On August 4 I told you about our new feature for email subscribers, a weekly people practices email geared toward improving your company's bottom line.  Tom Walter, CEO of our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace Tasty Catering, commented on that post saying it's a great idea.

This week he shared specifics with me on exactly why he thinks business leaders should sign up for this free email (emphasis mine):

The Weekly Bottom Line-Improving People Practice email should benefit all business leaders.  The world has become commoditized.  The true marketplace differentiator is human capital.  I enjoy learning the Best Practices other companies use with their most valuable asset - their people.

An engaged workforce is typically harmonious, productive and profitable.  These Best Practices eliminate the need to manage.  We have replaced management with effective leaders armed with Best Practices, and the difference has been remarkable.

While Winning Workplaces surely plays only a small part in Tasty Catering's success, you can't argue that they're not doing a lot of things right in their staff engagement that comprises their highly productive workplace culture: As we shared in the company's award profile, in a very tough year broadly and certainly in their industry (2009), their employee leadership development and other strategies helped them earn above-average revenues.

Register now to start getting our weekly, bottom line-improving people practices email FREE in your inbox.

I would imagine that many of you are familiar with recent employee engagement research finding that one of the ill effects of mass layoffs on companies is an increase in top talent who leave or are looking to do so once the economy picks up a bit more.  I have shared studies attesting to this here since August 2009; Human Resource Executive has a new article on this.

But another worrisome effect that I was not aware of until today is the prospect of a reduced and/or demoralized knowledge base of workers leading companies down a path of a long-term lag versus their industry.  Quoting Wayne Cascio, the Chair in Global Leadership and Management at the University of Colorado Denver Business School, National Public Radio published an article yesterday in which it warns of an industry lag of 9 years for companies that cut their workforce by 20% or more.

NPR frames the issue of significant layoffs as a choice for leaders between short-term financial gain and a deficit in long-term competitiveness:

Extreme downsizers do see an immediate boost in productivity as fewer workers do more.  But it can also lead to burnout and eventually the departure of top performing employees.

It will be very interesting to see what the statistics look like starting in 2017 for companies that have, over the past two years, cut their workforces by 20% or more in terms of revenue, profitability, market share, and turnover and related spending on recruiting/retention.  Not to mention, good team building, the measurement of which has come a long way in the past few years and will surely be even more precise at that time.

Your thoughts?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It takes time, commitment by company leadership, and at least some financial investment to make significant inroads to implement employee development strategies to create more leaders at all levels within an organization.

So why should a firm go down this path?  What's the ROI?

An article on Newswise this week based on a new study published in The Leadership Quarterly provides answers to these questions.  According to the employee engagement research of Kaiser Permanente by faculty at three California-based universities,

the more effective both the CEO and head of a department are perceived to be; the more [employees] supported the change in strategy.  ...   Moreover, the data showed that leaders are more likely to be effective in getting employees to achieve organizational objectives ... when the employees are shown that their leaders are united in supporting the strategy.

In other words, as the title of the Newswise article suggests, the number and competency of leaders in an organization contribute directly to the effectiveness of both senior leadership and the strategies they seek to carry out to achieve desired business outcomes.

With this in mind, I wanted to share the most popular posts among readers of our Employee Leadership Development blog – the ones that have helped them most to think about and act on the process of creating more leaders among their workforces.  Check them out:

1. The Connection of Flexibility and Training to the Bottom Line
2. 10 Best Practices: Transitioning to Work at Home
3. Updates: Resource Interactive's Work Environment, Comment to Our Post on Zappos' 'Leaving Bonus'
4. Employee Engagement: A WorthWHILE Metric
5. 30 Employee Development Strategies to Boost Productivity
6. BNET: Strong Workplace Cultures a Boon for MBO Leaders
7. Five Proven Strategies for Retaining Top Talent
8. Friday Nugget: Don't Underestimate the Importance of Learning
9. How a Small IT Firm Creates Knowledge Leaders, and the Company ROI
10. Job Swapping Extends Beyond Non-Management Employees

How does a focus on developing leaders factor into your overall employee practices?

Photo credit: CAREEREALISM

In April I blogged about what I perceived to be a direct link between progressive workplace culture practices at Netflix, and the payoff of employee engagement the company enjoys from such forward-thinking product innovations as discs for Internet-connected video game systems that allow their customers to stream movies and TV shows.

Today John Jantsch has a new post on his Duct Tape Marketing blog in which, through photos, he shows why a customer referral package he received from Southwest Airlines is effective for the airline.  It comes down to the package being extremely easy for the customer to understand, and to easily and quickly act upon.

This type of referral program should be no surprise coming from a company that is, as their President Emeritus and our past Top Small Company Workplaces award judge Colleen Barrett says, really in the customer service business, but happens to use airline transportation as a means to win that business.  And as Barrett told us in this Q&A with her on our website, unmatched customer service starts with an unparalleled commitment to building trust in the workplace and empowering employees at all levels to make decisions that benefit the customer (obviously a much different leadership approach than that which exists at most other airlines).

So to review, here's how Southwest Airlines' customer referral program is an example of turning what some would call "squishy" people practices to impossible-to-ignore bottom line results:

• Treat employees with trust, respect, and fairness, and encourage and empower them to think and act like owners (at Southwest, all employees are, in fact, owners).
• More highly engaged employees are more apt to create ideas, individually and as part of teams, that will generate more revenue and are more sustainable.
• The customer referral package Jantsch writes about is a tangible example of this, designed to increase that holy grail of profit margins for businesses, especially small ones: repeat business and referrals.
• More repeat business and referrals is better for everyone: customers, the business and their vendors and suppliers, and, of course, employees and their communities. 

Given the rising unemployment and falling budgets for needed social and educational programs in many states due to the economy, that businesses can have a hand in reversing those trends through the cycle described above is an inspiring proposition – and one that, frankly, I wish the leaders of many more organizations were focused upon.

Related: Read my firsthand perspective on how Southwest Airlines' workforce effectiveness made my first flying experience with them a joy.

Photo credit: John Jantsch

I've written before taking the counterpoint position to those who argue that investing in your workplace to create a robust workplace culture of employee engagement is a waste of time and money.  I think it's important for people who share my view – that it's just as good if not better for businesses as it is for employees – to speak up about it, given the economy and companies' resultant tendency to reduce spending on initiatives designed to keep employees engaged in favor of those that seem to translate more readily to bottom-line returns.

One small business advisor who shares my view is Lonnie Sciambi.  On his Entrepreneur's Yoda blog yesterday, he wrote about how employee engagement, when done well, can lead to better, longer-term results from key stakeholders including:

• Employees – keeping them in the loop of how the business is doing and their role in that increases productivity.
• Customers or clients – "The more you know, engage and motivate your prospect ... the more comfortable that prospect will feel [sic] about your company and the more successful you will be."
• Suppliers – Sciambi touches upon a small business trend: connecting with a supplier's leadership like never before to incentivize both parties' markets and reap collective returns.  How well each company's workforce is engaged quickly becomes a factor for success.

Read his full post here.

Related: Sciambi writes from the point of view of leadership engaging employees, which echoes Winning Workplaces' advice that the most effective engagement is shaped by the "tone at the top."  This post from Wally Bock, warning of a middle-management crisis when it comes to supervision of current employees and promotion from within to management posts, underscores even more why engagement should start with the CEO.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's resignation this week and lightning-fast replacement by David Cameron illustrates an organizational inevitability, writes executive coach and speaker Scott Eblin on his Next Level Blog.  Namely, that your leadership role will end.

One of the tips Eblin offers for CEOs pondering on and strategizing around this is to "Do as much good as you can while you can."  To me this speaks to succession planning – an arrow in the "quiver" of leadership practices that, in my assessment, is rarely used (or maybe I should say, rarely fully and effectively executed), but which can be incredibly powerful in terms of both employee engagement and building trust in the workplace for the long term.

Winning Workplaces has written on succession planning based on lessons learned by both outgoing and incoming leaders of our small honored firms, and others.  Here are the top five related articles on our website you might want to check out:

1. The Changing Face of Succession Planning
2. A Conversation with Helen Johnson-Leipold of the Johnson Family Companies, Part 1 (see the third question and answer)
3. Tips to Best Utilize Older Workers in Your Workforce (see the fourth paragraph down starting with bold text)
4. Succession as a Values Test
5. Casting a Wider Ownership Net

Related: Leaders of two of our award-winning firms get into more detail of their varying succession planning experiences in one of our most popular webinar recordings.  Access it here.

Image credit: Changing Trends in Human Resource Management

Last week WorldBlu announced its fourth annual list of the Most Democratic Workplaces for 2010.  Among the 44 honorees are three from Winning Workplaces' own network of honored small organizations:

• Chroma Technology Corp. - 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces Finalist
• Menlo Innovations - 2010 TSCW Finalist; 2008, 2007 Top Small Workplaces Finalist
• New Belgium Brewing - 2008 TSW Winner

Congratulations to these firms for being named to WorldBlu's list this year.  I think their short profile on New Belgium sums up very well the payoff of investing in your workplace to strengthen workforce effectiveness:

CEO Kim Jordan of the Fort Collins, CO-based 340-person company that makes the popular "Fat Tire" beer believes, "Businesses that are open to organizational democracy are usually nimble, resourceful and actively maximizing their human potential."

Related: Read about how consensus decision making is the rule at S.C. Johnson, from our interview with executive Helen Johnson-Leipold.

Like anyone, entrepreneurs can lie – to their friends and family, and certainly to their employees.  But Harvard Business Review asked last week, is it in business leaders' best interest to twist or outright ignore the truth when it comes to employee engagement for a most productive workplace?

"I don't have the right answers," Babson College management professor Daniel J. Isenberg writes on the HBR website, "but I do know that entrepreneurial lying (whether we call it marketing or raising capital or negotiating or selling the vision) is more prevalent than we care to admit."

Not only do I think Isenberg is right, but I would argue that the weakened economy over the past few years has been a major contributing factor here.  However, not every entrepreneur is guilty of lying to his or her employees.  Valuing the Winning Workplace building blocks of Trust, Respect & Fairness and Open Communications, on the whole leaders of our award-winning small organizations opt for the truth when presented between that choice and being misleading.

In the majority of these firms, the practice of open-book management (OBM) goes hand in hand with truth telling, since by nature it involves showing employees what the numbers look like (except salaries, in most cases).  OBM helped our Best Boss David Pierce be brutally honest about where his firm, ENA, was and what he needed his people to do to overcome a potentially devastating obstacle shortly after he assumed leadership of it in 2002.  You can read more about how truth telling helped ENA rebound in our Success Story on the company.

But with the right workplace culture in place, any firm – OBM or not – can benefit from a leader who tells his or her people the truth, in both good and especially in tough times.  Our 2007 Top Small Workplace Corporate Ink bears this out.  We explained in our Success Story on the business, which does not use OBM, how Founder and President Amy Bermar was able to see a substantial ROI – nothing less than the survival of her PR firm – after she was truthful with her employees that they either had to let someone go or take a collective pay cut.  The team chose the latter, and it was the right decision because when business improved a short time later, Bermar had her talent in place to tap for new client engagements.

Where do you stand on business leaders lying to their employees?  Do you think a gray area of truth-bending is OK?  And what effect do you think this has on workforce effectiveness?

In January 2009, Winning Workplaces Chairman Ken Lehman recommended that small business leaders

consider bucking the trends of publicly traded firms by engaging in a dialogue with your workers to come together around how you can all share the pain to survive this economic crisis.  The result can be heightened respect by employees for their workplace and appreciation for the opportunity to participate in the search for solutions to challenging business issues.  By taking this approach, your organization will likely be better positioned for future growth when the eventual recovery occurs.

Since then, I've explored what sharing the pain looks like when done effectively in a number of posts.  Regardless of the application of employee engagement best practices, though, our assumption has always been that it's less costly for organizations to make short-term sacrifices – such as cutting bonuses, salaries, and/or hours – to realize the longer-term desired outcomes of keeping your knowledge base and customer service expertise intact by retaining your employees.

By extension, this also means spending less on recruiting when conditions improve – a huge cost for firms during normal times and a truly prohibitive one when they need to play catch up.  The Wall Street Journal wrote about exactly this type of situation yesterday.  Citing the results of the Business Roundtable's Q1 2010 survey, Sudeep Reddy reports that while 73% of U.S. executives expect their sales to rise in the next six months, only 29% expect to increase their workforce during that period.

As opposed to hiring, Reddy writes, leaders are more likely to focus on restoring capital spending as revenue picks up.  This may be great for market expansion – or perhaps rebuilding if the recession caused some firms to lose ground.  But if consumer confidence continues to climb, as it did in March, and/or if a product or service suddenly takes off, my worry is that rampant hiring in a short burst could create a shaky workplace culture (and, thus, productive workplace) foundation moving forward.

Yes, as our honored small businesses know all too well, organizational cultures are fickle things.  They require a watchful eye, a careful touch, and unsurpassed patience.  But boy do they lead to incredible results when nurtured effectively.

I would hate to see one of the legacies of the recession we're emerging from be shoddy workplace environments that aren't truly beneficial to people or profits.  Sharing the pain, and at this stage sharing the recovery, are strategies to avoid that outcome.

Related: Whether you need to make due with the staff you have or are looking to grow your workforce, a key to success is a strong customer service culture.  This webinar recording provides insights into how best to build one from two CEOs who've done it.

The goal of this week's blog is to get you thinking about your decision-making style and, more importantly, what that style means to your workplace culture and workforce effectiveness.  Said another way, how is your decision making style impacting your organization's results? 

As a leader, have you ever thought about the number and types of decisions you make every day?  Have you considered how you make those decisions?  What about the implications of your decision-making style on employee engagement, team building, and open communication in the workplace? 

Most of us probably remember this from Management 101: The most commonly used styles are Autocratic, Democratic, Participative, and Consensus.

"I'll make the decision and you go get it done."  "No, I don't need any input; I know everything I need to know to make the right decision."  "I'll handle it; I always do and it turns out fine."  To be fair, the autocratic style is appropriate when a fast decision is required.  Otherwise, this approach ignores the importance of engaging employees and the possibility that "two heads are better than one."  It also has a dampening effect on building trust.  Do you think overusing this style might affect your business results? 

"Let's vote on it; the majority rules."  "I know we are doing it, but I didn't vote for it."  This democratic style has some advantages including building trust in the workplace and supporting open communication.  But who really "owns" the outcome?  It is easy for employees to claim, "I didn't support that" or "I thought he was doing it because he voted for it."  That reaction to the democratic style eats away at a culture of ownership and hinders your effectiveness.  Do you think overusing this style might affect your business results? 

What decision-making style do you use and how is it affecting your bottom line?

Here's an interesting piece of employee engagement research: I just compared the three-year revenue growth of applicants to Winning Workplaces' Top Small Company Workplaces award over the last two years, whose founder is still active in the business, to applicants whose founder is no longer active.

Here's a table showing my findings:

As you can see, our 2010 applicants that have active founders experienced 20% greater revenue growth over three years than those without active founders.  Likewise, our 2009 applicants with active founders experienced 15% greater revenue growth than their counterparts without them.

Note: While Winning Workplaces has run the Top Small Company Workplaces award project since 2007, I didn't include our 2007 and 2008 award applicants in this sample because in both of those years, the question in our application "Is your founder still active?" was not required.  Therefore, we don't have enough comparative data on them.

What should we make of this?  Here are my takeaways:

1. This reinforces the notion that company founders tend to assemble like-minded workforces.
2. On the flip side, job candidates ideally want to join firms whose values reflect theirs.
3. Once they're hired, employees take their workplace team building cues from the founder.
4. And this is why succession planning is so difficult, and should be given as much lead time as possible to implement effectively.

Bonus: Here's a post-succession tip to keep employees engaged (although it may not be for every company): Invite a non-active founder to attend your next all-employee gathering.  The informal conversations can lead to actionable, innovative ideas.

As I did yesterday, I turn once again to SmartBrief on Leadership, which now points to an article on Jack Welch in the San Francisco Chronicle as a "must-read."

In summarizing the Chronicle piece, SmartBrief pulls out Marc Davis' statement, "[F]or any business -- gigantic, medium-sized, modest, or small -- the management philosophy of Jack Welch may be applied equally."

Really?

While four of the five Welch management strategies Davis covers are good, and can be applied in any size business, I would disagree that his #2 ("Lead a company, don't over-manage it") is just as effective in a small setting as in a large one.

Winning workplaces has long said, based on our own employee engagement research and other workforce effectiveness studies, that small and midsized businesses' "secret sauce" are managers and even CEOs who lead and manage, taking every opportunity to boost employee leadership development.  While time intensive and impactful on the budget, the payoffs of this approach are many, almost always outweighing the investment:

• Greater commitment and engagement
• Lower absenteeism and presenteeism
• More innovation
• Longer employee tenures
• Lower turnover (and lower recruiting costs)
• Higher customer satisfaction, mainly due to customers dealing with the same employees for longer periods

Need more proof that Jack Welch might not be the best management model for small businesses?  Click below to read our take on his arguments that...

• The bottom 10% of employees should be cut each year
• There's no such thing as work-life balance

Care to push back?  Please do so by leaving a comment below.

This week, once again, my e-mail inbox contained the disappointing results of a Gallup study that indicated that the Work Environment Index dropped to a new low in February. 

The Work Environment Index measures job satisfaction, the ability to use one's strengths at work, trust, and openness in the workplace, and how one's supervisor treats him or her.  The Work Environment score was 51.6 in February 2008; 48.7 in February 2009; and is now at 48.0 in February 2010. 

Why are these results so concerning?  Among other things, these scores say two things:

1. Quality of life is negatively impacted, and
2. Workforce effectiveness and workplace productivity aren't nearly where they could be. 

As a leader, do you want to make sure that these numbers don't apply to you?  Do you want a productive workplace with highly engaged employees and a culture of ownership?  If so, consider these actions: 

1. Take a hard look at your organization's culture.  What's the level of employee engagement?  Do your managers know how to manage and lead?  Do you sense a positive energetic organization or one that reflects fear and/or boredom? 
2. If you think there is an opportunity for improvement, get serious about it.  Start with doing an employee survey to better understand where you are doing things right and where you could improve.  If you are going to be serious about improving your workplace culture, don't guess.  Get the facts – directly from your team.
3. Once you have the facts, do something about them.  This is where the work gets hard.  Changing a culture, which means changing the way people behave, isn't easy.  Get outside help if you have to.  Be clear about your "end goal"; if you do this work successfully, what will your workplace culture look like in a couple years?  Develop a plan to get from where you are today to your end goal.  What are the key steps?  How will you measure your success?  How will you engage employees along the way?  How will you build trust, a foundational component of a great workplace? 

The workplace studies are yielding consistent results: there is a growing problem with job satisfaction and, in turn, productivity.  As a leader, do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem?

Yesterday after the Associated Press reported on the results of a San Diego State University study finding that Generation Y (or Millennials) highly value compensation and vacation time, some in the blogosphere asked if, especially in this economic environment, Gen Y needs a wake-up call.

I don't think so – and I'm not saying that because I'm a card-carrying Millennial.  As someone interested in progressive people practices for a more productive workplace, I look at these two sticking points as the carrot at the end of a very lucrative stick for businesses.

Here are my top 5 reasons why I think Gen Y is entitled to its job wants:

1. It's now the most dominant generation in the workforce.  When you rise to that position and make decisions that benefit companies in both front-line and managerial roles, you get to call the shots when it comes to "skin in the game."
2. As Donna Fenn reports from a number of sources in her book Upstarts!, not only are record numbers of Millennials enrolling in entrepreneurship/MBA programs, but a greater share of those students than ever before are coming in with a business already in tow.  IMO, if these young people invest the ridiculous amount of time it takes to create and nurture a thriving business – and help our economy in the process through taxes and job creation – they deserve these two rewards.
3. As Penelope Trunk pointed out in a blog post I cited last year, Gen Y more readily embraces a proven leadership approach known as "fast failure."  Since our employee engagement research shows this can greatly improve innovation and thus productivity and customer satisfaction, again, I think Millennials deserve some just rewards for significantly scaling up a company's revenue and giving them a greater shot at achieving or maintaining profitability.
4. As organizational development guru David Lee argued on ERE.net last month, Gen Y doesn't beat around the bush on satisfaction – if they're not, you won't see them because they'll have left.  The cost-effective flip side of this for businesses is that they're much less likely than other generations to be "what the Gallup Organization calls ROAD Warriors — Retired on Active Duty."
5. Finally, as The CEO of YOU author Marsha Petrie Sue wrote in the California Chronicle, "Gen Y won't retire – they will reinvent."  Aren't greater pay and more time off fair tradeoffs for more productive ideas coming back from breaks and a longer work life spent helping companies improve their sales and bottom line?

Do you agree or disagree with my assessment?  Why?

In my last post I mentioned the employee satisfaction level (45%) recently reported by The Conference Board and concluded by asking "whose fault is this anyway?"

When I've asked similar questions, I get a range of answers.  Some are adamant that it is the leader's fault.  Some say the employee should switch jobs if they are so dissatisfied.  Others can't come up with an answer.

Here's the answer: It is the leader's fault and the employee's fault.  In organizations with an effective workplace culture, all parties have a sense of ownership. 

In creating a culture of ownership and in turn a productive workplace, we often write about what leaders should do.  I'm going to look at the flip side of the coin and point out what leaders shouldn't do if they want to contribute to a culture of trust, employee engagement, or team building.

1. As your organization's leader, DON'T be so intensely focused on results that you forget people are your most important means of getting to those results.  A quick story: Years ago, during the first six months of becoming a CEO, I learned this the hard way.   I overused the phrase "I expect" and the majority of my interactions with my team were about what they were doing to deliver the numbers.  Thank goodness a combination of my own experience, an executive coach, and feedback from a couple people on my team helped me realize that the intense focus on results was backfiring.  Clearly, a productive workforce requires building engaged employees. 
2. DON'T ask for input and then ignore it.  This approach squashes open communication in the workplace.  This approach says "I don't care about your ideas or expertise."  Without communication and caring, building trust is unlikely. Guess what?  Poor communication + minimal trust = less than optimal results.
3. DON'T decide that you are going to launch an initiative (large or small) to improve employee engagement unless you plan to follow through.  Not surprisingly, this reinforces a perception that you as the leader really don't care about employees and you can't be counted upon to do what you say you will do.  And that goes back to one of my beginning points: In a great workplace, the culture of ownership contributes to results. 

This list of "don'ts" is endless.  Have you been on the receiving end of a don't?  As a leader, have you learned a valuable lesson from a don't?  Those of us at Winning Workplaces would love to hear your story.

My fellow Drake University alum Jennie Dorris – a former entrepreneur who founded the Internet-based Knot.magazine – penned a powerful, firsthand account this week for Denver's 5280 magazine on how the recession has "fused" her workaholic tendencies into her definition of self.

Although she speaks from the point of view of a freelance writer, I think even folks who are content working for someone else, and not being in business for themselves, can relate to the symptoms of burnout Jennie describes.

Just as some economists are predicting that we need to get used to the idea of a "new norm" of unemployment at or above 10% and extremely slow GDP growth, I worry that employees and independent contractors, not to mention the newest generation of entrepreneurs, will need to accept the new norm that sacrifices personal/family commitments and involvement and even investment in their communities in the name of work – including, as Jennie says, the overwhelming pressure to say "Yes" to every opportunity.

Ironically, even though – speaking of new norms – the focus in employers both large and small these days is on goal completion and showing bottom line results (fueling management trends such as lean and ROWE), these same employers owe it to themselves, at the end of the day, to encourage a healthy balance with all of their stakeholders.  This includes all three I mentioned above: employees and ICs and, yes, their vendors and suppliers, which lead their own workforces.

The reasons to fight back against the tide of work as redefinition of self are compelling: burned out workers are less productive and are more likely to leave given the opportunity, adding to a company's turnover costs.  At a larger, societal level, their consumption by work takes away from their ability to participate in their communities (including being good consumers, which spurs economic growth), and be effective parents to the next generation of workers and consumers.

What can be done to reverse course here?  Small businesses that actively manage their workplace culture and have a strong pulse on the needs of their employees, like our Top Small Company Workplace award applicants, are building safeguards to prevent burnout into their employee engagement strategies.

For example, 58% of our 2010 applicant firms offer wellness/fitness programs as part of their employee benefits.  And over 80% of them offer flexible work arrangements – I blogged yesterday about some of their top practices.

These employee activities are not going to turn things around overnight, particularly if the economy worsens.  But as BP is saying when it comes to their efforts on the renewable energy front, "It's a start."  I happen to think it's a good start.

Related: Read our editorial on the cost of job stress.

After reading this scathing editorial on the new CBS TV show Undercover Boss in the latest issue of Newsweek, our Founder and Chairman Ken Lehman wrote our team an email in which he wondered,

if even big company CEOs who are doing their jobs, and providing leadership, could be sufficiently anonymous, given all the technology that enables regular contact with a workforce, to go undercover and pull it off.  So while the program is probably intended to depict these undercover bosses as progressive leaders, I think it demonstrates just the opposite.

I agree with Ken.  He seems to share the view of respected workplace author and coach Wally Bock, who recently fired off a series of his own cogent arguments for why Undercover Boss is "a repellant piece of trash."  Chief among these is that,

If you're a senior executive, you don't need to go undercover to find out what happens on the front line.  Just go out and talk to the folks on a regular basis.  If you're not already doing that, you won't find out much from a single week undercover.

I was so impressed by Wally's take on the show that I tweeted about it last week (in addition to an assessment by Quantum Workplace, which is much more forgiving).

Taking into account the above opinions on Undercover Boss, and my own, I would retitle it Exposed Boss.  Here's why:

• A boss of a large company that is "surprised" by any amount of poor workplace behavior should be an agenda item for the firm's next board of directors meeting.
• Even more importantly from an employee engagement/workplace team building perspective, no CEO – of a large or small business – should be OK putting workers between a rock and a hard place, forcing them to appear on air and potentially reveal damaging behavior, or to refuse to appear and risk disciplinary action, including suspension or even termination.

In his email to us today, Ken also said "No CEO of a Winning Workplace is sufficiently anonymous to become an undercover boss."  While that's true – and ultimately a good thing in terms of creating a productive workplace starting from the "tone at the top" – it's a shame that there are probably not high enough ratings in the premise of CEOs of highly effective small businesses MBWA and focusing on what their people are doing that's right and which moves the business forward.

If you've seen Undercover Boss, what's your take on it?

In the last few days, as the extent of the problem with the brakes on Toyota's Prius and other popular models has become widely known and finally acknowledged by the company, the media has rightly critiqued the automaker for its failures in leadership and public relations management.

What's been talked about less is how Toyota has dropped the ball in its customer service.  I found this segment by Prius owner and CNN reporter Jessica Yellin quite revealing.  It shows her struggle to first reach a real, live person to state her case, and then to get some accountability and next step recommendations.  Check it out:

As usually happens when a customer is also a member of the mainstream media, once Yellin told a manager that she was with CNN, she started getting some answers – and an acknowledgement of the problem by Toyota.

But what about the "little guy" (or girl) who doesn't have the clout that comes with a press pass?  I liken the customer service experience of regular Toyota customers in this situation to the Titanic not having enough lifeboats for every passenger.

Not having enough reps in place, and not equipping the ones that are with sufficient, actionable information for the customer – on a normal basis and especially in a massive recall situation like this – is not just Toyota's problem.  It's a persistent issue for most big companies.

Consequently, when smaller companies provide enough people or improve their processes so this hurdle is removed, they greatly increase their competitive advantage in customer satisfaction.  This, in turn, has a profound effect on new customer acquisition and revenue from repeat customers.

At our annual conference last year, the chairman of midsized company Rackspace Hosting, Graham Weston, called their main phone number to show attendees that they, in contrast to Toyota, do have enough "lifeboats" in place to keep everyone afloat, in good times and when disaster strikes.  Check out the video of this compelling demonstration:

The Bottom Line: Small businesses have an inherent workforce effectiveness advantage over their larger peers when it comes to communications team building/employee engagement innovation so that when crises hit, they're ready to continue providing excellent service.  This preparedness can mean only a negligible impact on sales and reputation.

If you missed Winning Workplaces' annual conference last October in Chicago, you can get a taste of what attendees experienced by watching the video below.  Especially noteworthy from an employee engagement research perspective is the section from :37 - 1:48, which describes the nomination, application, and judging process we undertook to select the 15 Top Small Workplaces that were honored at the event.

Check it out (if you can't see the video in your blog feed, click here):

In terms of the payoff of employee engagement activities, I love Bernie Dyme of Perspectives Ltd's definition of the ROI of a great workplace (starting at 5:38):

When people are so engaged in what they're doing and their employer that they want to be there no matter how bad the economy or the situation.  They're going to be there even when things are good after they're bad.

When it comes to employee retention tips and other strategies for greater workforce effectiveness, what would you like to see us cover in an event format this year?