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Is California’s Paid Family Leave Program a Bellwether for National Implementation, Success?

Team Building Activity Tips — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 17:26:33 +0000

It’s no secret that California, where I live and telecommute for Illinois-based Winning Workplaces, has been largely an economic failure in recent years. While Silicon Valley continues to do well (did you hear that Google is going to embark on its biggest expansion to date this year?), overall the state has unemployment of 12.5%, the second-highest in the nation after Nevada.

Yet, a new report by researchers at the Washington, DC-based Center for Economic and Policy Research and the City University of New York shows that an employee benefit that Winning Workplaces has long touted as part of a successful people practices program – paid family leave – is substantially helping the state’s businesses, even as it alleviates the stress of their workers.

Today on the Sloan Research Network Work and Family Blog, Mary Curlew pulls some revealing findings from this employee engagement research. According to Eileen Appelbaum and Ruth Milkman’s survey of 500 workers at over 250 employers, California’s 9-year-old Paid Family Leave (PFL) program had either a "positive effect" or "no noticeable effect" on:

Productivity (89%),
Profitability/Performance Order Generic Cialis Online without Prescription (91%),
Turnover (96%), and
Employee morale (99%).

This is hard data that can’t be ignored by business leaders who don’t think paid leave leads to improved organizational metrics. For those critics, we have more data to share. Not surprisingly given California’s status as our most populous state, it had the highest number of small businesses that applied for our 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award with Inc. Magazine: 37, or 11% of our 342 total applicants this year.

Among the 37 California-based award applicants, here’s the breakdown in the share that were profitable in 2010 and average employee turnover in 2010 among those that offer paid leave starting at one year of employment, versus those that offer no paid leave:

As you can see, among our research sample those that offer paid leave tend have slightly lower turnover; also, more of them are profitable. (I should note that among those that offer paid leave, the average number of days/year is 17.5, with a range from 5 to 36 days.)

Do you think this data suggests that all other states should implement a paid leave program? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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Is California's Paid Family Leave Program a Bellwether for National Implementation, Success?

5 ESOP Success Story Videos for Employee Ownership Month

Team Building Activity Tips — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:30:43 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about the underreported story of how more states enacting hands-free driving laws for public safety is having the side effect of helping sales for headsets and other electronic retail businesses.

Another story I feel has gone largely Buy cheap Cialis Online under the radar in the national media is how employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) have helped organizations – especially small ones – insulate themselves during tough economies like the current one. I’ve explored this in past posts like these two, as well as this more recent one from April where I show that among Winning Workplaces’ 40 finalists for our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award, the 7 that are ESOPs have posted greater average 2009 revenue and 3-year revenue growth, and a greater share of them are profitable, than the 33 that are not.

As October is Employee Ownership Month, I thought I would help celebrate the payoff of employee engagement and team building that’s associated with these programs by sharing the following 5 videos we shot of leaders from some of our award-winning small businesses that are ESOPs. Be sure to have your notepad handy as you watch them – the subjects offer tips that you can use to implement or improve upon an ESOP in your organization for a stronger workplace culture of ownership.

Bill Loskutoff, Jackson’s Hardware – Retail – California:

Sarah McGinley-Smith, King Arthur Flour Company – Manufacturing, Retail – Vermont:

Wally Bateman, Paducah Bank & Trust Company – Financial Services – Kentucky

Bill Marshall, Phelps County Bank – Financial Services – Missouri

Mike Foley, Reflexite Corporation – Manufacturing – Connecticut

Related: Longtime ESOP expert and speaker Corey Rosen of NCEO hosted a webinar for us on options for transitioning ownership. Access it here.

Image credit: ESOP Association/Entertainment Partners

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5 ESOP Success Story Videos for Employee Ownership Month

Case Closed: Researchers Find Employee Engagement Drives Financial Success, Not the Other Way Around

Team Building Activity Tips — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 09:30:48 +0000

Winning Workplaces has always made the case, on the grounds of leading workplace studies like these and our own research, that employee engagement drives financial success. But it has still been up for discussion among CEOs and academics alike whether the inverse is really how the relationship works – whether financial success begets increased worker engagement.

Well, according to a meta-analysis of over 2,000 business units in 10 large organizations by researchers at Gallup and the University of Iowa, the verdict is in: employee engagement causes better financial performance. (Their analysis also found it causes higher retention and greater customer loyalty.)

All three of these ends, especially Buy cheap online Provigil the financial component, justify investing in your workplace for greater engagement and team building – even during tough times like these, as I wrote about yesterday.

Related: Several of the small business leaders we have recognized over the years for their success in turning high engagement into impressive financial performance will be speaking at our October event in Denver in partnership with Inc. Magazine. Learn more about it here.

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Case Closed: Researchers Find Employee Engagement Drives Financial Success, Not the Other Way Around

University of Iowa Prof: Don’t Underestimate Leadership’s Role in Business Success or Failure

Team Building Activity Tips — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 05:33:22 +0000

Cheap Accutane height=”203″ alt=”" width=”160″ align=”right” style=”border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 5px; border-left: medium none; margin-right: 5px; border-bottom: medium none” src=”http://cdn.content.compendiumblog.com/uploads/user/0da1f4b5-6d49-4164-9009-9f4d0114ef86/e5cc468d-0810-41b1-89b0-87b5a2bbfb03/Image/276e79e61f2b375d640bd0cfafcc4113.jpg” />Given this blog’s focus on how employee retention tips and other people practices lead to a more productive workplace culture – and how leadership strategies such as succession planning reduce dependency of the business on key people if they leave or are otherwise taken out of the equation – a reader might conclude that decisions made in the C-suite matter less now than they once did.

This conclusion would be wrong, however, argues Tyler Leverty, assistant professor of finance in the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business. According to this Newswise article, which references Leverty’s paper "Dupes or Incompetents: An Examination of Management’s Impact on Firm Distress," some CEOs significantly improve a firm’s performance, while others hurt it.

Writes Newswise,

[Leverty] found … good CEOs can remove their firms from regulatory scrutiny 8 to 16 percent faster than a poor manager. And in insurance companies that are going out of business, a more talented CEO can get a better return on the firm’s assets by up to 10 cents on the dollar.

The takeaway is that events and other learning opportunities that deliver a good ROI for leaders are worth the investment – even in tough times. This is why Winning Workplaces is excited to partner with Inc. Magazine to host the Creating Competitive Cultures (C3) Conference in Denver on October 27-29, 2010. As Inc. says on their C3 website, CEOs and other attendees can expect to learn "the newest leadership strategies for developing the best possible company culture, one that results in a loyal, motivated, inspired, and focused team."

Click here to learn more about this event. You’ll want to register by tomorrow, August 31, to get the early bird rate, a $300 savings.

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University of Iowa Prof: Don't Underestimate Leadership's Role in Business Success or Failure

Acton-Boxborough science team discovers success

Team Building Activity Tips — Mon, 10 May 2010 07:40:00 +0000

Acton-Boxborough science team discovers success
Acton-Boxborough’s budding scientists have made their mark: After winning the state Science Olympiad, they’re headed to the national Order Generic Cialis Online without Prescription competition.

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NetFlix’s Workplace Culture Has Contributed to Its Success

Team Building Activity Tips — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:31:34 +0000

We all know NetFlix. They started out small here in California in 1997, and their domination of the online video rental space in less than 10 years forced longtime market leader Blockbuster into the defensive position of throwing "everything but the kitchen sink" at the company.

I’ve been a NetFlix customer off and on since the early 2000s. I’m currently with them, and plan to stay with them because they recently came out with an extremely cool value-add Buy Cialis for owners of the Nintendo Wii like me: they have available, free of charge, a Wii disc that allows NetFlix customers to instantly stream both new and older movies to your TV. This is a great feature for customers who also subscribe to cable TV services that charge extra for on-demand movies, as many of them can be viewed through the Wii under the same, basic $10-per-month NetFlix membership fee.

Customer-centric innovations like this come about in part because of the productive workplace culture NetFlix has built and sustained. Dharmesh Shah, the co-founder and CEO of successful software company HubSpot, shared on his OnStartups blog yesterday 23 insights from NetFlix’s workplace culture deck. These include such Winning Workplaces-approved tenets as:

Values defined by who gets rewarded and who is asked to leave.
Treating people with trust, respect, and fairness.
Creating mechanisms to solicit and act upon employees’ best ideas.
"Fast failure": recognize mistakes and quickly move on.
Emphasis on building teams in the workplace.
Employee leadership development to encourage people at all levels to "behave like an owner."
Flat hierarchy in which titles don’t matter as much.
Employees in charge of their career development.

A commenter to Shah’s post, Matt, shared the link to the slides of NetFlix’s culture deck, which I pass along here. Enjoy!

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NetFlix's Workplace Culture Has Contributed to Its Success

How Much of a Company’s Success is Tied to CEO Ownership?

Team Building Activity Tips — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:26:07 +0000

I wanted to pose the question that’s the title of this post to you because I noticed something interesting when I pored over data from Winning Workplaces’ 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award applicants and finalists today.

The table below shows how the average share of a company owned by the CEO, and the share owned by non-management employees, compare among all our applicants (497 firms) and our 40 finalists that we announced last month:

We see, at least in our total survey sample of just under 500, that as CEO ownership goes down, ownership by non-management employees goes up. And when compared to this year’s entire applicant pool, our finalists posted better outcomes including lower turnover, longer employee tenures, and greater Buy cheap Accutane Online overall profitability (see this post for more on how our finalists edged out the other applicants).

As the post mentioned above shows, the finalists enjoy more productive workplaces on the whole due in part to their greater investment in employee benefits including medical insurance and flex practices. But their (again, overall) stronger culture of ownership seems to also play a role in their impressive business results.

Is it true that turning over more ownership to employees, and a CEO involving employees to a greater degree in key business decisions, improves productivity and the bottom line? What do you think?

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How Much of a Company's Success is Tied to CEO Ownership?

Corporate Team Building Success

Team Building Activity Tips — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:19:29 +0000

Do you want your corporate program to build a successful team? While many factors play a role in creating a successful meeting, off-site and the team’s training program – here are 4 ways that work for organizations team success. To understand 1) why they are there entirely. It’s for the computer to make sure what it is, with knowledge of the team’s formation. Transparency in the goals and expectations and needs of team members who are part of the team make participants feel comfortable. If you think of the amazing team with a flick of the company feels that are dysfunctional and we will spend a day, team building “This will show a lack of confidence, and is trying the team as children. Meet the equipment to do what they feel is the team that covers the problems in making decisions. The team members know what is happening, and they’ll tell you what they need – all you need do is ask. 2) correct sequence of events. For this reason, the meeting with the consultant team building is necessary. The sequencing is a building of “security” risky “one” point. If the team does well and the program continues growing. If time is 2 hours or 25 years – planning and time sequence. A good starting point to understand the sequence, as just Tuckman stages of group development, training, assault, complete standardization and interruption. This shows the progression of the development teams. It is imperative to understand that at any time the team can change from one stage to another. This must be borne in mind when sequencing team building activities and materials presentation for the program from your computer. 3) Focus on treatment and briefings. If you really understand the desire of a recreational event – that all you have a great time and make people laugh. This is a wonderful thing and should Buy Cialis be build teams. If you are an educational program for team building events then your search.’s team-building activities only supply vehicles for team learning. The point of the hands of the initiatives is to strengthen team members and test new knowledge and skills acquired during a conference of the computer program. In addition, hands and experience of nature-centered learning creates a learning environment.) Processing (with the right agent is exciting and motivating. Before committing to a program, ask the facilitator to lead a small sample exercise. You should end with the feeling that you have learned and acquired some knowledge, a strong advocate in the treatment makes you feel like you taught him something. 4) Monitoring and now what? The team building and experiential training are long term projects. At the end of the session ask the team what we use to make energy and ideas that were generated. Create a concrete plan to follow. They even go so far as to record and put the objectives and competencies of team building program assessments for team members. An effective team building has the ability to detect different learning styles and skills at once. This is best seen as a symphony of ideas. All the great songwriters (in this case, team building is the leader) will be able to maintain beautiful sounds and know exactly when you need different tools. Investing in their capabilities, equipment and the results sound like beautiful music, “Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, as a pilot and training consulting organization, and a blogger from New York Team Building. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, the creation of team building programs, the talent to increase production and maintain the efficiency of your team. He lives in Buffalo, New York, and runs his team and leadership training to meet needs where and when it fits your schedule.

-Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, as a pilot and training consulting organization, and a blogger from New York Team Building. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, the creation of team building programs, the talent to increase production and maintain the efficiency of your computer. He lives in Buffalo, New York, and runs his team and leadership training to meet needs where and when it fits your schedule.

Corporate Team Building Success

Elements For Success In Team Building Event Planning

Team Building Activity Tips — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 01:22:16 +0000

The responsibility for organizing team-building events is a difficult task for everyone. Everything must be planned and executed with great precision. Also, the team building objectives should be included in most activities. Therefore, the objective of the first event is identified before werden.Sobald planning is done, it would be better to run an investigation on building activities of several teams that meet the desired objectives of the organization. Browsing through websites like www. Chili sauce. co. en / corporate events will have an idea of the activities of the next step können.Ihr one place, the implementation of the necessary facilities to make your computer has started building activities. May be a good idea to go through the list of sites that your company before you go making inquiries accepted. This way you will not waste your time with the examination of the sites that are not accepted. Can you also to colleagues of recommendations on how the first hand experience on levels of service and facilities of places you have, that nachdenken.Als planning team building events, is one of its main tasks, the balance between the organizational meeting to establish goals and enhance employee morale. To promote one of the ways to do this, interaction among participants through activities and games that will take place. Holistic participation would be his goal, why these games must be appropriate to use the evaluation models work as jedermann.Die Kirkpatrick’s learning model, you can decide whether an activity is fun, educational and applied research, and improve performance. Depending on the objectives of the event will provide many opportunities for you to choose among activities such as ice breaker Provigil pharmacy exercise, leadership and management and monitoring activities and awareness Übungen.Schließlich good to have a last-minute list of ordering tasks relate a few days before the event date must be done. For example, you have to confirm the number of participants in the construction equipment necessary to the place or location and a list of teams for the event. Ultimately, the addition would be in all these details for their success in the organization is essential.

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Elements For Success In Team Building Event Planning

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Corporate Team Building – Bridges For Success

Team Building Activity Tips — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:34:47 +0000

Promoting a positive mental attitude in the workplace and promote the management of production time can be a difficult task for anyone with a leadership position. One of the ways you might consider improving the working environment by building employee moral through team building exercises. In the announcement of a mandatory corporate event in some people fear that the strike as memories come to office activities which are designed to break the ice and not offered as a public humiliation. These doubts whether these activities can actually appease a positive exercise creates a list of options. It would also be useful in providing a sense of security that is held by professional manager of corporate entertainment, just fun in the agenda. It is important not to skimp on the cost of a day as positive, avoid low-budget events and the benefits of a successful day team are priceless. Morales will be encouraged to improve communication, reduce barriers and improve creative thinking. Happy workers are more productive and a good working environment leads to better quality work. The positive mind frame is transmitted from the experience of the Office and the creation of a social network in the office sector is an openness and honesty in the hierarchy of the office is the result of inestimable value. Events range from the first business day in sports events such as cricket, motor racing and rugby, several of the union activities of specialized equipment. Music, fashion shows, treasure hunts, paintball, tanks are driving, archery, games and contests all available with varying degrees of interaction depending on group size and account for all mental and physical abilities. Even if you are an international event that will take guests are kept simple activities and general enough for all nationalities to understand and participate. Quiz and games are an ideal choice for an indoor event exciting and attractive. These are often shown in popular TV-based game, such as Family Fortunes, Blankety Blank and play your cards right. There is even a competitive and challenging the competence of the company’s apprentice, the specification of your company can be cut like the other games. Creative make binding events related to the catwalk, film, art, music and journalism can be a very exciting and mind stretching a day. Reducing barriers is always an easy task when it comes to creative challenges. From full day events that lead to a musical Order Generic Cialis Online without Prescription performance to a 60-minute class colors to the level of skill and how much you want to stretch the imagination of its employees determines the type of team development, you can choose. During the summer months, why is not the best of the weather and take a dip in an outdoor exercise. Pursuits like shooting and archery are motivated and driven employees in size. The challenge of competing with their colleagues, the outdoor environment is a healthy form of energy more competitive, otherwise a closed office environment in a negative way to banish the surface. For something less serious, is a knockout-style games is a solution for one minutes laughter excess energy to burn throughout the company. Foamy Fun and sumo suits will be a day of remembrance, and see each other in a light comedy can always reverse the negative attitudes of the office. One thing is certain, more effort is put into the development and employee retention efforts to become more personal for your business.

Shaun Parker is a leading construction equipment. Find out more about team building in Accolade corporate events, with particular experience in events of team spirit.

Corporate Team Building - Bridges For Success