After careful consideration, Winning Workplaces has concluded that it will not be carrying out the 2012 Top Small Company Workplaces competition with Inc. Magazine.  In 2010 and 2011 we collaborated with Inc. on this recognition project honoring small and midsize organizations that use exemplary employee engagement and team building strategies to create more productive workplace cultures.

We are taking a step back and retrenching over the next few months while we work to redefine our major activities that will lead us to sustainability for the next decade.

If you have any questions, please contact either Nuala Novak or Ken Lehman at info@winningworkplaces.org or via phone at 847-328-9798.  Thank you.

Christopher Wallace is Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Amsterdam Printing, a leading provider of personalized promotional pens and other personalized items such as imprinted apparel and mugs and customized calendars. In the following guest post, he details how you can show appreciation as part of your employee engagement best practices to strengthen your workplace culture and improve business results.

Think back to the worst job you've ever had. Whether it involved greasy food, dirty hands, or unclogging sewage, chances are, you didn't feel worthwhile. There's a common denominator when it comes to feeling unsatisfied with your job, and it has everything to do with morale.

Even the grossest, seemingly unpleasant jobs can be alright when you feel appreciated for doing them.

Gratitude starts at the top. If you're the owner, manager, or supervisor, it's important to let your employees know when they've excelled at their job. A culture of 'thank you' will take a company much farther than one where employees harbor quiet resentment and distrust. If you're looking for genuine ways to thank your employees, consider these suggestions:

1. Give Them Something They Really Want

   Gifts don't have to be just for the holidays, and sometimes a thoughtful item can be more effective from a management standpoint than even a small bonus on a paycheck. Do you have a salesperson who is always excited about the office March Madness basketball pool? The next time he closes a deal, get him a pair of tickets to his team's next home game. Is everyone always raving about one employee's homemade lunches in the break room? Surprise your foodie employee with a gift card to that buzzed-about new restaurant.

   Gifts can be more than just a generic, obligatory thank you. Personalize your gratitude. Which brings us to tip two:

2. Get to Know Your Employees

   Years ago, on my second or third day of a new job, the company owner appeared at my desk and handed me two tickets to a new night club's grand opening. He said he'd be there and hoped I could come. Of course I made the effort, enjoying an open bar and free dinner, not to mention getting to know my new boss in a comfortable atmosphere.

   In the three years that I worked there, we also went fishing together and played golf. When the company took a downturn and a large chunk of the staff, including myself, had to be laid off, I knew it was an agonizing decision for him. Although we weren't 'friends' like I am with my college buddies, we understood each other and I knew he cared about helping me find a new job.

   It's important to know the people you work with. If you don't even know an employee's name, how can they believe it when you say 'thank you?' Learn the basics. Ask about their family and their hobbies. When a person knows you care about them, they'll work harder because they know you appreciate it.

3. Have Contests, but Don't Discriminate

   An employee of the month program can be a great motivator, but chances are, one or two 'teacher's pets' will end up always being the stand-outs. Have a 'once a year' policy for the winners if you go this route.

   For sales teams, goals and rewards are a great way to motivate. If your entire staff has a motivator beyond their usual commission to sell the most product in a period of time, you'll undoubtedly see higher sales figures than you would without the additional incentive.

4. Take Them Out On the Town

   Food is a universal currency. It's amazing how a treat in the break room can change your employees' day. Donuts and muffins are the easy go-to items in the morning, but consider being a little more thoughtful. Did a new BBQ restaurant just open down the street? Surprise everyone on Friday with a catered lunch. Did you have a particularly strong quarter? After-work happy hour (with the boss picking up the tab) is a huge morale booster, and it brings your staff closer together.

5. Set the Mood

   We can't get every employee a corner office with wall-to-wall windows, but a few small items can improve the aura of any workplace. First on the priority list? Plants. The simple presence of our living green counterparts seems to sooth the soul, especially in otherwise sterile, fluorescent-lit environments. If space allows, create a break room with comfortable seating and space to congregate. Finally, consider letting employees be casual in their dress. If clients don't come by the office, letting them know it's okay to take their shoes off at their desk can add to comfort levels. Casual Friday is always a plus. Taking any sort of initiative to increase worker comfort shows that you're thinking about their best interest and grateful for their hard work.

Everyone wants to feel appreciated, and a good business leader will recognize the value of happy employees. Let your staff know you're thankful for all they do, and the rewards will come back tenfold.

Related: To see these tips and others in use at an Ohio-based communications firm, click here.

Did you catch this rare bit of good news about the economy this week?  Reuters reported that based on increased consumer spending, U.S. gross domestic product grew at a 2.5% annual rate in the third quarter, up from a 1.3% in the second quarter.

If a strong or even stronger fourth quarter follows, will companies dip into their historic profits to hire in a manner that will be meaningful in terms of making a dent in the high unemployment rate in early 2012?  That's anyone's guess at this point, but what is known is that eventually -- as the recovery comes or continues to happen, depending on your perspective -- recruiting efforts will need to pick back up.

And, as leadership educator, executive coach, and speaker John Baldoni argues in his new column on BNET this week, companies need to cope presently with a workforce that, in large part, is and has been doing more with less.

He cites a new People Metrics report in making the case that employee engagement best practices matter because they enable workers to feel positive about their organization (the fact that their firm is still in business being a contributing factor in their engagement level).

What's more, as hiring picks up in tandem with an improving economy, it may make an even bigger impact on your current workforce.  Baldoni notes that in this scenario, employees know that their options have expanded, so the extent to which their employer's people practices make them feel integral to the team and chart a tangible path for their growth and development within the organization become "a critical factor in whether an employee stays or leaves."

As Winning Workplaces advised in an editorial on our website in July 2009 -- ironically at the same time that many economists later said we were out of the "Great Recession" -- businesses would do well for their long-term prospects if they purposefully shared the rewards of recovery with their workers as both an acknowledgement of their taking the hard journey with leadership, and as a means of encouraging continued commitment and camaraderie to maintain a productive workplace culture.

Next Step: Whether you are in a hiring mode now or waiting to do so based on how your sales forecast plays out and how the economy as a whole continues to perform, this guest post on our blog provides great tips to motivate your workers, including many that are cost effective.

Some of our past posts have stressed that it's a good idea for you to improve employee engagement and other people practices in your organization by adding a formal social media policy.  Reasons for taking this step include enhancing your ability to engage both existing and potential customers as well as promoting better cross-generational communication among your workforce and avoiding employee litigation.

But what does a comprehensive and effective social media policy look like?  Dr. Sarah Elaine Eaton of Eaton International Consulting shed a lot of light on this last week in a post for Social Media Today.  Based on her review of over 150 such policies for a wide range of firms, including both for- and not-for-profits, she shared 16 dimensions in a "lessons learned" context.

What I find especially noteworthy about a number of Eaton's policy considerations is how they align with the building blocks of a Winning Workplace.  For instance:

• "Encourage honesty and transparency" and "Respect others" promote Trust, Respect and Fairness
• "Encourage a conversational tone" and "Seek permission and ask for help" promote Open Communications and Learning and Development
• "Discourage disputes" promotes Teamwork and Involvement
• "Time allocation" promotes Work/Life Balance

As our research and that of others who study highly productive workplace cultures show, to the extent that companies can reinforce great-workplace characteristics in their policies and procedures, they tend to enjoy better business results as they inform, enrich, and empower their people.  Eaton's social media policy framework is one example of this phenomenon in action.

Related: We recently shared this video by social media marketing expert Laura Roeder on our Facebook page, in which she argues that you will best engage existing and potential customers (and convert that engagement to sales) by turning to current employees.  This approach, of course, hinges on having in place a useful social media policy.

The following is a guest post by Drake MacDonald.  Drake's brief experience in construction introduced him to the field's many shortcomings.  As an online writer and editor, he works to promote construction management education in the hopes of improving industry standards of communication and organization.

In the construction business, it is crucial for supervisors and employees to have a symbiotic relationship in order to build a healthy work culture.  However, in order to create such an environment, each construction management company must consider what can be done to develop a supportive workplace, how to inspire trust and leadership within the team, and how barriers that may inhibit productive transactions can be removed.  While this process sounds complicated, in actuality it is fairly easy to implement.  Simply utilizing the following ideas will allow you to establish a work environment that is not only healthy, but efficient and productive at every level.

The first step in creating a healthy work culture is for both employees and supervisors to be open to hearing and utilizing the ideas of any member of the construction team.  To ensure that all ideas are being heard, construction owners can encourage workers and supervisors to submit their ideas formally to the construction office.  Company owners should also encourage employees to share their ideas with their supervisors and other team members.

Secondly, although purpose is important to construction, it is also important that supervisors and employees utilize a process approach to managing each construction site.  When construction management is focused on process, team members are much more likely to meet the expected standards and complete each stage of construction with success.  Furthermore, the process approach allows construction work to be completed with greater efficiency and quality.

Thirdly, it is important that team members on the construction site have peer support and trust during the building process.  This can be facilitated by following through with all work orders and process standards.  Likewise, all members of the construction team should learn to cooperate and collaborate with each other on a day-to-day basis.  This means that each team member needs to be accountable for their work and must treat other members of the team with respect.  However, even with the most agreeable team, it’s inevitable that issues will arise that interfere with the construction process.  When such an instance occurs, it is crucial that the issue is addressed promptly with the entire team.

Ultimately if you incorporate collaborative behaviors, open communication, and a process approach into your construction company, you can easily build a healthy and profitable workplace culture.  Remember that construction teams can also focus on creating healthy work environments by utilizing economically green tools and materials that benefit the industry, workers, and clients.  With such a culture, construction safety is inevitable.  Furthermore, when you utilize these techniques, you can be confident that your team is giving their best.

Related: For even more employee engagement and team building strategies aimed at increasing job satisfaction and overall performance within the construction sector, click here.

• An Innovative, Cost-Effective Advertising Strategy (Bonus: It Builds Goodwill)
• There's Strength in (Offbeat) Numbers

The two videos below provide about as stark a contrast as you could imagine between what constitutes a poor workplace culture in the carwash industry, and one that relies on the Winning Workplaces-approved notions of strong team building and investing in your workplace to boost customers and their satisfaction for a healthier bottom line.

First, here's the "bad" example.  I found this in a Huffington Post article published this week highlighting extreme practices in play in a number of car washes in the Los Angeles area.  Warning: at times the video is graphic in its depictions of how workers are treated.

Substandard – even inexcusable – people practices mentioned include:

• Beatings
• Sexual harassment
• Manager threats
• Pay at half the minimum wage, or less

Now here's what a workplace looks like in the same industry with the polar opposite approach to employee engagement.  This is our interview with Jerry Dahm, Executive VP of Mike's Carwash.  Based in Indianapolis, Mike's is a 2009 winner of our Top Small Workplace award.

Here's what Jerry mentions as features of how they treat their workforce, which includes over 200 full-time employees at more than 30 locations:

• When new hires emerge from their rigorous hiring process, their on-boarding includes 40 hours of job training
• Grooming leaders from within; while they invest $3,500 per person, per year, on tuition reimbursement, they see a great ROI since about 50% of job openings are filled from within
• Open book management with financial literacy training to help workers see how their efforts influence the bottom line – and improve their pay, since they also have profit sharing

Also, while Jerry doesn't mention this in the interview, I think it's noteworthy to point out the further contrast involving wages.  When Mike's Carwash filled out their application for our award in 2008, only 8% of employees were earning $20,000 per year or less, and none of them were (or are today) getting below the minimum wage.

Thinking about the "bad" example above, I find it not only sad that some carwash owners and leaders are fostering such poor workplaces, but counterproductive to their financial best interests!  The Huffington Post article notes that the car washing services industry today is a $23 billion enterprise, and new research released this month shows it's a rare one that, over the next 5 years, is actually set to experience healthy growth of about 19%.  So doesn't it make sense that those who run these operations would want to adequately pay and fairly treat their workers to in turn deliver the best service, to earn the biggest piece of that pie?

Related: Read our Success Story on Mike's Carwash to learn even more about how the company creates a competitive culture of ownership which translates to better business results.

I am pleased to share with you the following guest post by Anita Campbell.  Anita is the Founder of the Small Business Trends website and CEO of BizSugar, an online community of small business owners.  Today she tackles a topic of concern when establishing great employee engagement and workplace team building strategies: not crossing the friend line with your employees to your business' detriment.  Enjoy!

Everyone wants – has a need, even – to be liked.  It certainly makes going to work every day a lot easier if the people you work with like you.  And because we spend so much time at work, it's only natural to want to cultivate friendships with the people we're with for so many hours every day.  The rules change when you're the boss, though.  There's nothing wrong with being friendly with your employees.  But you do have to draw the line, or maybe a few lines, to also avoid damaging your professional relationships with them, and to keep their respect.  Here are a few tips on how to maintain that delicate balance.

Don't Get Too Personal

You've probably read or been told that you should set boundaries with your employees.  But what does that mean, exactly?  It would be awkward to actually sit your employees down and go over a list of what subjects are okay to talk about, and which ones are taboo.  But it can also be difficult to establish those lines in a more subtle manner.  How you set those boundaries is up to you, but one of the most important things to avoid is getting too personal.

From time to time, your employees may have to reveal certain personal information to you if it's about something that may affect their work.  Having surgery can mean time out of the office, for example.  Or maybe they're getting a divorce, and must remove their spouse from their insurance coverage.  There's really no getting around that, as uncomfortable as it may be for everyone involved.  But those types of revelations should only go one way.  Need to be away from work for medical reasons?  That's all you need to say.  Getting a divorce?  Try to keep it to yourself.

Just like you wouldn't broadcast your problems on a business networking site, you don't want to let your entire office know what you're going through.  Your employees need to have faith that you are there to manage and help them, and although you want them to see you as human, you must try to maintain their confidence in you, and in the company.  Breaking down in the office because your spouse left you will damage that confidence.  Take time off if you need to, but keep your personal life personal.

Now, as with many rules, there is an exception to this one. If you're a small business owner, and you only employ a few people, it may be more difficult to separate your personal life from your professional one.  A startup can oftentimes create a camaraderie and a sense of ownership that employees in larger companies don't feel.  You may all be spending long hours in the office together to get those client proposals done, or inviting your employees' ideas and contributions to get your startup past one of the inevitable hiccups you'll run into.  If that's the kind of relationship you've built with your employees, you may feel more comfortable revealing some of the more personal details of your life.  Just remember to maintain your position as the boss at the same time.

Don't Get Drunk in Front of Employees

You'd think this one would need explaining, but think back.  Before you were promoted or started your own business, did you ever see one of your bosses get drunk at the company Christmas party, or the company picnic?  It happens more often than you might think, and much more often than it should.  Learn from those experiences, and don't be that boss.

It's okay to have a drink or two with your employees from time to time.  Most people will probably have a drink at a holiday party or other company event.  Or maybe you'll go out after work to celebrate landing a big contract.  Just don't overdo it.  Your employees do not need to see you slurring your words, or losing control in public.  It can be embarrassing, and make it very difficult for them to respect you once you're back in the office.  And let's face it, no one likes to have to babysit someone who's had a few too many.  Never put your employees in a position where they have to monitor you, or take your keys away from you.  It's asking too much of them, and putting them in a very awkward position.  No one appreciates that, least of all the people who are supposed to be able – and want – to look up to you.

Don't Play Favorites

Of course you're going to like some employees more than others.  There'll be one person you just click with, someone with whom you'd be very good friends if not for the work situation that requires keeping a little distance.  Because you can't hang out with that person the way you'd like to, you may try to compensate by treating that employee a little better than the others.  If you think you're being subtle about it, you're wrong.  The other employees will notice it, and it will cause problems.

Having several employees can be very much like having a family, especially if that's the kind of culture you've worked to build in your company.  Like a family, there will be some sibling rivalries, and competition for your attention as the pseudo parental figure.  Don't encourage it.  Everyone needs to work together, not against each other, and if it becomes obvious that you favor one employee over the others, the employees on the outs will band together against the favorite.  It's just human nature.  And nothing destroys morale more quickly in the office than feeling unappreciated, or as if the work being done doesn't really matter.  Treat all your employees equally but fairly, which also means that when one of them isn't performing, you take the appropriate action – even if it's your favorite.

The main answer is, yes, you can be friends with your employees, just not the same kind of friends you are with your non-work friends.  Be friendly, be fair, but keep the focus on work, morale, and productivity, and you'll get much more out of your employees than you would if you tried to make them like you all the time.  In other words – be the boss.

Related: As the boss, you may be concerned about getting too chummy with your staff to keep an eye toward building trust in the workplace. Yet, as we write about here, research shows a possible link between budding friendships among your staff resulting in more highly engaged employees when it comes to dealing with leaders and managers.

I've written before on the real and significant costs to businesses that fail to put in place people practices to rid their workplace culture of undue stress.  This is something that more owners and leaders are becoming cognizant of, setting up things like EAPs to help their workers cope with the pressures of work, home life, and their other demands.

The conventional wisdom has been that this problem is unique to, and confined to, each organization.  Yet, a study published in this month's issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior, which I learned about on the TODAY Show's website, shows that once employee stress is severe enough, it can act like a virus:

"This phenomenon jumps workplaces," [study author Merideth Ferguson] says.  "It goes from the workplace to the home to another workplace."

This finding seems particularly alarming for small businesses.  According to the SBA, firms with 500 or fewer employees account for over 99% of all employers and are the leading creators of net new jobs.  Therefore the effect identified in this study spells bad news for our entire economy – at a time when it cannot afford another setback.

Yet, in the silver lining department, these firms' key strengths are their small size and typical lack of silos, which make it easier to implement meaningful change relatively quickly.  This includes employee engagement practices with a fulfillment focus – those that engender caring for people in the totality of their lives and a mutual understanding and appreciation of the responsibilities of leaders and employees toward one another.

Winning Workplaces has written on this extensively.  Check out the selected articles below for practices you can use or adapt to promote a healthy work/life balance among your workforce – and to ensure that "the employee stress buck stops here":

• Feature: How Babies in the Workplace Provide a Win-Win
• Success Story: Barclay Water Management, Inc.
• Success Story: Dealer.com
• Success Story: Guerra DeBerry Coody (GDC)

I've written before sharing some company core values templates you could consider using and internalizing in your organization to improve employee engagement and create a more productive workplace.  However, it's the internalizing part that can prove difficult for organizations.

Just how do you "operationalize" your values so they pervade your culture, promote company pride, and – most importantly – contribute to the bottom line in the form of productivity growth so they're not just words to your accountant?

In answer to a question about this I posed on LinkedIn last week, Rich Sheridan, CEO of our 2011 Top Small Company Workplace Menlo Innovations, quickly replied via email and shared with me 7 posts they had already penned and posted on their blog which show how this successful, Michigan-based business software developer has made this work in their organization.  Here's what he shared, and what they have done:

1. Rethink and retool your interviewing phase so it becomes new hires' most exciting day with your company
2. Build an intentional culture
3. Elevate the person sitting next to you
4. Celebrate stories of joy – even when visitors are around
5. Take note of how others see your workplace culture
6. Use your product/service quality as noted by your customers, as a source of energy and motivation for your team
7. Look at implementing a "babies in the workplace" benefit for new moms and dads (an expert in how these practices are achievable and their business benefits is profiled on our website)

Some of the business results Rich and his company have seen from how they've operationalized their company values include:

• Profitable all of the last 4 years
• 2010 voluntary turnover less than half the industry average
• Average employee tenure of 6 years
• A long line of top talent who want to go through Menlo's unique recruiting process and join their team
• A long line of CEOs who want to tour their business to learn and adapt their processes for their own enterprises (helping to build buzz and forge new relationships for business development)

Next Step: What do you do currently to operationalize your company's core values?  Click here to add your answer to my LinkedIn question.  Hurry – it closes in 4 days.

The historically high unemployment level gets discussed often in the media lately, but an under-the-radar trend is that voluntary employee turnover is currently at a three-year high, according to the Department of Labor.  Clearly, even with continued rounds of layoffs at some of the best-known companies and a weak hiring outlook, greener pastures are luring away top talent.

Still, through our employee engagement research, Winning Workplaces sees a vehicle for both increased job satisfaction and commitment (helping to keep in check and even reduce voluntary turnover) and innovation, productivity, and service improvements to boost the bottom line: employee ownership.

One of the measurements we did as part of our 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award application was to see what percent of employees, whether management or lower-level staff, own stock in the company.  As you might expect, in the vast majority of the 342 private and not-for-profit organizations who applied this year – 252, or 74% – no employees own company stock.  In the remaining 90 firms (26%), 1-100% of employees do.

But check out what I found, as illustrated in the charts below, in terms of how annual revenue, revenue growth, and employee turnover are all impacted by how many employees own stock.  I added trendlines which show that as more employees are part of the workplace culture of ownership, these all-important metrics tend to be stronger.

Employee ownership may not be right for every organization.  Yet, as our coverage of our 2011 workplace award winners shows, those that make it work set themselves up for long-term success.  In some cases, in perhaps an ironic twist, those that come out way ahead of downturns like the one we're in now and need to create and fill more roles to meet demand use it as a selling point to attract top talent from their competitors.

One of the hallmarks of a harmonious and productive workplace culture is little to no litigation initiated against a company by current or former employees.  Winning Workplaces looks at this as part of a larger question about government, civil, or criminal complaints in our annual Top Small Company Workplaces competition.  In 2011, only 2% of winners and finalists and 3% of the other applicants for our award had had employees bring forth litigation.

We evaluated our 2011 award applicants for the year 2010, so this means a total of 5% of all firms were the subject of related complaints or investigations.  This is consistent with what we saw for our 2010 award applicants (for the year 2009), as I wrote about here.

And yet, as Jason Carney, Human Resource Director for WorkSmart Systems, an Indianapolis-based PEO serving clients in 37 states, shared with me, complaints filed in 2010 by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) grew 7% over 2009, to just shy of 100,000.

What are the companies who apply for our workplace award doing to safeguard against employee litigation (and legal trouble in general)?  They are largely following these steps that Jason outlined, which speak to these firms' exemplary people practices:

1. Policy development: Have good policies in place and regularly update employee handbooks.  Policies should including one addressing social media participation, specifically mentioning that the terms of the policy are not intended to interfere with concerted protected activity.
2. Ongoing informal education: Guide your employees to changes in federal labor laws.
3. Formal training: Ensure that your employees are well versed in company policies and federal guidelines, such as unlawful harassment prevention and wage and hour law proficiency.

One additional insight related to these steps Jason shared is that while many companies might view their implementation as routine in terms of forms creation and updating, or just doing the right thing as any company would strive to do, the reality is that they are a powerful set of trust building activities that promote better communication and, ultimately, greater productivity.

Related: If you didn't see this article when we first published it, check out guest columnist and attorney Paula Brantner's checklist to help startups avoid cutting legal corners which could prove costly later on.

Although we consider ourselves extremely vocal when it comes to promoting the link between staff engagement activities and long-term company growth, Winning Workplaces is by no means the only organization shouting this from the soapbox.  Just last week, SJF Institute (with whom we've previously collaborated to produce content to help you improve your people practices) released a massive, 155-page report exploring this link in stunning detail.

While this report, Employees Matter: Maximizing Company Value Through Workforce Engagement, would be noteworthy in any case, we appreciate that over a third of the 24 companies profiled are Winning Workplaces honorees.  They include:

• Advanced Circuits
• Dancing Deer Baking Company
• Graniterock
• Namaste Solar
• New Belgium Brewing
• PrintingForLess.com
• Red Door Interactive
• SmartPak
• The Redwoods Group

Before delving into the full report, I recommend checking out page 3 of SJF's 4-page Executive Summary of the report.  There you'll find a breakdown of 10, Winning Workplaces-approved worker engagement strategies which fall under the areas of HR practices, culture formation, and broad-based involvement and ownership.

We congratulate SJF Institute for undertaking the research, writing, and production to make available this valuable report.

What are your takeaways from the report, or other thoughts on it?  Let us know in the comments.

In this economy, who doesn't want all the help they can get to grow their business?  I got an email this week from our friends at the Small Giants Community (whom I've mentioned before here) that on Wednesday next week, July 27, they will be hosting a FREE webinar on the values proposition of private equity.

No, values above is not a typo.  Small Giants will enlist Excellere Partners VP Lindsay Lewellen to discuss how being on the same page as potential investors goes beyond the balance sheet.  Just as employers use people practices to attract, retain, and develop passionate employees for best organizational results, Lewellen will show that when investors link up with leaders whose passion for business exceeds profit, truly great things can happen.

Click here to register for this free webinar.

Related: To whet your appetite for this webinar, check out these articles on our website, which address the connection between better-informed financial decision making and an improved culture of ownership for a more productive workplace:

• Demystifying Private Equity
• How to Position Your Company to Access Outside Capital, Part 1
• How to Position Your Company to Access Outside Capital, Part 2

This is a little late coming, but I wanted to supplement the takeaways I've shared on Twitter from our Leadership Conference last month with Inc. Magazine (see these five recent tweets) with a post here with even more on what I learned and got a refresher on when it comes to investing in your workplace for greater employee engagement, team building, and other profitable people practices.

I'm also happy to share some of the great photos Inc. took of the sessions.  My thanks to Rachel Kovar, Inc.'s Events & Conferences Manager, for supplying them.  Rachel and her team are busy getting ready for the 2011 Inc. 500/5000 in September.

Back to the June Leadership Conference...

June 16, 2011

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Patrick Lencioni of The Table Group gave a rousing review of the successful business practices he puts in a real-world context in his book of the same name.  He gave all attendees a copy of it – it's a great, short read, which I finished on my flight from Dallas back to Los Angeles.

His premise was that all the company smarts that CEOs care about and work to improve from day one – strategy, marketing, finance, technology – are only half the equation for successful firms.  The other half is creating a healthy workplace culture, with minimal politics and confusion, but high morale and, thus, productivity.  "Healthy is the multiplier of their smarts," Lencioni said.

A Top Workplace One Year Later: The New York Jets

Some of what Matt Higgins, EVP for the Jets, shared in this session – which took place just over a year after the team was named one of our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces – was reflected in the Success Story we wrote on the company last July.  This includes the inclusionary leadership of the owner and head coach and the pervasive focus on listening to lower-level employees.

What was new here, to my ears at least, was how the Jets are being productive in their version of a particularly "down" time – the NFL lockout.  Higgins said they've taken it as an opportunity to send some of their staff to shadow people in other professions, ranging from firefighters to politicians, to promote continued employee leadership development.

June 17, 2011

How to Get Ferocious Commitment from Your People

I hadn't previously been exposed to the speaker of this session, Stan Slap, author of Bury My Heart at Conference Room B: The Unbeatable Impact of Truly Committed Managers.  He spent a good deal of time explaining the differences between leaders and managers; while both work hard on consistency and passion, Slap said, what distinguishes managers from leaders is that the former can get away with faltering on these qualities, but the latter simply cannot afford to do so.

Also, based on what I've seen and written about in terms of the highly specialized, tight knit cultures of many of our award-winning small workplaces, I liked that he emphasized family as a core value that helps create more open, honest communication – which, of course, promotes better business results.

Creating a Culture of Customer Service

Since Winning Workplaces previously enlisted the expertise of one of our honorees, Headsets.com's Mike Faith (who moderated another session at this year's conference), to speak on this topic in one of our webinars a few years ago, I didn't think I would pick up many new tips.  Boy, was I mistaken.

Christopher Zane, founder and president of the wildly successful Zane's Cycles, said one of his main areas of focus is improving and leveraging relationships with his business customers in between sales by surveying them on potential new product features.  He also shared the story of how he fired one of his customers after the person unnecessarily berated one of his employees.  This made clear his belief in the long-term good of working with quality folks in all parts of their product lifecycle – not just employees.

Related: This conference was the culmination of our 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award process.  We're gearing up now to launch our 2012 competition.  Click here for the latest news on it.

Did you know that when it comes to the newest and best research on investing in your workplace for better team building and other desired outcomes, we have a repository on our website?  That's right, it's here, it's free – and it's significant: 40% of the total educational content (some 500 articles) we've provided since 2001 on building a more productive workplace culture is our research study summaries.

You may be interested to learn what your peers who have dug into this section of our site have found to be the most pertinent and insightful summaries.  So here's a list of our Top 10 by visits:

1. Work-Life Balance a Key to Job Acceptance
2. Four Out of Five Workers More Likely to Stay at Firm with Low Stress and Good Work/Life Balance
3. 'SHRM Fun Work Environment Survey'
4. 'Overwork in America'
5. Workers Link Company Culture to Organizational Success
6. 'The Employee-Customer-Profit Chain at Sears'
7. Most Employee Recognition Programs Do Not Meet CEO Expectations
8. 'Linking Organizational Characteristics to Employee Attitudes and Behavior'
9. Bad Bosses Tolerated if They're Productive
10. Empowering Leaders Not Always Best for New Business Ventures

Next Step: Now that you've seen some of what we offer here, I invite you to take this 2-minute survey to tell us under which of 10 workplace areas you'd most like to see Winning Workplaces summarize the latest research in the future.  Thanks in advance for your time!

I love LinkedIn.  I've blogged before about its value, especially considering it's free except for your time (though there are fees if you want to post jobs there).  In the past I've used the business-themed social networking site to gather opinions on Zappos' "leaving bonus," and I referenced its Group feature as a lead-driving tool.

One of the best ways to use LinkedIn is to ask and answer questions.  I particularly enjoy going to the Small Business and Organizational Development sections and seeing what company leaders, managers, and other employees are talking about – and occasionally offering my opinion.  I did so last month in response to organizational culture consultant and speaker Marcella Bremer's question asking why building a productive workplace culture is often not on the agenda of CEOs, company board members, and other top executives.

My response sparked an email conversation in which Marcella and I compared notes on our respective firms devoted to leveraging employee engagement and team building strategies to improve companies' bottom-line results.  The enterprise she co-owns, OCAI online, is based in the Netherlands (people practices advancement is truly a small world!).

When I went to her site I learned what OCAI stand for: Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument.  Developed by Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn, the OCAI operates based on what's known as the Competing Values Framework.  Here's what this looks like:

As you can see, as you go up on this graph you transition from core values supporting stability and control (some would say, command and control) to flexibility and discretion.  From left to right, the focus changes from internal and integration to external and differentiation.  Where a company lands on this graph determines its balance among four Organizational Culture Types: clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, and market.

What I find amazing is that when I go to OCAI's page explaining these culture types in greater detail, I find that, generally speaking, Winning Workplaces' Top Small Company Workplace award honorees fall within the area of the graph I highlighted below:

That is, they have:

• workforces who say they feel like a family;
• leaders who see themselves, and are seen by their people, as mentors;
• strong emphasis on teamwork, participation, and consensus; and
• employees who take risks, within a culture that promotes individual initiative and freedom.

However, I think our honorees are also a hybrid – they might have cultures which generally fall within the area of the graph I indicated, but when you read their applications for our award, they have succeeded in using staff engagement activities representative of a clan or an adhocracy to propel their business squarely in the market sector of the graph.  This is another way of saying, they don't just treat their people well because it's the right thing to do – they integrate these practices into the "vaue drivers" OCAI talks about of increasing market share, goal achievement, and profitability.  I discussed this a bit more in posts in January and June.

So...where does your company's culture fall on OCAI's graph?  I think leaders would find it an insightful and useful exercise to survey their management teams and other employees on what they think, and see how it compares to their own assessment.