Workplace Culture

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?

If you were among the over 41 million people who watched the 82nd Academy Awards telecast last Sunday, you might have seen one of our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award finalists: outdoor clothing designer/distributor/retailer Patagonia.

During the program American Express ran an ad for their Members Project, a new partnership with social action network Takepart.com.  Here's the commercial if you missed it:

The ad features Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, who according to their application for our award – and the company's own press materials – is still actively involved in the business he established almost 40 years ago.

This post on Patagonia's employee and customer blog explains the set piece in the ad, the Matilija Dam, and why removing it would be good for the planet and people (which, along with profit, make up the three pillars of the growing triple bottom line business movement).

Patagonia's work maintaining a strong triple bottom line is readily apparent.  On their website homepage, a vast Environmentalism section is given equal weight to revenue-friendlier sections such as Clothing & Gear and Product Information.

This perfect weave (pardon the pun) of company mission and like-minded employees and customers has kept business strong, even in a down economy.  I can't get into specifics, because our Top Small Company Workplaces media partner Inc. Magazine will share those with you in its June issue should Patagonia be named a winner for 2010.  But trust me that they're doing very well on the key business metrics you're concerned about in your own organization.

Watch for the June issue of Inc. on newsstands to read about this year's winning firms and their workplace culture improvement and team engagement activities, which you can adapt for your company.  You can also subscribe to Inc. and get the issue as soon as it comes out.

Today Winning Workplaces announces the 39 finalists for our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award, in partnership with Inc. Magazine.

We started our search in November 2009 for small and midsized organizations (750 or fewer employees) that engage employees and create a great workplace culture and, in turn, deliver improved business results.  Almost 500 firms completed our online application by the deadline in late January.

Our staff then pared these down to the 39 finalists that appear in the interactive map below.  Click on a marker to access a finalist's website, as well as to see when they were founded and their size and industry:

The next steps in the 2010 selection process include:

• Later this month our final panel of judges will choose this year's winners.
• These winners will be announced in the June 2010 issue of Inc. Magazine.
• The winners will be honored at Inc.'s conference in Denver on Oct. 27-29 (more info on this event coming soon).

If you know anyone interested in human capital strategies for a more productive workplace, I encourage you to share this post with them by using the button below.  Thanks!

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.

We've long argued, in part based on our own employee engagement research, that empowering workers to make on-the-spot decisions and to contribute to the strategic direction of an organization provides benefits for employees (increases their job satisfaction) and for companies (typically greater customer satisfaction because issues are resolved sooner and at a lower level; as well as increased employee loyalty and drive).

Here are two new sources that support this argument, for your reading and learning pleasure:

1. A review of multiple studies by The Cochrane Collaboration found that giving employees control over their work schedule improves their stress levels, quality of sleep, mental health, and alertness.  (HR Morning)
2. "HR Bartender" Sharlyn Lauby defines 7 types of power in a workplace culture and uses these traits as the basis for an exercise to help you pinpoint how you influence action from others.  (Human Capital League)

Related: Need more proof of the impact of this leadership practice?  Read this firsthand account by an employee of a 2008 Top Small Workplace (identified as a finalist in the post based on the timing of that year's winners announcement) on how it's changed his impression of a productive workplace.

I'm all for outsourcing when it makes sense for a business leader.  In fact, this week I retweeted Adam Toren's suggestion that busy executives can save time by outsourcing some of their more tedious household responsibilities.

But I think that if employee engagement or the workplace culture could suffer, then don't do it.  Building trust in the workplace, IMO, should always be the top item on any CEO's to-do list.

So therefore I can't endorse Douglas R. Palmer's pitch on the Small Business CEO blog to outsource your finance department.  I have two thoughts here as to why (in addition to the line in the sand I laid out above):

• First, while Palmer's list of the pros of doing this does make business sense, one associated risk is the loss or accidental distribution of sensitive information.  Even if you've thoroughly researched your options and chosen a winning partner, that can still happen.  Would you take that chance with your company's balance sheet and salary info?
• Second and more importantly from a productivity standpoint, keeping this function in-house is one more piece of the intellectual capital pie that can benefit from leadership, if not team, involvement.  One of the themes of our Top Small Workplaces over the years has been their ability to anticipate marketplace changes, which especially helps them navigate tough times like these, in large part because their leaders engage employees by sharing financial information with them and teach them what it means, which spurs actionable ideas on creating efficiencies and optimizing revenue sources.  If they outsourced their financial component, this outcome would be difficult if not impossible to achieve.

Where do you stand here?

Just as employees crave recognition, organizations covet it, too.  In fact, that was the theme of my post yesterday on PrintingForLess.com.

I just heard that Winning Workplaces was named to the FastUpFront Small Business Blog's list of the Top Free Government Business Resources.  This designation joins others on our "mantle" including being named a Top HR Influencer for 2007 by HR World, and this blog being named a Top 100 Leadership Blog last year by BestUniversities.com.

We thank the FastUpFront Blog and the other two entities mentioned above for introducing more folks to us and our mission to equip small business leaders with proven, practical – and yes, FREE – team building and employee engagement strategies to improve their workplace culture and productivity.

In celebration of this recognition of our efforts, I offer these selected blog posts that will help you reward and recognize your employees, with minimal effort and cost:

• (Employee) Love Don't Cost a Thing*
• Employee Recognition on the Cheap
• How Important is Employee Recognition? Leading Book on It Gets Second Edition Makeover
• All Employee Recognition Roads Lead to Greater Company Productivity
• 10 Team Building Strategies of the 2009 Top Small Workplaces Finalists
• Nine Resources for Becoming an Employer of Choice

I was thinking about the title of this post this morning.  We've been hearing since at least late 2008 about rising unemployment, and even though it's leveled off, we're still not at a stage of job growth.  We're just not losing as many (relatively speaking) jobs per month.

Two other employment trends have been making headlines lately.  There's underemployment, where because of hour and pay cuts by employers so they can keep their doors open, people aren't making as much as they did before the recession.  Compounding this issue is the fact that often their employers are demanding more from them, leaving these folks with less time to look for a new job that would provide more pay.

Then, there's the tendency of businesses, especially small ones, to replace laid off full-time employees with temp workers.  The benefit for organizations is that they can manage current and even emerging job functions (as markets improve and they see the need) by paying someone less than they paid a FTE, and with less of a commitment if it turns out a temporary hire is suddenly not needed.

My fear is that if, as many econmists are predicting, economic/job growth is extremely slow for the next year or two, these three employment factors – unemployment, underemployment, and the rise of temp workers – will impede the adoption and cultivation of the qualities of a productive workplace.  These qualities, or hallmarks, include many of the workplace team building and employee engagement best practices we talk about on this blog.

You may ask, what's the harm over the next few years if this scenario does, in fact, play out?  For one thing, less cohesive workplace cultures – those that, for instance, don't rein in toxic managers – very often increase supervised employees' stress levels.  On a macro level, studies have shown this hurts our GDP to the tune of $300 billion annually.

This, of course, doesn't even begin to address costs such as absenteeism, turnover, and recruiting/training that could become even less manageable under this scenario.

Do you agree or disagree with my assessment?  If you agree – how do you think should firms, especially small ones, should respond?

Every day I hear another story that indicates so many leaders don’t get the strong connection between people and results.  When I first moved into a CEO role, I admit I didn’t always see the connection as clearly as I do now.  I was so focused on results, I neglected to pay as much attention to people.  Now that I have seen the research and gotten to know dozens of extraordinary companies who have great workplaces, I am ramping up my focus on employee engagement. 

Our mission here at Winning Workplaces is to inspire and assist organizations that want to create great workplaces that are better for business, better for people, and better for society.   These organizations have workplace cultures that include open communication, trust, team building, and...fun!  

Given the results of the recent Conference Board study, I’d say Winning Workplaces still has a lot of work to do.  In fact, that is an understatement.  The Conference Board reports that only 45% of employees are satisfied with their jobs.  Moreover, I was astounded to learn that the employees rate the best part of their day as the commute.  Yes, the commute.

As more and more baby boomers retire, I wonder if dissatisfaction will increase.  Why?  The most dissatisfied generation is Generation Y. 

Clearly, this situation says we have not only a lot of dissatisfied employees but, in turn, a productivity level that isn’t nearly where it could or should be. 

So whose fault is this grim situation?  The leader's?  The boss's?  The employee's?  More importantly, what do we do about it?  These will be the topics of future blogs. 

Let me know what you think.

I like Dragan Sutevski's comparison on his Entrepreneurship In a Box blog of running a business to being in a dream.  According to Sutevski, there are only a handful of factors keeping this experience from turning into a nightmare.

Number 7 on his top 10 list that he shared this weekend is employees:

Your employees can contribute to your business to be successful, but in the same time they can harm your business.  Employees are the heart and the most important resource.

Sutevski makes the case that although they represent perhaps the most important resource, your employees are still only that – a resource that can be useful or useless depending on how the leadership engages them and acts on their expertise.

In the right leader's hands – and in the context of the right workplace culture – employees can bring a company substantial bottom-line returns at every stage of interaction.

For example:

• Prospective hires, both those that join the workforce and those that are not the best fit: managers' interview questions lead to feedback that can influence product/service development and delivery.
• Once a person in "on the bus," employee engagement best practices such as mentoring, annual opinion surveys, and monthly or quarterly all-hands meetings can promote cross-department learning, as well as improve internal processes and external marketing.
• Promoting from within is particularly useful to building trust in the workplace, and keeps your knowledge base intact and strong.
• Employee exits, especially if they are voluntary, can also produce valuable feedback on improving of your culture and your customer satisfaction.

Go here to read Sutevski's top 10 list of resources to make your business life easier.  How do you rank employees compared to the other resources in terms of potential?

Consumer confidence is down – no doubt in large part because one in 10 Americans is still without a job.  That combined with mostly inaction from Washington has created a climate where entrepreneurs must (with due credit to Jack Matson) innovate or die.

Adam Toren wrote a great post on the YoungEntrepreneur site last week on this necessity.  Perhaps the most powerful of the five tips he shares to "keep your fire burning strong" is to guard against negativity.  As I've written here before, negativity results in employee stress, and that can wreak havoc on your ability to create a productive workplace culture.

Picking up and running with Toren's point on ridding your workplace of negativity, here are three road-tested strategies you can use to get there.  Use them in tandem for best results:

1. Hire slow.  Don't be afraid to bring prospective hires in for interviews with staff they would report to, as well as decision makers in other departments or areas.  Doing this will greatly increase the likelihood that they're the best person for you and, on the flip side, that you're the best organization for them.
2. Communicate with employees often, and give them a voice in how the company operates.  Frequent all-hands meetings and annual or semi-annual employee surveys are great action steps under this strategy.
3. Invest in employee leadership development.  We've seen that while some leaders think paying to advance workers' career development will lead them to jump ship, by and large they show their appreciation for their employer's commitment to their growth by staying put and instead looking for growth opportunities from within.  In turn, this helps keep your knowledge base strong and also saves on recruiting and training costs.

When you engage employees, do you do anything in addition to the above measures to make your organization a positive place in which to work?

If you own or run a business, would you like to experience strong revenue growth – growth that makes your enterprise highly coveted if you wanted to put it up for sale?

This is what Karen Oman realized with her Minnesota-based specialty job placement firm Certes Financial Pros.  (Winning Workplaces named Oman a Best Boss in 2003.)

She details her people practices to create a productive workplace, which led to the two business outcomes I mentioned above, in the following post, which is cross-posted on Oman's site Time to Breathe.  I thank her for agreeing to share her wisdom here.  Enjoy:

Cracking the Work/Life Balance Code Once and For All!

I just discovered the Yerkes-Dodson Law which was written up in the 70’s in the Harvard Business Review.  It says that with stress comes productivity...to a point.  But with too much stress, productivity plummets.  The resulting graph resembles an upside down U with stress on the x axis and productivity on the y axis.  So, just as we know that our stress-free zombie-like state is not productive, our overstressed state is equally not productive.  The secret is to back off the stress just enough to be at our peak in productivity.

So, if stress is coming on too strong, and we all know what that feels like, get out of there!  Take a walk, call a friend, read something funny in the broom closet, take deep breaths, or if more serious, call it a day and do what you love.  Don’t worry about the boss because, in the end, if you are the only one containing your stress appropriately, you will easily be the most productive person in the office.

I started my own company because after 15 years in corporate jobs, I couldn’t handle the stress any more.  As CEO of my new company, I granted flex hours, only gave deadlines when absolutely necessary, minimized overtime, tried to be transparent by over communicating, and even bought five executive vacation homes around the country that our employees could use free-of-charge (now available to you too at www.certifiedleisureproperties.com).

We unexpectedly grew to $20 million in 13 years.  When I decided to sell, 11 companies wanted to buy us because we obviously had a great culture, as well as off-the-charts productivity statistics.  As any of my corporate peers will attest, I was just your normal average CPA with nothing to predict this sort of result.  I just knew that if I didn’t stress employees and myself out, we would all have much better lives and I would succeed somehow.  Now, with the Yerkes-Dodson Law, I understand why we succeeded so well...and so do you!

Related: Get more employee engagement strategies from this webinar that Oman co-presented for us.

The recent actions of big players in some industries have helped sour business' overall reputation.  I'm referring to the likes of Goldman Sachs and WellPoint, who are awarding themselves with, respectively, record bonuses and rate hikes while consumers continue to languish in this economy.

When big business' rep takes a dive, employees who work for them, and even workers in small businesses that partner with them, can become disenfranchised.  Disenfranchised, of course, is another way of saying disengaged, and when this happens, productivity suffers.

Greg Hakim, a new employee of our Top Small Workplace Corporate Ink, wrote on this on their company blog this week.  He starkly defines the differences in business outcomes when leaders engage employees as merely numbers, or business assets, versus as the dynamic, innovation starters they truly can be when workplace team building is similarly dynamic and innovative.

A workplace culture that doesn't place any value on job meaning produces siloed work, customer or client dissatisfaction, and turnover that's often above the industry average.  On the other hand, companies that demonstrate through their people practices that they respect their workers and also invest in employee leadership development enjoy more and better innovations from collaborative work, which make customers/clients happier and also make it much more likely that workers won't bail, keeping your recruiting/training costs under control.

Related: Helping to instill a sense of meaning in your workforce doesn't have to be expensive.  This post reveals ways to do employee recognition "on the cheap."

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.

For the last few years, we've shared the employee engagement wisdom derived from a trend among the winners of our Top Small Company Workplace award: A focus on helping employees strike an ideal work/life balance is good for the business, too, because it results in greater commitment and productivity, and lower absenteeism and turnover.  We've focused on staff and the company as beneficiaries of the benefits of this practice.

But as entrepreneur and Career Renegade author Jonathan Fields wrote on his blog this past weekend, extending the concept of a healthy, nurturing workplace culture to everyone a business owner deals with – including vendors and clients – amounts to a "giant benefit" that's under the radar compared with those usually sought by entrepreneurs: freedom, control, money, and passion.

Says Fields,

[T]here’s one giant benefit most people never focus on.  As an entrepreneur, I get to create the culture and pick the people I surround myself with.

We don’t often realize how mission critical the people we surround ourselves with are in our ability to not only thrive in business, but feel fulfilled or just love every day.  In the brick and mortar businesses I’ve built, I’ve taken years to build families of people, from managers to services providers to receptionists and volunteers, who are the very people who make ME come alive.  And, I’ve taken it a step further and become insanely selective with what vendors I work with and who I take on as customers, students and clients.

Because, the nature of the people you surround yourself with everyday will have a profound impact on the way you experience your life.  That’s why, when I’ve realized I’ve made bad decisions, I’ve not only fired employees, I’ve also fired vendors and clients.

I think what Fields writes here makes a lot of sense.  In fact, it's played out this way for leaders of our honored small firms that founded or co-founded their business – almost universally their business model and especially workplace engagement have attracted like-minded employees, vendors, and even customers.  Because these small organizations often can't compete with larger competitors solely on price, this tendency has aided them tremendously in staying innovative and maintaining sales.

Perhaps more powerful, though, are the work/life balance benefits this mindset provides to the entrepreneur.  Consider:

• According to the SBA, over 99% of employer firms are small businesses.  Over half of these are home-based businesses with zero to only a handful of employees.
• On par with doctors, entrepreneurs routinely work 60+ hour work weeks.
• Stress in the workplace has been shown to cut into U.S. productivity at a rate of $300 billion annually.

While we've made a big deal here that helping employees achieve a healthy work/life balance is good for the company and, by extension, our economy, you could make this case even more clearly and readily, I think, when it comes to business owners/leaders.

What's your take?

If you're reading this, you probably understand and place stock in the link between great employee engagement and a thriving, productive workplace culture.  Great people practices can maximize a company's internal performance.

But then there's that pesky, all-important external performance – particularly against larger competitors that can outspend you in everything from advertising to inventory to recruiting.  What's a small business to do?

Luckily, there are tried and true ways to beat back bigger competitors.  Our friend Becky McCray shared four of these this week over at Small Biz Survival.

Her second one centers on the intrinsic value of a cohesive work culture:

You have a better connection with what your people want, how they like to be treated, and what touches their emotions than any big company can.

Becky's right.  As we have seen time and time again with our Top Small Workplace award winners, a highly effective culture has powerful implications on employee retention, which directly affects customer retention and satisfaction – two factors that often drive the bulk of revenues for small firms.  (Just look at our 2007 winner Gentle Giant Moving.)

Incidentally, the effectiveness of Becky's #1 and #4 methods can be enhanced when #2 (culture) is firing on all cylinders.

Related: This post explains another benefit of top tier work cultures: increased likelihood of surviving multiple economic downturns.

This post from last week on Canada's Axiom News site caught my attention.  In it, Jennifer Higgs cites the Vermont Employee Ownership Center – and our 2007-09 Top Small Workplaces – in making the case that companies that are employee owned have "disproportionate excellence" relative to their peers that are not.

Higgs' evidence to support this case includes the fact that a third of our winners the last three years thrive with the help of a true culture of ownership, and that, at least in Vermont, employee-owned firms have tended to win more awards.   She also cites employee engagement research compiled by the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) which finds that, as we've shared here, employee-owned firms "tend to grow faster and are more profitable with higher productivity than non-employee-owned companies."

But, while desirable, do these business outcomes equate to "disproportionate" excellence, or success?  One firsthand perspective I can offer might shed some light on this question.

This year I had the opportunity to read and score a batch of our Top Small Company Workplaces applications.  I looked at the following factors for success, as assessed in our extensive application:

• *Business structure & growth
• Employee metrics
• Benefits
• Learning & development
• Workplace culture & people practices
• Impact of people practices
• Employee participation
• Impact of economy & company response
• Fostering community & collaboration
• Goals & sustainability

I put an asterisk (*) next to the first bullet above because this is the area that asks about employee ownership.  It is only one of 10 areas I, and the rest of our reading teams, are looking at.  I personally put as much or more weight into applicants' benefit offerings, employee development strategies, and responses to the essay questions that make up the last six areas listed above as I put into their business structure/growth.

For me and surely for others now reviewing applications, employee ownership by itself is not a guarantee of moving on to the next round (where our judging panel – of a caliber on par with our 2009 roster, TBA – will select the winners that will be featured in the June issue of Inc. Magazine).  Because employee ownership has historically been viewed similarly relative to many other success factors by our final judging panel, you get the majority of our winners over the last three years that are not employee owned.  This includes such excellent organizations as Healthwise (2007 Winner), Lundberg Family Farms (2008), and Anthony Wilder Design/Build (2009).

So in terms of addressing the claim that employee ownership equals "disproportionate excellence," I stick by what I wrote here last month: While employee ownership is not essential for creating a Winning Workplace, it is often tied to the ability to do so.

How much weight do YOU give employee ownership, as compared with other factors, to achieving excellence (defined as long-term success and sustainability)?

The U.S. has survived and, most often during its 234-year history, thrived under a forward-thinking Bill of Rights.  Much more recently, innovative airline JetBlue has turned its industry on its ear and even inspired action by the White House through its Customer Bill of Rights – which, from a consumer's point of view, is one of the few bright spots amidst a slew of disappointing developments like this one.

If the Bill of Rights concept works, why not apply it to the workplace culture?  After all, research shows that more highly engaged employees result in stronger company earnings, and lead those firms to more resiliency in down economies like the one we're in now.

That – along with fair treatment of, and an adequate living wage for, employees – is the idea behind Workplace Fairness' proposed Workplace Bill of Rights.  The 9 "basic rights [they] believe every worker should be entitled to" that they spell out here are the basis of a petition in partnership with Change.org.  The signatures gathered will be presented to the Obama Administration, through which a best-case scenario would produce widespread adoption of the bill by employers.

The largest hurdle before this initiative is, of course, business owners' uncertainty of the payoff of employee engagement, or of anything beyond what they're already doing in a tough economy.  This is especially true of small businesses, which comprise the vast majority of employers and tend to be under-resourced versus their larger peers.

To help prove the point of my title for this post, and hopefully help overcome this hurdle, I've linked some of the 9 basic employee rights* Workplace Fairness is advocating to bottom line business results that Winning Workplaces has seen in our small business award honorees, and confirmed in workplace research by others – both of which I've blogged about previously:

• Employees should be treated with honesty and respect – Among our 2010 small business award applicants, employee activities designed to foster greater respect helped them grow 2009 revenues 12% over 2008, on average.
• Working full-time should guarantee a basic standard of living – Paying only 5% over the minimum wage saves a business almost $2,200 per employee in turnover costs.
• No working person should be without health insurance – An average increase in employer-paid employee medical premiums of 6.8% of our 2009 small business award finalists, over their 2008 counterparts, led to increases in employee tenure and year-over-year revenue growth, and a decrease in turnover.
• Employees should be able to leave a job with dignity – Our 2008 award winners' universal adoption of retirement plans that match employee contributions at an average rate of 2.8% is linked to double-digit, year-over-year revenue growth and average per-employee revenue of over $200,000.
• There is more to life than work – We pointed to Talent Management's citation of a Corporate Executive Board analysis which shows that strategies to promote work/life balance can raise workplace productivity by 21% and employee tenure by 33%.

The net impact of these business outcomes is stronger sales from a larger, more satisfied customer base, which adds up to job growth and ultimately a more robust economy over time.

If you see benefits for both employees and companies in WF's Workplace Bill of Rights, you can help to advance it by signing their petition here.

*Update: Workplace Fairness Executive Director Paula Brantner informed me that even though their list was promoted as having 9 employee rights, there are actually 10.  See toward the bottom of their petition, as well as the voting/comments page over at Change.org. 

Most companies look at national holidays as simply a paid or unpaid day off for their employees – and also as top sales day, if you're a retailer and it's New Year's, for instance.

But as we noted in our Success Story on them, 2008 Top Small Workplace The Redwoods Group (TRG) is not like most companies.  Two things that make them unique, our judging panel concluded, was their significant efforts to decrease risk for their insurance industry clients, as well as their almost unheard-of commitment to funding nonprofits with approximately 50% of their pre-tax profits.

TRG is also unique when it comes to their approach to national holidays and employee engagement/team building.  As employee MJ Pearle shared with us today,

Each year, TRG holds a special Martin Luther King Jr. celebration.  This year we had a week of activities.  One activity featured performances by our Redwoods Choir (organized for the first time for this event).  There was some pretty amazing music from a bunch of insurance folks!  We also sent a group of employees to the opening of the new International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, NC (a 45-minute drive from our office), and afterward they reported on the experience to their colleagues.

Here's one of several videos of their choir TRG posted on YouTube – in this case, singing "Oh Happy Day":

Does your company do anything special on or around national holidays that emphasizes or leverages your unique workplace culture?

As someone who earned a journalism degree when the paperless office was just starting to be discussed as a cost-effective workplace/operational model (circa 2001), I read with interest yesterday's blog post by Max Chafkin, an editor at Inc. Magazine.  Inc. is Winning Workplaces' media partner for our Top Small Company Workplaces competition.

Chafkin links to a slideshow of photos of their snazzy new office space.  So why are they closing up physical shop and going virtual for a month?

He writes that this experiment is a way to walk the talk when it comes to the businesses they write about that have gone space-less and made it work.  This includes the desire to chronicle firsthand the related cost savings.

But Chafkin also says he and his fellow staffers want to find out how virtual team building affects the overall workplace culture.  With him and his staff leading a regular dialogue with Inc.'s blog readers over this month-long trial focused on their collective lessons learned (and, surely, avoided), I'm eager to see the takeaways this experiment yields.

To contribute to and learn from this dialogue, you can add the Fresh Inc. blog to your list of bookmarked websites.  If you subscribe to blogs in a feed reader, here's the link for their RSS feed (and here's our blog's RSS feed to add, too, if you don't already subscribe to it).