Team Building Activities For The Workplace

Winning Workplaces feels almost like a parent when it comes to Seventh Generation, the company of our Best Boss Jeffrey Hollender.

Hollender's environmentally responsible household products business had annual sales of less than $50 million when we honored him in 2006, at a time when SG's progressive people practices were not widely known; by June 2009, when he named his successor as CEO, that figure had grown to more than $1 billion.  SG recently started airing national TV spots, showing that they're definitely here to stay.

And that's a good thing when it comes to not only green consumerism but sustainable business practices.  Hollender has waxed on the latter topic for some time on his Inspired Protagonist blog.  Now's he's bringing his leading-edge thoughts to the masses through his new book The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win.

I just received an advance copy of the book and am looking forward to digging into it.  You can read the first chapter of it for FREE by visiting Hollender's website.

Related: The forward in The Responsibility Revolution is by Peter Senge, a highly respected author in the area of how to improve employee engagement and workplace team building.  We referenced Senge in the Executive Summary of our 2007 Top Small Workplaces Data Report – see page 5 of this pdf.

I was thinking about the title of this post this morning.  We've been hearing since at least late 2008 about rising unemployment, and even though it's leveled off, we're still not at a stage of job growth.  We're just not losing as many (relatively speaking) jobs per month.

Two other employment trends have been making headlines lately.  There's underemployment, where because of hour and pay cuts by employers so they can keep their doors open, people aren't making as much as they did before the recession.  Compounding this issue is the fact that often their employers are demanding more from them, leaving these folks with less time to look for a new job that would provide more pay.

Then, there's the tendency of businesses, especially small ones, to replace laid off full-time employees with temp workers.  The benefit for organizations is that they can manage current and even emerging job functions (as markets improve and they see the need) by paying someone less than they paid a FTE, and with less of a commitment if it turns out a temporary hire is suddenly not needed.

My fear is that if, as many econmists are predicting, economic/job growth is extremely slow for the next year or two, these three employment factors – unemployment, underemployment, and the rise of temp workers – will impede the adoption and cultivation of the qualities of a productive workplace.  These qualities, or hallmarks, include many of the workplace team building and employee engagement best practices we talk about on this blog.

You may ask, what's the harm over the next few years if this scenario does, in fact, play out?  For one thing, less cohesive workplace cultures – those that, for instance, don't rein in toxic managers – very often increase supervised employees' stress levels.  On a macro level, studies have shown this hurts our GDP to the tune of $300 billion annually.

This, of course, doesn't even begin to address costs such as absenteeism, turnover, and recruiting/training that could become even less manageable under this scenario.

Do you agree or disagree with my assessment?  If you agree – how do you think should firms, especially small ones, should respond?

Attention readers – especially the 3% of you from Massachusetts: On Wednesday, April 28, you can network with Winning Workplaces Best Boss Trish Karter, CEO and Co-Founder of Boston-based Dancing Deer Baking Company.

That's when One Family, a nonprofit whose mission is to end family homelessness in Massachusetts, will honor Karter with their 2010 One Family Founders Award.  The ceremony, part of One Family's Mothers of Inspiration 2010 event, will take place at Westin Copley Place in Boston.

Why is Karter receiving this award?  For the past 9 years, through Dancing Deer's Sweet Home Project, the "deers," as they're known, have donated 35% of the retail price of their Sweet Home goodies to One Family's initiatives to end family homelessness.  Their efforts here include Karter's 1,500 mile bike ride last year from Atlanta up to Boston, which I blogged about.

In total, she and Dancing Deer have donated over $230,000 to support One Family.  Their Sweet Home Project is a textbook example of using workplace team building and employee engagement to achieve a double bottom line – doing well for the company and the community at the same time.

In fact, if you choose to attend the Mothers of Inspiration 2010 event, you will help to advance One Family's work: $93 of the $150 ticket price is tax deductible.

For more info on this event and to register, click here.

In today's business communication climate, because of time management and privacy concerns (including ORM), the ability to opt out is perhaps more important than opting in.  This is especially true of social networking sites, which by nature should be highly user focused.

Therefore I was annoyed to learn today, after months of trying to close my account through phone calls, emails, and website form submissions – which all went unanswered – that the businesspeople-focused social networking site Spoke actually has a pay wall on closing your account!

According to this post on Spoke's general forum, in which "woozoom" registered the same complaint I did, "If you are not a paying customer, you cannot cancel your subscription."

I'm sure Spoke is saving money by not performing this function, but it is certainly not customer focused.  And I don't think it's ultimately the best practice for their long-term financial success, since restricting free users in this way basically ensures that they will never convert to paid users – and, worse, that many of them will, ironically, use other social networks to tell their families, friends, and colleagues to avoid Spoke.

I am doing that with this blog post, in fact.

Admittedly, this doesn't directly relate to workplace team building or employee engagement.  Yet, it's something to think about for your staff who perform a customer service function.  You may not run your own social network, but you can apply the same principle to your phone, email, and snail mail contact lists.

In brief, make it just as easy, if not easier, to opt out than to opt in.  Invest to do this for non-paying contacts and you will see returns through a top-tier customer service reputation from your contacts that convert to paid customers.

Related: I noted above that my attempts to contact Spoke went unanswered. I wrote last year that I think every inquiry deserves a response, even if it's just an automated one.

*Hint: As Dan Bobinski wrote on Management-Issues last week, you can't.  However, you can control your communications team building culture and the mechanisms therein to greatly increase the chance that your people will choose to listen.

The key is that they must make the choice to listen.  Once you get them over this hump, employee engagement – and with it, commitment and productivity – will be much enhanced.

The three overall strategies Bobinski shares represent a good starting place.  To help you go further with specific action steps, I've compiled a list of some of the listening tools the small businesses we've honored use, which I've written about before:

• Clearly communicate departmental objectives, and solicit input from your employees on what they can do to help achieve them.
• Ask employees for advice in areas where they have expertise.

(Source)

• Create a committee of employees at different levels and areas of responsibility that has "New Ideas" in its title – and as its objective.
• Same as above, but with the title/objective of creating and implementing workplace team building activities.

(Source)

• Implement "lunch & learns."
• If your firm is small enough – have your CEO conduct one-on-one career advancement meetings with those interested in a leadership role.
• "90 percent solution" – give employees 90% ownership in each project.
• Do 10-minute daily stand up meetings in departments.

(Source)

Are there innovative ways, in addition to the ones listed above, that you succeed in getting employees to tune in to your leadership and your mission and goals?

Could small businesses go the way of the dodo bird?  That's what readers of this new Washington Post article may be left thinking.

Citing the pervasiveness of big-box retailers and a U.S. legal framework that for a generation has nurtured big business while undercutting small business, New America Foundation Senior Fellow Barry C. Lynn concludes that

Many of our most gifted entrepreneurs remain under siege by rivals armed not with better products or better business models, but more money.

This may be true, but I think it a stretch to go further and frame big business as a thriving species like humans, and small business as something akin to polar bears.  There are just too many data points in the employee engagement research on startups and entrepreneurs which show – to use another ecological metaphor – that we're actually at an unprecedented high tide.

Consider:

• Recognized small business expert Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends described the current sheer size of the small biz market in a piece for Google's knol site, based on SBA data.  There are approximately 27 million small businesses in the U.S., representing over 99% of all employer firms.
• In 2008 the U.S. Census Bureau predicted that by 2042, current minorities including Latinos and Asian Americans will become the majority.  As a result of this population trend, we're already seeing sharp growth in business creation rates from these segments, as the Kauffman Foundation reports.
• Young people are showing – and acting on – an interest in entrepreneurship in record numbers.  In her book Upstarts!, Donna Fenn reports that college and university entrepreneurship courses have increased over 400% in the past decade, and Belmont University entrepreneurship chair Jeff Cornwall is quoted as saying that 4 in 10 of their incoming freshmen already have a business.

I think this and other evidence that's out there roundly refutes the WaPo implication that small business is an endangered species.

Related: The above-mentioned Fenn spoke with us recently and, among other things, made the case that there's a revenue opportunity for colleges and universities in equipping their students with a foundation in workplace team building strategies to supplement their education in the numbers side of starting and running a business.

The recent actions of big players in some industries have helped sour business' overall reputation.  I'm referring to the likes of Goldman Sachs and WellPoint, who are awarding themselves with, respectively, record bonuses and rate hikes while consumers continue to languish in this economy.

When big business' rep takes a dive, employees who work for them, and even workers in small businesses that partner with them, can become disenfranchised.  Disenfranchised, of course, is another way of saying disengaged, and when this happens, productivity suffers.

Greg Hakim, a new employee of our Top Small Workplace Corporate Ink, wrote on this on their company blog this week.  He starkly defines the differences in business outcomes when leaders engage employees as merely numbers, or business assets, versus as the dynamic, innovation starters they truly can be when workplace team building is similarly dynamic and innovative.

A workplace culture that doesn't place any value on job meaning produces siloed work, customer or client dissatisfaction, and turnover that's often above the industry average.  On the other hand, companies that demonstrate through their people practices that they respect their workers and also invest in employee leadership development enjoy more and better innovations from collaborative work, which make customers/clients happier and also make it much more likely that workers won't bail, keeping your recruiting/training costs under control.

Related: Helping to instill a sense of meaning in your workforce doesn't have to be expensive.  This post reveals ways to do employee recognition "on the cheap."

Due to my workload, one of my Winning Workplaces New Year's resolutions – being a more active discussion moderator here on our blog – has been on the backburner since January 1.  I'm happy to report, though, that I've shuffled some things around and have also placed more of a premium on being present when you take the time to comment on one of our posts.

To catch you up and hopefully spur more dialogue where it's already been started on workplace team building and employee engagement, here's a list of posts where I've most recently commented on someone else's thoughts.  I'd love to read your take on the following:

• Employee Engagement - It Takes Two to Tango
• Paid Sabbaticals Less Radical
• Don't Be Afraid to Expand Employee Training to Include General Career Advancement Skills
• Stanford Prof Reinforces Theory: Poor Employee Engagement Will Lead to Talent Exodus
• Bob Sutton: Don't Cut Bottom 10 Percent of Workforce as a Knee-Jerk Reaction
• Who's in the Wrong Here: Employee or Company?
• What 'Tabatha's Salon Takeover' is Really About
• '60 Minutes' Reveals the VA Benefits Backlog is a Leadership Problem
• Nonprofits and Blogs Were Made for Each Other
• Ingredients Common to Business Success Involve Employee Engagement

After reading this scathing editorial on the new CBS TV show Undercover Boss in the latest issue of Newsweek, our Founder and Chairman Ken Lehman wrote our team an email in which he wondered,

if even big company CEOs who are doing their jobs, and providing leadership, could be sufficiently anonymous, given all the technology that enables regular contact with a workforce, to go undercover and pull it off.  So while the program is probably intended to depict these undercover bosses as progressive leaders, I think it demonstrates just the opposite.

I agree with Ken.  He seems to share the view of respected workplace author and coach Wally Bock, who recently fired off a series of his own cogent arguments for why Undercover Boss is "a repellant piece of trash."  Chief among these is that,

If you're a senior executive, you don't need to go undercover to find out what happens on the front line.  Just go out and talk to the folks on a regular basis.  If you're not already doing that, you won't find out much from a single week undercover.

I was so impressed by Wally's take on the show that I tweeted about it last week (in addition to an assessment by Quantum Workplace, which is much more forgiving).

Taking into account the above opinions on Undercover Boss, and my own, I would retitle it Exposed Boss.  Here's why:

• A boss of a large company that is "surprised" by any amount of poor workplace behavior should be an agenda item for the firm's next board of directors meeting.
• Even more importantly from an employee engagement/workplace team building perspective, no CEO – of a large or small business – should be OK putting workers between a rock and a hard place, forcing them to appear on air and potentially reveal damaging behavior, or to refuse to appear and risk disciplinary action, including suspension or even termination.

In his email to us today, Ken also said "No CEO of a Winning Workplace is sufficiently anonymous to become an undercover boss."  While that's true – and ultimately a good thing in terms of creating a productive workplace starting from the "tone at the top" – it's a shame that there are probably not high enough ratings in the premise of CEOs of highly effective small businesses MBWA and focusing on what their people are doing that's right and which moves the business forward.

If you've seen Undercover Boss, what's your take on it?

This week Ben White at Slate's BizBox site pulled out what I thought was the most important point that the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) made in its commentary that accompanies its latest monthly Small Business Optimism Index.

NFIB argues that more than government incentives to spur lending by local banks, what small businesses need right now is more customers to turn around poor sales.  This will result in the kind of robust job creation that will lead to optimal growth of our GDP over time.

While I tend to think government sometimes has a necessary role in business – curbing bonuses and executive pay of bailout companies seems like a no-brainer – entrepreneurs are right to ask what government can realistically do to bring more customers to their door.

Here the experience needed to reach a good outcome lies with business leaders and their employees.  To help equip these stakeholders, responsibility (and opportunity) also lies with workplace consultancies and content publishers.  This week, for example, America's Best Companies did startups a service by providing them with four outlets from which to attract new customers.

I'd like to continue in this vein and share some channels I see successful small businesses (our honorees and others) using to maintain sales in these tough times:

1. Social networking sites – especially LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
2. The comment form on your website.
3. Ask and make it easy for customers on your (e)mailing list to refer others.  Incentives such as discounts on their next order improve the participation rate.
4. Free product/service demo webinar or teleseminar.  All registrants, even if they don't attend, are new leads.  Tip: Use an incentive like a gift card to maximize attendance.
5. Workplace team building can produce additional channels you might not have considered.  Engage employees in a weekly or monthly, all-hands forum to brainstorm on new ways to attract customers.

In addition to the tactics mentioned above, what do you do to find new customers?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you looking for a (new) job?  Do you want to work for a company that places as much of a premium on building employee engagement, workplace team building, and employee leadership development as on growing revenue and profits?

Well, spurred by this post on The Talent Buzz (providing links to the job pages of the 2010 Fortune "100 Best Companies to Work For"), I revised the Google Map of Winning Workplaces' 45 Top Small Workplaces I last shared here to include applicable links to the employment pages on their websites.  Check it out:

For your convenience, here's a list of the companies we've honored each of the last three years that currently have job openings.  You can use the map to zoom in on your state and click on the "Job Openings" link provided to apply to any relevant positions.

2007 TSW Winners Hiring:

• Exactech (FL)
• Healthwise (ID)
• Restek Corporation (PA)
• Summit Aviation (DE)

2008 TSW Winners Hiring:

• ATA Engineering (CA)
• Decagon Devices (WA)
• Integrated Project Management Company (IL)
• JA Frate (IL)
• King Arthur Flour Company (VT)
• Lundberg Family Farms (CA)
• New Belgium Brewing (CO)
• Phenomenex (CA)
• Rainforest Alliance (NY)
• Resource Interactive (OH)
• The Paducah Bank & Trust Company (KY)

2009 TSW Winners Hiring:

• Analytical Graphics (PA)
• Censeo Consulting Group (DC)
• HCSS (TX)
• Mike's Carwash (IN)
• Radio Flyer (IL)
• Root Learning (OH)
• Skyline Construction (CA)
• Steppenwolf Theatre Company (IL)
• Tohono O'odham Nursing Care Authority (AZ)
• Woodmeister Master Builders (MA)

Would this post benefit someone you know who's seeking employment?  If so, click the Share button below to email it to them, or to post it on your social networks.  Here's the short permalink for this post to paste in your email or status update: http://bit.ly/bK8NP5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are three sources that support this:

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

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

Image credit: City of Eagan, Minnesota

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

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

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

Amidst troubling economic news such as the continuing saga of "Too Big to Fail" and a second straight month of job losses, I found the results of this study by Opinion Research Corporation a much welcome breath of fresh air.

The 2009 Cone Consumer New Media Study, which polled over 1,000 U.S. adults, found that business' reputation is not so tarnished as to preclude consumers from wanting to engage them in a conversation, particularly online. 

The study found that six out of 10 adults believe they can use new media tools – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube as well as blogs – to influence business decisions.  And eight out of 10 want companies to tell them what's in their products and explain the development process.

To me this, combined with small business' typically stripped-down bureaucracy and ability (due to their small size) to be closer to what their employees are thinking, presents a tremendous opportunity for them to use employee engagement to meet this consumer need and, as I wrote about last year, turn customers into customer evangelists.

The lesson here, which more and more firms seem to be heeding – the economy is most certainly a contributing factor – is that in this age transparency you can never involve customers too much in your ideation and development.

What thoughts do you have on this study's impact on workplace team building and employee engagement best practices?

While I think the "Move Your Money" movement is a little late, as they say, better late than never.

It was almost a year ago that Winning Workplaces wrote an editorial that cited feedback from the leaders of two of our Top Small Workplaces – along with some of their key business metrics, achieved in part by eschewing the questionable lending that the big banks engaged in – to argue that "small community banks have a rightful place at major discussions on how to fix our troubled financial system."

Now, with Move Your Money, the public is taking control to prove this point, sidelining policymakers but attracting media attention in the process.  Everyone from Becky McCray at Small Biz Survival to Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is chiming in on this new populist movement.

And now we're adding our voice, too.  For those interested in supporting small banks with top-tier lending practices, and which also excel in community and workplace team building, check out these pages on Move Your Money which feature the following Top Small Workplace honorees:

• Phelps County Bank - Rolla, Missouri - 2007 Winner
• Paducah Bank & Trust - Paducah, Kentucky - 2008 Winner

These small banks have earned an IRA Rating of B or better.  They will make your money work for you in good times and bad and, maybe just as importantly, their incredible employee engagement means you will never be just a number to them.

What are your thoughts on the Move Your Money movement?

It's my impression that the hospitality industry is ahead of the game compared with some others in terms of realizing and acting on the connection between better employee engagement and higher customer satisfaction.  Because companies in this space deal with customers face to face more often than others, they were on the leading edge when the economy tanked starting a little over a year ago, and they had to make some changes in how they dealt with them or risk losing them, since they deal in "nice to haves" and not "must haves."

So therefore I was happy to see organizational and workplace culture consultant Gene Ference explain how companies whose leaders adapt to foster greater workplace team building will be more successful this year, on Hospitality Net.

Specific people practices Ference points to include:

• Taking more time in hiring to make sure the right people are on board
• Seeking and providing more feedback to employees
• Create more nuturing environments for employee leadership development

Here's how he describes what ideal employee engagement looks like, and the business benefits that occur as a result:

The key to a peak-performing organizational culture is engaged employees who are invested in their work.  As in Star Wars, effective leadership develops cultures in which people « feel the force » rather than merely collect a paycheck.  Clarity about the organization’s vision, mission and values allow employees to embrace that spirit and make it their own.  ...  Put another way, leaders need to make sure employees understand the brand and their roles in helping to build, energize and sustain that brand.

Talented employees who are fully invested in their jobs provide huge payoffs to the bottom line.  They increase productivity, reduce turnover and generate higher employee and guest satisfaction, all of which result in more profit for the organization.

Related: Winning Workplaces written Success Stories on three hospitality companies and the practices they use to strengthen their bottom line.  Check them out:

• Emmett's Tavern & Brewing Co.
• Kahunaville Management, Inc.
• Zingerman's