Team Building Strategies

Just as employees crave recognition, organizations covet it, too.  In fact, that was the theme of my post yesterday on PrintingForLess.com.

I just heard that Winning Workplaces was named to the FastUpFront Small Business Blog's list of the Top Free Government Business Resources.  This designation joins others on our "mantle" including being named a Top HR Influencer for 2007 by HR World, and this blog being named a Top 100 Leadership Blog last year by BestUniversities.com.

We thank the FastUpFront Blog and the other two entities mentioned above for introducing more folks to us and our mission to equip small business leaders with proven, practical – and yes, FREE – team building and employee engagement strategies to improve their workplace culture and productivity.

In celebration of this recognition of our efforts, I offer these selected blog posts that will help you reward and recognize your employees, with minimal effort and cost:

• (Employee) Love Don't Cost a Thing*
• Employee Recognition on the Cheap
• How Important is Employee Recognition? Leading Book on It Gets Second Edition Makeover
• All Employee Recognition Roads Lead to Greater Company Productivity
• 10 Team Building Strategies of the 2009 Top Small Workplaces Finalists
• Nine Resources for Becoming an Employer of Choice

LEED certification by the U.S. Green Building Council can be a tough caveat for small businesses.  However, I think the benefits of acheiving this designation for your facility far outweigh the costs involved.

Here are just a few of the benefits:

• Cost savings – most typically in reduced water and electricity consumption.
• Local and national recognition, exposing your business to more potential customers.
• Increased ability to attract top talent who value eco-friendly (and generally employee-friendly) workplaces.
• Greater perception of "walking the talk" when it comes to the carbon footprint of your organization and its products/services.
• Maybe most importantly in this business climate where some CEOs are making headlines by using profits to fund lavish lifestyles that are out of touch with what most Americans are experiencing right now – writing a new narrative for the media in which the CEO is a hero for dumping profits back into the business in a way that benefits not only the company, but its employees and the greater community.

Winning Workplaces Best Boss Nicolas Thomley is enjoying all of these benefits based on the LEED Gold certification his company, Pinnacle Services, announced last week.  You can read their press release on it here.

Related: Read how employee engagement and team building strategies factored into the workplace "greening" of three other organizations in our network.

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.

Last month I wrote that two small banks that we've recognized for their exemplary employee engagement and team building strategies are on the popular "Move Your Money" list.

This month we're endeavoring to dig deeper into this movement, which appears to be gaining traction among consumers.  We want to assess their understanding of it, as well as adoption for personal and/or business purposes.

Please take our short Move Your Money survey today

Your feedback will inform an article I'm writing on this topic for our next IDEAS newsletter, which will go out in early April.  (If you're not yet on our mailing list, you can sign up free for IDEAS here.)

Thanks in advance for your valued input!

I've followed the In Good Company Workplaces blog for some time and agree with most of what Adelaide Lancaster and Amy Abrams write about there.  Subject matter-wise, they overlap with our main focus of small business, and also delve into issues affecting women entrepreneurs.

However, I disagree somewhat with their latest post from today, which argues that the ingredients of success are unique to each business.  While it's true that such factors as a coveted, not-easily-duplicated widget; interesting coming-to-market story; and charasmatic founder/owner/CEO can build buzz and result in strong sales from highly engaged customers, other factors that contribute heavily to long-term business success can, in fact, be replicated by other organizations.

I was going to build a case for this based on my writing here, which itself is based mainly on the employee engagement research Winning Workplaces does each year through our Top Small Company Workplaces recognition project.  But I found this post from last week by serial entrepreneur Geri Stengel on the Ventureneer site that does this for me.  Citing the key team engagement activities of four of our 2009 Top Small Workplaces, Stengel identifies these employee engagement-themed common success ingredients:

• Soliciting ideas from employees
• Team or family mentality – either way, everyone is included and cared for
• All employees have a financial stake in the company's success
• Shared pain in bad times; shared recovery in better ones
• Employee involvement in management decisions
• Recognition of work/life balance
• Employee training initiatives
• Promotion from within
• Cross-department relationship building; also conscious management of multiple generations
• Flat hierarchies
• Above (industry) average benefits

These common ingredients come together to form a plethora of (also common) business results:

• Lower turnover
• More ideas to help fuel sales and company growth
• Better customer service from a more loyal, dedicated, and creative staff
• "A flexible, trained staff that can respond to crises efficiently" (Are you listening, Toyota?)

Related: Read more about team building strategies of the four Top Small Workplaces that Stengel cites here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Due to overwhelming response by interested small and midsized organizations, Winning Workplaces is pleased to announce that we have extended our original application deadline of today for 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces to Monday, January 25.

Applicants now have three additional days to tell us about the payoff of employee engagement and team building strategies in their bid to win the prize: being featured as a winner of this award in Inc. Magazine this June.

As I've mentioned here before, the process of applying has proven valuable for our current applicants.  Here's some of the most recent feedback we've received from them on how applying has shaped their approach to improving their workforce effectiveness in 2010:

The questions are ones we are continually challenging ourselves with and were on target.

The essay questions really made us give specific details, which we felt was different from a lot of the applications we have completed in the past for similar competitions.

This application really helped us to evaluate our company.  We had several meetings to discuss the questions and learned a lot about what we should be doing.  We set goals and strategies to reach them.

1. Go here to create your application login, complete the criteria pre-screen, pay (yes, there's a fee and here's why), and reach the application Table of Contents page.
2. Click here to download a sample application you can use to gather the required information offline.
3. Go back here to copy and paste your offline data into our online application.

I am looking at the countdown clock on our application website for 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces and currently small firms have 5 days, 11 hours, and 59 minutes to submit their application for contention this year (by midnight in your North American time zone).

The prize is worth the effort, which typically has taken applicants a day or two – and only a few hours if they've gathered the required information before applying online by first reviewing our sample application on our website.

Winners of the 2010 award will be featured in the June issue of Inc. Magazine, providing them with priceless exposure and allowing them to show pride for the innovative employee engagement and team building strategies that have helped them maintain high productivity and profitability in a tough economy.

As I've discussed in these three posts, there is also considerable value for ALL applicants through the process of applying – especially now as companies take a fresh look at the effectiveness of their people practices to make 2010 a year of strong growth.

Don't miss out on this small business award opportunity.  Apply today!

What have your fellow readers found most helpful when it comes to the workplace culture strategies covered here?  On the last day of 2009, I can share with you the following posts, in descending order of popularity.  Enjoy, and see you in 2010....

1. 20 Proven Workplace Team Building Strategies
2. Friday Nugget: Transparency is a Business Model
3. Three Benefits of Virtual Team Building
4. Google Employees Can't Get No Satisfaction?
5. Inclusiveness, Multiculturalism, Employee Engagement the Norm at Phenomenex
6. 12 Ways to Save on Your Holiday Party This Year
7. 30 Reasons Jack Welch is Wrong on Work-Life Balance
8. 10 Ways to Motivate Employees
9. Top 10 Influential Small Business Thought Leaders
10. 10 Small Business People to Follow on Twitter
11. Six Ways to Measure the ROI of Employee Engagement
12. 30 Employee Development Strategies to Boost Productivity
13. Fair Treatment of Employees Counteracts Fear of Pro-Labor Bill
14. Two Inspiring Stories of Team Building
15. Toyota Leads Again, This Time in Team Building During Down Times
16. 10 Best Practices: Offering Vacation Days
17. 10 Company-Building Lessons Learned by a Successful Entrepreneur (Plus 2 Bonus Lessons)
18. Rackspace's Graham Weston: 'No Voicemail Jail for You!'
19. The Crisis of Employee Engagement Among Top Performers
20. 10 Team Building Strategies of the 2009 Top Small Workplaces Finalists

I have written recently on employee engagement research which has found that, based on leadership's treatment of workers during the downturn, the majority of them plan to leave their current employer once the economy improves.  The studies in question underscore fairly rampant employee discontent.

But this research takes into account all working adults in the U.S.  As Management-Issues shares today based on the findings of faculty at both Stanford University and the University of Toronto, hourly employees may be generally happier at work than their salaried peers.

However, the research, which appears in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, also indicates that as hourly pay goes down, so does the level of happiness.  At some point, then, as shifts and especially wages are reduced, your hourly workers are going to feel worse than your salaried employees.  Since turnover of hourly workers is often greater than it is for salaried staff, it makes sense to use effective team building strategies to cut your related recruiting and retraining costs.  Winning Workplaces' 2009 Top Small Workplace Mike's Carwash in Indiana is a model employer in this regard.

Related: You can help us take a read on the percentage of lower-income workers in North America and how happy they are by applying to be named a 2010 Top Small Company Workplace in Inc. Magazine next summer.

Photo credit: Mike's Carwash

The trade journal ChemInfo did a nice profile this week of NewAge Industries, a Pennsylvania-based tubing manufacturer that was a finalist for Winning Workplaces' Top Small Workplaces award this year.

Getting at the substance of what makes NewAge so effective when it comes to their team building strategies that lead to a payoff of employee engagement – their average, non-management employee tenure is an astounding 8 years! – editor Anna Wells discusses the company's basic guiding principles, or core values, in a sidebar.  Far from being a "stale mission statement," she writes, these values are specific and highly actionable.

After I read the ChemInfo article I realized that I had never done a post just on the equally powerful core values that our other small business honorees use for everything from getting the right people "on the bus" to solving customer issues to employee leadership development.  So what follows is a list of core values for a company that's won our small business award each of the last seven years we've sponsored it.

Stellar Solutions - 2003 Winner

• Empowerment
• Flexibility

Aloft Group - 2004 Winner

• Creativity
• Openness
• Daring
• Confidence

Pro Motion - 2005 Winner

• Employees first always
• Work as a team, win as a team
• Make it happen
• Reputation before revenue
• Commitment to safety

Merkle Inc. - 2006 Winner

• Desire to serve
• Desire to learn
• Desire to achieve

Gentle Giant Moving Company - 2007 Winner
Display a "Giant HEART":

• Honesty
• Enthusiasm
• Above and Beyond actions
• Respect for people and ideas
• Teamwork

Decagon Devices - 2008 Winner

• Think like scientists
• Work like farmers
• Dream like children

Barfield Murphy Shank & Smith P.C. - 2009 Winner

• Family
• Work/life balance
• Character
• Treating everyone professionally

If you don't have a set of core values for your organization, use this list as a starting place to create one.  If you do, are there any values here that align better with where you are today than when you created your list?

Image credit: The Financial Brand

SmartBrief on Leadership – a daily aggregator of news relating to building a successful workplace culture that I highly recommend you subscribe to – pointed me to a valuable article in The New York Times from this weekend.  In it, Accenture chairman and CEO William Green says you can cast aside most of the "endless management tricks and techniques to be a good leader" and just focus on three traits that start with the letter "C":

• Competency (hopefully a given if you worked your way up to assume leadership, or received your board's blessing coming from outside)
• Confidence
• Caring

The second and third "C" traits are a little trickier.  We're told over and over by both applicants and winners of our Top Small Company Workplaces competition that being a president/CEO is a lonely calling.  Somehow, though, whether through networking support or by increasing your leadership knowledge base (or both), you need to find a place of strength from which to provide direction to your troops.

Yet, helping you with all of the above-mentioned "C" traits, including Caring, is one more that I think trumps the three that Green advocates: Communication.  Put simply, being a great leader means being a great communicator.  You cannot separate the two.

You can read about how innovative communication helps get and keep employees engaged in this post, which outlines communications team building strategies at four firms that have won our small workplace award.

Image credit: Bird's Eye View

There's a weird duality going on right now in the workforce.  Unemployment recently topped 10% nationally – the highest it's been in over 25 years.  This is distressing, to be sure, but what really has my attention is studies like the one referenced here which tell us that despite the bleak job outlook, lots of employees are unhappy with their current jobs and are looking to leave as soon as they can.

Surveying over 900 North American workers, Right Management found that 60% intend to leave their jobs – although the asterisk here is, if that the economy continues to improve.  In an editorial a few months ago, Winning Workplaces pointed to a study in Newsweek which found that half of American employees say they'll look for a job once the recession ends.

Of course, we're not out of the woods yet when it comes to our fragile economy.  Much more recently – last month – Newsweek reported that a new, "echo" market bubble may be brewing.  If what the magazine describes plays out, and this bubble bursts like the last one, no doubt many workers will be changing their minds in these turnover-focused polls and push back or put off entirely their plans to change jobs.

I continue to believe that meaningful employee engagement and team building strategies can be the glue that helps hold companies together and keep them going, especially small ones when we face macro-economic problems like market bubbles bursting.  In bad times, leaders can turn to these practices to level with their staff and take a temperature read on making group sacrifices, such as across-the-board pay cuts, so layoffs can be avoided.

We have written extensively about the chief benefits for companies that "share the pain" in tough times: retention of their valuable workforce, and competitive advantage over their peers when the latter inevitably need to do more hiring in a short time when things pick up.  But there is another, less tangible but no less powerful benefit: companies whose workplace culture is all about communications team building have happier employees.

And happier employees, as Administaff and many others have concluded, are synonymous with greater productivity.  That sets up a foundation for success, in any economy.

Lending, especially to small businesses that make up more than 99% of all employer firms, is a hot topic of conversation these days.  In fact, I addressed it in my last post.

Yet, the always insightful Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends has a different take: more vital to small businesses right now than lending is customers.  The resulting sales, she says, pump sorely needed capital into the economy and fuel (also sorely needed) job growth.

Campbell's post got me thinking: If customers are what small business needs most – and I think she's absolutely right here – how can these firms use employee engagement and team building strategies to attract new customers and keep existing customers enthused enough to keep coming back?

The posts below provide real-world examples of employee activities geared toward improving the customer experience.  Check them out:

1. 'Happy Employees Translate Into Happy Customers'
2. Customer Evangelism Begins with Employees
3. All Employee Recognition Roads Lead to Greater Company Productivity
4. Employee Development ROI: 80 Percent of Revenues from Return Business or Referrals
5. The Golden Rule: Not Typical of B-School Curricula, But Necessary for Successful Small Businesses
6. Rackspace's Graham Weston: 'No Voicemail Jail for You!'
7. 10 Company-Building Lessons Learned by a Successful Entrepreneur (Plus 2 Bonus Lessons)
8. Airline Customer Service: The Difference Employee Engagement Makes
9. What the Luxury Brands Are Doing That You Should, Too
10. The Power of Saying or Showing Thanks

Do you have any tips you'd like to share with your fellow readers?  Please add them in the comments below.

At a time when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, and other large, high-profile entities are pushing for measures from Washington that are decidedly pro-big business on the jobs front, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has a different message: small is the new big when it comes to net new job creation.

Last week the foundation released the results of an analysis of U.S. Census data which found that companies less than five years old created nearly two-thirds of net new jobs in 2007.  "If the U.S. economy is going to have a sustained recovery, it will be up to entrepreneurs to lead the way," Kauffman Foundation President and CEO Carl Schramm said in a press release.

Here's the crux of the foundation's findings, from the same release:

Net job growth is marked by churn, the process by which jobs are created and destroyed by shifts in the economy.  Each year new companies emerge to create lots of jobs and are succeeded in subsequent years by a new pool of firms.  The net effect of this is to consistently add two million new jobs to the economy each year.

Think about that: the potential for 2 million new jobs, vs. what we actually see right now in employment headlines: around 200,000 jobs lost, up from a low of 700,000 jobs lost at the start of this year.

In Winning Workplaces' recent employee engagement research coverage, we've spoken to the likes of Sramana Mitra, Donna Fenn, and even the partner of a young firm that falls squarely into the demographic Kauffman addresses.  When I look back on what these folks have told us, particularly the enthusiam that seems to be at an all-time high among Millennials who want to start businesses according to Fenn, I think the foundation is on the right track.

What are your thoughts here, especially around the formation of effective team building strategies early in a young company's development to spur revenue and job growth?

Last week I included 2009 Top Small Workplace Mike's Carwash on a list of 10 small businesses that Winning Workplaces has honored over the years, that use the element of surprise to increase their customer base and deliver value to them in unexpected ways.

This week on Human Resource Executive magazine's website, Wharton School Center for Human Resources Director – and Top Small Workplaces judge – Peter Cappelli provides more insight into the management and resulting employee engagement practices of this Indiana-based retail outfit.

Framing Mike's as a success story in an industry known for "bad jobs," Cappelli provides three quantitative data points that show why this is no standard-issue "Mom and Pop operation":

• Turnover of around 10% (if you're a big company you're considered to be doing well if you're at better than 33%).
• Great, uncommon benefits including paid vacation, tuition reimbursement, and 401(k) plans (yes, even for hourly employees).
• Lots of training hours (90 for entry-level workers) and individual development plans as part of the firm's employee development strategies.

Cappelli continues with lots of numbers-based meat for small business leaders who are looking to increase their competitive advantage through rare-in-industry team building strategies.  Read more here.

Kudos to the always insightful Steve Roesler over at All Things Workplace for pointing to a trend when it comes to three-plus decades' worth of employee engagement research: More than anything else, workers seek senior management's interest in their well-being.

And while there are team building strategies impacting companies' operating expenses that allow leadership to be all about this – employer-paid medical insurance, wellness-themed activities, and flex work arrangements come to mind – as a leader you can meet this need by simply walking around and checking in on everyone.

A bonus of this time-honored use of an executive's time is that, if any of your people have illusions that you're Mr. (or Ms.) Moneybags delegating all from your ivory tower, doing this shows that you're a real person with relatable issues, both personal and professional.  In my own career I've been amazed at the electricity that often builds when the CEO takes the time to meet with one or more employees.

This is particularly important in small businesses.  In fact, there is a fair amount of debate that this networking should fall on leadership's shoulders, and not Human Resources', as the majority of small firms, with fewer than 50 employees, are often not equipped to have HR tackle their core competencies of administration and compliance, and spearhead communications team building.

This is why firms like 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, whose employees benefit from private lunches with the CEO, and Communispace, whose CEO thinks of her first duty as serving as "chief culture officer," have garnered such great press over the years in building an effective workplace culture – a culture which, in turn, has improved the bottom line through higher productivity and greater ease in attracting top talent, reducing recruiting budgets.

So, leaders, here's some homework for you: Over the next month, set a day where you dedicate an hour to simply walking around and talking to your employees.  Start casual, asking them what's going on in their personal lives.  Monitor how often this spurs "shop talk."  And at the end of the month, see if the engagement level is improved.  I'm guessing it will be.

I enjoyed Standout Jobs founder Ben Yoskovitz's Instigator Blog post sharing the wisdom that there is competitive advantage in how well a company carries off, of all things, the surprise.

Referencing a book on this topic by Andy Nulman, founder of the Just For Laughs event and co-founder of Airborne Mobile, Yoskovitz writes,

People will give you their money if you surprise them.  And I don’t think enough people realize the value, importance and power of surprise.

Too true.  And as Yoskovitz later alludes to in his post, most consumers are so fed up with the status quo of how companies treat them that it doesn't take that much of a surprise to convert them into paying customers.

As they do with respect to other leading-edge trends for small businesses, our honorees by and large have embraced the surprise as a way to get on potential customers' and clients' radar screens, earn their business, and especially keep them coming back – helping to preserve their cash positions and support people practices to retain their best employees in tough times.

Here's a list of 10 Winning Workplaces honorees that surprise and profit from it:

1. Aquascape  How: First-time purchasers of Aquascape's water garden and pond supplies are quickly (and happily) converted to evangelists through fun and informative gatherings such as their annual Pondemonium.
2. Dancing Deer Baking Company  How: People don't just want to indulge their taste buds when they consume cookies and cakes – they want to enrich their soul.  DD makes this possible through their products that support causes that matter in their home state of Massachusetts.
3. Gentle Giant Moving Company  How: Today there are other moving companies that differentiate on service, but this notion didn't exist when Larry O'Toole founded Gentle Giant in 1980.
4. Headsets.com  How: Mike Faith's business would be profitable but arguably not nearly so much if "customer love" and training managers to look for things done right – not wrong – weren't hardwired into their culture of ownership.
5. Jackson's Hardware  How: A focus on mentorship and cross training means all employees can help any customer with questions to facilitate sales.
6. Mike's Carwash  How: Front-line employees wear neckties, applying a Nordstrom-like "If it's not right, we'll make it right" approach that's rare in the industry.
7. New Belgium Brewing  How: Craft breweries are a dime a dozen these days, so how do you stand out?  New Belgium has done so by tuning their eco-conscious customers in to the company's eco-themed team building strategies.
8. Rackspace Hosting  How: Similar to the industry-redefining service of Gentle Giant, Rackspace found unparalleled success by applying "Fanatical Support" to web hosting, spawning many imitators.
9. Skyline Construction  How: It's an ESOP company that is 100% employee owned; union and non-union employees and customers have a say in the firm's strategic direction.
10. The Paducah Bank & Trust Company  How: Through everything from customer outreach via an ice cream truck to subsidizing a major community revitalization effort, Paducah is not merely a bank but a public partner.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Most, if not all, small businesses are using this quarter to evaluate what worked well this year and where they can improve to retain customers, continue to remain as profitable, and hold on to their best employees heading into 2010.

With that in mind, I thought I'd share what your peers are finding most insightful among our library of articles on investing in your workplace with the goal of building employee engagement – both on this blog and on our website.  So here's a Top 20 list split by site:

Most popular in Q4 2009: winningworkplaces.org

1. Ask An Expert: Representing a Department or Team to Management
2. Feature: Ways to Engage Employees Using Technology That Deliver ROI
3. Success Story: Integrated Project Management (IPM)
4. Ask An Expert: Employee Opinion Surveys
5. Success Story: The Redwoods Group
6. Feature: How Small Businesses Are Increasing Sales in a Recession
7. Feature: Blue Jeans Day
8. Editorial: The Power of Communication
9. Q&A: LifemeetsWork President Kyra Cavanaugh
10. Feature: Michelle Obama Delivers Address at Best Bosses Conference

Most popular in Q4 2009: blog.winningworkplaces.org

1. Top 10 Influential Small Business Thought Leaders
2. Rackspace's Graham Weston: 'No Voicemail Jail for You!'
3. 10 Company-Building Lessons Learned by a Successful Entrepreneur (Plus 2 Bonus Lessons)
4. 20 Proven Workplace Team Building Strategies
5. The Crisis of Employee Engagement Among Top Performers
6. Three Benefits of Virtual Team Building
7. 10 Ways to Motivate Employees
8. Stanford Prof Reinforces Theory: Poor Employee Engagement Will Lead to Talent Exodus
9. 12 Ways to Save on Your Holiday Party This Year
10. 10 Best Practices: Offering Vacation Days

If you find value in any of these links, I encourage you to share this post with your colleagues and contacts using the button below.

Congratulations to PRIZIM Inc., a 2007 and 2008 Top Small Workplaces Finalist, for being recognized for their exemplary employee engagement best practices by the Alfred P. Sloan Award program earlier this month.

As the press release by the Families and Work Institute, which sponsors the Sloan Awards, states, PRIZIM was deserving of this award because the 13-year-old, Maryland-based management consulting firm

is one of a small cadre of businesses that has been able to not only maintain but increase workplace flexibility in recent months.  Despite the economic recession, PRIZIM has enhanced and enriched the benefits and workplace flexibility options offered to its employees.

I have firsthand knowledge of how PRIZIM increases employee satisfaction and productivity through their flex practices – beyond, of course, the Top Small Workplaces application they've completed all three years we've run the program (they were not a Finalist in 2009).

Gabrielle McDonald, an environmental consultant for PRIZIM, attended our 2009 annual conference at the start of October.  She shared with me that she has taken on more responsibility within the company, branching out into HR.  She is willing to put in more effort because PRIZIM allows her to work out of a home office in Denver.  In fact, a number of the firm's 31 employees work from satellite offices in different parts of the country.

Related: PRIZIM shines in more than just employee engagement practices to create a flexible workplace.  In our post on 20 Proven Workplace Team Building Strategies, check out what they do that promotes health and wellness and also aligns with their mission and service offerings (see #16).