leaders, managers, and other employees are talking about – and occasionally offering my opinion.  I did so last month in response to organizational culture consultant and speaker Marcella Bremer's question asking why building a productive workplace culture is often not on the agenda of CEOs, company board members, and other top executives.

My response sparked an email conversation in which Marcella and I compared notes on our respective firms devoted to leveraging employee engagement and team building strategies to improve companies' bottom-line results.  The enterprise she co-owns, OCAI online, is based in the Netherlands (people practices advancement is truly a small world!).

When I went to her site I learned what OCAI stand for: Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument.  Developed by Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn, the OCAI operates based on what's known as the Competing Values Framework.  Here's what this looks like:

As you can see, as you go up on this graph you transition from core values supporting stability and control (some would say, command and control) to flexibility and discretion.  From left to right, the focus changes from internal and integration to external and differentiation.  Where a company lands on this graph determines its balance among four Organizational Culture Types: clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, and market.

What I find amazing is that when I go to OCAI's page explaining these culture types in greater detail, I find that, generally speaking, Winning Workplaces' Top Small Company Workplace award honorees fall within the area of the graph I highlighted below:

That is, they have:

• workforces who say they feel like a family;
• leaders who see themselves, and are seen by their people, as mentors;
• strong emphasis on teamwork, participation, and consensus; and
• employees who take risks, within a culture that promotes individual initiative and freedom.

However, I think our honorees are also a hybrid – they might have cultures which generally fall within the area of the graph I indicated, but when you read their applications for our award, they have succeeded in using staff engagement activities representative of a clan or an adhocracy to propel their business squarely in the market sector of the graph.  This is another way of saying, they don't just treat their people well because it's the right thing to do – they integrate these practices into the "vaue drivers" OCAI talks about of increasing market share, goal achievement, and profitability.  I discussed this a bit more in posts in January and June.

So...where does your company's culture fall on OCAI's graph?  I think leaders would find it an insightful and useful exercise to survey their management teams and other employees on what they think, and see how it compares to their own assessment.

As Newswise reported two weeks ago, a University of Iowa study found that a good portion of the $134 billion that businesses spend annually on employee development strategies "could be wasted if companies don't assure their employees that they have a promising career with the company."

That's a huge chunk of change – savings that struggling small businesses, especially, would love to see back on their balance sheets.  To it in perspective, Standard & Poor's said Sunday that the U.S. bond market could lose roughly that amount if our economy loses its triple A rating as a result of the debt ceiling not being raised by the Treasury's August 2 deadline.

According to the study's authors at the UI Tippie College of Business, spending on professional development is most effective when it's tied to career advancement opportunities.  In fact, they argue, when it's not, turnover actually increases.

They also say that in addition to employee engagement activities like career counseling, "programs like mentoring and job rotations as well as good relationships with their immediate boss can create the feeling that career opportunities are available."

In fact, tying professional development dollars to career counseling is a practice the small firms that applied for Winning Workplaces' 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award earlier this year have used to great effect.  And by "great effect," I mean keeping their workers longer, so they end up spending far less recruiting and training new hires to replace those who've left for jobs where they see more long-term career potential.  This, in turn, helps maintain the knowledge base and facilitate the kinds of quality customer and client relationships which generate businesses' favorite revenue, repeat business and referrals.

Check out the charts below.  Among our sample of nearly 350 firms applying for our workplace award this year, those providing career counseling experienced better employee tenure on average than their peers with no professional development approaches.

We also saw that companies providing mentoring programs and/or job rotation – which the study authors also pointed to for the most "lean" spending on employee training – in addition to career counseling earned more average revenue in 2010 vs. who don't fund professional development practices.  And firms providing mentoring and job rotation, but not career counseling, were more likely to be profitable than those who don't fund professional development.

Related: For more workforce effectiveness tactics that are low-cost but high-impact, read this article on our website.

In Winning Workplaces' experience – when consulting with small businesses and when evaluating them as part of our annual Top Small Company Workplaces competition – when companies "share the pain" with their employees to help weather hard times, often a prime employee engagement activity is switching from a traditional five-day work week to four days, and increasing the work day from eight to 10 hours.

The company whose legacy of the profound payoff of employee engagement led to the inception of Winning Workplaces – Fel-Pro in Chicago, IL – turned to this practice at one point in their 80-year history when they faced the prospect of laying off a portion of one of their units.  This "share the pain" tactic and desired result (not losing employees for when conditions inevitably improved) has played out in small firms we've honored for their innovative and productive workplace cultures including:

• Alaska Wildland Adventures
• Applications Software Technology Corporation
• Finelite
• Golden Artist Colors
• Summit Aviation

I was reminded of the benefits of this practice (not just for employers but for employees as well in terms of saving money on gas for commutes and being able to run more errands and thus experience less stress in their personal lives) when I read this Huffington Post article a few weeks ago.  It shares that, while the state of Utah recently switched its public employees back to a typical, five-day work schedule, when they worked four-day weeks three years ago when 2012 Republican presidental hopeful Jon Huntsman was still governor,

When it came to employee morale, Huntsman's "four-tens," as the shortened workweeks were known, ended up being more loved than loathed.

The article notes that after the kinks were worked out from this huge schedule change, the practice had an 85% approval rating.  Why?  Well, in addition the work/life benefits I mentioned above, Utah employees wound up doing more community service.  In fact, a key output of winning workplaces is that through people practices which support greater trust, respect, and fairness of the workforce, employees are more inspired and engaged, and – as our chairman Ken Lehman explains in this video on our website – they leave the office with more energy to be better neighbors and citizens (not to mention, parents and spouses).

I think it's also worth noting that while the practice was curtailed in part because Utahns were not able to get needed state services on Fridays, the state did save some money as a result: around $1 million (Huntsman's administration had projected it would save about three times that).

What are your thoughts or experience with implementing four-day work weeks in your organization?  Please let me know in the comments.

A year ago, after Winning Workplaces and Inc. Magazine announced the winners of our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award, I began a series of posts sharing data on how the winners, finalists, and other applicants performed on some key business metrics:

• Average employee tenure and turnover
• Estimated annual turnover costs per company (and how the winners and finalists outperformed their fellow award applicants)
• Revenue, proftability, employee tenure, and turnover among all applicants who fund a retirement plan, vs. those that don't

Now that both organizations have announced the winners and finalists of our 2011 award, I think it's time to give you some updated stats.  As you'll see, they continue to support our thesis – and those of many of the other firms out there that study employee engagement and team building within productive workplace cultures – that investing in your workforce pays being dividends over the long term.  That includes an increased ability to anticipate and weather tough economies like the current one.

Employee Tenure and Turnover

As you can see, part of what distinguished the 2011 winners from the finalists was higher average employee tenure and lower turnover.  But to me the real story is how much improvement in these metrics the winners had over the finalists, vs. last year's winners compared to the finalists.  This is represented in the chart below:

While one might argue that the continuing down economy, and particularly the stagnant job market, is keeping people from leaving who otherwise might jump ship – increasing average tenure while keeping voluntary turnover low as a share of total turnover – our data seem to indicate that something else is going on.  Otherwise the winners' improvement over the finalists from 2010 to 2011 would be more gradual and not so steep.  I suspect that more leaders of small firms are having frank, "We're all in it together" conversations with their workers, and at the same time are doing a better job of linking individual to company performance and providing attractive incentives to encourage more top-level work and innovation.

Turnover Costs - Winners and Finalists vs. Other Applicants

Most definitely there is a mixed-results story going on here.  On the one hand, while among our 2010 pool the winners and finalists had about half the turnover of other applicants, in 2011 the winner and finalist turnover was two-thirds the level of other applicants.  That was the driving factor behind the average, annual turnover cost of winners and finalists representing 89% of the cost of other applicants (in 2010, winners and finalists experienced only 40% of the cost of other applicants).  Still...

...as this chart shows, you can also look at it as a testament to the current winners and finalists that they were able to keep turnover at essentially the same low level (considering the variance in industry, geography, marketplaces, et al) as 2010, which allowed them to still have lower turnover costs than other applicants.  This is particularly noteworthy since the 2011 winners and finalists represent a greater share of the total applicant pool (24%) than they did in 2010 (8%).

The Link Between Retirement Plans and Revenue

While there are obviously many, many other factors involved, it's hard to ignore the business metrics that tend to increase – among all our award applicants, not just winners and finalists – when companies show their long-term commitment to their workforces by investing in their retirement, as I discussed last October.  As the table above shows with the 2011 applicant data added, we continue to see a link between funding these plans and the tendency toward greater revenue and increased likelihood of being profitable.  However...

...take a look at the difference in revenue for companies who funded 401K, 403B, IRAs, or other plans in 2011 vs. those who do not, compared with the same groups in 2010.  (Also note that the ratio of those who fund these plans vs. those who don't stayed essentially the same both years, 9 to 1.)

Is the difference a fluke?  Or do you think there's something going on related to benefits and incentives within a framework of progressive staff engagement activities?  I'd love to read your thoughts – on this trend and anything else I've shared above – in the comments.

Last week I was combing CNN.com on my lunch break.  When I first came across author Max Barry's article "Why I fled the office cubicle," I thought it was going to just be about how this 20th century feature of workplace culture and design can hinder employee engagement and ideation from the bottom up.

It is about that, but Barry also takes aim (I think unnecessarily) at human resources professionals:

The difference between people and human resources is that people have brains.  ...  Human resources are basically office equipment with legs.  They're talking furniture.  In fact, they're worse than furniture, because at least furniture stays where you put it.

Ouch.

In stark contrast to how Barry sees HR, here's how I painted this critical business function in the context of our Winning Workplaces in 2009:

For the most part, among the small firms we've honored for their outstanding employee engagement that improves productivity and the bottom line, HR leaders morph from paper pushers to planners and implementation specialists, along with the CEO, of team building activities that fit and reinforce the work culture.

Below are five specific examples of this, among the small firms we've honored and profiled over the years:

1. Leadership Advisor and Key Decision Maker

Ginger Bay Salon & Spa, Kirkwood, MO
HR Representative: Sasha McGuire

"I'm part of the leadership team here, and we meet weekly to collaborate," McGuire says. "My boss, the owner, is very open to my feedback.  For example, I make the decisions around staffing, and she trusts me and consults with me.  I make the recruiting schedule, and make selections.  The owner is involved, but trusts me to do my work well."

2. Self-Directed Workforce Director

New Belgium Brewing Company, Fort Collins, CO
HR Representative: Jenny Briggs

Philosophically, NBB's intention is to develop a workforce that, at all levels, is self directed, makes reasoned decisions and is inspired to pursue their passions at work.  The company provides a menu of opportunities for all staff including: a process for employees to establish their own work objectives, on-site internal training, tuition for external education, a job shadowing program, and participation on one of NBB's committees.  Many of these activities are directed by Briggs and her 10-person staff in Human Resources.

3. Productivity Enhancer

High Performance Technologies, Inc. (HPTi), Reston, VA
HR Representative: Eleni Antoniou

The firm's staff benefit from peer learning through Learning Cafe presentations that are given every two to three weeks. Occurring over the lunch hour in a format akin to brown bags, staff members have the chance to receive in-depth training on a particular computer program or even learn a skill not tied to the workplace.  Antoniou, director of HR, has presented several topics, including goal setting and getting the most out of performance reviews.

4. Relationship Builder

Optimax Systems, Inc., Ontario, NY
HR Representative: Alejandro Mendoza

Mendoza's duties include helping to administer Optimax's successful mentoring program, which is core to the company's developmental process and helps maintain its unique workplace culture.  All new employees are assigned a mentor for a minimum of 90 days and there is a structured timeline of events that are expected to take place during this time period, including: much one-on-one time, monthly lunches, introductions to all staff, orientation to computer systems, understanding the bonus program, etc.  "Instead of a boring HR orientation, this mentoring relationship helps new employees understand our environment and what is expected in a far more effective manner," says Mendoza.

5. Emergency Responder (Culture Maintainer)

Ipswitch, Inc., Lexington, MA
HR Representative: Betty Lang-Holmes

Lang-Holmes had been on the job for one week when tragedy struck her software company, Ipswitch, Inc.  An employee's well known significant other passed away unexpectedly.  As vice president of human resources, she acted quickly.  "We invited a licensed counselor from our EAP to host bereavement seminars the very next day," she says.  "Now, there's no stigma attached to getting help when people need it."  In fact, at only $65 per employee, Ipswitch's EAP investment, and oversight by HR, amounts to just pennies compared to the costs of losing a valued associate.

Related: Our Leadership Conference with Inc. starting June 15 is a fantastic opportunity to learn about cutting-edge employee practices for greater team camaraderie and company productivity – the kinds of practices you can leverage your HR staff to implement, increasing your ROI from them!  Hurry – the $300 early bird disount is only available until May 6.

Last March I shared a trend Winning Workplaces noticed when we reviewed a question we asked of our 2009 and 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award applicants: Is the company founder still active?  In both years we found that small businesses with active founders had noticeably higher 3-year revenue growth than those whose founders were not active.

With our 2011 application cycle having recently wrapped up, I updated last year's table with this year's growth percentages for each group:

The trend continues...but that's not all.  As the chart below shows, the growth disparity between companies with active founders and those without them is widening.  While the gap from our 2009 to 2010 award applicants grew 33%, it nearly doubled from 2010 to 2011:

Not that you have to have an active founder to attain strong growth and profitability.  Still, if your founder is actively involved in your business, our data show that you may have a great opportunity to make better use of this person in terms of aligning employees and people practices with your mission and marketplace impact.

Related: Our website has lots of case studies on how small-company founders have used a variety of innovative staff engagement activities to take their organizations to the next level.  Check them out.

How do you ensure that your benefits are really resonating for your workforce, so they're incentivized to continue to deliver excellent service?  As Finelite – a 2010 finalist for Winning Workplaces' Top Small Company Workplaces award – shared in their application, 4 employee engagement-driven keys work for them:

1. Experiment
2. Listen to results
3. Make continuous improvements
4. Avoid becoming rigid

As we noted in our award profile on Finelite, during the current downturn the 20-year-old, California-based firm avoided layoffs while generating record shareholder dividends – and still were able to pay employee bonuses near target levels.  Their answer to our application question asking for info on benefits not asked as part of our checklist of common package offerings sheds light on how the keys mentioned above played out in helping them achieve these outcomes:

Finelite strives to find ways to address the high cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area and the congestion on our roadways.  When gas prices skyrocketed in 2008, our hourly workers voted to change to a 4-day, 10-hour-a-day work plan.  Half of our hourly employees worked Monday to Thursday, while the other half worked Tuesday to Friday.  The goal was to reduce commute time and fuel costs, while limiting daycare needs to four days a week.  In practice, the challenges surrounding daycare and adjusting schedules within families were greater than anticipated.  Hourly workers also indicated that they missed the benefits of working as one team instead of two.  As a result, in November 2009, our hourly employees voted to return to a 5-day, 8-hour-a-day workweek.  Here is the bottom line: Experiment. Listen to results. Make continuous improvements. Avoid becoming rigid.

One more thing: In this case I mention these 4 keys as pertaining to benefits-oriented people practices, but you'll find them helpful in general when it comes to making your staff engagement activities more successful for your workers and for your organization.

Do you have uncommon or original homegrown benefits that have helped keep your business humming during the downturn?  Tell us about it, and enter for your chance to be featured in Inc. Magazine this June!

Organizational development factors strongly in the content on staff engagement activities and other people practices that Winning Workplaces has published – just check out this page of search results on our website.

As our mission is to help small and midsized businesses create better work environments, it likewise also looms large in our biggest annual project, our Top Small Company Workplaces award with Inc. Magazine.  In fact, in our retooled-for-2011 application for the award, Learning and Development has its own section.  You can see the questions we ask in this section by clicking here and then clicking the 2011 application preview link in the 3rd bullet in the lefthand column.

If you're an HR type, you may be wondering what your peers think of our award in terms of the value they've gotten from applying, as a means to improve their firms' workplace culture.  Below is feedback that 8 such applicants shared from our 2010 application cycle:

1. "The application does a good job of breaking down the key attributes and facets of our firm (i.e. culture/people development, etc.). It allowed us to look critically at each area and determine what we are excelling at and what could use development." (Manager of talent acquisition, 10-year-old consulting firm with 50 employees)
2. "Excellent exercise in articulating our workplace culture." (VP of HR, 7-year-old retail electricity provider with 103 employees)
3. "This process was very rewarding as it brought together several departments and helped each of us to not only look back on past accomplishments but also to look ahead to where we are going." (Organizational development specialist, 8-year-old government contract support provider with 160 employees)
4. "We have documentation of our practices that we plan to share with board and staff at upcoming meetings.  We have also recommitted to the HR goals set for this coming year." (Development director, 9-year-old social services firm with 33 employees)
5. "What this did do for me was open my eyes to all our company does even in these tough economic times, and I have started using this in my recruiting process." (Recruiting manager, 11-year-old financial services firm with 62 employees)
6. "We're taking next steps to more consistently track HR metrics such as turnover, hires, percent minorities, etc." (Employee experience manager, 18-year-old information design consulancy with 30 employees)
7. "Our next steps will be to document our ethical practices so that everyone knows that we are an ethical company." (Director of HR and finance, 11-year-old software installation provider with 27 employees)
8. "Formalizing discussions about a 401k match, in addition to considering flexible work arrangements were definitely our take-aways from the process." (Director of HR, 19-year-old financial services firm with 294 employees)

If you are in HR in your organization and would like to gain a better workplace perspective, click here to see if your company qualifies for our 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award – and a shot at being featured in Inc. Magazine in June.

Tanveer Naseer has a thought-provoking post on his blog this week in which he emphasizes the importance of celebrating the traditions that define your firm's workplace culture.  He says company traditions are worthwhile because they:

• Make your organization stand out from the crowd,
• Foster a sense of shared identity, and
• Remind us of past challenges and of how far we've come.

In businesses, tradition is commonly thought of as parts, or the whole, of special events that bring employees together and help with building trust in the workplace.  One example is this practice at Rackspace Hosting, a 2006 winner of Winning Workplaces' annual workplace award.

But it can also serve as a benchmark for how you want your firm to be unique, or at least different than your competition, in your processes and people practices.  This is apparent in the feedback shared by the following four winners of our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award:

Award application question: How do you work with employees to help them grow in their jobs?
Response: In 2008, ALL4 made a significant change to our performance review system by eliminating the existing system and replacing it with what we call our Continuous Improvement Program (CIP).  Our old process was a traditional annual performance review and we made salary adjustments based on the results of the review.  We felt that this system was not consistent with our company culture, or our matrix-type organizational structure, and it relied on feedback that was not always current or geared to affecting positive personal growth.  We migrated to the CIP system which we created.  The system involves soliciting more consistent and current feedback from everyone involved with project execution.  At the beginning of each year, all staff take part in a "Create the Year" exercise where each person develops their own annual goals and objectives (aligned with company goals and initiatives, where applicable).  Each employee also identifies their personal "breakthrough" objectives.  Additionally, employees are able to give and receive performance feedback using a web based system.  Staff meet with their group coordinator on a regular basis (at least 1/quarter) to discuss feedback and their progress to date on their goals and objectives that were developed in their "Create the Year" form.  All group coordinators act as "career coaches" and maintain an "open door" policy at all times.

Award application question: Describe the culture of your organization and the key people practices that support that culture.
Response: I can best describe Biomark as a group of individuals that use an organic approach to management.  While there's reference to a traditional organizational chart which outlines Biomark and its hierarchy, Biomark practices the idea of individual contributions and self management.  It is this that defines our culture.  We've found that by empowering and EXPECTING personal input at all levels people become vested.  It IS their ideas and actions that are moving our business decisions forward and albeit they may not always be the right ones, they're input directly affects the health of the business.  We've been fortunate over the last (2) years to become 100% employee owned (ESOP)and this move has solidified the belief in every one of us that it is "our" company and what we do wholly affects it.  We have been and continue to be the best at what we do and our execution both physically as well as financially has proven it.  There are examples of this practice and their positive outcomes that occur frequently.  Production staff have recently taken steps that have both improved quality and output (productivity improvements) of a product we make.  This is not done at the urging of management or supervisors.  This is done because these people care about what we do and want to see their team and the company succeed.  Trust can cost an organization but we believe that oversight can be even more costly.  We prefer to work in an atmosphere of trust.

Award application question: How does the organization encourage employees to participate in important business decisions?
Response: Dealer.com has a flat organizational and management structure, rather than a traditional hierarchical structure.  This format was adopted to facilitate communication among all employees, regardless of title, department or tenure.  All senior executives have an open door policy that encourages any employee to ask questions and share thoughts.  Team leaders also sit with their groups in "pods," instead of being located in separate offices.  This allows for immediate and continuous communication between team members and leadership.  When employees have suggestions, criticisms or new ideas there are numerous communication options.  They can schedule a meeting with a team leader or departmental manager, email their thoughts, or talk to them via the internal chat tool.  Open discussion about the majority of important business decisions is encouraged and taken seriously by management.  Senior management also regularly communicates information, both good and bad, via the company wide "earthlings" (Dealer.com's nickname for all employees) meetings.  The weekly meetings also showcase the company's successes, news and development stages of various projects so that all employees can see how their job responsibilities fit into and contribute to the overall organization.  Even more frequently, executives write and send informal emails to all employees to keep everyone up to date regarding new business and company developments.  In addition, president and CEO Mark Bonfigli sent out a company-wide email stating that he wants to get to know all employees better, as Dealer.com has been growing so rapidly.  He offered to take all new employees out to lunch on an individual basis.  The feedback from employees is that it has been wonderful to get to know the president and CEO on a personal level.  Mark encourages everyone to express their opinions and share new ideas about how Dealer.com could be an even better company and workplace.

Award application question: How does your organization develop employees for leadership roles?
Response: We think that Open Book Management challenges employees to be responsible for the outcomes that they control in our organization.  Those that are in leadership positions at Ginger Bay Salon are asked to consider all the sources of information they have (appointment books, vacation schedules, previous results) to predict future revenues.  These are tasks that are traditionally executed by very few people in small business, let alone front-line leaders.  Because the information is shared across the entire team, all of our employees are in a better position to lead should the opportunity arise.  While we use this system to help run our business, we can't help but believe that Open Book Management also helps build our employees' resumes.  Ginger Bay may not be the last stop in some of our employees' careers, so helping our team understand our business puts them in a better position for the future.  Our sincere hope is that none of our employees are ever in a situation where they are at the mercy of a small business owner and unaware of what they need to do to help build value in a business.

Does your small business do things that buck tradition when it comes to your staff engagement activities?  If so you may be a contender for our 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award.  Learn more here.

Lots of the business blogs I follow have spent part of this last week of 2010 sharing with their readers the posts that most resonated with them.  I'd like to do the same today in terms of what you found most useful this year that we've published on staff engagement activities to create a more productive workplace culture.

Below are your 10 most popular posts.  In addition to those of you who found us from a search on Google, Bing, Chrome, etc. (59% of readers), I'd like to thank the remaining 41% of you who arrived here directly, or based on a referral from another website.  We are grateful to all of our readers, as we think there's much more to be done to get the word out that great workplaces are "better for people and better for business," as we say in our tagline.

1. Top 10 Workplace Trends for 2010
2. 10 Best Practices: Offering Vacation Days
3. All Employee Recognition Roads Lead to Greater Company Productivity
4. 20 Proven Workplace Team Building Strategies
5. 10 Small Business People to Follow on Twitter
6. Team Building Improves Hospital's Productivity
7. Toyota Leads Again, This Time in Team Building During Down Times (written prior to their brake recall mess this year)
8. Three Benefits of Virtual Team Building
9. Two Inspiring Stories of Team Building
10. Top 10 Performance Bonus Practices of Our 2010 Small Business Award Finalists

Happy New Year!  Here's to a safe, healthy, and productive 2011!

Are you a betting man (or woman)?

It's a common question on the Vegas strip – but how common a question is it for small business leaders?  On the one hand, Winning Workplaces' informal poll of our network a while back found that 2/3 allow office betting pools for sporting events.  However, given the economy we're in and the ever-increasing focus on investments tied to hard data, that's probably where the betting stops for the majority of entrepreneurs.

But it doesn't have to, if you have the same read as I do of this new article in MIT's Technology Review.  SmartBrief on Leadership aptly summarizes it as follows:

To gauge the potential success or failure of new products, a video game company had its employees place bets on projects using Monopoly money.  The game lets the firm's R&D team harness the collective wisdom of the company's workers, and it has proven more accurate than any other method the company has tried.  Corporate elitists, take note: The further a worker was from the C-Suite, the higher his accuracy.

I like this story because it applies the "wisdom of the crowd" approach – as successfully used with customers by companies like Threadless – to people practices for a more productive workplace culture.

What do you think of this employee engagement activity tried by Crowdcast?  Do you see it improving your culture of ownership?

This new article about employee engagement on Management-Issues got me thinking.  While Brian Amble discusses the findings of a study of top executives in European and Middle Eastern companies, their response to one of the questions in particular is highly applicable to their counterparts in the U.S.:

• Nearly half – 47% – of C-suite executives believe they are most responsible for practices to get and keep employees engaged.
• 16% of senior directors outside the C-suite believe this.
• 13% of middle and line managers believe this.

Amble goes on to argue that the highest percentage of engagement ownership claimed by C-level folks represents a "self-inflated view" that's at odds with results of other studies finding that managers are most responsible for strong engagement – or a lack of it depending on their people practices.

On the one hand, Winning Workplaces has written in support of Amble's view that favors managers' ownership of staff engagement; most recently with the help of guest author, workplace coach Wally Bock.  On the other, though, we have attempted to balance the scale, giving voice to the feedback we routinely hear from small business CEOs as well as HR directors and managers in other areas – that based on the leader's vision (especially if they're also the founder), small company size, and a (usually intentional) flat structure, the leader assumes the role of "chief culture officer" and thus the task of guiding employee engagement performance.

I don't think there's a "one size fits all" solution – myriad factors will influence an individual firm's decision as to whose job it is to foster stronger engagement.  Still, if you have not already done so, you would do well to define what ideal engagement looks like and have a discussion among your team with the intention of assigning the best person to lead this effort.  After all, if no one leads it, how can you measure the success of the engagement activities that make up your workplace culture?

More on defining success of staff engagement activities...

Some of the questions we're asking the small businesses currently vying for a spot in Inc. Magazine next June – the prize of winning our 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award – can help you define what successful engagement looks like, including in bottom-line results so you can determine a clear ROI for investing in your workplace.  Check them out:

• What kind of management development or training do new and existing managers and supervisors receive?
• Describe a management development or training strategy that has been particularly effective.
• How does the organization involve employees in important organization decisions?  Please give an example.
• Please share 1-2 examples of how your investment in people has improved the performance and results of the organization.
• Are there any distinctive, home grown or unique people practices you would like to tell us about that have not already been mentioned?

To answer these and many other questions that can provide you with a roadmap for cost-effective employee development strategies, complete our 2011 workplace award application.

I read this new post by our friend Becky McCray on Small Biz Survival today – on how you can turn customer prospects into purchasers by repeating your message in different ways – and couldn't help but think there's a connection here to employee engagement for a more productive workplace.

Becky says seven is a magic number when it comes to branding; people often need to hear your message that many times before they remember it so that you're top of mind when they need something that you offer and are prepared to make a purchase.  An implication of this tendency on small businesses, she says, is that in general marketers need to have more patience and keep their message, such as a product promotion, going longer, spread out across more channels on which your audience spends time.

Importantly, she ends her list of small biz implications by suggesting that leaders turn inward and

Extend the same courtesy to your employees.  Repeat instructions in more than one way.  Provide the same info multiple ways.

We have seen this as a hallmark of small firms that rise to the top of our annual Top Small Company Workplaces competition.  From hiring interviews and mentoring of new hires, to frequent all-staff meetings, lunch and learns, the company Intranet, and employee recognition activities, financially successful small organizations achieve their results in part by communicating the same thing to everyone across multiple internal channels, multiple times.

In terms of building a sustainable, high-performance workplace culture, continually mentioning and linking tasks and metrics back to your mission and core values can help you keep a pulse on whether you always have the right people on the bus, working on the right things, to keep moving your business forward.

Related: Our next IDEAS newsletter will share proven employee development strategies.  Sign up here to receive it, and apply the "seven times" messaging philosophy discussed above once you've read the article!

Thousands of books have been written on the notion that identifying and serving an audience's need can lead to a viable business.  But how many have taken this same approach to employee engagement for a more productive workplace?

When you think of staff engagement activities, with regard to your business model, you will ultimately do your bottom line well by approaching them with the mindset of your average worker.  These days, almost over and above competitive pay and benefits, your average employee values job security.  They want to know that barring any egregious performance error on their part, if the company continues to do well they will have a job to provide for themselves and, in many cases, for their families.

I am working on our Success Story for our November IDEAS newsletter (sign up here to receive it; it's free) and it will be on our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace Ginger Bay Salon & Spa.  Here's a portion of the article that addresses a specific practice the Missouri-based business uses:

To help the company continue to meet their high standard of customer service, in late 2009 they developed a spreadsheet tool that each of their team leaders could use in their one-on-one coaching sessions with their members.  The tool provides each employee a number of performance metrics that help them understand how they are doing compared to industry benchmarks and company standards.  In the short time between when the tool was put into use and when they completed their application for our award, leaders noted this bottom-up process had helped grow revenues by nearly 10 percent.

Ginger Bay Salon & Spa provides a compelling case study in the industry-bucking results small firms can realize by creating a trusting workplace culture and, especially, giving employees tools to easily see how their individual contributions affect the company's bottom line -– and, just as relevant in this economic climate, their job security.

The organization achieves strong financials -- their 2009 revenues were up over 2008 when the industry was down over the same period -- by working backward from a fundamental view that enhancing employees' skills for their entire careers is good for their business, here and now.

Related: Beyond greater productivity, as I wrote about here another benefit of this focus for companies is the cost savings from longer average employee tenures that commonly accrue.