We're approaching the middle of the summer (for school-age children, anyway) and the July 4 holiday.  It's a time for taking advantage of good weather and doing fun things with friends and family, many involving physical activity, outside.

Unfortunately this atmosphere was marred this week by two items on the health and wellness of Americans, one of which addresses workers specifically:

• Fat in the USA: Obesity Is Rising (BusinessWeek)
• Study: Disturbing trend on employee health (HRMorning)

Of particular note to those in small organizations concerned with implementing effective benefit programs as part of their overall employee engagement practices, the HRMorning article, which summarizes a recent CareerBuilder study, reports that more than four out of 10 workers have gained weight in their current jobs.  No doubt the economy is playing a role here.

But there's some good news here when you put some trends together:

• The Obama Administration is pushing for more investment in health and wellness as part of companies' people practices.  This may spark more players in the provider space and push them to cultivate more employers as clients.
• The SBA says that 99% of all employer firms are small.
• Small businesses are more likely to turn to innovative health and wellness benefits in addition to or – increasingly to cut costs in a tough economy – in lieu of medical insurance coverage to continue to attract and retain top talent.
• Small organizations have less bureaucratic "red tape" and thus can shift their health and wellness programs more quickly based on what works and what doesn't.

We have seen that when you add forward-thinking leadership and an employee engagement culture of ownership to the mix, great things can happen long term.  By this, of course, I mean healthier employees who are more productive at work and miss less of it, and employers that benefit from that as well as lower health care costs.

To conclude, I'd like to share some of the innovative ways that Finalists for our 2009 Top Small Workplaces competition are implementing wellness-based initiatives at their work sites.  Check out this list of related employee engagement best practices:

• Use perks such as gift cards for healthy lifestyle changes, on-site yoga, and use of snowshoes
• Reimbursement of fitness club memberships (one firm does so for up to $500 annually per employee)
• On-site health assessments with follow-up consultations
• Fresh fruit and/or vegetables served once or more per week
• Free (to employees) annual biometric screening
• On the higher-cost side, on-site exercise facilities
• Incorporate health and wellness into personal growth programs that typically address business and personal financial literacy and family life
• Documented healthy activities, on-site and off, make employees eligible for discounts on their insurance contributions
• Form a runners club that's tied to your brand, mission, and values 

How is your organization doing its part to turn your state or national obesity statistics around?

There are many, including New West media publisher and CEO Jonathan Weber, who argue that we need to separate business (especially small business) from health care coverage of individuals.  Marc Tracy of Slate's BizBox site echoed Weber's argument in a post yesterday.

Tracy points to three big reasons Weber states as to why this needs to happen:

1. It distracts small businesses from their principal mission,
2. It gives large companies a big advantage over small companies (big companies can leverage economies of scale to reduce their per-employee costs), and
3. It introduces friction in the job market by creating an external incentive not to change jobs.

These are very compelling reasons and I agree with them...to a point.  Where I start to play devil's advocate is when I see workplace research – namely our analysis of our 2009 Top Small Workplace Finalists – which shows that including health care coverage as an employee benefit, when combined with employee engagement and trust building activities as part of overall innovative human capital strategies, can maintain or boost business metrics that matter to small business leaders.

Check out this chart which shows how the 2009 TSW Finalists compare to the 2008 Finalists when it comes to offering medical insurance, the company's share of employee premiums covered, and some of the resultant business outcomes:

I need to put a big asterisk (*) here that this alone, of course, does not lead to the outcomes shown, including better employee retention, lower turnover, and comparable revenue growth (we suspect the 2009 average is down slightly due to the economy, although the figures for both years are strong).

Still, it is where these companies spend the most money in benefits to recruit and retain the talent they need to drive business success.  Removing employer-provided health care coverage would likely lead to decreased competitiveness – especially in recruiting Millennial employees, which studies have shown have come to expect this in the benefits packages of employers they want to work for.

Thus, we come to the rock-and-a-hard-place part of this debate.  Small firms are damned if they include a health insurance component and pay some or all of the premiums for employees and/or dependents, as they can be flattened by larger competitors here as Weber notes.  And they're damned if they don't because top performers will seek to join other (possibly larger) employers that do instead.

All that said, it will be very interesting to see what comes out of Washington this year (if indeed it happens in 2009 as President Obama wants) with regard to a health care overhaul.  I hope that the needs of small organizations – those that, let's not forget, make up over 99% of all employers and provide 60-80% of new jobs annually – don't get lost in the shuffle.

Should small firms be mandated to provide medical insurance coverage, or should it be optional as it is now?  Or, should it be taken out of the purview of business altogether?

Photo credit: Quincy Herald-Whig

Thanks to my new contact at LifemeetsWork, their President Kyra Cavanaugh, for passing along this study by Corporate Voices for Working Families (CVWF).  As Kyra explained in her email to me yesterday, "Since it often seems easier to think of flexibility in terms of exempt employees, you might find it interesting to review best practices intended for shift workers and admins."

This study is indeed interesting.  It culls employee engagement ideas from an in-depth, year-long review of five organizations that have found success implementing flex work arrangements with at least a portion of their low-wage workforce – typically those earning $12 per hour or less.  The trends CVWF identified, which you might compare against your own measures to strengthen your culture of ownership, include:

• Flextime in production, operations and other settings in which coverage is essential
• Flexible "flexibility policies" and "just-in-time" time off reduces absenteeism and overtime and increases retention
• Telework for administrative assistants and customer service representatives
• Team‐based compressed workweek schedules
• Full-time benefits at 30 hours (side note: at our judges meeting yesterday the fact that several of our 2009 Top Small Workplaces Finalist organizations do this at 20 hours was a point of discussion)
• Career flexibility – flexibility over the life cycle
• Employee-designed schedules for continuous operations
• Employee-managed shift trades

Read the full study for lots more great info, including key findings in addition to the above trends as well as success factors (hint: the latter underscore our building blocks to a Winning Workplace).

Look for an interview with Kyra at LifemeetsWork in our next IDEAS newsletter.  (Subscribe to it here.)

Photo credit: daylife/Getty Images

As a fan of the Fox show So You Think You Can Dance, I liked Peter Vajda's recent post on the Management-Issues blog in which he took the judges' common comment to the contestant dancers that they need to leave the technical behind at some point and focus on their emotional connection to their partners and the audience, and applied it to business leaders in terms of their employees.

Peter justifies his comparison here as follows:

What's happening in the face of challenging times is a rush to put into place the technically efficient leader.  People like the "numbers guy," the "turnaround artist," the "visionary".  But in the process many organizations are experiencing the fallout from leaders who may be technically savvy but who are clueless when it comes to people skills, who lack the emotional maturity to truly lead.

This is an astute and highly relevant observation.  We've written on our website that a number of the business leaders we study and bring together, such as Southwest Airlines' Colleen Barrett and Communispace's Diane Hessan, think of themselves as their firm's "chief culture officer" first and foremost – ahead of other roles they play such as liaison between staff and the board and financier, among others.

If you haven't picked up a copy already, I suggest you check out Dev Patnaik's book Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When they Create Widespread Empathy.  This book is all about how to do this and what the payoff of it is – namely more satisfied customers and other stakeholders as well as employees.  The greater the employee engagement satisfaction, of course, the more productive they tend to be and the longer they tend to want to stay at your company.

Speaking of Dev Patnaik, who leads 2008 Top Small Workplace Jump Associates in California, he is slated to serve as a panelist for our session on Engaging the Workforce in Innovation at our ROI of Great Workplaces Conference in October.  Check out the conference agenda to see the other sessions slated for this event.

In your trust building activities and other elements of your overall human capital strategies, how much stock do you place in the emotional connection your leaders and managers have with employees?

Our office is buzzing as we await the arrival here later today of our judging panel that will select the 2009 Top Small Workplaces from the 35 Finalist organizations.  These firms were paired down over the last few months from the hundreds that applied earlier this year based on their exemplary team building activities for the workplace.

While you'll have to wait until September 28 to read about the 2009 Winners in The Wall Street Journal – click here to subscribe to it if you don't already – I will be updating here in the meantime with video interviews of our judges, which we will also shoot today.

Following is a list of this year's judges.  We thank them for their time, talent, and concern for the leading-edge people practices that show that investing in your workplace can lead to stunning business outcomes.

Colleen Barrett

• President Emeritus, Southwest Airlines
• Years as a TSW judge: 3
• Other TSW affiliations: Keynote speaker at our 2008 annual conference
• For more information: Read our interview with Barrett on our website

Peter Cappelli

• Director, Center for Human Resources, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
• Years as a TSW judge: 3
• For more information: Watch this interview with Cappelli we shot in 2008

Judith Cone

• Vice President of Emerging Strategies, Kauffman Foundation
• Years as a TSW judge: 3
• Other TSW affiliations: Workplace session moderator at our 2007 annual conference
• For more information: Read our interview with Cone on our website

Timothy Feddersen

• Director, Social Enterprise Program, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
• Years as a TSW judge: 1
• For more information: See Feddersen's faculty/research page on the Kellogg School website

Bart Houlahan

• Co-founder, B Lab
• Years as a TSW judge: 1
• For more information: Read Houlahan's bio on Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Corner

Nancy Kramer

• Founder and CEO, Resource Interactive
• Years as a TSW judge: 1
• Other TSW affiliations: Resource Interactive is a 2008 Top Small Workplace
• For more information: Get our 2008 TSW DVD containing an interview with Kramer

Ken Lehman

• Founder and Chairman, Winning Workplaces
• Years as a TSW judge: 3
• Other TSW affiliations: Ken participated in a panel entitled "60 Ideas in 60 Minutes" at our 2007 annual conference
• For more information: Watch this video that features Ken on our website

Kevin Trapani

• President and CEO, The Redwoods Group
• Years as a TSW judge: 1
• Other TSW affiliations: The Redwoods Group is a 2008 Top Small Workplace
• For more information: Get our 2008 TSW DVD containing an interview with Trapani

A number of our judges will be at our ROI of Great Workplaces Conference in Chicago on October 1 and 2.  Join them – register to attend today.

Here's my review I wrote a few months ago on the book The One-Life Solution: Reclaim Your Personal Life While Achieving Greater Professional Success by Henry Cloud:

If you were drawn to getting the latest phone with email and Internet built in because you don't want to be left behind when it comes to your job, this book by clinical psychologist and workplace consultant Dr. Henry Cloud is for you.

The "one-life solution" that Cloud refers to is a strategy for integrating life and work to better achieve both better job performance and greater happiness and balance at home.  Expanding on the thoughts of his previous best-seller, Boundaries, the author writes that, "Balance will be a fruit of your boundaries that will integrate your personality.  Then you will not feel torn between many lives and many different people, but you will be one person, one life…."

It might sound a tad Oprah, but Cloud does provide many practical tools for the reader, drawn from his broad experience with leaders at a wide range of companies.  Maybe his book can help you, your senior leadership team or others in your organization strike a better balance between work and home life.

Does this sound like a title you'd like to add to your collection?  Well, you can enter for a chance to win it by registering today to receive our free monthly e-newsletter, IDEAS.  Register and enter to win this book here.  In fact, you need to register today because I'll randomly select and email the winner tomorrow, July 1.

Even if you don't win the book you'll still come out ahead because you'll join the over 7,000 small business leaders, HR managers, consultants, academics, and others who receive our newsletter that features the latest and best workplace team building and employee engagement research to help small organizations increase productivity and profitability.

Register/Enter Now

Good luck!

Supporting the thesis our Chairman, Ken Lehman, laid out in his recent editorial on "sharing the pain," Susan Heathfield on About.com's HR site blogged this weekend about new research from Harris Interactive which finds that employers who act on their advantage in this recession and mistreat their employees could face a talent deficit when the economy picks up.

Here are some key findings Heathfield cites that support this conclusion:

• 54% of employed Americans say they're likely to seek new employment once the economy improves.
• This figure jumps to 71% among the younger, 18-29 set.
• Perhaps most telling, over half of the employees who are willing to accept a pay cut to keep their job would agree to a decrease in salary of 10% or more.

This last point speaks to the employee concessions our chairman addressed in his editorial I mentioned above that employers, especially small organizations, should consider as part of their strategies for improving employee retention.

The question small business owners and leaders should be asking themselves is, Is it better to see lower expenses now, or find ways to keep our people, whatever it takes, and save on recruiting and training costs later?  Judging by our recent article on the results of a survey on how our small business honorees are weathering the downturn and a separate poll of our website visitors, the folks in our network have opted overwhelmingly to take an all-in approach with the hopes of keeping their knowledge base intact when conditions improve.

Have your people practices for a productive workplace changed in this recession to focus on retention at all costs?

Photo credit: Mother in Chief

Check out this snippet of an article that appears on the Business Mirror's Philippines site:

Dr. E. Thomas Garman, who has done over 20 years of research on financial literacy, calculates that the benefit-to-cost ratio to employers of empowering their employees financially through financial education is 3:1.  ...  [T]hese studies and calculations are for US workers....

When asked what would make them financially free, employees would normally say a higher pay.  But both Dr. Garman and I believe that more money is not the answer; better personal financial management is.  ...

Employee financial education is a critical component of employee-wellness programs.  When properly executed, employee financial education will help reduce stress both at the workplace and at home.

This is the opinion of Efren Ll. Cruz, a financial planner with the Registered Financial Planners Institute USA.  When it comes to your workplace team building and employee engagement best practices, he makes the case for including a financial education component to reap the following benefits that make up the $3 gained (in some cases, saved) for every $1 spent on these programs:

• Lower employee stress related to finances - means fewer unscheduled absences, less use of sick leave, and higher productivity
• Enhanced company loyalty
• Better appreciation of and participation in company benefits
• Employee retirement readiness

Related: Our Workplace Perspectives feature on employee finances.

Do your employee activities involve a financial education component?  If yes, what is your related benefit-to-cost ratio?

Photo credit: Benefits and Pensions Monitor

Is your organization old school or new school when it comes to your employee engagement practices to help workers share information?  Get a sense of this and help me write a feature article for our July IDEAS newsletter on this topic at the same time.

Take our survey

Thanks in advance for your valuable feedback!

Next step: If you don't currently get our IDEAS newsletter, subscribe here.  It's free and will allow you to see our article on the survey results next month, which will enable you to benchmark your firm against your peers, as well as provide strategic takeaways you can use to optimize – and monetize – information sharing in your workplace.

Image credit: George Mason University

If you haven't checked out Corporateinklings, the blog of our 2007 Top Small Workplace Corporate Ink, a Massachusetts-based PR firm that specializes in the technology industry, I urge you to do so today.  There you'll find honest voices of most employees of this small business – including the Founder and President, Amy Bermar.  I tweeted earlier this week about a post that employee Corinne Federici wrote about converting social media pessimists with some new Google data on executives' use of the Internet and search engines.

Yesterday Bermar wrote about the importance of thank-you notes for job applicants – especially recent college grads and other Millennials – who feel they're the best fit for a company.  She makes a great point, particularly since a handwritten note has become somewhat of a lost art with the advent of 24/7 connectedness via technology.

Bermar's post got me thinking about other ways that thank-yous are used – not just to acknowledge or recognize, but to impact organizations' bottom line in tangible ways.  I remembered this article that appeared in Inc. magazine last fall, in which Danny Meyer of Union Square Hospitality Group (one of Inc. editor Bo Burlingham's Small Giants) said that one of the time- and cost-efficent and yet powerful ways he caters to existing customers is to write them personal thank-you notes.

But thank-yous can be used in other ways, and can go in all directions across various stakeholders.  They can be powerful tools for building employee engagement and a more satisfied customer base.  Consider these examples from our website:

• Supervisor to reports.  In a recent guest feature, workplace consultant Allison O'Neill talked about turning all those times you merely think, "I must remember to thank so-and-so" into reality.  She advises on how you can do this one-on-one and in a group setting.
• Employees to other employees.  One of our first Success Stories, on Wisconsin-based Sargento Foods, illustrates one of their employee engagement practices – workers using "praise cards" to thank fellow employees for helping to remedy production issues or otherwise going above and beyond.
• Employees to leadership.  One of our most recent Success Stories, on 2008 Top Small Workplace Decagon Devices in Washington state, relates how the company's explanation of their debt-free standing in a down economy prompted an employee to praise management's operations strategy.  While impossible to predict in terms of frequency, leadership should use this valuable feedback to gauge progress against the firm's mission and goals.
• Customer to company.  I wrote our Success Story on iRobot, whose CEO, Colin Angle, we named a Best Boss in 2005, and one of my favorite moments in it is where we heard the joy from the employees we talked to as a result of soldiers' emails and letters to the company thanking them for their products that literally save lives – their PackBots in use in the Middle East.  In your business, similar types of thank-yous could spur practices around customer focus groups or even user-generated marketing content.

So as you think about your employee engagement strategies, don't discount the power of a seemingly simple gesture of thanks, no matter the source or the recipient.

How do thank-yous factor into your workplace team building activities and customer relations?

Please take a minute – well, more like 5 seconds – and vote in our web poll: Has your firm cut hours or salaries due to the recession?

Vote now

Currently the "No's" outweigh the "Yes's" by 3 to 1, which is a good sign, but that could change with more votes.  Add yours now and view the results!

Did you know that good team building and employee engagement practices can have a tremendous impact in how an organization responds to tough times – especially in improving employee retention for long-term growth?  They can.  Read why and learn how to best position your company for when the economy improves here.

Related: See results of past web polls we've conducted.

We know that historically the stock market is a leading indicator of how the economy is doing.  But who knew that employee engagement was a link in this chain?

Apparently, Quantum Workplace, a market research company focused on engaged employees, knows, as their press release from today explains.  (Quantum Workplace has surfaced on this blog recently in connection to Google's algorithm to predict who on their payroll will factor into their turnover.)

The Nebraska-based firm's release today cites research it conducted among over 6,000 companies over a two-year period which finds that "employee engagement is capable of predicting directional movements of the Dow Jones Industrial Average four months ahead of time."  Says Quantum Workplace President Greg Harris,

[I]f our Engagement Index is up in June, there's an 83% probability that the Dow will be up four months later -- in October.  To our knowledge, this relationship has never been discovered before.

Their research provides further validation that engagement activities that boost workplace team building lead to both more productive businesses and a stronger overall economy.  Visit this page on our site for more studies that address this link.

What thoughts do you have on this finding?

Image credit: Investing School

Check out this Google Map I created that shows the U.S. locations of the Top Small Workplaces that we've honored the last two years:

(If you're viewing this post in an RSS reader, you may have to click on the title to see the map.)

Zoom in and click on a marker to see:

• Company name
• Year honored
• Industry
• A link to either their Success Story we've written about them, or their Top Small Workplaces Winner snapshot page (we've still got six 2008 winners to write features on before the 2009 winners are named in The Wall Street Journal in late September).

I hope you enjoy exploring our honored firms geographically and learning about their activities for employee engagement and team building that make for a productive workplace culture.

Have feedback about the map?  Drop me a comment.

At Winning Workplaces, our tagline is "Better for people, better for business."  It's one of the things we look for in selecting and naming our Top Small Workplaces each year, and we sometimes refer to it as a "win-win."

What we mean by this is the use of workplace team building and engagement activities to create more satisfied employees – who are better parents, citizens, and volunteers in their communities (that's the people part) – and who are more committed to the success of their employers' missions and goals (that's the business part).  Our Founder and Chairman, Ken Lehman, explains this in greater detail in a video on our website.

Sometimes we're fortunate to honor small firms that provide another win for a triple win.  Such is the case with 2008 Top Small Workplace the Rainforest Alliance.  My coworker Jason, an ardent environmentalist, sent me this link from the New York City-based nonprofit's Facebook page.  It talks about how much larger companies/brands, such as Chiquita, Kraft, Nike, and even Wal-Mart, are increasing their enviro-cred with the help of the Rainforest Alliance's responsible business partnership and certification programs.

So here's a breakdown of how the Rainforest Alliance produces a triple win:

• For their employees: Many innovative employee engagement team development strategies, some of which we covered in our Success Story on the nonprofit.
• For the organization: The employee engagement strategies alluded to above contribute directly to its bottom line, especially in annual revenue growth (36%), annual turnover (lower than the industry average of 21%), and average employee tenure (3.5 years).
• For their business partners: a better CSR reputation and positive buzz, both of which lead to greater identification among target audiences and ultimately sales.

For a lot more on the people practices that make the Rainforest Alliance a productive workplace, check out our report on them and their fellow 2008 Top Small Workplace winners.

This most recent post by Greg Harris on The Science of Work blog contains a simple but powerful lesson for small business owners and leaders when it comes to the emphasis they place on team building activities for the workplace.  Citing several Wall Street Journal articles, Harris writes,

[Google] is a company that sees their biggest challenges ahead as people issues....not technology issues, not government issues, not economic issues.

Go figure: one of the biggest/fastest growth stories in American business history suggests that attracting and retaining talent is the most critical factor in their strategy.

His post follows on the heels of Google's much-hyped algorithm to determine which employees are most likely to leave, which I blogged about earlier this month.  My post on this contains a comment from none other than...Mr. Harris.

Related - selected posts on this blog on improving employee retention:

• Do You Work As Hard to Impress Employees As You Do Customers?
• Family-Owned Businesses Holding on to Staff, Optimistic About Near-Term Economic Recovery
• Gentle Giant Moving Takes Its Recruiting Challenge on the Road
• LinkedIn Group Initial Consensus to Using Zappos' 'Leaving Bonus': No

Here is another guest post by MKB and Anchor Advisors.  Save the date for their seminar on this topic in Chicago on June 30, which should serve to monetize your team building and employee engagement practices.

Marketing isn't always a high priority for some business owners because they can feel intimidated, even defeated by it.  They understand sales – but marketing?  What's it for?  Why do you do it?  And when you only turn to marketing to pull you out of a slump and then it doesn't deliver, we can see how you could feel like that.

But marketing is just like any other part of your business – it requires strategy and then the tactics to implement the strategy.  What often happens is that business owners come up with the tactics, but not the strategy.  And therein lies the problem! 

Marketing and selling smart is imperative in a tight economy. 

Are you getting the most out of your sales and marketing efforts?  How do you optimize your operations for today in preparation for an upturn in the future?  How do you derive maximum return for your spend? 

When marketing and sales teams are on the same wavelength so many good things can happen.  We more quickly find the pitches and offers that work for our ideal clients; we close more sales faster and everyone wins.

Want to explore this topic further?  Come see Brad Farris and Suzanne Voce speak on "How to Leverage your Brand, Optimize Marketing and Improve your Sales Closing Ratio in a Recession Economy" on Tuesday, June 30, from 7:30 to 9:30 am. 

Click here for more info.
 
Brad Farris works with business owners to help them to clarify their purpose, identify better people, develop repeatable processes and track key performance measures that help them to grow their business.  Find out more here.

Suzanne Voce and the team from MKB help organizations perform better and reach growth goals faster.  We help position companies for top-line growth, translate vision, value and engage actionable results by devising smart strategies and tactics.  Suzanne will also be sharing insight from global CMO's and illustrating effective solutions through case study success stories.

I blogged last week asking for your help in supporting our continued operations – specifically our below-market-rate consulting work for small businesses and nonprofits and sponsoring folks to attend our upcoming conference.

I'm happy to report that the response to our appeal has been positive.  Here are some of the latest people and groups that have contributed to our Scholarship and Special Assistance Fund, and which now appear on our Supporters wall:

• Anonymous
• Peter and Katharine Darrow
• Craig J. Duchossois
• Mr. & Mrs. James M. Florsheim
• Mr. & Mrs. James S. Frank
• Allen and Evi Goldberg
• Peter and Carol Goldman
• Doris B. Holleb
• Bruce and Martha Karsh
• Paul and Nancy Lederer
• Lewis-Sebring Family Foundation
• MDP
• Julie Stagliano
• Esther Saks
• Mr. and Mrs. John P. Sall
• Mr. & Mrs. Donald M. Schwartz
• The NDH Group, LTD
• The Redwoods Group
• Elizabeth Tisdahl

We greatly appreciate their support for our mission to instill in more small firms, and disseminate via the web, actionable team engagement activities for greater workforce effectiveness.

If you would like to become a Supporter you can do so in one of three ways:

1. Purchase a Dinner Table for eight at our ROI of Great Workplaces Conference in October in Chicago.  You can purchase a table for your employees, vendors, customers, or others you'd like to sponsor to attend.
2. Buy tickets to the conference.  Again, these could be for you, people you work with, or others.
3. Donate on our website to our Scholarship and Special Assistance Fund.

Photo credit: GuyLunardi/flickr

Almost a year ago my colleague Jason Ticus wrote what I consider now to be a prescient post on how part of how you can tell if a Top Small Workplaces applicant is truly a Winning Workplace is if front-line employees refer to their relationship with leadership using the word "us" instead of "them."

Why prescient?  Because, as Management-Issues writes about today, the recession and the layoffs and slashed hours for employees it has produced has had somewhat of an unintended consequence.  In many businesses it has turned whatever might have existed as "us and them" resentment to a culture of increase employee engagement and workplace team building.

At least, this is happening in the U.K., where Management-Issues is based.  The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) reports that "the recession is creating more engagement and bringing employers and managers closer together."  According to the CBI and recruitment firm Harvey Nash, this is resulting in such "share the pain" initiatives as:

• pay freezes
• keep staff training and invest in better targeting
• reduce hours/offer flex hours

We know this is happening in the U.S., too.  Recently promoted head of global marketing at Hyatt Hotels, John Wallis, talked about it as part of their strategy in a Q&A this month in Advertising Age.  And I think it's no coincidence that the issue of leadership maintaining a strong focus on employees' livelihoods and work/life balance was a theme of our recent webinars on strategies to develop and retain technical talent, and on succession planning.

The leaders of exemplary organizations understand, in short, that we're all in this together.

Speaking of an all-in attitude, stay tuned to our July newsletter for an addendum to our editorial on sharing the pain that will advise on employee engagement practices to share the recovery as well.

I remember reading this statistic by Forrester Research back in March: 43% of U.S. workers will telecommute by 2016.  I circled back to it today after reading this new post by America's Best Companies (ABC).  It talks about how Washington (particularly Rep. James Himes from Connecticut) is working on legislation that would remove tax penalties for employees who live in one state but work in another.

This is a topic I'm actively researching because in August I will set up Winning Workplaces' first home/satellite office – mine.  I look forward to serving as a guinea pig on this emerging trend so my successes and pitfalls can inform your employee engagement and communications team building strategies for those workers who may telecommute to your office.

I agree with the reasons that Forrester Research's Ted Schadler states as to why telecommuting will be more widely adopted:

• More broadband pipes to homes, work laptops, and secure VPNs.  Schadler's point is strengthened by the progressive views on broadband access advocated by President Obama's pick to head the FCC.
• Employees are making more, and stronger, cases to their bosses that telecommuting will save the company time, and thus money.
• Business leaders benefit from an ease-in approach: Forrester found that "The number of full time telecommuters today is small compared with 'regular telecommuters.'"
• "[M]anagers and other high-influence employees ... are most likely to work from home regularly or occasionally.  And that means their growing comfort with the ability to monitor and manage employee productivity will spill over into their support for a telecommuting workforce."

The newer ABC article digs deeper, addressing people practices that lead to a more productive workplace as a result of greater telecommuting:

• Improved productivity
• Personnel retention
• Reduced office overhead
• Reduced absenteeism
• Wider recruiting pool
• Stronger continuity plans

All of this said, I predict that the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act of 2009 sponsored by Rep. Himes will not be the last, nor the most sweeping legislation that will come out of Washington and the states to help companies benefit from the reduced costs and increased productivity potential of this emerging trend.

Stay tuned as I relate my experiences on my journey toward telecommuting full-time from Los Angeles....

Related: Our interview with Intelligent Office Founder Ralph Gregory that addresses virtual team building.

We are all about transparency at Winning Workplaces.  Longtime readers of this blog have been privy to information on applicants and honorees of our Top Small Workplaces recognition project with The Wall Street Journal such as:

• Metrics they're using to measure the ROI of employee engagement
• Employee engagement strategies to motivate workers
• Benchmarks for medical insurance premium coverage for employees and their dependents
• Vacation leave best practices
• Elements of a strong employee ownership culture
• Trends of applicants over the last three years when it comes to revenue, revenue growth, and turnover

Today I'm continuing this trend by providing you with leading-edge employee development strategies as used by our 35 finalists for Top Small Workplaces 2009.  Check them out:

1. 30-day orientation for new employees
2. Future leaders groomed with a mix of executive education, developmental assignments, job rotations, mentoring, diagnostic skills testing, and coaching
3. 3x3 performance/potential matrix to tailor development
4. In-house sales coach
5. Open books, share financials, and teach employees how to read financials (note: not for every company)
6. Weekly "storytime sessions" to instill a sense of community and provide a mechanism for open timely communication to paint the big picture
7. Learning across and between teams
8. Tuition assistance – up to $5200 annually per employee
9. Informal mentoring
10. Task forces including exploration of career paths for non-traditional employees, communication of "essence of firm," pairing younger employees with management group, and soliciting feedback
11. Hiring a training coordinator
12. Lunch & learns
13. Leadership training
14. Recruit internally for new positions and leadership roles before seeking outside candidates
15. CEO conducts one-on-one career advancement meetings with those interested in a leadership role
16. Multifaceted development program: outside professional instructors + classroom training + experiential on-the-job learning
17. Outside coaching resources made available to all directors and senior leaders
18. Employees not only encouraged to bring their ideas, but to take the lead in realizing those ideas
19. Extensive cross-training allows employees to be added to on-call staffing list in case of an after-hours emergency
20. Company employees active in local university curriculum (community outreach)
21. Series of educational seminars over a six-month period provided employees with a common vocabulary to discuss work phases and preferences
22. Performance evaluation – review previous performance and establish continuous improvement goals for the coming year
23. "90 percent solution" – employees given 90% ownership in each project
24. All goals set by department heads according to the mantra "How can you be best used?"
25. Ownership classes on topics including making fiscally sound business decisions, incentive plans, key performance indicators, finance for non-financial managers, and the basics on profit and loss
26. Every employee required to attend course in conflict management and dialogue skills
27. Weeks with no travel are set aside each year with a focus on training and development
28. Mentorship program focused on developing younger industry talent in light of approaching talent crunch due to retirement
29. Sales Professional Development Day for all account executives on business skills, knowledge sharing, coaching, mentoring, and software training
30. 10-minute daily stand up meetings in departments

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