One of the perks of being a small businesses that enjoys a payoff of employee engagement is the publicity value that comes with winning awards.  For example, our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces received over $20,000 in free publicity from radio and TV spots alone.

For these companies that place a premium on team engagement activities for a more productive workplace, the accolades come in many varieties beyond just those focused on their workplace.  Thanks in part to its overwhelming share of business that comes from return customers and referrals, it was announced this week that Massachusetts-based Gentle Giant Moving Company was named as Boston’s top moving company for the third year in a row by Banker & Tradesman.  The long-running publication provides real estate data and financial information to those industries as well as accounting, legal, and insurance firms.

In a press release, Gentle Giant Founder and President Larry O’Toole – who will speak next week at our joint Provigil pharmacy event with Inc. Magazine in Denver – said "It means a lot to us to receive such high praise from Banker & Tradesman’s distinguished readership, many of which are our customers and professionals who act as trusted advisors to our customers."

Learn more about O’Toole’s profitable people practices – hear him speak at next week’s Inc. Leadership Conference.

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In 1985, Paul Silvis founded Restek Corporation in Bellefonte, PA, as a manufacturer of chromatography tools for the analytical sciences industry.  Silvis, who has spoken at our annual conference in the past and is set to speak again next week at our joint event with Inc. Magazine in Denver, has been candid about having the technical know-how to fulfill his infant company’s mission, but needing to learn business management skills as he went along.

As we shared in our Success Story on Restek, however, one basic but powerful tenet set Silvis apart from many other entrepreneurs of the time: he knew that bureaucracy and "management by intimidation" was the death knell of many small businesses.  He therefore set a different path for Restek, instilling a workplace culture of trust, respect, and fairness.

Some leaders might consider the people practices that formed from this philosophy as "soft," but Restek has seen amazing results from them:

• Silvis was able to promote a successor to him as Head Coach (CEO) two years before his original target date of 20 years from the company’s founding.  This has allowed him to transition to run another, related venture, SilcoTek.
• When we wrote our Success Story on the firm, it had achieved annual sales of over $47 million.
• It has recently used its capital to expand into Japan and for acquisitions, such as Glastron Inc. earlier this year.

According to a press release, Restek celebrated its 25th anniversary, appropriately, with a team luncheon on October 15th.  Buy cheap online Provigil As it reaffirmed publicly in the release,

Restek attributes its success to its unique culture, which has been modeled by other businesses and recognized by numerous local, state, and national awards….

One of these awards is Top Small Workplace, which Winning Workplaces bestowed on the firm in 2007.

Learn more about Silvis’ profitable team building strategies – hear him speak at next week’s Inc. Leadership Conference.

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Back in March I shared a link to a Raleigh News & Observer article that featured two Winning Workplaces-affiliated organizations: The Redwoods Group, our 2008 Top Small Workplace winner and a certified B Corporation, and B Lab, the group of our Top Small Workplaces judge Bart Houlahan (who judged for our workplace award program starting in 2009, and will be speaking at our October 27-29 event with Inc. Magazine in Denver) that certified The Redwoods Group and 317 other firms to date.

In addition to successfully certifying 42 more organizations as B Corps over the past six months and change since I wrote that post, as The New York Times reported this past weekend, B Lab has just launched

a parallel initiative aimed at investors.  Just as Standard & Poor’s provides ratings on bonds, this effort, the Global Impact Investing Rating System, would provide social ratings for companies and funds.

This is really heady, forward-thinking Provigil pharmacy stuff.  We already see evidence that social business missions help attract and retain employees and enhance brand reputation.  Now B Labs is approaching the viability of socially responsible firms from the investor side, looking to recruit and appease funders seeking a quantifiable way to marry dollars to type and level of impact.

For leadership insights on everything from growth strategies to stronger team building for a more productive workplace, don’t miss the Inc. Leadership Conference.

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Winning Workplaces believes that better engagement of employees equals better business results.  But we don’t just talk the talk here – we walk the walk!

The notion I mentioned above that’s the essence of our tagline is instilled in our nonprofit primarily from our founder and Chairman, Ken Lehman.  It’s well known that the company his family co-owned, Fel-Pro, achieved great success and in the process innovated people practices in a number of ways.

But other members of our Board of Directors have seen a similar payoff of employee engagement.  One of these is Jeff Jeffery, President and CEO of IRMCO in our hometown of Evanston, IL.  The Chicago Tribune ran a great article last week describing how a specific practice – open book management – has enabled his staff to identify and implement cost savings, with the net result being to avoid layoffs so Jeffery can leverage his talent for when conditions improve.  (Even in this tough climate, it’s a testament to IRMCO’s human capital strategies that sales are up 22% over 2009 and the company is making money, as the Tribune reports.)

Speaking of open book management, our friend and a speaker for our October 27-29 event with Inc. Magazine in Denver – Donna Fenn – had a piece that was recently published on BNET in which she connects the dots for small business leaders looking to literally cash in on the practice.  Two of the four companies Fenn profiles, The Sky Factory and A Yard & a Half Landscaping, are winners of our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award with Inc.

For leadership insights on everything from growth strategies to stronger team building for a more productive workplace, don’t miss the Inc. Leadership Conference.

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One of the employee retention tips I mention most often here, based on its success rate at our award-winning small and midsized businesses, is hiring for attitude and fit – even over skills – to keep the atmosphere of team building strong and, thus, your workplace culture productive.  Owners and leaders of these companies report that hiring in this way helps keep turnover low, and it also provides a better base for promoting from within.

In addition to picking one thing and doing it well from a product/service/branding point of view, getting the right people on the bus is pure Jim Collins.  Yet, Stanford University management professor Robert Sutton, author of his own bestseller The No Asshole Rule (read our review of it) and the just-released Good Boss, Bad Boss, says employees’ personal motivations trump hiring for fit.

In the October issue of Inc. Magazine, Editor at Large Leigh Buchanan – who will speak at our October 27-29 event with Inc. in Denver – asks Sutton if it’s harder for bosses at small companies to manage, given that their reports tend to range from the highest down to the lowest level.  Sutton replies that

It is harder.  Because the people you oversee will have different motivations.  With all due respect, this is where Jim Collins is full of shit.  I have a friend whose family bought a chain of movie theaters.  Maybe all that get-the-right-people-on-the-bus stuff applies to the managers of those multiplexes.  But a couple levels down, you’re dealing with teenagers who are going to be in the job for a year or less.  My friend said there are four things you want those people to do: show up to work, look decent, not make out or get stoned while they’re on the job, and not steal.  If you can find people like that, you have a successful business.

What do you think about Sutton’s response?  I have two observations:

1. Today the Kansas City Star highlights an ominous statistic from the September unemployment report: barely more than one-quarter of teens have a job.  With this level of job insecurity, will teens who secure work act more like adults and curb their behavior along the lines of what Sutton says his business-owner friend sees at the lowest level?  My guess is yes, and if this is true, this would create a work environment where more of these folks are prone to drinking the motivational Kool-Aid for fear of losing their job.
2. I also think Sutton’s repudiation of Jim Collins when it comes to hiring for fit doesn’t give leaders enough credit.  Just among Winning Workplaces’ award winners, Phelps County Bank in Missouri Buy Accutane and Gentle Giant Moving in Massachusetts illustrate that you can create a workplace that entices teens to come on board and motivates them to stay on and look for increased responsibility as young adults.  It can and does happen, irrespective of industry or location as the aforementioned two examples show.

For leadership insights on everything from growth strategies to people practices, don’t miss the Inc. Leadership Conference.

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A perennial political issue, and one that has become even more of a hot button this year in the run-up to the midterm elections in the midst of a tough economy, is the extent to which government creates the conditions for business growth.

I found what amounts to an underreported Cheap Accutane story about how government is inadvertently helping to improve sales in one particular industry: headsets, a $2 billion market as of 2007, when we wrote our Success Story on Winning Workplaces Best Boss Mike Faith of Headsets.com.

How is government helping the headsets industry?  According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, currently 9 states including the District of Columbia prohibit drivers from using handheld cell phones while driving.  As more states put hands-free driving laws on the books, companies like Headsets.com benefit – not to mention general electronic retailers large and small.

Faith – who will speak at our October 27-29 event with Inc. Magazine in Denver – said as much in a recent article in The Baltimore Sun (Maryland’s hands-free driving law just took effect October 1): "Whenever there’s a [hands-free] cell phone law passed, we see quite a spike in business in that state immediately before and then a continued uptick in business afterwards as people get pulled over," he told the newspaper.

While more new customers are a great thing, especially in this economy, it’s what you do with them that can make the biggest impact on long-term revenue potential and business sustainability.  Using a solid foundation of employee engagement best practices, Faith built a highly successful enterprise channeling them into his philosophy of "Customer Love" well before rampant cell phone driving necessitated state action for public safety.

For leadership insights on everything from growth strategies to stronger team building for a more productive workplace, don’t miss the Inc. Leadership Conference.

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I’ve referenced Bob Rosner a number of times here.  It’s evident from his work at Workplace911, his guest blogging at Today’s Workplace, and in his best-selling book for managers The Boss’s Survival Guide that greater employee engagement is a top priority for him.

A few weeks ago I saw that The Wall Street Journal‘s The Juggle blog Order Generic Cialis Online without Prescription pulled out some questions from Rosner’s book that fit an unfortunately all-too-common scenario: when interviewers get too personal in assessing the attitude and personality of job candidates.

While the Journal writes that employers with fewer than 15 employees in most states are not legally held to anti-discrimination laws, it’s obviously good practice for companies of all sizes to get in the habit of avoiding toxic or potentially toxic questions such as those posed by Rosner, who will speak at our October 27-29 event with Inc. Magazine in Denver.

Asking job-related questions only, as the Journal advises, is not only good legal practice – it keeps the emphasis on time as money, for both interviewer/employee and interviewee.

For leadership insights on everything from growth strategies to stronger team building for a more productive workplace, don’t miss the Inc. Leadership Conference.

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I like to reference this statistic that appears on our website when I see folks challenge the notion that there is no payoff of employee engagement:

From the period of 1998 to 2006, the stock of the companies identified in FORTUNE Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work for in America” list outperformed that of the Standard and Poor’s 500 by over 230 percent.

This 2007 study was cited earlier this month in an article by executive coach Debbie Robins on The Huffington Post.  Since there has been a discussion lately in the business press on whether CEOs should be authentic and swear at work if they feel so inclined, Robins makes the case that these leaders should add one more 4-letter word to their communications bag, but not a profane one: love.

"Fear based, top down cultures aren’t going to cut it anymore.  People want to connect.  They want to be a part of a community.  They want to feel loved," she writes.  This is where Jeffrey Hollender – a Winning Workplaces Best Boss and a headlining speaker for our October 27-29 event with Inc. Magazine in Denver – comes in.

The highly successful company Hollender co-founded, Seventh Generation, became a small business success story and household name – and outperformed the S&P 500 – largely by hiring the right people and creating an inviting, inclusive workplace Cheap Cialis culture within a flat organizational structure.  It’s a recipe for success that has been copied (to the extent that any culture strategy can be duplicated) by most of our award-winning small and midsized businesses.

For leadership insights on everything from growth strategies to stronger team building for a more productive workplace, don’t miss the Inc. Leadership Conference.

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Late last year, citing both Small Business CEO and several small firms that have won Winning Workplaces’ annual workplace award, I made the case that giving back to your community is not just good for your brand, it helps strengthen your employee engagement for a more cohesive and productive workplace culture.

One strategy in this vein is to use your products or services to shine a light on what a segment of your community that relates to your business in some way is doing to improve people’s lives.  This recent Connecticut Post article talks about how Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is doing exactly this; in their case, honoring children aged 6-14 for their contributions to their communities Order Generic Accutane Online without Prescription when the circus comes to town.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is owned by Feld Entertainment.  Their CEO, Kenneth Feld, is a headlining speaker for our October 27-29 event with Inc. Magazine in Denver.

For leadership insights on everything from growth strategies to better team building activities for the workplace, don’t miss the Inc. Leadership Conference.

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When it comes to recent economic trends, on the one hand there is a migration happening of consumers from urban to rural areas.  On the other, though, consumers are not spending like they have in the past, regardless of where they live.  This creates a unique challenge for owners and leaders of rural-based small businesses.

One company that has emerged as a success story despite the economy is Tastefully Simple, a 2009 finalist for Winning Workplaces’ Top Small Workplace award.  The story of how this 15-year-old, 350-employee food and beverage enterprise has thrived carries special meaning for me: the company is based in Alexandria, MN, where I spent many a summer growing up as I have family there.

As Tastefully Simple Order Generic Cialis Online without Prescription is now Alexandria’s second-largest private sector employer, locals have known for years what Prairie Business Magazine reported earlier this month – that the company recruits and retains the best talent and continues to meet its sales goals because of its innovative workplace culture.

Tastefully Simple Founder & CEO Jill Blashack Strahan – a headlining speaker for our October 27-29 event with Inc. in Denver – is featured prominently in the Prairie Business article.  Writer Dee George does an excellent job of showing how the firm’s human capital strategies support Blashack Strahan’s claim that "Our principles aren’t just sayings on a wall.  They are a way of life."

For leadership insights on everything from growth strategies to better employee engagement and team building for a more productive workplace, don’t miss the Inc. Leadership Conference.

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