Last week I enjoyed a week off with my family in Canada, specifically Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.  But before I had even left the states, I was reminded of an important lesson when it comes to hiring for fit as well as employee engagement and workplace team building.

My wife and I flew from LAX to Newark Liberty International Airport before connecting on a flight from there to Halifax.  Between our arrival and second departure gate was a small, '50s-style diner.  Not having much time and knowing there'd be at least a snack on our second-leg flight, we sat down there to split a plate of fries.  We wanted to keep ourselves hydrated, so we each opted for free glasses of water instead of sodas (you'll see why this is important in a second).

When we arrived the place was maybe a third full – not too busy for the one waiter to serve us, as I can say with authority from my high school days as a waiter.  Yet it was immediately apparent that he preferred to favor tables with more people who were ordering more items.  That's understandable because, in theory, that's where the bigger tips were.

What he shouldn't have assumed, though, is that we would leave a proportionally smaller tip.  It so happened that we had bills and no change so, proportionally, had he done an even passable job, he would have gotten a very nice tip for his time involved.  But he initially ignored us, literally rolled his eyes when we asked for a plate of fries and two waters, didn't check on us once he delivered our order, and, worst of all when it comes to waiting etiquette, took our check and tip before we had left!

On our way out, when my wife shared that his tip could have been a lot higher if he had treated us better, the waiter said lazily, "Well, you only ordered fries."  Since when does amount spent dictate the service level received!?  (This is an equation that doesn't factor into the business models of our Top Small Company Workplaces, BTW.)

If you run a company, especially in the hospitality industry, you might be thinking that this experience reflects more on the individual employee and doesn't impact the business as much.  Not necessarily; on our return visit to the same airport en route from Halifax to Los Angeles, we noticed the same waiter in the same restaurant – steering clear of both and getting our food on elsewhere in the terminal.  A different customer-employee experience could have meant repeat business for that diner.

The takeaway?  When you have a more or less stable, captive audience such as in an airport or mall, people practices including hiring for fit and using employee development strategies to deliver excellent service can make a huge difference on your bottom line.

Related: In this webinar recording on our website, two of our award-winning small business CEOs share proven tips for creating a fantastic customer service culture.

Photo credit: Maurice Prather

SmartBrief on Leadership was one of the sources I noticed that touched upon what appears to be a relatively new employee engagement approach: allowing workers to take unlimited paid vacations.  Recently they linked to this NPR article on the trend.

But then last week they raised the topic again; linking to this article by Chris Grams, SmartBrief wrote:

An increasing number of companies are taking a relaxed approach to worker management, letting staff decide for themselves when they take vacations and how they spend their time at work.

The emphasis on the word "relaxed" above is mine.  It's only one word, but in my opinion in terms of leaders taking something away from their summary, it's an important one.  "Relaxed" can imply "quick and easy."  In fact, getting your workplace culture and productivity to a place in which your organization can truly succeed with a "no policy" vacation policy requires a lot of time and, especially, buy in and long-term commitment from leadership.

I think of the pinnacle of an unlimited vacation policy as the visible part of an iceberg – there's a whole lot more going on under the surface than what's apparent:

What's your take on this trend, and on the team building progress and other people practices work that needs to happen before it's feasible to jump on it?

My thanks to one of the bloggers I follow, Aaron Juckett of The One-Stop ESOP Blog, for pointing me to a new study by Hewitt Associates which uncovers some of the most conclusive evidence I've seen that poor employee engagement leads to an undesirable outcome for the top-priority stakeholder for many companies: shareholders.

As Hewitt explains on their website, since the onset of the economic downturn in July 2008, they have analyzed changes in employee engagement levels by quarter for more than 900 global organizations.  Juckett points to their most recent findings published last month, which show that

Organizations where 65% or more of employees are engaged had total shareholder returns 19% higher than the average total shareholder returns.  Companies with less than 40% of employees engaged had total shareholder returns that were 44% lower than the average.

I find this to be incredibly powerful, especially when I look back to a 2007 study by another leading workplace trends research firm, Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson after merging with Watson Wyatt in January), which we've summarized on our website.  That year-long study of 50 companies found that those with the most engaged employees had a 28% increase in earnings per share, while those with the least engaged workers had an 11% decline in earnings per share.

When we put the results of these two studies back to back, the payoff of employee engagement and team building on shareholders and other investors could not be clearer:

Likely due in part to layoffs and other workforce cuts made after 2007, shareholder returns for companies with the highest engagement – while still above the average – did drop 147%.  But look at the whopping drop of 400% in returns among companies with the least engaged employees.  Ouch, or as my Norwegian ancestors might say, Oofta!

These findings serve to advance the case that it's in companies' best interest to take up, or improve upon, their long-term strategy to motivate employees to create a more harmonious and productive workplace.

Related: Among the best practice articles that those who share their bad workplace experiences with us receive as part of our free, 20-page white paper is one on employee practices that increase competitive advantage.  Get the white paper by sharing your bad experience (and solution) here.

I had a "wow" moment yesterday when I was reviewing my post history in our Compendium software and realized today's post will be our 900th.  900 blog posts in roughly 800 days (our blog has been running since June 4, 2008) – that works out to about one new post per day on employee engagement and team building strategies to help small businesses create a more productive workplace.

In addition to the writing I do here to (hopefully) make your work life easier, I also follow over 100 blogs in Google Reader, choosing some of the best stuff from them to share here as well as on Twitter.  In all this time I've picked up on some important best practices when writing business blog posts – along with some things to avoid.

I want to focus today's post on the latter to help you draw in and better engage your readers, and – addressing what CEOs and others who hold the purse strings care about – get them to take a desired action that meets your goals or helps your bottom line.

Here's my top 5 list of things to NOT do when business blogging:

1. Truncate your RSS feed.  In layman's terms, this means setting up each new post so the reader only sees a bit of teaser text in their RSS feed (explained here if you don't know what this is), and must click through to your blog to read the full article.  I'm on the same page as Techdirt CEO Mike Masnick as to why this is a bad business decision.  I'm sorry, but I look at this the same way I do a pay wall: you're putting a barrier in front of me, and my gut reaction is to leave.
2. A "link dump" or "flashback" to an earlier week or month of posts.  I've seen a growing number of blogs do this, and although I do get why they do so (more targeted, quality links help with search engine optimization), it's really a disservice to the reader.  A link dump says to me, "I've found this collection of articles, but I don't care enough about your time to put any kind of analysis or framework around them...and I'm sure you have an hour to kill reading all my links until you get to the last one."  A flashback is even worse; usually it's a linked list of dates corresponding to posts – that tells me nothing about what I can expect to read by clicking through.  You have to ask yourself if even your most engaged readers will go with you on your stroll down memory lane.  I guarantee a huge percentage of them will not.
3. Use too much "inside" language.  There's a prominent blog I follow, which I won't name, where lately almost all of the posts are about the author's spouse – who is not relevant to the title (read: promise) of the blog.  This author has written some greater material over the years, but lately I've been tempted to hit "Delete" next to that blog for this reason.  The lesson?  Keep your first-time readers in mind and don't veer too far off course from the promise to your readers stated or implied in your blog title.  (Or, do it but then change your blog title/focus.)
4. Write too many posts per day.  Speaking of moves that are great for SEO but bad for the average RSS follower, don't publish so many posts per day that it becomes burdensome for your average reader to keep up.  How many posts/day are too many?  My number is five.  Tip: Survey your readers to learn the max that they're comfortable with, and don't go over it.  (Side note: A number of the blogs I've seen that publish what I consider to be way too many posts/day accomplish this volume by enlisting guest writers.  If your goal is build relationships with these folks and to get great SEO at the expense of the average reader's time, then by all means keep doing what you're doing.)
5. Write posts that are too long.  Frankly, this was not a concern of mine when I started writing here.  But the more I've written with the reader's time in mind, and seen this come up again and again as a blogging best practice, I've tried not to do this.  Right now, in my mind, this post is getting to be too long, and I'm at 734 words.  That's about 100 words shy of the average, feature-length article on getting employees engaged in our quarterly newsletter.  Too long for everyday consumption, so this list is ending...now.

What's on your list of pet peeves or things to avoid when blogging for business results?

Image credit: oz 2 designs

What an amazing community of small business leaders Winning Workplaces is fortunate to know!  After I wrote this post last week providing resources to help leaders set their new managers up for success – in which I shared a facet of our honoree Andrew Field's approach to this – the President of PrintingForLess.com emailed me with expanded tactics intended to help you with your own employee leadership development of this pivotal group of workers.

According to Field, here are some things that PFL implemented to grow great first-time managers in a relatively short time:

The critical first step in cultivating new managers is to identify candidates before they are needed in their new positions, and to begin giving them the preparation they need well in advance.  It is critical to have an explicit "leadership pipeline" and to hold yourself and your management team accountable for the development of your future leaders.

At PFL, this looks like having a standing agenda item at our broad monthly management team meeting that involves each person who has direct reports identifying their top and bottom performers, along with what they are doing to grow/reward/engage their top people, and what they are doing to "coach up" their low performers.

The second tool for success that we equip our new managers with is a template for regular (weekly or biweekly) one-on-one conversations with each of their direct reports.  The critical elements are personal connections, specific project updates, and discussion about professional growth plans.

Many entrepreneurs say that they don't need regular, scheduled one-on-ones because they have so much impromptu contact with their teams.  Nice try.

Spur-of-the-moment discussions are important, but they are not a substitute for regular one-on-ones, which encompass deep discussions focused mostly around the employee's work and development plans, rather than just current action items.

Our third support system for new leaders is that we provide them with development paths that include opportunities to expand their experience levels within the company.  In addition to education and mentorship (both of which are structured), we give future and current leaders the opportunity to test themselves in leadership roles, ranging from running a small project to leading a large group of people.  We move them around to different areas of the company in order to broaden their knowledge base, as well as giving them a chance to build robust networks within the organization.  Critical to the success of this OJT ("On the Job Training") is that we structure discussions about learnings and challenges.  We have found that peer-to-peer discussions are every bit as productive as boss-to-employee interactions.

At the end of the day, PFL has grown our best people by identifying potential leaders, modeling good leadership habits, and showering them with resources aimed at nurturing their growth.

Related: Andrew Field clearly knows his stuff when it comes to team building in the workplace – and seeing a payoff of employee engagement.  Learn even more about his employee development strategies on our website.

This new post on the Business Pundit blog caught my attention: Citing data from Wall St. Cheat Sheet, it contains a map of the U.S. showing the scope of business closures in FY 2009.  The number of closures are given for states suffering from the highest number of them, including New York, California, Texas, Georgia, and Florida.

This is across-the-board data, representing all businesses, large and small.  But what about just small businesses?  And more specifically, as a point of discussion relative to the findings from Wall St. Cheat Sheet, how many of them are expanding or planning to expand in this environment?

Our employee engagement research from our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award sheds some light here.  We asked our 497 applicant firms about their future organizational goals; 101 of them, or 20.3%, used terms describing expansion in the immediate future including "new location," "new office," and "new facility."

I thought it would be illuminating to juxtapose the map of U.S. business closures from Wall St. Cheat Sheet with a map I created showing the breakdown of our 101 small business award applicants expanding or looking to expand soon:

Click on our map in blue to view a larger version.

Besides company size – our applicants have no more than 750 employees – what else is different in the survey samples comprising these two maps?  We know that our award applicants understand the payoff of employee engagement and team building on their bottom line, and accordingly develop people practices to leverage this.  This enhances their ability to invest in the business, including expansion – even in a tough economy.

Can we say that about the much larger company sample in Wall St. Cheat Sheet's research?  Not necessarily.

What's your reaction to these two maps?

You have probably heard of these employee engagement themed stories by now: Both former JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater and a woman named Jenny are being called workplace heroes on the Internet for the spectacular ways they departed their employers in the face of on-the-job adversity.

They both tapped into the frustration felt by at least 55% of the workforce who are unsatisfied with their current jobs, many of whom no doubt fantasize about doing exactly what these two ex-employees did.  (However, hat tip to executive coach Scott Eblin for noticing that the experience of "Jenny" turned out to be a hoax.)

Yet, there's a lesson in these two stories for employers, as Lauren Moak at the Delaware Employment Law Blog – one of my recommended small business/entrepreneurship blogs – explains fabulously:

While these stories are endlessly entertaining to the on-line community, no employer wants to be on the receiving end of this type of publicity.  So treat your employees well, and minimize the incentive for them to quit with a flourish.

So, how best to use team building to keep employees engaged to avoid one or more high-profile exits?  Here's a selected list of our webinars – featuring CEOs of small businesses that excel at this – to point you in the right direction:

• Engaging Fresh, Young Talent in the Workplace
• Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy
• Fostering Trust Within the Workplace
• Growing Leaders from Within

On her blog last week, Harvard Business School's Rosabeth Moss Kanter identified setting clear expectations about everything as one of four things groups want that leaders can't provide.  She writes,

No matter how much leaders try to define expectations, lay out the nature of likely events, or describe the steps that the group will be going through, it's not enough.

My question is, while it may not be enough to fully satisfy groups of employees for ideal workforce effectiveness – is it enough to move the business forward in a meaningful way (even if that means not sliding backward in a recession)?

The workplace team building and employee engagement experiences of 8 small businesses that applied for our Top Small Company Workplaces award this year – including 2 winners – show that building clear employee expectations from leaders into the strategy contributes to organizational success.  Consider that the companies I'll tell you a bit more about below:

• Have been in business an average of 13 years,
• Grew revenue more than $5 million on average from 2008 to 2009,
• Went from 50% being profitable in 2008 to 75% being profitable in 2009, and
• Decreased average turnover by close to 3% from 2008 to 2009.

Specifically, here's who the firms are and how they maintain their success, in part, by being intentional about setting clear expectations:

Awarepoint - Real-time awareness technologies to monitor equipment and people - San Diego, CA
"Awarepoint helps managers get the best out of our staff.  The in-depth performance review helps managers and employees have better conversations, set clear expectations and build useful development plans.  This method also helps our leaders learn to identify poor performance so that it can be dealt with quickly, while developing the solid performers and building the business."

Enhanced Recovery Corporation - Financial Services - Jacksonville, FL
"The Owners, VPs, Directors, Department Heads, and Operations Management Team are all committed to the continued success of all ERC employees.  From Peer to Peer feedback to our Open Door Policy, employees of ERC always have clear expectations and development opportunities.  All departments at ERC are committed to ensuring constant development of employees at all levels within the organization."

FMYI - Software - Portland, OR
"We have done a lot more than what's expected of a small company such as providing medical benefits from day one with only a couple of employees even though it wasn't required by Oregon law.  We also want to be more authentic and fully integrated with our sustainability commitment.  We will sustain employee culture through ongoing sustainability discussions (via Northwest Earth Institute courses), clear expectations written into job descriptions and reviews about our doer/helper culture."

NouvEON - Consulting - Charlotte, NC
"NouvEON's Talent Management and People Care Division has several platforms that allow us to set goals, dialogue throughout the year, establish clear expectations, and perform 360 reviews, as well as measure and track potential.  We map Performance AND Potential and communicate to our employees where we see strengths and gaps.  It is through open communication and candid conversation that we help individuals grow in their jobs."

NY Jets (Winner) - Professional football team - Florham Park, NJ
"When our current management development initiative started, the Jets were in the planning stages of our relocation from Long Island to NJ.  HR was able to add in a special section on managing change that prepared mangers for the huge changes employees faced with our relocation.  The training sessions consisted of 6 modules: The Role of the Manager, Setting Clear Expectations, Feedback Skills, Delegation and Motivation, Handling Performance Issues, and Managing Change. The initiative proved to be highly successful for all managers; the learnings from the trainings are still used by the managers today."

Portico Systems Inc. - Software - Blue Bell, PA
"People succeed when they care share their ideas, build their skills, collaborate with others, and move into the realm of confidence that comes with mastery.  The masters become mentors and guide others with wisdom and a desire to enable others with positive reinforcement.  This is the environment that Portico is cultivating as we grow the organization and the people who are working to succeed.  Employees are provided with clear expectations, direction and feedback from supervisors, and opportunities and monetary and non-monetary ways incentives to succeed."

Red Door Interactive (Winner) - Advertising - San Diego, CA
"Our culture has been one of open dialogue, learning and progression since the company was formed eight years ago.  The family and team oriented environment at Red Door Interactive fosters open communication, leadership, clear expectations and teamwork.  A visit to Red Door Interactive will clearly display the open environment since the office is completely devoid of doors; even the CEO. Internal committees encourage feedback and collaboration to maintain our culture and engagement."

Sierra w/o Wires - Computer systems and related services - Pittsburgh, PA
"Regular and real communication is essential to establishing any corporate culture, community and collaboration.  In our organization this type of communication ranges involving employees in the project planning and estimating, to regular team and one-on-one update meetings, and also establishing clear expectations for each employee on what needs to be done, when."

How clear are the expectations in your organization?  Do your people practices help or hinder this?

Winning Workplaces is pleased to announce a new, free benefit for our email subscribers, on top of the ones they already enjoy such as our quarterly IDEAS newsletter, workplace topic surveys, and event and network news.

Last week we started sending out an update we're calling "Your Weekly Bottom Line-Improving People Practice."  The concept is simple: Based on qualitative feedback we've collected from our Top Small Company Workplaces award applications, we choose and send you real world company practices and the subsequent results they've seen that best demonstrate the payoff of employee engagement and team building.

To show you what I mean, here's this week's practice that went out to our subscribers earlier today:

• The Leadership and Learning Center
• Founded 1994
• Salem, Massachusetts
• Consulting

Practice/Result:

"Our employees design our people practices – everything from our benefit structure (employee committees create them) and benefit evaluation (twice annual surveys).  That is why turnover, which had been 30-40% in the late 1990s, has been in low single digits for the past several years."

If you'd like to start getting practice/result updates like this each week to help improve your business, click here.  It's free and you can opt out at any time.

When the six building blocks of a Winning Workplace are in place and supported by a company's leadership, the results are magical.  I spelled out some of these results in this post, and even more are summarized from leading research studies here on our website.

These results are possible when a workplace culture is not based on fear.  Scott Eblin has a new post on his Next Level Blog for executives that describes, in almost scary detail, seven factors that can come together to create a "perfect storm" of fear that can cripple the camaraderie and productivity in your organization.

Of course, Eblin's post is an exercise in what to avoid when you work to better engage employees and execute effective team building strategies.  For the opposite perspective – tips to get and keep fear out of your workplace – see this Ask An Expert column on our website.

How have you worked to keep fear from becoming a cancer in your business?

I don't yet have it in my hands, but I already know I'm going to like the latest book from workplace generational expert Neil Howe, Millennials in the Workplace.

According to StreetInsider.com, Howe "turns [the] downbeat message [from the media on Millennials, aka Generation Y] on its head."  Taking the position that Millennials are an asset and opportunity rather than a lazy (insert other adjectives here) liability, the website writes, Howe's new book serves in part as a resource for employee engagement and team building strategies to find and keep them.

Providing a sample of the employee retention tips Howe shares in Millennials, StreetInsider.com links to this pdf from Howe's company, LifeCourse.  At its core is the following list of recruiting and retention strategies tailored to this young generation that, some reports say, became the most pervasive one of all this year: 

1. Treat them like VIPs
2. Co-recuit the parents
3. Find them early
4. Look after them
5. Offer structure and teach them the basics
6. Provide tight cycles of feedback
7. Don't offer a "McJob"
8. Make them part of the group
9. Be active in the community
10. Take an interest in their success

I really like that the pdf includes a section on "What To Do" under each of the above strategies to take them from the world of the ambiguous to the practical.

Given the Millennial workforce's size and its stature as the dominant generation in the work world for years to come, it's no surprise that our Top Small Company Workplaces are already using many of the above strategies to help them tackle pressing issues from process and supply chain improvement to sales lead cultivation and delivery.

Related: Read my 4 reasons why Millennials may be the ones to pull us out of our troubled economy.

Last July, when Amazon.com was on the verge of acquiring Zappos.com, I questioned if the move would lead to the demise of the unique – and uniquely powerful in terms of buzz and sales – productive workplace culture Tony Hsieh built within his retail business.

A year later, I'm happy to note that just the opposite seems to be true.  Hsieh has remained in place as CEO and, more importantly from an employee engagement perspective, he's become even more visible as a "chief culture officer": I was one of many bloggers and reporters to pick up on his New York Times Q&A in January in which he shared the benefits of attracting and retaining offbeat workers.  Last month, Hsieh went even further in sharing his workplace culture beliefs, practices, and successes with the release of his book Delivering Happiness.

Through it all, Zappos continues to wow customers with its incredible service, helping to maintain sales in a tough economy.  What's more, the company serves as a beacon of hope to job seekers and a vital source of tax revenues in hard hit Las Vegas.

Honest Tea, a finalist for our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award, appears to be following in Zappos' footsteps.

After seeing this post last week on the Triple Pundit blog, which spells out the dilemma for the 12-year-old, Maryland-based organic tea bottler – staying true to its "no high-fructose corn syrup" label, and thus its customer base, with a Coca-Cola minority stake that's set to become more significant next year – I decided to dig into Honest Tea's application for our award for clues to their next moves.

Here's how they answered our question on their key long-term strategic goals for the organization and the workplace (my emphasis is in bold):

A critical strategic goal is to maintain our mission-driven, entrepreneurial culture as we grow alongside the world's largest beverage company, and to mentor other mission-driven companies.  We will continue our tradition of including all employees on crew drives, a vital way of instilling the Honest Tea culture.  Rapid expansion in 2010 will demand participation from everyone in the company.  Crew drives enable employees from every department to experience selling and marketing our beverages and directly invests them in our business fundamentals.  Another key goal is to maintain and build our position as a leading, innovative organic beverage company.  In 2010 we introduce Honest Kombucha, a unique, sparkling tea beverage based on live, organic cultures.  Even as we grow nationally, we are determined to sustain our role as a leader in the local community.  Honest Tea is a founding sponsor of a local environmental non-profit, Bethesda Green, supporting a healthy economy and sustainable living.  The company's visibility in the community is a source of pride for our employees and a key part of our identity.  Finally, the company's commitment to transparency, the accessibility of our President and TeaEO and the rest of the management team, are important ways in which Honest Tea will continue to be steeped in its entrepreneurial, mission-driven culture.

Like Zappos, Honest Tea is placing a premium on maintaining its human capital strategies and core values that have contributed to its massive success while it negotiates with a much larger company that has a sizable interest in it.

Related: For more on how Honest Tea's employee development strategies led it to become an industry leader, read our award profile on the firm.

In a recent post on The Wall Street Journal's The Juggle blog, Jennifer Merritt asked if Summer Fridays still exist.  The "still" part of her question is informed by the realities of the economy forcing companies to cut benefits such as a part or full workday off, and companies that are tight on staff (again because of the economy) needing all the time they can get to best serve the customer or client.

In response to Merritt's question, Summer Fridays do, in fact, still exist.  Among the nearly 500 applicants for our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award, 8 specifically referred to reduced hours or a full day off on Fridays during the summer in their applications:

1. The Leadership and Learning Center - consulting firm in Salem, MA
2. Sonoma Partners - software firm in Chicago, IL
3. McGraw Wentworth* - insurance benefits provider in Troy, MI
4. Family Heritage Life Insurance Company - financial services firm in Cleveland, OH
5. NogginLabs Inc - software firm in Chicago, IL
6. Maxons Restorations, Inc. - property damage restoration services provider in New York, NY
7. Rauxa Direct - advertising firm in Costa Mesa, CA
8. Affect Strategies - PR/marketing firm in New York, NY

*This company is a 2010 award finalist

In addition, a review of our 2010 applicants shows that many of them offer the following activities for employee engagement and team building on Fridays (in all seasons):

1. Happy hour
2. Healthy breakfast items – most commonly fruits and bagels
3. Staff lunch
4. Casual dress
5. Yoga
6. Massages
7. Fun run
8. "Praise Box" – measure to reward hard work with awards and prizes
9. Staff outings during sport seasons – most commonly football
10. Friday night movies

Think these Friday-themed people practices are just a waste of money?  Consider that another 2010 applicant, B2B sales training services firm Vorsight in Arlington, VA, told us that, "When we put in place our Friday company lunch and one on one coaching, top line revenue jumped 20%."

What other Friday practices do you do, or have you heard about?

Today I shared with our Twitter followers a how-to series of posts the Young Entrepreneur blog is running on starting a business.  One of these posts I found interesting is Adam Toren's piece on choosing a business legal/tax structure.  He helps budding entrepreneurs greatly by rating the pros and cons of structures including Sole Proprietorship, Joint Venture, Limited Partnership, Limited Liability Company, and C and S Corporations.

Reading Toren's post inspired me to take a look at the data Winning Workplaces has on the small business applicants for our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award, in terms of revenue and profitability for the legal/tax structures we looked at under our criteria of evaluating privately held and not-for-profit organizations.  The legal/tax structures of the firms we assessed included:

• C Corporation (roughly 3/10 firms)
• S Corporation (roughly 5/10 firms)
• Partnership/Proprietorship (roughly 2/10 firms)

Here's how they break down by structure for both average 2009 revenue and percentage that were profitable in 2009:

*Assumes the firm has been in business at least 3 years

The key takeaway is that while C Corps edged out the other two structures in revenue, a greater share of Partnership/Proprietorships are profitable.

You may be asking, What makes this survey sample a good one to use these metrics for benchmarking purposes?  Well, beyond the size of the sample (497 organizations) and the fact that they have all crossed the Dun & Bradstreet threshold of surviving after the first three years, most of these enterprises understand the payoff of employee engagement and team building strategies on the bottom line.  So they post better revenue and profitability numbers to shoot for than a survey sample in which employees are more likely to be actively disengaged.

What's your take on the above?  How do you see strong people practices factoring into the equation?

Did you know that in late October, Denver will be a mecca for workplace team building and employee engagement practices that improve both business results and job satisfaction? 

It's true – that's when Winning Workplaces will join with our Top Small Company Workplaces award media partner, Inc. Magazine, to host Creating Competitive Cultures (C3): New Leadership Strategies for Building Great Companies.  The event will be held Oct. 27-29 at the Denver Marriott City Center.

If you're looking for reasons to save the date, you need look no further than at the current speaker roster.  It includes some impressive entrepreneurs, including several from companies we have honored with our workplace award over the past 8 years:

1. Jill Blashack Strahan, CEO of Tastefully Simple
2. Mike Faith, founder of Headsets.com
3. Kenneth Feld, CEO of Feld Entertainment (Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey)
4. Donna Fenn, Inc. contributing editor and author of Upstarts
5. Leigh Buchanan, Inc. editor-at-large
6. Bo Burlingham, Inc. editor-at-large
7. Norm Brodsky, Inc. columnist and founder of CitiStorage
8. Ted Freeman, principal at Praxis Consulting Group
9. Jeffrey A. Hollender, Chief Inspired Protagonist, co-founder, and Executive Chairperson of Seventh Generation
10. Bart Houlahan, founder of B Lab
11. Selina Lo, founder of Ruckus Wireless
12. Paul Silvis, founder of Restek
13. Larry O'Toole, founder of Gentle Giant
14. Bob Rosner, author of The Boss's Survival Guide
15. Paul Spiegelman, founder of Beryl
16. Gail Sussman Miller
17. Tom Walter, CEO of Tasty Catering
18. Steve Voigt, President and CEO of King Arthur Flour

To learn more about this event or to register, visit the C3 website.  Through August 31, you can save $300 by registering at the early bird rate.

If you have 90 minutes to spare, I have something that's a great use of your time when it comes to expanding your understanding of the payoff of employee engagement and workplace team building activities.

Below is a video of our President's presentation last month at an Entrepreneurial Roundtable hosted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

If you can't see the video in your RSS reader, click here.

The presentation kicks off with our own Gaye van den Hombergh explaining why companies should care about creating great workplaces (starting at 7:30) and the qualities we see as critical to Winning Workplaces, along with some of the people practices used by winners of our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award, which were featured in the June issue of Inc. Magazine (starting at 29:00).

Starting at 44:00, Gaye led a panel featuring leaders of this year's two Chicago area winners: Marvin Klein, Founder, PortionPac Chemical Corporation; and Tom Walter, President & CEO and Tasty Catering.  As you absorb the lessons learned and insights of these two leaders, consider their workplace culture practices, which I've listed below respectively, that have led them to success – even in this tough economy:

PortionPac

Selected workplace best practices:

• Offers personal and financial support for employees on a case by case basis
• "Front to Back Day"
• Offers experience to improve personal confidence and communication skills
• Employees have a high degree of autonomy

Business results:

• 2009 revenue up 7% from 2008
• Over the same period their competitors suffered double digit losses

Tasty Catering

Selected workplace best practices:

• Personal financial crisis fund fed into by employees
• Healthy free meals provided to staff on a daily basis
• If an employee comes up with idea and is willing to put in the effort, the company will help finance and support the endeavor

Business results:

• While sales fell in 2009 vs. 2008, it experienced only half the decrease of its industry and remains profitable
• High average employee tenure of 7.5 years

What are your takeaways from watching this video?

The following is a guest post on workplace team building and employee engagement by Steve Ritter.  Ritter, the Founder and CEO of Team Clock Institute, is the former Director of HR at Leaders Bank, which was named the #1 Best Place to Work in Illinois in 2006, and was a finalist for Winning Workplaces' Top Small Workplaces award in 2008.

Growing up, most of us are taught how to succeed as individuals.  Unfortunately, individual talent and dedication alone are not nearly enough to ensure a team’s success.  Teams are messy.  Conflict is unavoidable. Team dynamics are fluid.  Despite these challenges, working in teams is fundamental to most endeavors.

Twenty-five years ago, I began the quest of understanding the complexities of teams following a happenstance opportunity with the Chicago White Sox.  At the time, a seemingly strong team was underperforming for reasons beyond the grasp of their leadership.  Unexpectedly, a complex situation ended up having a simple solution.  Since then, identifying the recipe for healthy and effective teams has been my passion giving rise to the founding of the Team Clock Institute, a research and training consultancy specializing in breakthrough teams.  Recently, the Team Clock Institute responded to a unique challenge.

The Issue: Early in 2010, I received a call from a FORTUNE 500 company facing the integration of disparate cultures following the acquisition of a prominent player in the industry.  All of the expectable merger/acquisition politics were underway and the leadership team was seeking a simple model to anchor the transition.  What began as a casual conversation on a commuter train grew into an opportunity to assess the integration effort and provide recommendations to enhance successful business outcomes.

The Response: Accordingly, the Team Clock model was introduced to key players on the leadership team. The Team Clock model mirrors the face of a clock where each hour represents a stage along the path of team development.  In a nutshell, strong teams begin with an investment in common norms and direction.  Based on this foundation, team members test trust as they become more cohesive.  This platform supports their efforts to be innovative and take risks.  This activity inevitably leads to change and a repositioning of people and functions.  Healthy teams find a way to refocus following such growth and cycle begins again. 

The Impact: Over the next six months, the Team Clock Institute assessed a series of key business units to determine opportunities for greater effectiveness.  Results were analyzed revealing the strengths, vulnerabilities, areas of congruence and discord on the team.  Debriefing sessions were facilitated to discuss results and targeted actions were identified that would bring measurable change in team engagement and productivity.

Typical examples of diagnostic vulnerabilities included:

• Mired in loss: too depleted to re-invest.
• Inability to manage conflict/differences respectfully.
• Indulgence in the comfort zone: afraid to take risks and explore new ideas.
• Adherence to the status quo: unwilling to accept the consequences of change.

From a strengths perspective, the Team Clock Institute identified key anchors to healthy team interactions based on the diagnostic results for each team.  Goals were established in each of the core areas of vulnerability and business metrics were assigned to determine ROI.  The goal areas included:

• Investment infrastructure

- Consensus philosophy/mission/values/vision

• Trust and interactional dynamics

- Effective management of conflict

• Innovation and team effectiveness

- Measureable productivity/efficiency shifts

• Distancing to leverage change for growth

- Functional repositioning and identification of new opportunities/methodologies

The business case for effective teaming is simple.  Healthy teams are more productive and adaptable.  Anticipating the 4th quarter of the calendar year, the organization is poised to re-assess their team effectiveness metrics mapped to their productivity results.  Pending the quantitative impact, the qualitative result is clear: the emotional journey of a healthy team provides opportunities for positive workplace culture that struggling teams rarely experience.  Where is your team on the Team Clock?

Learn more about all of the resources at the Team Clock Institute at www.team-clock.com.

I wanted to share with you two upcoming events for which Winning Workplaces is a promotional partner.  You will surely gain valuable insights at both of them to help you implement employee engagement and team building activities for a more productive workplace – especially at the latter event, whose programming is all about that.

SJF Summit on the New Green Economy: Early Bird registration ends this week

What: SJF Summit on the New Green Economy
When: September 14-15, 2010
Where: Durham Marriott Convention Center, Durham, NC
Event Website: www.sjfsummit.org

Register now for SJF's second annual Summit on the New Green Economy: Accelerating Growth and Impact.  The SJF Summit will be a dynamic gathering of entrepreneurs, investors, government and community leaders  sharing inspiring successes & practical tools and exploring strategic partnerships to build the green economy with opportunities for all.  The event will feature keynotes from Bruce Usher, former CEO of carbon trading firm EcoSecurities, and David Orr, distinguished professor at Oberlin College describing the innovative Oberlin green economy initiative, as well as many more.  There will also be a Cleantech CEO panel and concurrent sessions on the latest in cleantech investing, emerging capital market innovations, green jobs and green economic development strategies, and carbon markets.

Creating Competitive Cultures: Register by August 31 and save $300

What: Creating Competitive Cultures: New Leadership Strategies for Building Great Companies
When: October 27-29, 2010
Where: Denver Marriott City Center, Denver, CO
Event Website: www.competitivecultures.com

Inc., the magazine for growing companies, has partnered with Winning Workplaces to discover and recognize private companies with exemplary workplaces that motivate, engage, and reward employees. Honorees will appear in the June 2010 issue of Inc., and the achievement of these companies will be commemorated at the 2010 Inc. and Winning Workplaces Conference on Creating Competitive Cultures (C3).  At C3, you'll learn about innovative approaches from award-winning companies and extraordinary entrepreneurs, the inspirational tools and processes they deploy to build teams and workplace environments that have a lasting impact on financial results and personal satisfaction.  Creating Competitive Cultures presents the newest leadership strategies for developing the best possible company culture, one that results in a loyal, motivated, inspired, and focused team.

What workplace improvement events, in person or virtual, have you already attended this year?

In a new post on the Small Business CEO blog, What Works for Business blogger Daniel Kehrer shares 13 mistakes that can jinx your business.  The #8 mistake on Kehrer's list is taking good employees for granted.  He explains that,

High turnover and the departure of valued employees can accelerate troubles.  Rewards and recognition - even small gestures - go a long way to keeping your best people around.  Treat new hires with care.  Provide a mentor, if possible.

These are wise words that have been borne out in the case of the small businesses Winning Workplaces has honored over the last 8 years for their ability to realize a substantial payoff of employee engagement and team building activities.  Based on what we've learned from these high-performing organizations, I wrote the following two posts that should help you when it comes to, respectively, recognizing employees effectively, and cost-effectively; and implementing mentoring initiatives that help both the employee and the company:

Employee Recognition on the Cheap

Two Approaches to Mentoring Employees

If you find the information in these links helpful, I invite you to retweet this post on Twitter using the link at the top of this post, or to share it using the button below.  Thanks!

The business justification for employee engagement focused on their continued, on-the-job learning is easy to understand.  It's a win for employees who increase their skills and become more marketable in their careers; and the company wins because their talent has a greater ability to perform at top levels and to innovate, and it's less of a risk and more of an opportunity to promote from within (saving money on recruiting from outside).

Yet, there are myriad options when it comes to educational employee development strategies.  Where should a small business start?  Maybe a more important question is: Considering each investment in this economy needs to generate several times its amount back in returns, what learning initiatives are most effective for small firms?

Luckily, Winning Workplaces has some real-world answers to these questions to share with you to help you decide how to invest when it comes to this important area of human capital strategies.  Our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award application asked applicant companies to give an example of a learning initiative they found to be particularly effective.  Here's how our 20 winners this year responded:

1. A Yard & A Half Landscaping: We spend the equivalent of 1-2 weeks per year offering paid training days for field employees.  Because of the democratic educational setting, by the end of the day, people were helping each other across work crews, and on two occasions, younger employees stepped in to coach crew leaders on machinery that was still unfamiliar to them.
2. All4: For our staff that are in the beginning of their careers and are developing their core consulting and technical skills, we have developed a skills matrix which allows them to know exactly what metrics must be met in order to be promoted to the next position. 
3. Alternative Solutions HomeCare: One interesting program ASH put into place in 2009 was the Dream Manager Program.  Tackling head-on the growing problem of employee disengagement, the program explores the dynamic collaboration that is unleashed when people work together to achieve company objectives and personal dreams.  We had so much positive reaction to this program that we will be continuing it in 2010.
4. Biomark: A couple of years ago we did a several-day team building training.  The effect is that when we employ an idea or theory from this training in our everyday work environment, everyone knows what we are trying to accomplish and is engaged in the process.  This has paid dividends in workplace happiness, turnover, and job performance.
5. Chroma Technology Corp: A few years ago Chroma underwent a full company Lean Manufacturing initiative.  Every employee attended a 2-day workshop and seminar about the fundamentals of Lean Manufacturing.  In addition, 25% of the company was directly involved in two different Lean Mapping and Value Stream courses and projects.  This resulted in $1 million material savings in the first year.
6. Daphne Utilities: We include a large number of our employees in public events involving interaction with our customers.  Here, they work side by side with upper management in events like street festivals and charity fundraisers.  This helps them hear the message being put out from the highest levels, allows top management to get to know each employee a little better, and helps to motivate our workers to take public pride in their work and their company.
7. Dealer.com: We launched uFuel in 2009, a customized online learning management system that was implemented over a 14-month period.  uFuel contains interactive simulations, measures success and knowledge gaps, and creates training programs for areas of improvement.  This learning initiative has been extremely effective at keeping all employees at the leading edge of online marketing best practices and ensuring consistent service for clients.
8. Dixon Schwabl: Our employee development includes an initiative launched by our CEO in 1998 to enhance overall employee communications and allow employees to appreciate each other's differences.  Based on Myers Briggs indicators, it helps frame leadership development, coaching, internal training opportunities, and cross-training.
9. Ginger Bay Salon & Spa: Beginning in 2008 and throughout 2009, we spent significant time with our leadership team opening our books and helping employees understand our financial statements and review our financial performance.  We believe that Open Book Management is likely the main reason that we were able to post results that were not only stronger than our competition, but reflect growth in all areas of our business.
10. MAYA Design: Teaching – many of our employees teach at local universities and we find that allowing this as a paid benefit helps employees learn more about their jobs, how to manage and work with others, and better communication skills.
11. NY Jets: In 2008, the Jets embarked on a first of its kind management development initiative entitled "Take It or Lead It".  Both Business and Football managers partcipated in the sessions.  When this program started, the Jets were in the planning stages of our relocation from Long Island to New Jersey.  HR was able to add in a special section on managing change that prepared mangers for the huge changes employees faced with our relocation.
12. Optimax Systems: The implementation of Job Instruction Training which ensures direction provided from internal trainers is consistent and measurable for effectiveness.  This has allowed us to make sure that people "get it" when instructed on a specific task.
13. Patagonia: Our Employee Development Program temporarily assigns employees to other positions in circumstances where an employee may be out on an extended leave (e.g., maternity leave, an environmental internship, etc.).  Employees participating in this program attain new job skills, have the opportunity to meet more people in the Patagonia community at a new location, and significantly ease the transition back to work for the employee they've replaced.
14. PortionPac Chemical Corp: For 22 years we have held a "Front to Back Day".  Management, office and sales staff spend the day working in the factory.  The "Front" staff gains an appreciation for the skills, talent and physical work that go into making PortionPac, while the factory staff are able to showcase their accomplishments and the attention to detail that goes into making each Pac perfect.  The event fosters communication and suggestions that go back and forth as to how our products can be made better and how the "Front" staff can make life easier for the "Back".
15. Red Door Interactive: We believe that promoting opportunity to change your role at Red Door has prevented talented employees from leaving the company to pursue interests and additional responsibility elsewhere.  Emergent practice areas such as social media and search marketing now comprise over 30% of our total service revenue, and those practice areas are led by people who identified new opportunities and invested in becoming experts by playing to their strengths.
16. Return Path: Most recently our CEO developed and delivered an "Effective Presentations" course.  Content is broken down into small, easily absorbed chunks and reinforced to create a solid foundation that is common for all new hires.  This builds not only a shared vocabulary in our unique business, it builds a shared context.
17. Tarlton Corporation: Our most innovative training program is called Increasing Human Effectives (IHE).  The philosophy behind this training is to help our employees grow personally through this process, which will allow growth professionally.  If they believe in themselves, anything is possible!  Happy employees are productive employees.
18. Tasty Catering: We have 11 advisors/consultants that work with our teams.  Advisors are in the following areas: Banker, Financial, CPA, HR, PR, Marketing, Legal (one for the company and one for the shareholders), IT, Culinary, Dietician and Sales.  The staff benefits by receiving advice from a recognized expert in the field who has larger and smaller clients.
19. The Sky Factory: To further our understanding and experience of the creative process as it applies to our daily work and to the building of the company, we prepared an all-company course with an art historian.  After viewing hundreds of art images and engaging in extensive dialogue it became evident that the process of building a company can (and should) be the same as that of creating a beautiful and lasting work of art.  This notion became practical when a designer aptly observed the skill of a production worker's multiple LED solders.  The fine quality of his work was especially significant because of a recent multi-million dollar fire caused by sloppy work from a competitor's LED system.
20. Van Meter Industrial: One effective learning initiative in our organization is our Foundations training program.  New employees attend this day-and-a-half course near their 90-day milestone anniversary with our company.  Feedback from employees has shown this is fun, interactive, and important training that provides a true insight to our culture, gives the basis for understanding what is important to our company, and sets the tone for who we are and what we represent.

Related: Dive even further into learning activities that will benefit your workplace culture, and your bottom line, by reading our Success Story on ShoreBank.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons