Inc. Magazine’s Takeaways from Covering Our 2010 Small Business Award Finalists

Lately I’ve shared with you data trends of the 40 finalist organizations for Winning Workplaces’ 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award.  This includes our employee engagement research findings on:

• Industries
• CEO/employee ownership breakdown
• Top 10 performance bonus practices
• Top health/wellness initiatives
• Share of low-income workers they employ
• Their performance vs. the other 457 applicants this year on profitability, years in business, turnover, percentage of positions filled from within, and employee tenure

But what about takeaways that are more high level?  And what if they came from the perspective of an outside party (ie, not from our staff)?

I happen to have some feedback along these lines from Leigh Buchanan.  Leigh is an Editor at Large for Inc. Magazine, our Top Small Company Workplaces media partner.  She attended the meeting of our esteemed panel of judges in March in which the winners were chosen from the 40 finalists.  Since then she has served as head writer for the coverage of our 2010 winners and finalists (including their highly productive and profitable people practices) that will appear in the forthcoming June issue of Inc.

Here are Leigh’s observations:

• "I was particularly impressed by the very small companies that practice significant financial education in conjunction with open-book management as well as other forms of employee development.  I interviewed a woman who was over the moon about how understanding the numbers had made her feel so connected to the business and fired her up about her job."
• "A lot of CEOs describe their companies as democratic, but Buy Accutane I was amazed at the extent to which some of these leaders involve employees in decision making."
• "It’s great how many companies encourage employee engagement with their communities and the world at large.  There were so many models for philanthropy and volunteerism.  And the best part is that these companies don’t dictate charities – "Thou shalt raise money for United Way" – but in most cases let employees choose causes that matter to them."
• "The geographic diversity was refreshing."  [You can view a map of the finalists here.]

The June issue of Inc., which will reveal this year’s Top Small Company Workplaces, will be out on newsstands on June 8.  If you subscribe to the magazine, you’ll receive it on June 5.

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