Lately our phone lines have lit up as we approach the date of convergence between the 2008 and 2009 Top Small Workplaces cycles:

• 2008 - One week from today, on October 13, The Wall Street Journal will announce, in a special section of the paper, this year's 15 Winners and provide detailed reporting on what makes them all so incredible when it comes to their employee engagement and team building practices that enable them to grow consistently year after year, and lead their industries in low turnover.
• 2009 - That same day, October 13, our website will contain a simple form for you to fill out to nominate your company, or another you think has a great workplace, in the start of the 2009 Top Small Workplaces nomination process, which will run through the end of January.

That said, I thought it might be helpful to provide you a FAQ of the most common questions we're getting now, along with our answers.

When will the Winners be announced?
Monday, October 13, in The Wall Street Journal.

Can you tell us who the 35 Finalists are now?
Unfortunately, we can't.  The Winners and Finalists will be announced in the Journal on October 13.  Our website will also have profiles of the 20 Finalists.

Will the Winners be notified prior to the announcement in The Wall Street Journal?
Yes.  The Winners will receive an email from the Journal early on the morning of the 13th, before the print edition announcing them goes out in the United States.  The Finalists will also receive an email, from Winning Workplaces, early that morning.

What is the process for a press release for Winners/Finalists?  Will Winning Workplaces or The Wall Street Journal create a press release for our company?
An offical press release from Winning Workplaces and the Journal will be released early on October 13.  The email notifications from the Journal and Winning Workplaces to the Winners and Finalists will contain press release boilerplate language that those companies can adapt to craft their own releases.  Those emails will also contain links to download print and web versions of their respective Winner and Finalist 2008 logos for use in their marketing materials and on their websites.

Will the Winner/Finalist company have to pay anything for publication rights or displaying our award?
No.

My company applied for Top Small Workplaces 2008.  How can I learn how well I did compared against the Winners?
Or: I didn't apply but I'd like to learn from the practices of the Top Small Workplaces.  How can I do this?
We are preparing a 2008 Top Small Workplaces Benchmarking and Best Practices Report that will provide an assessment to benchmark your organization against the metrics of the 2008 Winners.  The report is available for pre-order here at a discounted rate (40% off).  This rate will only be available until October 13.

How can my company apply for next year’s award?
Starting October 13, visit winningworkplaces.org/topsmallbiz to nominate your firm.  Note that past Top Small Workplaces Winners are ineligible from applying again.

Is there a fee to nominate?
No, it is free to nominate your firm and to apply through our offical application, which will be sent to all nominated organizations in February 2009.

What are the criteria to nominate and apply?
They are listed here.  The same criteria will apply for 2009.

I hope this helps.  If I did not answer your question above, feel free to give us a call at 847-328-9798.

If you have employees spread across the country, state, or even just across town, what is a proven list of cost-effective strategies you can use to ensure your cultural values are maintained and that communication remains strong?

During our webinar on maintaining community in a virtual workplace last month, our 2006 Best Boss, Tim Keenan, shed some light on this, based on his experience presiding over High Performance Technologies, Inc. (HPTi), a 325-employee firm based in Virginia that assists the U.S. Government in super-computing needs that range from science to defense and national security.

Tim has learned a lot in just a few years as president of HPTi, having assumed the role in 2003 after his partner and former CEO was killed in a tragic plane crash.

In transitioning from COO to CEO and expanding the business, Tim boiled down his advice for other small business leaders who need to keep employee communication at a premium as follows:

• Listen
• Be inquisitive
• Be shameless
• Be relentless
• Be creative

Hear more on each of these points from Tim's closing segment of his presentation from our September 2008 webinar:

mp3 - 1.7 MB - 1:50

What would you add to Tim's list that are part of your strategies when it comes to workplace team building and employee engagement best practices to foster open communication?

We are working feverishly to bring you our bigger and better-than-ever 2008 Top Small Workplaces Benchmarking and Best Practices Report.  You can pre-order it now here, and it will be sent to you when it's ready.  We are hoping to have copies available at our Top Small Workplaces Conference on October 14-15.

I have been editing a draft of this report today, most of which is all about this year's 15 winners (TBA in The Wall Street Journal on October 13).  While working on this, two pieces of data under the benefits section really stood out.  I'm talking about total paid leave (including vacation and sick days, and PTO) and medical coverage (premiums paid by the company for both employees and their dependents).

I wanted to see how these benefits metrics from the firms we evaluated compare with those from other leading studies of small workplaces.  So I chose a solid benchmark: the 25 Best Small Companies to Work For in America, as named in July 2008 by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the Great Place to Work Institute.

Check out the charts below, which show both these metrics side by side with that survey:

As you can see, our Top Small Workplaces provide, on average, 5% more in company-paid medical coverage for employees and 16% more for dependents.  They also provide half a month's worth more paid leave for their employees vs. the paid leave average of the 25 Best list.  These results support two of the many themes we noticed among this year's winners: that a focus on well-being and health builds endurance, for employees and the business; and that when workers have a stake in the risks and succeed, they also share in the rewards.

Note that average number of employees between the two lists are comparable: 154 in 2007 for the Top Small Workplaces; 136 for the 25 Best list.

There are certainly many more relevant studies of exemplary small businesses out there, and we'll be comparing the data from our 15 winners (out of 406 that applied this year) to those as well in the coming weeks.  But we thought we'd start by comparing against SHRM's list because they've been doing this for a while (2008 is their fifth year publishing their small and midsize companies lists) and because they are a well-respected authority on employee engagement best practices.

The first session that will kick off our conference on October 14, by the way, will review in detail the stellar workplace team building and employee engagement practices of this year's Top Small Workplaces.  With a lot more info on benefits being provided by one of last year's winning firms and the Principal Financial Group in this same session, you won't want to miss it.

What other workplace data or best practices from the 2008 Top Small Workplaces would you like to see discussed here, and/or compared against other prominent studies?  (And which ones?)  Add a comment below and let me know.  Thanks.

Ah, the power YouTube.  Thanks to Chad Hurley and Steve Chen's little billion-dollar Web innovation, I don't have to fly you out to rural Montana to show you how a successful workplace works, and how employees feel about it (in this case, 12-year-old PrintingForLess.com, founded by 2005 Winning Workplaces Best Boss Andrew Field).

I can simply show you.  Enjoy this short clip that features a number of their employees from different areas of the company talking about what drew them to Livingston, MT, to work for PFL, and what keeps them coming back with enthusiasm each day.

As you can see, their employee engagement best practices are matched to the culture that Andrew created and works hard to maintain.  These address family (an on-site daycare; dogs in the office), respect for the environment (a facility with radiant heating and unobstructed views of nearby mountain ranges), and community (partnerships with other area businesses and community development organizations).  PFL also places a strong emphasis on workplace team building, bringing workers together frequently for things like an annual chili cook-off and regular barbecues.

You can learn about another side of PFL by attending our Top Small Workplaces Conference on October 14-15, during which Andrew will offer tips and strategies on an uber-relevant topic, "Managing and Thriving in Lean Times."

Stay tuned as we bring you more videos that reveal the employee engagement activities of some of the small and midsize firms we've honored over the years for their outstanding people practices and financial performance.

Yesterday I wrote about Zappos' practice of offering a $2,000, no-questions-asked bonus to new hires who complete a four-week training program and feel they're not a fit for the e-tailer.  As you can see in the original post below, Jim and Michael had some great thoughts on how this employee engagement best practice can positively affect a company's culture, morale, and productivity.

However, Michael also notes that he believes his employer would not choose to implement a measure such as "The Offer" "due to scale."  He also asks two great follow-up questions:

1. Does this type of program strike you as industry specific?
2. What are the factors that are making it catch on?

I pasted my post from yesterday into a discussion thread on Winning Workplaces' LinkedIn group, and Michael replied to me with his same comment there – that he thought his employer would pass on the initiative.  In response to my LinkedIn question, I also heard from Norma, who had this to say:

I saw this article [from BusinessWeek] and brought it to the attention of my execs to get their thoughts.  One partner was intrigued because he oversees ops and realized that the cost to ensure we have a committed employee up front is probably still less than the cost of turnover altogether.  The other partner was turned off by it because he felt this was an extreme method for retention.  He also said that while he agrees that many people will know in their first 30 days whether or not the culture is for them, many more will wait until 6 months or so to leave a company because they would have wanted to give the company a chance before just walking away or ensure they have something else first, especially in an economy we have today.  I personally think it is an innovative idea and could be very positive given the right circumstances.

I found her description of her firm's partner who is against the leaving bonus quite revealing.  At issue:

• Is 30 days enough time to accurately gauge a company's culture and an employee's adjustment to it?
• How does the state of the economy skew the success (retention rate and employee tenure after implementation) of this practice?

Like Michael, Norma seems to suggest that industry may be a barrier to entry.  (Does anyone out there have industry data on adoption of this type of bonus?  Or is it just too new/too soon to tell?)

I invite you to join our LinkedIn group – it's free and a great networking tool – and add your thoughts there to this intriguing question.  And here, too, if you wish!

My colleague Rob forwarded me this article today from BusinessWeek.com.  The gist of it is that e-tailer Zappos is finding great success with a practice of offering cash bonuses to new employees who complete a month's worth of training on their culture, strategy, and processes.

How much do they offer employees who feel they're not a good fit for Zappos?  $2,000.  They can take the money and run, as it were.

While about about 3% of hires choose to do this, the company comes out ahead, as Zappos' CEO, Tony Hsieh, told BusinessWeek.  The company is out $2,000 per person, as opposed to the 50-150% of their salary they could spend if it's determined later on that the same person is not the right fit.

Even without this practice, known internally at Zappos as "The Offer," the company must be doing a lot of things right when it comes to their recruiting processes.  The 97% retention rate post-Offer attests to this.

Entrepreneur and author Keith McFarland, writing for BusinessWeek, says that the Offer concept is taking off in other large firms.  I wonder how long it will be until the practice becomes widespread among small and midsized firms, considering 50-150% of a worker's salary is a much bigger hit to an organization the smaller it is in size.

If your recruiting efforts are more formalized and you have a budget that could allow for cash incentives for new hires who might wish to opt out – and you'd like to find this out now and not later – you might consider incorporating a form of The Offer into your employee engagement best practices.  The potential benefits to your workplace team building, productivity, and profitability seem undeniable.

Felix Salmon posted an interesting commentary yesterday on Condé Nast's Portfolio.com website.  Addressing a session from this week's World Business Forum in New York that featured microcredit creator and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, Salmon's piece, titled "Philanthropy vs Profit," concludes that

for-profit philanthropies have very little in the way of a track record, and the track record they do have is not particularly good.  Maybe that will change, in the future.  But for the time being, I'd keep the idea of for-profit philanthropy in the "not proven" category.

If there's a business leader who could change Salmon's mind, I think it would be Trish Karter, the CEO and Cofounder of Boston-based Dancing Deer Baking Company, and one of the keynote speakers at our upcoming Top Small Workplaces Conference here in Chicago.

Trish has made a name for herself more for employee participation in a tough, inner city environment and helping Massachusetts' homeless population find jobs and homes through the company's Sweet Home product line than merely running a successful business, which she's done since she and her partners founded Dancing Deer in 1994.

As Trish told us in an interview we did with her in late 2006, the year 2000 was a pivotal one for Dancing Deer when it came to marrying philanthropy and profit.  It was then, after she bought out her partners and became CEO and majority stockholder, that she began to think seriously about doing much more than simply creating wealth for employee-owners and other stockholders.

The Sweet Home product line, established in 2002, emerged from this brainstorming.  It gives 35% of the retail price of each order to homeless families in the state, and it has made a real impact.  In 2005, for instance, Dancing Deer donated $30,000 to help three women with children achieve financial independence and a career path.

So how do businesses get started on a course to both give back and turn a profit?  Trish told us, in answer to a question that was held from our 2006 interview due to length, that business leaders must identify a cause that "resonates with the definition of who you are and what you want to accomplish."  She also said it's important to show a measurable gain at the end of the day, whether it be in terms of branding, increased employee morale, better perceived social responsibility by customers and clients, or raw revenue gains.

Obviously, your employee engagement best practices will help tremendously in both of these areas.  Think of what a great team building exercise this endeavor would be!

What are your thoughts on philanthropy vs. profit?  Do you think it's one or the other, or do you think businesses can achieve both with the right planning and execution?

Back in 2004, TIME magazine ran a story on the then-emerging phenomenon of people turning to pedometers to count the steps they take every day to help them change their lifestyle habits for the better.

It wasn't long before organizations large and small began purchasing pedometers – often getting bulk discounts on them, or freebies from their medical insurance carriers – to help them implement voluntary fitness programs that focused on reaching a certain number of steps in a given time frame. 

"10,000 steps" soon emerged as the number to reach.  It was a reasonable group goal, given the easy-to-wrap-your-head-around figure itself and the fact that fairly active individuals reach it (the equivalent of 5 miles) in one day.  It was just a matter of getting employees to take time out of their day to record the extra steps that were not part of their normal routine.  When workers did this in groups, this was where team building really began to, ahem, take shape.

We wrote about this trend in 2005 when we interviewed Reed Engel, the director of wellness strategies at Mather LifeWays, a nonprofit with locations in several states whose mission is to enhance the lives of older adults.  At the time, about half of their 450 employees had just completed the organization's first formal wellness initiative, their own 10,000 Steps program spread across 8 weeks.

Yet, over the past few years that goal has gotten a lot bigger in some quarters, stepping up (no pun intended) the competition factor, as well as the bragging rights for top performers.  According to this article from the Bend, Oregon Bulletin, the area's largest employer, Cascade Healthcare Community, has an insurer that is challenging its employees to walk 1 million steps, or "about the number of strides it would take to walk the perimeter of the insurer’s service area, which stretches into Montana."

And this piece from Palm Springs, California's Desert Sun talks about another health care organization whose partnership with Shape Up The Nation, a leading provider of corporate team wellness efforts, is getting some workers to aim for 10,000 steps a day as part of a 12-week program.

So, if one of your firm's employee engagement activities is a walking program that tracks a certain number of steps in a given period, you might want to consider upping the ante (steps).  Your employees will thank you and, as the Bulletin article notes when it comes to the the resulting reduced medical costs, your bottom line will likely come out healthier as well.

I was reminded of the power of great customer service, particularly as it relates to small and midsize firms, when I got the following message this morning from the president of JangoMail, our bulk email provider:

Dear Mark,

I want to brief you on the events of the last 22 hours that resulted in some of our clients being unable to access our web site Monday morning. JangoMail's domain name registrar, Register.com, had a problem resulting in the temporary expiration of our domain name. Register.com has so far been unable to explain the cause of the expiration, and while the expiration issue was corrected within 20 minutes of the issue surfacing, due to the caching nature of the Internet's DNS servers, many DNS servers around the world had cached the incorrect "expired" settings for jangomail.com. The following is a general timeline of events:

9/22/08 7:00 AM EST - Register.com expires jangomail.com.

9/22/08 7:20 AM EST - Our system admins are alerted, and we renew the domain within 3 minutes.

9/22/08 8:00 AM EST - A check of random DNS servers around the world reveals that about 50% of DNS servers are correctly resolving jangomail.com while the other 50% are re-directing jangomail.com to Register.com's web site.

Between 8:00 AM EST and 11:00 AM EST, three phone calls are made to Register.com, none of them resulting in any explanation of what happened. The issue seems to center around Register.com's SafeRenew feature. Our domain has the SafeRenew feature activated, which should have forced Register.com to automatically renew the domain without human intervention, but Register.com confirms that this didn't take place.

9/22/08 12:00 PM EST - About 75% of the Internet's DNS servers are correctly resolving our domain.

9/22/08 6:00 PM EST - About 90% of the Internet's DNS servers are correctly resolving our domain.

Currently, about 95% of the Internet's DNS servers are resolving jangomail.com correctly, and it should be 100% at 7:00 AM EST today. ...

We are terribly sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you. We were answering support tickets as quickly as possible during the course of Monday, providing alternate methods of accessing the application, ...

If you did experience any account issues from Monday, please let me know, and I'll make sure we examine your account and take any necessary corrective actions.

We pride ourselves on having the appropriate processes and redundancies in place to achieve 99.999% system uptime, and we know we've let some of you down. Yesterday's DNS issue plus last week's Hurricane Ike issue interrupted our otherwise smooth processes. We are going to be re-thinking how we handle our domain name registrations and renewals internally and will be modifying our processes to ensure this never happens again.

...

Sincerely,

Ajay Goel
President, JangoMail

This is a great example of quick customer response in and of itself (luckily, their domain was not forwarding for us, so today's note was news to me).  However, as Ajay Goel mentions toward the end of his note, JangoMail was experiencing a different set of problems last week, when the remnants of Hurricane Ike swept through Dayton, Ohio, where the company is based.  I knew about this because our account login page showed a continually changing status update on the damage the storm caused, how it might affect us (again, luckily, it didn't), and their work to restore power and all features.

The way JangoMail has weathered these two big, back-to-back incidents, and their efforts during "normal" times to expand their features and make using their service easier for customers – in the unabridged version of the message above, Ajay gave a heads up of three improvements coming down the pike – underscore how this company of only four employees is using employee engagement with customers to drive business.  In fact, this year they were named for the second time to Inc. magazine's Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies (no. 972 this year).

It's amazing to me how many tech, business service, and other companies miss the boat in not rising to the occasion during an unforeseen event that hinders product or service delivery.  In my mind, these types of events represent the best opportunity to show the value they offer their clients.

How have your vendors or suppliers reacted during an emergency situation?  Did their employee engagement best practices pay dividends?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Sure, here in the United States we have the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to help reduce workplace-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths.  Yet, as Wikipedia notes, in its 38-year history the agency has only secured a dozen criminal convictions for cases where willful violation of an OSHA standard resulted in an employee's death.  Many business leaders – especially those who head small firms – are wondering if the benefits of OSHA regulations and enforcement outweigh the costs.

It would seem there is a vacuum in making real progress here in U.S. workplaces – a point underscored by the relative lack of U.S.-based substantive results when you search for "hazardous workplace" on Google News.  The most practical tips and advice often come from countries such as Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand.

I was particularly impressed by content from a British source that Mark Harris summarized today on his Simply HR Jobs blog.  In a breakdown of the top 10 workplace hazards, he includes such seemingly forgettable incidences as repetitive strain injury (one form of which I addressed a few weeks ago), back pain, eye strain from staring too long at a computer screen, and germs.  Based on the Executive PA piece, Harris also tackles proper diet (five smaller portions per day, and not three larger ones, are best for your metabolism) and seriously misunderstood dangers that lurk in office equipment, including printer ink and even smog.

This list is a good one for you to check against what you may already have in use in your organization.  And if you are looking for fodder for employee engagement activities or workplace team building sessions, you can't do much better than talking about one or more common hazards.  (The topic of germs alone can cover several "brown bag"-type get togethers, with everything from work station cleanliness procedures to prevent the spread of colds to facts about the flu and where shots are locally available during flu season.)

Would your top 10 list of workplace hazards look the same as the Executive PA list?  How would it differ?

One of the essay questions we ask to generate qualitative feedback as part of our Top Small Workplaces application is:

Identify a specific critical challenge your organization has faced in the last five years.  How did you address the challenge?  Were employees engaged in the solution?  How did the solution affect the organization’s success?

The answers we receive to this question not only help separate the good small firms from the truly great ones that go further in the recognition project, but they also provide a meaty list of real world-tested employee engagement best practices that are highly actionable for other businesses that find themselves in similar situations.

I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you three short case studies from the 2008 applicant pool's answer to this question that address a specific challenge, the company's solution, and the subsequent longer-term results that emerged from it.

Case Study #1

Company Profile: Regional trucking company from Illinois, 85 employees

Challenge: Lost their #1 customer in 2002 due to competitor rates.  Resulting fewer shipments forced layoffs for first time in company's 37-year history.

Solution:

• Negotiated a 10% pay reduction with Teamsters
• Frank disclosure with employees resulted in decision for all employees, from CEO on down, to take a 10% pay cut for 3 months
• Refined budget and reviewed debt ratios
• Continued to focus on delivering highest quality to customers

Results:

• Customer returned in 2003
• In 2006, employees still with company received lump sum payment of the earnings they forfeited in 2002

Case Study #2

Company Profile: Innovation consulting firm from California, 48 employees

Challenge: After 9/11 and Enron crash, consultant market was poor.  Possibility of first-ever round of layoffs loomed.

Solution:

• Engaged employees, some of whom offered to become contractors to cut costs
• Founders decided to forgo salaries for 6 months to ensure all hires received paychecks until business picked up

Results:

• Earned new business and salaries were restored; no layoffs
• 2007 revenues 8x greater than those in 2002
• Employees saw commitment leadership made to them during hard times, which fuels their growth today

Case Study #3

Company Profile: Designer and manufacturer of site furniture from Michigan, 194 employees

Challenge: Rising material prices cut into profit margins in 2004, to the tune of around $1 million.  Had to raise prices.

Solution:

• Discussions with suppliers resulted in solutions that would "share the short term pain, with a view to the long term" including sourcing some parts in China
• Turned to employees to enact lean initiatives to improve operating efficiency

Results:

• Higher level of employee engagement cultivated
• Achieved 2005 profit goal; record growth and profitability in 2006 and 2007

What can these case studies teach us, beyond the actions these small businesses took?  To me the following themes stand out:

• Frank and honest communication with employees
• Long-term focus in solutions – not just a quick fix
• There are solutions to be found regardless of industry, company size, or geographic location

How would you answer the question above in terms of your own business?

Yesterday our media partner for the Top Small Workplaces recognition project, The Wall Street Journal, announced a completely new design for its flagship website, online.wsj.com.  Among many new features there such as tabs that allow you to view photos, video and comments tied to a particular article is the beta version of a social networking portal called the Journal Community.

I got my email from the Journal telling me about their new web design and the Journal Community yesterday morning, and by this morning there were already 122 groups that subscribers had created, ranging from "Flying: General Aviation" to "Military & Law Enforcement Body Armor Forum."

We joined the fray yesterday in creating our own Top Small Workplaces Journal Community group.  You can do a couple of things once you have logged in to your subscriber profile and joined the group:

• Read and comment on current topics (I wrote a primer post on Top Small Workplaces for those who are unfamiliar)
• Add your own topic for discussion
• See group members' profiles
• Invite members of other groups in the community to join our group (very cool)

If you're a WSJ subscriber, you can log in here, and then click on the Journal Community link on the right, just under the WSJ logo at the top of the page, to go to the Communities area. Then on the lefthand menu, click on Small Business and then Managing a Business to find our group.

If you're not currently a WSJ subscriber, you can visit the same page to subscribe today – the best deal by far is getting both print and online subscriptions for $99 per year; that's only $10 more than getting either print or online – and then follow the instructions above to find us.

I hope to see you there, and I look forward to getting some more great discussions going where we can learn from each other's employee engagement best practices and workplace team building strategies.

While we don't have a weekly Brag Basket like our friend Becky McCray over at Small Biz Survival, we do like to pat ourselves on the back when the opportunity presents itself.

It did this morning, when I noticed we gained our 200th and 201st member on Winning Workplaces' LinkedIn group.  Putting us over the 200-member threshold was Jacob from Arizona, who leads a financial services firm.

If you're on LinkedIn but not in our group yet, why not join today?  It's free and will allow you to connect with all other group members – through both straight, one-on-one networking as well as around discussions you can start or add your thoughts to.  We've already talked about different member events coming up as well as trends along the lines of employee engagement and workplace team building.  (Terry at another financial services firm, for instance, asked about the prospect of a shrinking talent pool.)

One nice feature of membership is that it's highly customizable when it comes to privacy.  You can decide if you want our group logo to appear on your LinkedIn profile, select which e-mail address you want to use to receive group updates (if you have more than one), and control whether other group members can contact you directly.

So what are you waiting for?  Join our group today if you're not a member and help us get to 300 members!

Photo credit: Graphic Design Forum

Last month I blogged about three recent studies that link employee engagement to such signs of business success as being able to attract and retain top talent, showing great productivity, driving down decision making (reducing hierarchies), and satisfying your customers.

With one of the feared byproducts of this weekend's major shift on Wall Street being even more scarce access to credit for small businesses, I thought it would be appropriate to look once more at how examining and retooling your employee engagement best practices can help your firm make the most from the workforce you have, as opposed to investing at the same pace in new hires.

Fortunately, HR Solutions has come up with a free, handy "return on engagement" calculator.  You start by entering some basic information such as number of employees, average salary, and turnover rate.  You then fill in some specific costs relating to separation, vacancy, replacement, and training. 

After entering all the data you have and clicking "Calculate," the calculator not only provides you with a snapshot of your organization's expense on employee salaries and revised cost of annual employee turnover, it tells you the annual savings of your efforts as well as how that should play out over a three-year period.

Try using this calculator for your business first based on reality, and then experimenting with hypotheticals (ie, vary your entrance interview and travel and moving costs under replacement costs, as well as your formal and informal costs of employee training) to see how much more your firm might be able to save over one to three years.

Did you find any surprises from this exercise, or are the savings about what you expected?  I'd love to read your feedback.

In our September Success Story on Texas-based full-service advertising agency Guerra DeBerry Coody (GDC), we talked in detail about one of the defining stories that stood out from their 2007 Top Small Workplaces application, in terms of marrying their cultural beliefs with employee engagement to get past a hurdle that could have jeopardized the union between understood values and demonstrated benefits.

I'm talking about how starting in 2006 this small business in San Antonio worked closely with both proponents and opponents of new legislation that would allow a child care facility that falls outside the Texas' normal purview for such entities to have an on-site daycare.  With GDC's employees – not all of whom had kids at the time – literally visiting the state legislature and helping to write the legislation, it passed handily in late 2007 and formally became law earlier this year.

As I mentioned, this has direct implications in keeping GDC an employer of choice for current employees who want to take advantage of this somewhat rare benefit, as well as prospective hires who would like to do the same.  As their Partner Tess Coody told me, they routinely are able to pull talent from much larger, far flung markets such as Los Angeles and New York, cutting down substantially on recruiting costs.

But their diligent work in this area has had some other unexpected repercussions.  Some of these have benefitted the company directly, like being able to hold on to current clients or attract new ones based on shared values around helping working families achieve a healthy work/life balance.

Some of these have helped GDC in indirect ways, too.  With news of their legislative accomplishment reaching other employers in Texas and beyond, they are fast becoming a resource for businesses that want to work with their respective stakeholders in doing much the same thing.

Tess Coody spoke with me recently about how this trend has unfolded, but her feedback didn't make it into our piece due to length.  Here is short sound bite:

mp3 - 1.4 MB - 1:34

The moral of the story?  Going the extra mile to ensure that your employee engagement best practices always reflect your mission, and actively using your employees to do this, can help your your business in both direct and indirect – yet no less beneficial – ways.

To learn more about the intricacies of the incredibly family-friendly work culture this small ad agency has created and how it continues to impact their bottom line, check out this webinar we hosted with them earlier this year.

Last week I talked about "A" players (top-performing employees) and "B" players, but then grouped everyone else as basically "bench" players, the bottom tier of which should be jettisoned if they have a record of not being able to work well with most other employees.  (This includes those who many leaders refer to as "cancerous" – ie, they don't agree with the company's mission and values and act on this by actively trying to bring coworkers to their "side.")

But this grouping of "C" level and below players into one subset isn't really fair.  I meant to talk in that post more about these employees, but it was quite long enough as it was.  However, I will talk about them today.

The reason I say it's not fair to lump all those folks into this group is that there are ways of turning these folks around – which means that many in this group would not, then, be necessarily headed for the door.  Obviously, the benefits of such in terms of reduced expenses for recruitment and training of new employees are tangible for the employer.

This post I saw today by by Paul Godines of Adapt on a Dime Consulting presents four ways to help turn a weak performer around.  The great thing about these strategies, he argues, is that they work in any industry and any scenario.  Here they are:

• Limit their role.
• Review the training you've given them to ensure it meets industry standards.
• Look at the equipment they use and make sure they understand how to maintain it.
• Pair them with a strong partner, who can serve as mentor or coach.

Keep these tips in mind when you see the need to improve your workplace team building by boosting the performance of those who tend to warm the bench in your organization.

Do you have any stories of using one or more of Godines' strategies?  What were the results?

Respect at work doesn't get a lot of, ahem, respect from the greater business community, which, understandably, often has a hard time connecting this universal but hard-to-peg principle to achieving bottom-line results.  It should get more respect, though – a lot more – as two new workplace study summaries show.

First, in another write-up of a Wharton study on E-learning (I mentioned them in relation to a different study yesterday), the main takeaway from a research paper by Wharton doctoral candidate Lakshmi Ramarajan is that industries such as healthcare and human services are prone to turnover due to a lack of respect at the organizational level, which results in employee burnout.

Arguing that this scenario can and does extend to other industries – including real estate, where some companies openly refer to workers with no direct role in driving revenue as "non producers – Ramarajan says that

Respect is a way in which employees get entrenched into the workplace and feel that what they do is meaningful. Conversely, if they observe that people around them are disrespected, they come to a consensus that the organization doesn't treat people well.

The study authors say that employers need to pay attention to how their employee engagement activities foster respect because it has direct implications on both presenteeism and turnover.  In fact, the authors warn, presenteeism can prove even more damaging in the long term because managers can embody this based on their feelings about the leadership and transmit it to those they supervise.

Another form of disrespect comes from denigrating older workers, a subtle but common trend as this study summary released yesterday on Newswise addresses.

Based on research he is presenting this week at a conference called "Aging in Place" in Japan, University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business Associate Professor Bob McCann's workplace findings, based on discrimination charges filed in FY 2006, show that using the wrong language when communicating to this diverse and growing employee group can have a substantially negative impact on productivity and profitability.

In looking at future trending of workforces in Japan as well as the U.S., which indicates "imminent" worker shortages, McCain says

Our research ... has clearly shown links between ageist language and reported health outcomes as broad as reduced life satisfaction, lowered self-esteem, and even depression.

These factors can lead to increased healthcare costs for employers.  But perhaps more compelling for business owners, especially those who run small firms, is how ineffectively communicating with older workers can result in paying unexpected costs from age discrimination court cases.  McCann notes, for instance, that over 82% of such cases received by the U.S. EEOC in FY 2006 were resolved, resulting in over $51 million in recovered monetary benefits.

So the bottom line here for businesses is to MBWA (manage by walking around) to observe how much respect is reflected in the culture you've created – and to look closely at your employee engagement best practices and workplace team building to fix what might be broken here.

As always, we're available to help when it comes to improving your people practices.  Call us any time at 847-328-9798.

Boy, was I glad to have worked as a waiter, a film projectionist and, yes, even a paper boy when I was a teenager.  At least, the good parts of these jobs came back after I read this rather ominous piece of research by The Wharton School that was reprinted on the E-learning blog today.

With teen unemployment at the highest level in almost 20 years, I don't think I'd be hired for these jobs if I had to do it over today.  The Wharton article argues that employers' tendency to hire older and/or immigrant workers in place of teens is the real reason they are having a tougher time finding work these days – and not, as others have suggested, that they are "too busy with their MySpace pages, disdainful of teen job opportunities or just plain lazy."

Take a look at this chart from my blog post arguing that Millennial employees are not, as many suggest, taking over the workplace.  Which segment of the U.S. population is the largest, at least through 2050 and most likely beyond?  That's right, it's Generation Z, today's 15 to 19 year olds who are just entering the workforce.

With many employers today facing a talent shortage – also discussed in the Wharton piece – I think it's imperative that they look at the make-up of their workplaces and their employee engagement and team building best practices to ensure that not only are qualified teens on the books when the opportunity provides itself, but that they are given learning and mentoring opportunities so they can metamorphose into managers and leaders who can take the reins from their counterparts today and continue to both solve problems via their businesses and provide purpose and income for tomorrow's workforce.

The most obvious way to do this is to turn to children of current employees, especially for temp roles during busier periods, such as holidays in retail.  If your business is going to generate more profits and you need the help, why not use this ready and eager talent pool?

And yes, we have done this at Winning Workplaces and it's been a great experience for all involved.  (One side benefit is that supervisors have a built-in way to get to know their employees better, which fosters open communication and boosts morale.)

What are your thoughts on having and making best use of teens in the workplace?

There are some indications, as I've blogged about before, that small and midsize businesses are now serving as the chief machinery that is keeping our economy moving at the pace that it still is – and that more and more, large firms are not as involved in this process, with almost perpetual bad news from Wall Street and increased emphasis on expanding global markets, which, combined with our weak dollar, has brought outsourcing and offshoring here at home.

But another factor looks to be responsible for small firms' relative better performance than their larger peers of late.  As "executive escapee" Babs Ryan writes in her new book "America's Corporate Brain Drain," workplace bullying is prompting "A" players to leave big firms for small ones in droves.

Based on some of the latest studies on bullying by bosses and others in the workplace, and her own research – Ryan has studied workplaces in over 70 countries, including China, Dubai, India, Iran, and Japan – she says the tendency when employees feel harassed enough to talk to HR is for them to be ignored and for the bully to not even be questioned.

It's a classic case of "shoot the messenger," and, Ryan argues, it is causing top-performing employees to retaliate by leaving, thus increasing turnover in many large employers and, subsequently, lowering their performance – which, of course, ultimately hurts their profitability and overall competitiveness.

I don't blame top talent for leaving under these circumstances.  As Idaho-based career counselor Nancy Goodman wrote on her blog yesterday, "Some employers have workplace bullying addressed in their human resources policy, some do not, and there is very limited legal recourse available."

Goodman also notes that the dialogue on this sensitive topic is unfortunately "in its infancy" compared with others such as sexual harassment.  What this means in the short term is that progressive employers need to reexamine their employee engagement best practices to minimize as much as possible instances of bullying in their work environments.

We've found that much of this can be avoided based on the type of culture created and nurtured by leadership, and using tools and practices in hiring to avoid even getting workplace bullies on the payroll in the first place.  If you would like some confidential help in assessing your employee engagement best practices related to this issue, feel free to call our workplace Consulting & Training Director, Diane Stoneman, at 847-328-9798.

*This is my actual feeling after getting out of our weekly staff meeting just now.  It has not been changed to protect the innocent.

How many people can say this?  It is quite a lofty goal, considering they tend to add to-do items to your list (I have five to get done today) and, all too often, focus on what people have done wrong versus what they've done right.

I think whether or not employees can say this, or at least believe it inside, depends on a combination of the following:

• Whether they're a glass-half-full vs. a glass-half-empty person in general
• Whether they're in a business they feel shares their values (speaks to success of hiring practices)
• Camaderie with coworkers
• The firm's ongoing emphasis on employee engagement and team building

As you can see, this list can only be fully realized when person and company both exert equal effort and come together around common values.  This also depends on employers doing a lot of work up front to ensure the right people are on board, and being quick to get rid of those who are not (the "hire slow, fire fast" philosophy I've blogged about before).

When is the last time you came out of a staff meeting feeling truly upbeat and energized to do your best work?  Can you pinpoint what made the difference in that instance versus in other meetings?  I'd love to hear your stories.