Winning Workplaces

As you may know, this week Winning Workplaces and Inc. launched our joint 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces competition. Online applications are coming in, and as they do we get the great opportunity to study, as they relate to current business challenges, particularly effective employee development strategies.

I'll share two with you that I thought were strong. For the sake of privacy, I'll just say they're being used by an advertising firm – which makes sense given the content of the employee engagement ideas presented.

In answer to our question "Please give one example of a learning initiative that you have found particularly effective or innovative," this company said:

Every new employee is required to go through an extensive 3 month training process prior to assisting to manage any client efforts. In this process they learn the basics about our industry as well as our internal process. Each new hire is trained by two designated staff members at the same time.
Additionally, each new hire is required to become certified in paid search via Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. We have found this particularly effective even if the team member is not directly involved in search marketing – it helps with an understanding of digital media, tracking, analytics and overall granularity of our business.

Think your business is doing better employee leadership development than this one? Give 'em some competition! Click here to apply now. The prize for the winning organizations is being featured in the June 2010 issue of Inc. magazine!