This week winning Workplaces added some new research summaries to our website which speak to how investing in your workplace can improve your competitiveness and bottom line.  One of these, a study released last month by the leading online employment platform oDesk, traces the steady growth in contractors used by companies – both because they have continued to find it challenging to find locally based top talent to fill positions, and because they can engage and disengage these workers more quickly than permanent employees to meet the real-time needs of their businesses.

A consequence of this phenomenon (which has no doubt also been driven by the tough economy since 2008 and rising health care costs) is that company investment in traditional benefits package items has declined somewhat in recent years.  I came across this press release on Small Business Trends this week, which shares the results of MetLife’s 9th Annual Study of Employee Benefits Trends among firms with 500 or fewer employees.

As the table in the release shows, the share of firms who invest in medical, dental, and life insurance has decreased.  It stayed the same for disability, while it rose slightly for vision.

I had this other addition to the Research Studies section of our site in mind when I thought about what this benefits erosion looked like among a set of small organizations that have typically, and purposely, kept their own packages robust in order to attract, retain, and leverage employees to maintain competitive advantage in their marketplaces – firms that happen to match the size criteria of the ones surveyed in MetLife’s study.  I’m talking, of course, about our Top Small Company Workplaces.

Below are graphs I created comparing the samples’ inclusion of five of the six benefits from the MetLife study (I couldn’t include Prescription Drugs because our award applications didn’t include this option for firms to check as part of their total package offerings).  I should also note that I looked at our honored firms from 2008 and 2011, because the years in which we evaluated their benefits were 2007 and 2010, respectively – aligning with Metife’s sample.

By a wide margin in most cases, our survey sample of small companies with great workplaces invest more heavily in the five benefits offerings.  And in 2010, our current honorees realized significant ROI through these and a whole host of other people practices, including:

• 80% have increased revenues over the past 3 years
• 96% were profitable in 2010
• 88% have increased their number of employees over past three years

Related: I mentioned above that we added some new research summaries to our site for your reading pleasure. If you have 2 minutes (literally!) I’d love if you’d take this survey to tell us under which workplace areas you’d like to see us add summaries in the future. If we’re not currently covering a topic you’d like to see, you can add it. Thanks in advance!

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Last week I was combing CNN.com on my lunch break.  When I first came across author Max Barry’s article "Why I fled the office cubicle," I thought it was going to just be about how this 20th century feature of workplace culture and design can hinder employee engagement and ideation from the bottom up.

It is about that, but Barry also takes aim (I think unnecessarily) at human resources professionals:

The difference between people and human resources is that people have brains.  …  Human resources are basically office equipment with legs.  They’re talking furniture.  In fact, they’re worse than furniture, because at least furniture stays where you put it.

Ouch.

In stark contrast to how Barry sees HR, here’s how I painted this critical business function in the context of our Winning Workplaces in 2009:

For the most part, among the small firms we’ve honored for their outstanding employee engagement that improves productivity and the bottom line, HR leaders morph from paper pushers to planners and implementation specialists, along with the CEO, of team building activities that fit and reinforce the work culture.

Below are five specific examples of this, among the small firms we’ve honored and profiled over the years:

1. Leadership Advisor and Key Decision Maker

Ginger Bay Salon & Spa, Kirkwood, MO
HR Representative: Sasha McGuire

"I’m part of the leadership team here, and we meet weekly to collaborate," Order Generic Cialis Online without Prescription McGuire says. "My boss, the owner, is very open to my feedback.  For example, I make the decisions around staffing, and she trusts me and consults with me.  I make the recruiting schedule, and make selections.  The owner is involved, but trusts me to do my work well."

2. Self-Directed Workforce Director

New Belgium Brewing Company, Fort Collins, CO
HR Representative: Jenny Briggs

Philosophically, NBB’s intention is to develop a workforce that, at all levels, is self directed, makes reasoned decisions and is inspired to pursue their passions at work.  The company provides a menu of opportunities for all staff including: a process for employees to establish their own work objectives, on-site internal training, tuition for external education, a job shadowing program, and participation on one of NBB’s committees.  Many of these activities are directed by Briggs and her 10-person staff in Human Resources.

3. Productivity Enhancer

High Performance Technologies, Inc. (HPTi), Reston, VA
HR Representative: Eleni Antoniou

The firm’s staff benefit from peer learning through Learning Cafe presentations that are given every two to three weeks. Occurring over the lunch hour in a format akin to brown bags, staff members have the chance to receive in-depth training on a particular computer program or even learn a skill not tied to the workplace.  Antoniou, director of HR, has presented several topics, including goal setting and getting the most out of performance reviews.

4. Relationship Builder

Optimax Systems, Inc., Ontario, NY
HR Representative: Alejandro Mendoza

Mendoza’s duties include helping to administer Optimax’s successful mentoring program, which is core to the company’s developmental process and helps maintain its unique workplace culture.  All new employees are assigned a mentor for a minimum of 90 days and there is a structured timeline of events that are expected to take place during this time period, including: much one-on-one time, monthly lunches, introductions to all staff, orientation to computer systems, understanding the bonus program, etc.  "Instead of a boring HR orientation, this mentoring relationship helps new employees understand our environment and what is expected in a far more effective manner," says Mendoza.

5. Emergency Responder (Culture Maintainer)

Ipswitch, Inc., Lexington, MA
HR Representative: Betty Lang-Holmes

Lang-Holmes had been on the job for one week when tragedy struck her software company, Ipswitch, Inc.  An employee’s well known significant other passed away unexpectedly.  As vice president of human resources, she acted quickly.  "We invited a licensed counselor from our EAP to host bereavement seminars the very next day," she says.  "Now, there’s no stigma attached to getting help when people need it."  In fact, at only $65 per employee, Ipswitch’s EAP investment, and oversight by HR, amounts to just pennies compared to the costs of losing a valued associate.

Related: Our Leadership Conference with Inc. starting June 15 is a fantastic opportunity to learn about cutting-edge employee practices for greater team camaraderie and company productivity – the kinds of practices you can leverage your HR staff to implement, increasing your ROI from them!  Hurry – the $300 early bird disount is only available until May 6.

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I was stunned to read The Huffington Post‘s headline last week that "Great Companies Don’t Require Good Management."  The site was referencing a May 2010 interview with billionaire investor Warren Buffett, picked up by Bloomberg on February 17, 2011, in which the Berkshire Hathaway CEO said he weighed companies’ pricing power more heavily than their management effectiveness when considering whether to invest in them.  He sometimes "doesn’t even consider the people in charge," Bloomberg reported.

Maybe you could make the case that with large, public companies this investment approach holds – although personally I think the management team and strategy are important no matter the size and type of business entity.  However, with smaller, private firms – which as we have often written based Provigil pharmacy on our own employee engagement research, must compete on quality rather than on price – not only is good management a required element of great companies, but these companies’ long-term sustainability and growth hinges on it.

The small firms that apply for Winning Workplaces’ Top Small Company Workplaces award are quite conscious of the equation through which investing in your workplace to improve the training and development of folks at management level helps the bottom line.  There is a causal relationship, as the five examples below show.  They represent selected 2011 award applicants’ responses to our application question "Describe a management development or training strategy that has been particularly effective." 

Note the varied forms of ROI a focus on strengthening their management have yielded (which I’ve bolded):

Related: Our profile of success on Merkle Inc., the database marketing agency run by our Best Boss award winner David Williams, shows how they use learning-oriented team building strategies to increase management effectiveness.  Read it here.

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Now that it’s December, it’s relatively easy to get a sense of how many companies of all sizes plan to add to their headcount in 2011.  Estimates range from 32% to 47% or more.

Harder to gauge is how many small firms plan to hire in 2011.  (Is it a coincidence that it’s historically been harder to find research of successful people practices and their financial impact among just small businesses?  That’s one of the reasons we continue to do our Top Small Company Workplaces award.  But I digress….)

I did a little digging today and found the following research, of varying sample sizes, which provides a picture of how many small organizations are looking to hire next year:

• 19% – Office Depot survey (first half of 2011 only)
• 20% – Small Business Advocate Jim Blasingame’s audience
• 22% – PNC Economic Outlook survey

These three findings suggest that 2 in 10 small businesses plan to add people in 2011.  Notably, among our own survey sample – 2003-2010 winners of our award for small firms with progressive, productive workplace cultures – we found this ratio increased to 3 in 10.  (See this article on our site, under "Actions to Ensure Success in Next 12 Months".)

This is further evidence that investing in your workplace provides results that are "better for people" (in this case, those out of work and/or looking for a career transition) and at the same time "better Provigil pharmacy for business," as we say in our tagline.

To learn more about our award-winning small firms, click here.

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Late last month I shared the preliminary results of our 2010 annual survey of Winning Workplaces’ hundreds of winners and finalists of our small workplace awards.  Today I took a fresh look at the results — at the same time that Reuters Small Business came out with an "exclusive" look at comparable data, Constant Contact’s Fall 2010 Small Business Attitudinal Survey key findings.

On two similar questions in both surveys, we see continuing evidence that a focus on investing in your workplace to create high employee engagement and team building results in not just better performance, but as a result, a rosier economic outlook for the next year.

We’re taking about apples-to-apples results here:

• Similar survey timeframe: Constant Contact surveyed U.S.-based small businesses (and non-profits) in September and October 2010; we surveyed a similar sample between October and November.
• Statistically similar portion answered the questions of business growth or reduction over the next 12 months: 94% of Constant Contact respondents did; 93% of our respondents did.

What were both samples’ answer to the above questions?  The fact that 75% of Constant Contact respondents expected revenue growth over the next 12 months made Reuters’ headline, so that’s where they stand.  In terms of our survey sample, 84% expect revenues to increase in the next 12 months.

On the question of expectation of decreased revenues over the next 12 months,

• 19% of Constant Contact respondents expect it.
• 9% of Winning Workplace award honorees expect it.

To read the full results Order Generic Accutane Online without Prescription of our honoree economic survey, with their feedback on many other pressing issues for small business owners and leaders, sign up for our November IDEAS newsletter (it’s free).

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Back in March I wrote this post, which expanded on a point made by Marisa Keegan at Fistful of Talent to argue that employers should draw a line in the sand and hire for attitude and fit over skills.  The justification for doing so is a greater tendency for your employees and teams to create customer evangelists who can increase your repeat business and referrals.

This reasoning was reiterated in an unlikely place: a guitar magazine.  Last week I picked up the September issue of Provigil pharmacy Guitar Player at my local grocery store, and in it I found the following poll and results:

In the ranking of the best qualities for fellow band members, GP readers – whom you can think of as entrepreneurs (bandleaders) and independent contractors (musicians seeking live gigs and session work) – rate team building capacity above skills by more than 5 to 1.

Does this shift your thinking when it comes to recruiting to cultivate highly engaged employees, especially when industry is the variable?

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Earlier this month I shared data from our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces employee engagement research which showed that the 20 winners of our award this year had better (which is to say, lower) average 2009 turnover than the 20 finalists.  But how do the winners compare to their industry?

From the preliminary research we’ve done into this, they have better turnover than their industries – in some cases dramatically lower.  Here’s a table that shows how this breaks down among seven of our 2010 winners, based on the latest (2009) industry benchmarking data:

What’s our takeaway from this in terms of cost savings?  Well, given that…

• These two sources say that the average cost to replace a U.S. worker is $17,000 (this obviously includes the whole spectrum from entry-level staff through managers and executives),
• The seven firms above had average 2009 turnover of 11%, 6% of which was voluntary,
• Average turnover for the industries of these seven companies is 23%, and
• The seven companies had an average of 188 employees in 2009

…if these organizations had double the turnover they actually had to match their industries, you could Order Generic Accutane Online without Prescription expect that their voluntary turnover should have been double as well – 12% instead of 6%.  This share of their average workforce works out to slightly over 11 full-time employees.  If you accept the average, per-employee replacement cost of $17,000, that works out to an average annual savings, based on better-than-average turnover, of $187,000.

That’s a significant payoff of employee engagement in my book.  It’s one of the reasons these firms are so intentional about their people practices.

Related: This Ask An Expert column on our website, which discusses in more detail the costs of turnover, contains a retention quiz to help you see if your finger is on the pulse of your organization.

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Despite this disadvantage, however, on Small Business Trends today, Case Western Reserve University Entrepreneurial Studies Professor Scott Shane shares research from ADP which finds that while the number of people employed in organizations with 50 or more employees has fallen compared to the percentage in December 2000, that percentage is over 100% for firms with 1-49 employees.  In other words, as Shane writes, the jobs trend is better at very small establishments.

This is why groups such as the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation have been urging policymakers to put more support mechanisms in place for very young businesses.  Based on past recessions, it’s a fact that many people who have been laid off, and/or who elect to leave their employers in a "Who’s next?" workplace culture, will form new businesses to strike out on their own.  Right now we’re also in a climate in which, spurred by parental support and advances in technology translating to low overhead, an unprecedented number of young people are forming small ventures.

When you combine ADP’s research with the SBA’s findings that over the last 15 years, small businesses have generated almost two-thirds of the net new jobs, it seems imperative to support the formation of startups, as well as their growth.  Winning Workplaces is focused on the latter as it pertains to activities for employee engagement and employee retention tips for leaders and managers.

Related: In February, when the economy was looking a lot more sluggish on the jobs front, I reported that over 50% of our Top Small Workplaces were hiring. See which ones here.

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In Winning Workplaces’ latest IDEAS newsletter on employee engagement and team building strategies in small firms, we wrote a feature on the "Move Your Money" movement after we sent a survey on it to registered users of our website and others in our network.

We listed selected qualitative feedback of our 172 respondents to the question, What do you think of this movement’s potential to help small businesses grow, and the impact it will have on the U.S. economy?  Based on the feedback, we then assigned an "impact level" rating of Low, Moderate, and High.

In our survey we also asked respondents to list their state.  This enables us to sort responses to the above question by region, maintaining the impact level rating of each piece of feedback.  The visualized data on this was something outside the scope of our original article, due to length, so I present the data here, as shown on the U.S. map below that’s been segmented into regions:

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Note: The majority of responses are from folks based in Illinois, as that’s where we’re located and do most of our on-site organizational work.

Even though for balance we included an equal share of "Low" impact level responses in our original article, compared to "Moderate"- and "High"-level responses, when we review all responses by geographic region, we see that the West just barely registered into the "High" level area.  The rest of the country – again, based on our survey sample – is squarely in the "Moderate" zone.

The takeaway here is that while we noted in our newsletter article that less than a fifth of respondents have moved their business accounts from larger to smaller banks, or know another business leader who has, all of them believe the movement has the potential to make at least a moderate impact on small business, and economic, growth.  Those in the West believe it will have a greater impact.

Related: Two of the small firms we recognized for seeing a payoff of employee engagement are on the Move Your Money list.  See which two here.

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