Our friend Becky McCray over at Small Biz Survival wrote about the state of small town banks a little over a month ago, concluding, based on the informal research of a small town banker, that it's "business as usual" for the vast majority of the local and community banks in the U.S.  This, of course, is a stark contrast to the picture painted by the media of all banks – those on Wall Street and especially those on "ailing" Main Street.

Why are these smaller banks seeing profits and growth consistent with what they've experienced in recent years, or perhaps even better, with the economy in the state that it's in?  We will dig into this largely under-wraps story in our November Ideas newsletter on employee engagement best practices, due out later today.  In doing so, we profile two of our Top Small Workplaces, Phelps County Bank in Missouri (2007 winner) and The Paducah Bank and Trust Company in Paducah, Kentucky (2008 winner).

The Paducah part of our feature article quotes Joe Framptom, CEO of the 60-year-old, independently owned bank, who talks about how the firm's core values, which are their employees and the community, led them to avoid issuing the types of "exotic loans that we don't understand in exotic places" that sent AIG and Wachovia (to name a few) spiraling.

Due to length, we were only able to capture part of Joe's sentiment in our article.  What follows is the rest of what he told us.  It certainly illuminates how their employee engagement activities and team building help the bank maintain their market dominance while at the same time giving back to their community (Paducah and other towns in McCracken County).

Here's Joe, from a phone interview I did with him last week:

The sub-prime issue is a whole different thing than community banks. That involves complicated packaged loans.  In community banks, we have plenty to do with other types of loans.  Our mission, market and products are different than Wachovia's.

One of the measures we look at is how many assets we've loaned back to the community.  Right now we're at 70%, the same as most of our peers.  This tells me we're doing a good job of deploying our resources back into the community, where our people live and work.  Therefore, they don't have to go seek employment in California or other hard-hit places.

All of our people live in this county or the adjacent county.  Our depositors live in this region.  So we feel the need to give back to support this community by volunteering and being charitable.

I'm proud of the fact that we just completed our 13th annual United Way campaign, and this year 100 percent of our employees [140 total] were involved.  We raised $56,000 for the United Way, a record year for us – 10% more than last year.

The mainstream press, when they talk about banks being in trouble, are talking about the largest 25% of banks in the country.  The other 8,500 or so local and community banks are doing quite well, thank you.

They are also talking about the housing crisis as a national problem.  In fact, grossly inflated home values have really only affected six states: California, Nevada, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Michigan.  The other 46 states are doing OK when it comes to home values and people meeting their mortgage requirements.

In The New York Times just the other day, there was a story with the headline, "Vermont Bank Thrives While Others Cut Back."  This is the same story with other "Main Street" banks like ours and like Phelps in Missouri, which I've watched and admired for a while.

This whole thing with the bailout – look who’s getting bailed out.  Nobody's going to bail out Main Street.  Nobody's going to bail out taxpayers.

What are your thoughts on Joe's remarks?  Do you agree or disagree with him?  I welcome your comments below.

I just looked back and it's been almost three months to the day since I published a "Friday Nugget" post.  I can't believe it's been that long.  Time flies when you're having fun – or writing about workplace team building and employee engagement, as the case may be.

I believe I have a good one for you today, though.  Long-time readers might remember the post I did in August on 30 blogs that you should check out and consider adding to your feed reader that cover pressing issues for small businesses and entrepreneurs.  Well, over the last three months I've compiled another baker's dozen (plus two) worth more blogs in the same vein.

Check them out if you haven't already:

1. Bob Sutton - While I disagreed with the premise of one of his recent posts, I still subscribe to his Work Matters blog because he has a lot of good experience to draw upon and he frames workplace issues in new, thought-provoking ways, both on this blog and in his books.
2. Brazen Careerist - Their "About" page says this site is "a community of top Gen Y thought leaders, forward-thinking organizations and everyone else who realizes that the way we define ourselves in both work and in life needs to change."  And you thought Millennials were lazy.
3. Cheezhead - Get on the bandwagon with the rest of the HR community and read this wide-ranging blog.
4. Delaware Employment Law Blog - Attorney Molly DiBianca and company provide the other 49 states with perhaps the best model of how to dissect legislation in a way that is reader friendly.
5. Doing Well by Doing Good: Organizational Learning and Social Responsibility - Here's another example of a blog that boils down an academic topic (cognition as a factor in designing new business practices and improving performance) in a way that's highly digestible.
6. Dr. Beyster’s Blog - If you work in science or technology and want to know more about employee ownership, this blog by the chairman of the California-based Foundation for Enterprise Development is your bag, baby.
7. Employee Free Choice: Laboring Away at the Institute - No matter where you stand on the pending Employee Free Choice Act legislation, it's good to get all the facts from all sides.  This blog assumes it will pass and is writing to help companies with the transition.
8. Evil HR Lady - "And now for something completely different" (or at least modestly different): An anonymous HR professional at a Fortune 500 company responds to her readers' questions about employee engagement best practices and other worplace issues with actionable tips and advice.
9. HR Daily Advisor - Self explanatory; from the team at the busy Business and Legal Reports.
10. HR Web Café - Like Cheezhead, this is a widely read HR blog.  Sponsored by ESI Employee Assistance Group, whose goal is to improve productivity and reduce on-the-job issues.
11. Inside Human Resources Blog - Discusses HR issues from both a U.S. and international perspective.
12. The One-Stop ESOP Blog - CPA Aaron Juckett of ESOP Insourcing strives to put all information of value related to ESOPs and employee ownership in general on one place on the Web.  It looks like he's succeeding.
13. Today’s Workplace - I've mentioned this blog, by our friend Paula Brantner of DC-based Workplace Fairness, before, but with an ever-expanding roster of writers that bring different flavors to the topic of labor relations (including, in full disclosure, yours truly), it's worth another plug.
14. The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur Blog - I'm convinced that Mike Michalowicz, the author of this blog and new book by the same name, is the King Midas of his generation when it comes to creating golden opportunities for startups and other ventures.  Note his UPS whiteboard approach in the frequent videos he posts here.
15. YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog - If you're a Gen Yer and you liked Brazen Careerist, above, you'll probably like this blog, too, which primarily tackles business strategy and technology issues.

There you have it.  Do you already follow any of the above blogs?  If so, how have they helped shaped your employee engagement activities and team building efforts?  Which blogs would you add to the list?

As if employees didn't have enough to worry about, what with massive layoffs making headlines pretty much daily.  Now a researcher at the University of New Hampshire is warning workers to watch their backs to avoid being unfairly tagged "it" in a blame game.

With the economic downturn as the catalyst, says Paul Harvey, assistant professor of management at UNH's Whittemore School of Business and Economics, employees may be more prone to blame someone else for problems they've caused.  He says this is bad when it occurs among employees, but when it stems from a supervisor or manager who wants to avoid blame, it takes on a new dimension that can ultimately hurt the business via things like:

• emotional stress and strain on employees
• reduced performance levels
• potential for increased turnover

So how can small and midsize organizations refocus their employee engagement best practices to avoid this outcome?  One tactic that our consulting and training director, Diane Stoneman, suggested in a webinar we held today that reviewed some of the exemplary business practices of our 2008 Top Small Workplaces is to devote a bigger piece of your training and development pie to ensuring that front-line managers, especially, are living the company values and, most importantly, treating those they supervise with respect.  Whether it's good behavior that should be reinforced, or bad behavior that should be avoided, she said front-line managers are often key to making or breaking a firm's morale and productivity.

In fact, one of the 9 themes that we identified among our 15 winning firms this year that made them stand out among the over 400 applicants was that they have created and systematized processes that call for, if not depend on, employee engagement to help run the business.

You can see how this theme was laid out in our webinar today by accessing the links below.  The first one is the slides that fit this theme; the second is audio featuring Diane giving examples from two of the winning businesses, and our Executive Director, Mary Corbitt Clark, discussing more about these firms' employee engagement activities, including her answer to the question, "Why do it?"

Webinar slides (ppt) - 215 KB

Webinar audio (mp3) - 4.34 MB - 4:44

For more best practices on maintaining strong morale and productivity in tough times, we have an early Christmas present for you in the form of another, upcoming live webinar on this topic on December 10.  It will feature Bill Brett, President of Barclay Water Management, a Massachusetts-based water treatment company that boasts the lowest associate turnover rate among major firms in their industry.

Are your workplace team building initiatives set up to guard against "the blame game"?  How so?

When I wrote my post yesterday profiling the physical workspace at three of our 15 Top Small Workplaces for 2008, I was waiting to hear back from Resource Interactive, the Ohio-based advertising agency that is known chiefly for two things, beyond consistently overperforming for their clients: being female founded, owned and operated; and giving all their employees shares of stock in all publicly traded firms that are part of their client base (a rare benefit indeed).

I knew from their Top Small Workplaces application that they engaged their employees in designing their unique workspace that I discussed yesterday, but I didn't know when that took place.  I also wanted a little more info on how they designed their headquarters to fit their needs.

Mike called me back yesterday with some details:

• The company, which was founded in 1981, moved into their current space in 1990.
• In 2000, they redesigned the space and called on employees to help make it their own.
• The space included a series of support columns, which employees incorporated into the design of desks that rotate around them to fit a variety of team building functions. The desks can be configured so that people face each other, or they can be offset to huddle around a team leader.
• No one has a traditional office; everyone is exposed to the whole environment.
• Employees got down to the micro level, deciding the texture and color of almost all surfaces.
• "Everything is mobile," Mike says, so that no one needs to box everything up when they move around within the firm or prepare for a client meeting.

I just wanted to share that with you so you can take note for your own employee engagement best practices.

Speaking of employee engagement, I got an answer to a question I posed in a group I belong to on LinkedIn (Networlding).  I asked that group if any members' firms would adopt the practice of the "leaving bonus" that e-tailer Zappos uses, which I blogged about in September.

V. Ryan from Chicago-based consultancy SwiftKick Growth Inc. responded as follows:

This is brilliant!  It takes all the emotion and pressure out of the process and the situation.

When I worked for Michael Alter, who is a brilliant leader and great boss, he did something along the same lines.  He ran a contest for "My Best New Mistake."  He did it once a year, after the busy season.  People self nominated and then the finalists all presented their mistake at a company meeting.  The top 3 finalists all got cash and recognition.

Michael created an environment where it was OK to make mistakes (as long as you learned from them and didn't continually make the same mistake).  The people were more than engaged.  They created a lot of teachable moments.  Michael is a brilliant guy and his results show that.  And, his process kept employees on staff and cost a lot less!

His answer segues from the orientation phase that engenders Zappos' practice to employee development for the long haul.  It reminds me of a common theme among our winning workplaces, as illustrated by Paul Silvis, the Founder and former Head Coach at Pennsylvania-based manufacturer Restek, in a video interview we did with him last year.  He said:

I think innovation is spurred by getting people to take a risk, make a mistake, and learn from that mistake quickly.  I can see that individuals who are afraid to take risks will hamper the growth of the organization.

It might seem counterintuitive to encourage employees to take risks and make mistakes, especially given our economy right now and the credit crunch that is having a devastating effect on R&D budgets of firms of all sizes.  Yet, we are seeing more and more that this leadership trait, when used in tandem with other smart practices, is a boon for small firms when it comes to meeting and exceeding market demands, establishing new markets, and satisfying all stakeholders.

Do you have any thoughts on either of these issues, or anything else I've blogged about recently?  Let me know by commenting below.

In a new article on Human Resource Executive magazine's website, David Shadovitz digs into a revealing study by California-based global design and consulting firm Gensler.  According to Shadovitz, their 2008 Workplace Survey – which includes data from 900 respondents in the U.S. – finds that

companies with workplaces that promote collaboration, learning and socialization were more likely to have more engaged employees and higher profits than those that focus on "heads-down" work.

How much higher on the profit side?  Fourteen percent.  Not too shabby.

The employee engagement and team building that ensue from a workspace that fits employee needs and the overarching culture improve productivity and innovation, which in turn beget higher profits.  Shadovitz writes that employees at companies in the study at the high end of workplace effectiveness – those in the 91st or higher percentile – consider collaboration as critical to their job success.  And they walk the talk here, spending almost a quarter (23%) more time collaborating as compared with the "average" companies in the study.

Gensler's findings mirror what we're seeing among the winners of our 2008 Top Small Workplaces competition.  One of the nine major themes we wrote about in our 2008 Top Small Workplaces Benchmarking and Best Practices Report is that, just as much as employee engagement activities focused on learning and development, workspaces that eliminate communication silos and reinforce desired behaviors contribute to sustained employee and revenue growth, and lower turnover.

What does this mean in terms of actionable best practices?  Consider these common, or soon-to-be-common, workplace configurations in use by our 2008 winners:

• Decagon Devices (design/engineering): Within an environment of workspaces that are grouped together without barriers, their departments and work groups are led on a rotating assignment basis, not by someone with a permanent title in a set office. Key result: greater risk taking.
• Jackson's Hardware (retail trade): In direct contrast to the usual format in both small retail hardware facilities and Big Box retailers – a cramped space in the back, out of sight of customers – at this 44-year-old business all 63 employees, including the president and CEO, have their desks in an open platform. Key result: managers able to instantly give guidance and support for customers' projects.
• Resource Interactive (advertising): Their 261 employees played an integral role in designing their office space in the Arena District of Columbus, Ohio. Collaboration-friendly pod arrangements and the inclusion of elements from home, from dogs to skateboards, were the outcome. Key result: annual turnover that's well below the industry average of 18-22%.

Here's one last example I like from a small firm whose President and Founder, Tim Keenan, we honored in 2006.  In presenting for a webinar we hosted earlier this year on maintaining community in a virtual workplace, Tim talked about a practice he uses for his 300+ employees at Virginia-based HPTi – who work mostly at client sites in an IT capacity – called "hoteling."

The idea is to make employees feel welcome when they return to headquarters by providing them with a two-drawer file cabinet on wheels that handles like rolling luggage.  The receptionist is in charge of assigning them a desk and routing a phone line to them.  The employee then docks their mobile file cabinet into the desk.  Tim said it's had a big impact in making employees "feel like they're not a visitor in their own company."

Is your organization using your workspace to its fullest potential wih one or more of the above practices?  If not, take a page from the firms mentioned here and think about how your physical work environment factors into your employee engagement best practices.

If you've budgeted for and are still planning on bringing your people together in December or January for an annual holiday event, you are in the majority.  However, that majority is shrinking due to the struggling economy.

As CNNMoney.com noted yesterday, a survey of over 100 companies by executive search firm Battalia Winston Amrop found that 81% of them plan to host parties this year.  This is down 4% from 2007, and is even lower than in 2001 – after 9/11 – and during the recession of 1991.

Not surprisingly, those organizations that do plan to host parties this year are trying to find ways to cut the associated costs.  In their just-released "pulse" survey of over 450 companies in the last month, global professional services firm Towers Perrin found that more than half (58%) say they are "somewhat or very likely to scale back this year's holiday party and other employee events to save money."

Before you jump on the bandwagon of the 19% of businesses that won't host parties this year, take a step back and think about how that would impact your employee engagement activities and workplace team building.  Do you host other all-employee events throughout the year?  If the answer is no, it may be vital to the camaraderie of your staff for you to bite the bullet and host a holiday party again this year.

Yet, as with employee recognition generally, you can find ways to do it "on the cheap," as they say.  Here are 12 ideas to get you there (courtesy of the Associated Press, Funny Employee Awards, U.S. News and World Report, and The Canadian Press):

1. If you were budgeting for an off-site event, hold it on site and donate some of the remaining funds to charity(ies).  If you donate to more than one, survey your employees informally to see which ones they would prefer.  Hold on to the rest of the funds in your budget.
2. Do your suppliers or vendors provide anything your employees would want as gifts?  If so, contact them to see if they would offer your staff discounts or freebies on their products, and distribute them at your party.
3. Save money and reduce the possibility for a workplace-related accident: cut the booze from the budget.  Or, if the party is off site, make it a cash bar.
4. Make the party potluck instead of catered.  This offers the benefit of getting employees to share their recipes with one another, fostering open communication.
5. If you decide to have your party be catered, do some research – perhaps call some of your suppliers – and look for catering companies or hotels that are offering great deals to fill up their bookings.
6. Appreciated almost more than a staff party these days is paid time off.  If your people aren't that excited for a holiday get-together, they will be for that – and you don't incur any additional costs.
7. At your party, in lieu of traditional gifts, create funny or personalized (or both!) awards.  This book by comedian Larry Weaver, which includes sample award templates, offers a starting place.
8. If your workplace has done a "secret Santa" in the past, consider reducing the amount employees spend on one another this year.
9. If you practice open book management, or otherwise communicate most of the key financials to your employees, they will know if you're having a down year.  If this is the case, it will be that much easier to tell them frankly that you have less to spend this year on a holiday event.  You might, then, encourage them to create a committee to brainstorm, create, and execute their own event that's highly tailored to your culture.  You still get the morale boost – and increased productivity that can result – out of the deal.
10. On the subject of holiday party committees, you stretch your dollars further by having them create do-it-yourself gifts such as mix CDs or photo albums.
11. If your party will be on site or otherwise cost-slashed, you may consider taking part of the budget and giving it to employees to help with their holiday expenses.
12. Finally, for those who still plan to host an event off site, a twofer: Hire a planner who is tasked with cutting costs, and then schedule your event for January, when the holiday rush is over, enabling your planner to better negotiate rates.

Are you already using one or more of these ideas?  Do you have others you are using and would recommend that are not on this list?  How do they fit in with your overall employee engagement best practices?  I'd love to hear your stories.

Regular readers of this blog surely know that employee engagement is like many things in life: you get out of it what you put in.

However, too many leaders of small and midsize organizations do the bare minimum when it comes to employee engagement activities.  They might remind their workforces about their open door policy a couple times a year – which may not exist in reality.  Or they might bring everyone together for a holiday party – only to watch as people self-segregate themselves by job function or department, the result of too few team building and morale-boosting initiatives throughout the year.

It's certainly understandable that the leadership of such firms might shy away from taking a bold, long-term position on employee engagement.  It is really, really tough to continually stay abreast of what your employees are thinking about each other and your business.  And, as mentioned, it takes long-term commitment and even the understanding that there will be some mistakes along the way.

Yet, as a recent Hewitt Associates survey of the 2008 "best" employers in Australia and New Zealand shows, the missed opportunity costs of doing nothing, or even too little, are huge.  According to The Age website, their study of almost 200 organizations composed of over 40,000 employees 

shows a clear link between levels of employee engagement and virtually every measure of company performance. The best employers generate an average of 1½ times more revenue and 2½ times more profit per employee than the lower-ranked organisations.

As may be expected, these "lower-ranked" firms deal with more incidences, on average, that generate unexpected costs – things like manager-prompted turnover and discrimination suits.  But, as The Age article also outlines, there are many more "hidden" costs that leaders and HR managers must consider as a result of poor employee engagement best practices.  These include:

• unplanned absenteeism
• reduction in work team cohesion and productivity
• reduction in staff morale
• lost management/employee time (investigations, hearings, etc.)
• workplace accidents
• stress and illness claims
• damage to the company's reputation
• political and industrial relations impacts

So how do smart firms avoid most or all of these known and lesser-known costs?  For one thing, leaders can get past the myth that the best solutions are expensive (certainly very good news in these tough times).  The Society for Human Resource Management just wrote an article on how to boost employee engagement during uncertain economic conditions.  Their list makes for a great starting place:

• Implement telecommuting
• Review goals and objectives with employees
• Get the basics of team building – meet with people and follow up with them on what they say they need – down pat
• Promote employee assistance plans (EAPs)
• Get involved in public transportation

You can even improve your employee engagement through learning and development initiatives, all while keeping costs down.  We wrote an Ask An Expert column on this a while back.  Check it out.

What solutions would you add?  How have they helped your bottom line and/or reduced some of the hidden business costs mentioned above?

We have heard for some time that Michelle Obama's pet concerns on the campaign trail, which she hoped to be able to continue while in the White House – and will indeed be able to after yesterday's dramatic election finish for her husband, President-Elect Barack – are helping families create a healthy work/life balance and easing the struggles for military families.

It's no wonder the former is an issue that's close to Mrs. Obama's heart.  This article from today in the UK-based Telegraph newspaper talks about her own work/life balance struggles, in three distinct phases of her life: while growing up on the South Side of Chicago and seeing an ailing father continue to work hard, and leave business matters at the office; while herself transitioning from the legal field to civic and community work after marrying Barack and having their two daughters, Malia and Sasha; and most recently while Barack was on the campaign trail.

Mrs. Obama even wrote a heartfelt essay on the topic of work/life balance last month on the popular BlogHer community of women bloggers.  Here's how she spells out the plight for working women:

As we all know, our country is in the midst of a major economic crisis.  And we’re all feeling the effects.  ...

And folks are feeling it at the workplace.  Because right now, thousands of women across the country don’t have family leave at their jobs.  And those who do can’t afford to take it because it’s not paid.  And 22 million working women don't have a single paid sick day.

That’s just unacceptable.  Families shouldn’t be punished because someone gets sick or has an emergency.

This is from the employee perspective, but Obama's cause has direct implications for small and midsize business leaders.  Morra Aarons-Mele, a graduate student specializing in women and leadership, framed this exceptionally well recently on The Huffington Post,

Why should we care about "work life" issues when our savings and retirement funds are literally halving by the day?  Because "work life," as nondescript as it may sound, is the stuff that keeps American families afloat.  Work life refers to issues ranging from sick leave to health care to early education and child care.  It also encompasses flexibility and better work-life balance, which have strong effects on companies' bottom lines and employee productivity.

So what would organizations' employee engagement activities geared toward helping workers achieve a more harmonious balance look like – ideally – four or eight years from now?  Obama hinted at this during a plenary address she gave at our annual small business leadership conference two years ago, when she spoke about creating relationships between businesses and the community.

Community organizing didn't just help Barack become President-Elect; it has also helped his wife use resources at her present employer, the University of Chicago (and later its Hospitals) to transcend both entities from simply a "name" in their neighborhood to a visible, tangible source of inspiration and assistance.

As we spelled out in our article summarizing her remarks at our event, Obama pointed to the creation of such initiatives as school "Principal-For-A-Day" and community fitness programs as ways to not only bring the University's and Hospitals' employees out in the open, but to better connect their passions to their work.

This model has been readily adopted, to great effect, by some of the firms we've since honored as Top Small Workplaces.  For instance, 2008 winner The Redwoods Group, an insurance provider for YMCAs and Jewish Community Organizations that's based in North Carolina, requires its 100 employees to volunteer 40 hours of service annually to nonprofits.  A condition of their employment, the company argues this has contributed directly to their steady employee growth (27% over the last two years) – including the ability to recruit cost effectively – and industry-low turnover (less than 6% on average the last two years).

So one plausible – again, ideal – work/life balance scenario is the government serving an encouraging, perhaps advisory role in helping small business leaders adjust their employee engagement best practices so employees can focus their passions on helping their communities, while at the same time benefitting the organization through enhanced workplace team building and lower rates of absenteeism and presenteeism.

Do you concur?  Or do you see Obama's work/life-related efforts playing out differently?

Although we prefer to highlight the employee engagement best practices of small and midsize organizations over large ones – since they create three out of every five net new jobs and are 14 times more innovative per employee than large firms – once in a while we do deviate from our normal emphasis to report on the good work that the big boys do.

When it comes to team building, Toyota appears to be leading the way, much as the company has done in pioneering just in time production – a management philosophy the "Big Three" are still taking notes on.

This article from this weekend's Evansville Courier and Press underscores how Toyota is re-emphasizing workplace team building in tough economic times like these, which are hitting all automakers equally hard.  Yet, rather than simply lay off workers and close plants, at least at the Indiana-based plant highlighted in Dan Shaw's piece, Toyota is using this time of decreased production of pickups and SUVs to help their 2,000 employees here double down on "corporate ideals and building techniques."

The result, as Shaw writes, is that even in an industry giant like Toyota, which employs over 300,000 people in many countries, employees in a single location can be empowered to improve processes, giving them a sense of ownership over their work.

Here are the core team building principles at work right now at this plant, according to the paper:

• Skills and responsibilities testing. Net results after the last few months: knowledge of both has increased at least 30% on average.
• Exercise regimen. Net results: employees limber enough to return to assembly line at a moment's notice.
• Reinforcement of value of mutual respect: no layoffs. Net results: too many to count, but high on the list is continued income for the 2,000 employees and their families, enabling them to help the local, and national, economy with their purchases – and taxpayers by not joining the ranks seeking unemployment benefits.

This article supports an underlying notion about workplace team building that is not yet universally accepted, whether among large or small firms: team collaboration and unity are even more vital in uncertain economic times.

Frank Whyte, a facilitator for nationwide employee training and development contractor Training Services On Demand, drives this point home in this press release from last week, which itself makes the case for an increased emphasis on organization team building efforts:

An organization may go through dramatic and traumatic changes, but when the dust clears, the team that emerges from the other side must be a high-performing team.  That's why savvy leaders are protecting team development budget dollars the way hurricane survivors conserve drinking water.

If you own or run a business, I encourage you to think about how the above story of the Indiana Toyota plant, and its efforts to use former production time for employee training and retraining, can apply to your workforce.  And if you need a helping hand once you've moved beyond ideation, we're here.

I'm going to peg this debate in the big business vs. small business category.  As in, it pertains (maybe) to very large firms, but not to small and midsize ones.

Robert Sutton, whose Work Matters blog I follow and whose most recent book we've reviewed, passed along some wisdom this week that Apple Chairman and CEO Steve Jobs once imparted to his senior leadership team – a nugget that Sutton says was recalled a couple years ago at Stanford University's Institute of Design (Dr. Sutton is on the faculty of Stanford's graduate business school).

According to Sutton, the best companies are those that master the killing off of most of the good ideas generated by their employees.  He paraphrases Jobs' sentiment thusly:

What is really hard – and a hallmark of great companies – is that they kill at lot of good ideas. ... Successful companies are tough enough to kill a lot of good ideas so those few that survive have a chance of reaching their full potential and being implemented properly.

Sutton goes further, developing this argument to "its logical conclusion": Innovative companies that follow this tack should track the number of good ideas that are killed, and whether this has an impact on turnover.

While I can see some merit in this argument – its implementation has no doubt worked well for Apple – I think small and midsize organizations need to approach employee engagement efforts meant to generate and act on good ideas differently.

For one thing, as the number of employees goes down, the number of really good ideas also decreases, lessening the need for leadership of small firms to clamp down on ideation.  On the contrary, among the firms we've honored as Top Small Workplace winners and finalists, most embrace good ideas at any phase of product development or service delivery.  They are small enough to work one on one with employees who submit the ideas, coaching them on how they could work outright, or be adapted.  This is a benefit of the nimbleness we often attribute as among small firms' greatest strengths.

And if an idea is not a fit at the time, smart firms develop processes to catalog them "for a rainy day."  2007 Top Small Workplace Point B, with around 400 employees spread across seven U.S. cities, exemplifies this approach with their SharePoint-based company intranet.  Employees, who spend the majority of their time at client sites, access it frequently and the company, and their clients, benefit when they find solutions to pressing issues from those who have gone down the path before.

I propose that Jobs'/Sutton's argument be revised for smaller firms as "The Importance of Assimilating Good Ideas."  If you think of a business as an organism, and a good idea as something that could nourish it once it's been absorbed into the system, isn't that a lot more healthy for the enterprise than "starving" it by declaring an idea dead and simply discarding it?  (Pardon my abstractness.)

How does ideation work in the context of your firm's employee engagement best practices?  Do your team building efforts include an intentional cutoff of ideas?  Why or why not?

When I was doing some research today on the much-hyped – but still, surprisingly, not universally adopted employee engagement practice of the daily huddle – I found this quote from an issue of Inc. magazine from late last year: "If you're a small organization, not doing this is crazy" (Patrick Lencioni, author of Death by Meeting).

Lencioni is dead on, especially given the much more competitive atmopshere many small organizations face today as a result of the credit crisis, among other factors.  This is one of the big ways where the Jackson's Hardwares of the world can outshine the Home Depots when it comes to workplace team building.

The premise is simple.  At some time between opening and lunch, the leadership (or in the case of midsize firms, team leaders) gather everyone in one place.

When the daily huddle happens is up to you.  Many businesses prefer a time that's easy for people to remember.  The Inc. article cites the CEO of a New Jersey-based nurse staffing agency as a proponent of 11:45 am, so it can't drag out too long with lunch on its heels.  On the other hand, according to Jason Yip of global software delivery and consulting firm ThoughtWorks, there is a psychological factor in preparing for the huddle, and so start-of-day huddles might also be avoided.

So, what happens during these?  (Or what should happen?)  One of the few international firms we honored a couple years ago for its outstanding employee engagement best practices, Canadian-based 1-800-GOT-JUNK, posted a video last year that highlights what they do in their huddles.  Here it is:

So to review, you can get great results from your daily huddles by:

• sharing company news, including key business indicators and metrics
• highlighting company happenings or milestones

1-800-GOT-JUNK also follows the daily huddle best practice of KISS, which in this case means "Keep It Short, Stupid."  Their huddles last for about seven minutes, although 15 minutes is OK, too.  The emphasis is, after all, on rapid-fire bits that pump up the energy.

What is on the cutting edge when it comes to daily huddles?  Glad you asked.  I would say it's LinkedIn's just-announced beta app addition of Huddle Workspaces, which promises to fulfill some lofty functions such as cutting down on email (good for the planet, and your IT budget), document sharing and storage, and, of course, real-time communication via discussion forums.

It will be interesting to see how that works out for LI.  It's likely, though, that no amount of online congregation will replace the power of getting actual humans together to celebrate and focus on the day ahead.

Have daily huddles factored into your employee engagement activities?  How have they translated into bottom-line results for your business?

Photo credit: The WorldBlu Blog

Do a search on "music + worker productivity" and you'll find a wealth of pro and con opinions on whether music should be pumped into work environments and, if so, what effect it has on workplace team building and employee performance.

This article from March of this year, for instance, highlights the "pro" stance.  Jennifer Weiksner, a team member at the Georgia-based Alison Group, a marketing, advertising and public relations firm, told the Augusta Chronicle that the music she and her coworkers listen to before their morning staff meetings gets them "pumped up and ready for the work week."

But, as part of the "con" argument, aren't music genres like pizza toppings?  Isn't it difficult, if not impossible, for everyone to agree on a style that works best to have a real impact on team building and doing quality work?

What's more, with so many ways for employees to listen to music on their own these days via iPods and the like, why even bother with music over the loudspeaker – for which employees might need noise-cancelling headphones to tune out?

It can be a tough balancing act, but some small businesses are taking the gamble and experimenting with the "one-size-fits-all" approach.  One of these is our 2008 Top Small Workplace Jump Associates, a 10-year-old consulting firm based in California.

Check out this page on their website that is part of their Culture section, which presents their mission and values, and also showcases their creative workspace.  Here they show how music in their workplace complements the visual and spatial elements, which vary from community areas that are full of color and reflect a modern style, to more traditional offices, with doors, that are used for both meditation and focused project work.

Shown above is one of their "zen rooms."

There are two cool things I picked up on related to how Jump uses music in its work environment, and presents this facet of their workplace to the world for marketing and recruiting purposes:

• Their "JumpSound" page serves as a real-time, communal snapshot of the musical tastes of their 48 associates.  It can be updated as frequently as necessary to show the world what makes their "deck" most often, and why.
• The page breaks down the wall between Jump and their current/potential clients, or anyone else who lands here.  Visitors can listen to samples of the same music that moves Jump's employees, and can download the tunes if they choose (providing Jump some affiliate sales income).  While certainly not a significant revenue model compared with their primary consulting work, this page does serve a purpose in that respect, in addition to sharing what's unique about Jump's workplace culture.

When visiting or revisiting your employee engagement best practices, I believe you would be well served to do either or both of the following:

• Continue to MBWA (manage by walking around) with the intent of seeing how your employees listen to music in your organization.
• Do a formal or informal survey of your staff to gauge their interest in having music play generally in the workplace.  You may be surprised by what develops.

For more on Jump's unique work environment that has contributed to its 142% revenue growth and its industry-low 5-10% employee turnover over the last two years, check out our 2008 Top Small Workplaces Benchmarking and Best Practices Report.

One of the speakers at our 2008 Top Small Workplaces Conference earlier this month was Rich Armstrong, President of The Great Game of Business.  If you've heard of Jack Stack, the Great Game should sound familiar.  He co-wrote a book on this simple but powerful concept in 1994, after using it to transform his near-bankrupt division of International Harvester, SRC, into a hugely successful enterprise today that includes 17 businesses that employ over 1,200 people.

Today Jack and his business coaches teach the Great Game to companies to help them become more transparent with their financials, get employees engaged and thinking like owners and, perhaps most importantly in our current economy, building profits for the business so it can stay open, providing jobs and economic stability to communities everywhere.

According to Rich, there are 4 steps to implementing the Great Game, as shown below.

I wanted to share with you a little of what he spoke about during his October 15 session on Open Book Management (OBM) regarding Step 3, "Follow the Action and Keep Score."  In terms of employee engagement, this means creating an environment where managers don't hold employees accountable but, rather, where employees hold themselves accountable, based on the common pursuit of a "critical number," which can vary depending on the business.

Here's Rich on getting employees to hold each other accountable:

mp3 - 1.35 MB - 1:33

Although the OBM session that Rich presented at our conference was attended by some business leaders who are already using the Great Game in their organizations, Rich spoke on the basics of OBM for the uninitiated.  As an addendum to that session, he will be presenting a webinar for Winning Workplaces tomorrow on the same topic, expanding on the basics to flesh out the ways to make the Great Game work for your business, and what that can mean in terms of your bottom line.

By the way, you don't have to take it from me that opening up your books and teaching your employees how to read your financials provides an easily understood through-line between employee engagement activities and achieving bottom-line results.  Fourteen of our 15 newly named Top Small Workplaces have successfully implemented OBM, helping them maintain steady revenue growth to the tune of 23%, on average, over the last two years.

Learn how you can make your employee engagement best practices work for you – attend our webinar tomorrow and chat with Rich Armstrong of The Great Game of Business.

Alan Murray, Executive Editor of The Wall Street Journal Online, was the closing keynote speaker at our Top Small Workplaces Conference last week.  As I noted in my post of photos from Day 2 of the event, his topic, which proved to be somewhat controversial for the clearly mixed (as far as party affiliation) crowd in attendance, was "The Stakes for Small Business in the 2008 Election."

We were lucky to be able to grab Alan minutes before his address to do a quick sit-down interview with him.  Taking up his keynote topic, I asked him the following:

There has been a lot of back and forth from the two presidential campaigns, and from observers on the sidelines, that an Obama presidency would mean increased regulation and higher business taxes; and that McCain would deregulate and cut business taxes.  Do you see it as that black and white, or is there a gray area?

His answer surprised me.  Check it out:

Alan predicts that no matter who takes office in January 2009, "history's pendulum" right now toward increased regulation and higher taxes will be too strong for any one man – any president – to stand in the way of.  I found this especially poignant food for thought considering the battle both campaigns are currently waging over "Joe the Plumber" and his pursuit to create and run his own small business.

I'd like to ask for your help in digging deeper: What do you think the implications of a McCain or Obama presidency will be on micro-workplace issues – the kind I bring up all the time in this blog – like employee engagement activities and workplace team building?  Do you think it cannot get down to this level, or do you think it can (I'm thinking of Obama's connection to the Employee Free Choice Act)?

And what do you think of Alan's answer to our question?  I invite your comments below.

Last week we started accepting nominations for our third annual ranking of the Top Small Workplaces in collaboration with The Wall Street Journal.  We are accepting nominations through January 30, 2009, and then a formal application process will occur between February and March 2009.  Our panel of judges (TBA for 2009) will then select the winners from the finalist pool, which will be announced in the Journal on September 28, 2009.

The 2009 winners and finalists will then be honored at our 2009 Top Small Workplaces Conference, which we just determined will be held Thursday and Friday, October 1-2, 2009, once again in Chicago.  To put a reminder in your Outlook calendar for our 2009 event, click on the link below:

With our nominations phase of the project in full force right now, I thought it would help to provide a top 10 list of the reasons why you should nominate your small organization, or another you think has a great work environment, as a 2009 Top Small Workplace:

10. It's free, to both nominate a firm now and to formally apply in early 2009. Before you do so, be sure to check our criteria to ensure the firm you want to nominate is eligible to apply.

9. It can help you think about your current workplace issues in new ways. 59% of respondents to our survey of 2007 and 2008 applicants said so.

8. This project also serves as a great learning process to help you beef up your employee engagement best practices and workplace team building initiatives. 59% of survey respondents also cited this as a positive from their participation.

7. Facilitates inter-departmental communication and collaboration: 25% of respondents said our application asked for data on their workplace that was not readily available.

6. It's completely free to nominate and apply.

5. Some 2007 and 2008 applicants reported that the application materials they retained have been useful in PR and marketing efforts.

4. Applicants also said participating in the project allowed them to "share positive info that we typically take for granted." We have heard anecdotally that this has translated to fruitful team building.

3. We also received feedback from respondents that the application process is "much more user friendly than other similar processes we've undergone to date."

2. Toot our own horn alert: Our support staff, respondents said, are "awesome": "Any questions we had regarding formatting (of application data) were answered."

1. Did I mention it's FREE to nominate and apply?

So what are you waiting for?  Nominate a company for Top Small Workplaces 2009 today.

Check out this video that our friend Carla Moquin of the Parenting in the Workplace Institute just posted on YouTube:

Carla's mission, which she's been at for the past three years or so, is a lot to condense into 30 seconds, but she did so to enter Google's new Project 10 to the 100, a "call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible."

I urge you to share the video above with others so her entry gets lots of views before the deadline of January 27, 2009.  At that time, the top 100 ideas – out of at least 100,000 submitted so far – will be opened to public voting to narrow the pool down to 20 semi-finalists.  Google's advisory board will then choose five from these to actually fund and help implement.

Why is Carla's idea a good one?  For one thing, as she mentions in the video, babies-at-work programs have been successfully implemented at over 100 firms already.  These companies, in 23 industries and spread across 37 states, include three small firms that we've honored for their overall progressive and innovative employee engagement best practices:

For the naysayers who argue that such programs increase the number of benefits that already lean too heavily toward parents as opposed to non-parent employees; who say that, like dogs in the work environment, young children are just too disruptive; or who believe these programs are too costly – or all of the above – I would urge them to:

• Read this post I wrote this summer on Carla's work, which considers the benefits of babies-at-work programs for parent and non-parent employees as well as businesses, and
• Plunk down the meager $10 for the Institute's comprehensive guidebook on implementing a baby program in your company.  (Hey, if it doesn't work out for you, you'll have a holiday stocking stuffer for a supplier or client firm.)

What are your thoughts on Carla's idea?  How do you think it would impact the team building or employee engagement activities in your workplace?

Take-home tips and strategies on using employee engagement to effect positive change, whether it be inside the workplace (work/life balance to reduce absenteeism, improved innovation) or out (helping to keep money flowing in this economy, corporate social responsibility efforts), were flowing, along with introductions – courtesy of a lively networking lunch – at our Top Small Workplaces Conference yesterday.  A visual testament to which follows:

Bill Marshall (left) and three of his employees at Phelps County Bank, one of our 2007 Top Small Workplaces, gave a great presentation on instilling an ownership mentality in employees.  Their community bank in Missouri, like several at our event – including 2008 winner Paducah Bank&Trust in Kentucky and finalist Leaders Bank here in Illinois – defines an emerging, under-reported trend within the financial industry.  These banks are not tanking as a result of the crisis on Wall Street.  In fact, they had a great 2007 and are looking at a strong 2008.

How is this possible?  Because employee engagement best practices have created a culture where coworkers look out for each other like family.  This pays dividends for the bank in the form of greater employee tenure and leadership potential from within. 

The concurrent session was all about leadership development.  At one of Gentle Giant Moving Company's 16 offices, Branch Manager Ryan Libby (right) uses the training he's received from the 28-year-old company's Founder and CEO, Larry O'Toole (left), to instill in both new and veteran employees the fundamental philosophy that, as Larry put it, "Our customers are paying us to care" when it comes to doing a good job (read: no undamaged merchandise) quickly.

Customer love, it should be no surpise, is a notion that the previous night's keynote speaker, 2008 Top Small Workplaces Judge and President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines, Colleen Barrett, shares with Larry.  Walking the talk when it came to her assertion on Tuesday that learning is of the utmost importance for today's small business leaders, Colleen attended the Gentle Giant session and asked a question during the Q&A that concluded it.

Lean manufacturing and economic silver linings for smaller firms were the topics of discusion during a session on – appropriately enough – managing in lean times, which featured a trio of leaders who have done it in three labor-intensive industries: manufacturing (Georgia Berner, Berner International, left); construction (C. David Moody, C.D. Moody Construction, middle); and commerical printing (Andrew Field, PrintingForLess.com, right). 

A recent management challenge faced by 37-year-old regional trucking company JA Frate, led by Joe Alger (right), was not unlike one faced by technology PR firm Corporate Ink, a 2007 Top Small Workplace.  In both cases, loss of business forced the leadership to open frank discussions with employees that resulted in team decisions to take pay cuts.  Fortunately, these cuts proved to be temporary in both cases after a renewed focus on team building kept quality high.  In JA Frate's case, this led a former client to return. 

The Illinois-based company then did right by its employees who had shared in the risk by not only restoring their salaries after business improved, but reimbursing their missed income.  Today employees who went through that process recognize the gesture, far more than the lump sum payment itself, as a sign that JA Frate is working for them.   

Alan Murray of The Wall Street Journal Online concluded this year's conference with remarks on the stakes for small business in the 2008 election.  His prediction that regardless of who takes the oath of office in January, increased regulation of many sectors will continue to be the order of the day evolved into a broader discussion of Big Government vs. free market principles as the best platform from which to build lasting enterprises that can support both their employees and our broader economic community.  Heady stuff, to be sure, but highly relevant as the leaders of the firms in attendance – members of the U.S. small business community that supply as many as 8 in 10 new jobs – weigh their options.

There you have it.  If you weren't able to attend our event this year, I hope you'll be able to join us in 2009.

You read that right.  As I monitored our various Google Alerts on Monday this week – the day our media partner, The Wall Street Journal, announced our 2008 Top Small Workplace winners – one of the more "left of center" articles (sorry, I couldn't resist) to come across the digital transom was this piece on Fort Collins Now, a website serving this Colorado city that's about 60 miles north of Denver.

Let's just say that Colorado Governor Bill Ritter has a keen press person working for him, because on the same day he toured one of our 2008 winners, New Belgium Brewing – our only winning firm in that state – as part of an energy tour the Democratic governor is on in support of Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, the remarks he delivered at the 17-year-old, 320-employee craft beer maker "echoed" the comments our panel of judges made about the firm, according to reporter Rebecca Boyle.

FCN reported that the governor toured several "new energy" businesses that fit with the Obama campaign's proposals on this topic on Monday.  Certainly an emerging core element of these companies is the extent to which they're sustainable businesses, and New Belgium exemplifies that.  They've been a champion since their inception of the "triple bottom line" approach to doing business, and their employee engagement best practices include:

• Giving each employee a red bicycle – in line with their distinctive branding – after one year of service
• Encouraging coworkers to recycle: they can bring their recyclables from home to the brewery
• Maintaining a voluntary program where employees pledge to leave their cars at home and instead commute to work via bicycle

If you'd like to learn more about how New Belgium works sustainability into its mission and employee engagement activities – and how this has translated into enviable bottom line results in 2007 including a 2% voluntary turnover rate and $96 million in revenues – you should check out our hot-off-the-presses 2008 Top Small Workplaces Benchmarking and Best Practices Report.

Winning Workplaces' staff have just gotten home after a long but extremely fruitful day putting on the first half – well, more like 2/3 – of this year's Top Small Workplaces Conference at the Mid-America Club in Chicago.

For those of you who couldn't join us this year, or are only coming for tomorrow's sessions, I wanted to provide you a taste of what happened today.  Enjoy these snapshots, fresh off the camera of our dutiful photographer, Dan Rest.

The trio that were soon affectionately known as "Mike, Mike, and Paul": (from left) Michael Mulqueen, Winning Workplaces Board Member; Paul Silvis, Founder and former Head Coach, Restek Corporation; and Michael Foley, CEO, Reflexite.  Mike Mulqueen moderated the session that featured Paul and Mike, which focused on two perspectives of leadership succession and the employee engagement that engendered these transitions.

Principal Financial Group, which provided content for the session on employee engagement activities and benefits that kicked off the conference, was one of several sponsors that provided attendees with information on their services for small and midsize firms.

The Awards Dinner keynote speaker was Colleen Barrett, who recently transitioned from President of Southwest Airlines to President Emeritus, where she will continue to serve as the heart of the low fare airline's team building and culture efforts.  Colleen shared her thoughts on "the Southwest way" and explained how "it's not rocket science" for small businesses to use employee engagement best practices to achieve great customer satisfaction.

Dev Patnaik of Jump Associates, one of our 2008 Top Small Workplaces, asks Colleen a question during the Q&A portion of her address.

All of this year's Top Small Workplace winners pose with their awards.  Congrats, ladies and gents!

Tomorrow I'll be back with more photos from Day 2.  Stay tuned...

As part of The Wall Street Journal's announcement today of our 2008 Top Small Workplaces, they produced a short video that reveals just a few of the innovative employee engagement activities of four of our 15 winners this year:

• King Arthur Flour Company - food manufacturer, catalogue, retail, school - Norwich, VT
• Landscape Forms - manufacturing - Kalamazoo, MI
• New Belgium Brewing - beer manufacturer - Ft. Collins, CO
• Rainforest Alliance - environmental nonprofit - New York, NY

Check it out:

As the moderator of the video – Kelly Spors, who attended the judges meeting here in June that's shown, and wrote the main WSJ feature on this year's winners – concludes, "Happy employees translate into happy customers." 

With the economy being where it is right now, and many retail stores in a position of practically begging for holiday foot traffic far earlier than usual, this statement carries substantial weight.  Smart business leaders, especially those that run small and midsize firms, are having a collective coming-of-business-age realization that a relatively small investment in their employee engagement best practices can help them hold onto their best people longer, which of course has direct implications on R&D for product and service offerings, and besting their competition when it comes to delivering unrivaled customer service.

We will have an editorial in our October newsletter, due out later today, that will make the link, in no uncertain terms, between the best practices of the 2008 Top Small Workplaces and the ability to weather a tough economy.  In the case of many winners and finalists, they have stood the test of time over several generations of bad market conditions.  So today's start-ups can definitely learn something here.

If you're looking for even more takeaways on this topic, I encourage you to also attend our Top Small Workplaces Conference, which starts tomorrow in Chicago.  While online registration closed last week, you can still register by calling 847-328-9798 or in person at our event venue.

What do you think of the statement that is the title of this post?  How have you tried to make this a reality in your organization?