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Business Leaders: Economy Will Grow Moderately in 2nd Half

Corp! magazine, in partnership with the Business Improvement Team and Business Research Group, conducted the Corp! Business Trends Survey, a longitudinal survey that tracks the opinions of business owners and company executives on the economy.

In this exclusive Corp! survey of leaders from a broad spectrum of the business world, more than half anticipate the economy as a whole will increase moderately during the second half of this year. We’ve included a few of their comments throughout this report.

As reflective of their leadership status (more than 75 percent were at least at the level of executive vice president with the majority CEO or chairman), all had definite opinions of what the next six months will hold for their company, their business sector and their regional economy.

In its report on the second quarter’s national economic activity that was issued late last week, the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) agreed that the economy was improving, albeit slightly. The country’s Gross Domestic Product went from an adjusted .4 percent increase in the period from Q1 (January through March) to a 1.3 percent increase for Q2. The increase, according to the BEA’s analysis, reflected a decrease in imports and growth in federal spending but was affected by a “sharp deceleration in personal consumption expenditures.”

How everything will be affected by recent legislation curtailing federal spending is, of course, unknown.

The Corp! survey is ongoing and, should there be significant changes, we’ll be back with an update.

Innovation
Nearly 8 out of 10 believe growth will come from good old American innovation, which will lead to increased sales. Companies from small to large are anticipated to contribute those innovative ways of doing business through new products or other means.

Key drivers are innovation and job creation-¦ .”

While average wages will remain the same, nearly half of survey respondents predict the cost of production will rise moderately, while a third think it will remain the same.

Financing and Taxes at a Macro Level
Financing options are predicted to remain the same by half of our respondents, while more than a third anticipate greater availability of investment capital.

Another economic bright spot anticipated by our respondents is the amount of overall business taxes -“ with more than a third predicting they will decrease moderately and nearly 4 out of 10 saying they will stay essentially the same.

Green Energy
The concept of alternative energy is gaining traction; with more than half saying they believe it will increase either moderately or even sharply, with one-third believing that the current level of interest will continue.

Green initiative research increasing -¦ .

Unexpected Sectors Growing
We asked which particular business sectors would lead the anticipated moderate growth in their state and a surprising 6 out of 10 answered that tourism, travel and dining would top their list. We gave them the option to provide multiple answers, so both the manufacturing sector and the sector that includes professional, scientific and technical services attracted the nod of our respondents as the next greatest contributors to our moderate economic growth.

Not surprisingly, given the current state of the real estate market, a quarter of our respondents anticipate that the construction and real estate sectors will decrease moderately.

Even with projected or existing funding cuts, higher education as a sector was seen by 7 out of 10 of our respondents as staying the same or growing moderately during the second half of the year.

Everyone’s complaining [commented one respondent, meaning both his customers and his competitors] -“ and, as a leader, [I know] that’s a sure sign that there is shared sacrifice for the good of the whole-¦ .

A Need for a Change in Thinking
We asked some respondents about questions we hadn’t asked and the responses we got seemed to reflect the thoughts of many as reported in national polling. Two examples:

The lack of leadership and consensus in our federal government is causing a ripple effect of uncertainty for our economic trends. This environment stifles decision making in the business community. Further, this delays decision making, sales cycles and can result in no decisions being made.

However, the current approach in our state government is providing a clearer approach to the future. We believe that this is providing the foundation for consistent growth going forward.

The biggest influence we can have is to do it ourselves and not wait for someone else to do it for us. Fear should not rule the day!

And-¦

The greatest influences on the economy today are increased spending by government at all levels, decreasing revenues to support that spending, a moribund housing sector where value continues its slide, perpetually high unemployment that is not accurately reflected in official statistics, businesses that fail to create jobs in the U.S. and a general disinterest on the part of citizens to look at outside-the-box solutions to these challenges. No one wants to discuss systemic change, but that is what we need if we are to survive and start to rebuild a broader based economic engine.

Focusing on Their Own Business
When asked to think more narrowly about their own company, our respondents were almost bullish. Two-thirds anticipate new orders will increase moderately or even sharply with only 10 percent anticipating a moderate decline.

Customers are opening up to new orders faster than in 2010-¦ .

A similar pattern emerges when asked about their company’s innovation, with 9 out of 10 planning to rely on it as a major contributor to their economic growth.

Growth may come at the expense of an increase in hours worked, with 9 out of 10 planning to have to work at least as hard if not harder in the coming months. Internal production, however, doesn’t seem to suffer from increased outsourcing, as more than two-thirds plan to keep things in-house at current levels.

-¦ work force readiness-¦ .

Compensation Up
Total organizational compensation is anticipated to rise at 4 out of 10 companies in our survey and stay the same in slightly more than that -“ a much better result for employees than the slightly more than 10 percent whose salaries will either decline moderately, or worse.

So are Health Care and Benefit Costs
The cost of health care and other employee benefits is another sticking point for our respondents. During the next 6 months nearly a third of them are planning for them to increase sharply, the highest percentage of responses in that category. Combined with those expecting their costs to increase only moderately, this represents a whopping 75 percent of those questioned.

Organizational-Level Financing and Taxes
Some 15 percent of our respondents anticipate their company’s availability of capital will decrease moderately, but more than 7 out of 10 report it will either stay the same or increase. Similarly, 8 of 10 think the cost of that capital will either remain the same or increase only moderately.

When the taxman cometh, nearly 9 out of 10 of our respondents think the bite will either stay the same or increase only moderately.

Restructured state debt through tax increases has caused a fresh view-¦ .

All in all, our survey participants are as positive on their own companies as they are on the economy as a whole, with two-thirds expecting that business will increase moderately or even sharply during the next six months.

Editors note: See related story U.S. IPO Market Predicted to Stay Strong for the Rest of 2011

Wanted: Green Government Contractors

Going green has become big business, and government contracting firms are cashing in on the greening trend, led in part by sustainability initiatives backed by the Obama administration. Ever since Executive Order 13514 (Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance) required 95 percent of new contract actions, including task orders, to be green, there is a growing consciousness among federal agencies to procure “green” services.

For instance, the federal government spends about $80 billion annually on information technology and is using its formidable buying power to encourage vendors to go green. The Department of Defense (DOD) is also going green, developing a Green Procurement Strategy. Requirements and preference programs may be assessed at the DOD “Going Green” website: www.defense.gov/home/features/2010/1010_energy/

The General Services Administration (GSA) Public Buildings Service has taken it to the next level. In 2009, the agency announced that each and every federal building -“ roughly 9,000 in the nation -“ must meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver standards by 2017. By 2030, the GSA would like to see all federal buildings meet net zero in terms of energy savings and sustainability. As part of the GSA’s leadership initiatives, they teamed with the Environmental Protection Agency and the DOD to lead an interagency work group to determine whether contractor greenhouse gas emissions can be used in the federal procurement process to make the government’s supply chain more sustainable.

These initiatives are increasingly compelling the federal government to utilize green contractors, and with the advent of green technology, it has become a goal of government leaders to carve funding ear-marked for research and project plans to include green ingredients. Federal purchasers usually have one of two things in mind when they hear about green services. The first is services that directly address environmental issues, such as waste management or energy metering services. The second is any service performed in an environmentally friendly manner.

In today’s economy, the federal government is one of the few organizations spending large amounts of money – $500 billion spent annually in procurement. Of those funds, 23 percent of federal contracts are earmarked for small businesses. However, there are billions of dollars in opportunities left on the table by business owners. So what do small business owners need to know to take advantage of the government’s green initiative?

The top ten essentials are:

  1. Explore the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Green Contracting Opportunities: Visit www.sba.gov/content/green-contracting-opportunities and become familiar with how the federal government purchases green products and service.

  2. Get your business noticed by government agencies: Register your business in the Central Contractor Registration (www.bpn.gov/ccr) and add your business to the Dynamic Small Business Search.

  3. Get your business certified: Visit www.sba.gov/gcbd to determine if your business qualifies for Small Business Certification. You are able to identify your firm as a small business, veteran owned, small disadvantaged business and woman-owned small business. This will give you an “edge” in government contracting.

  4. Broaden your industry codes to open up green contracting opportunities: Visit www.naics.com/search.htm to determine your NAICS codes.

  5. Develop a green-specific capability statement: A capability statement is a necessity when doing business with the government. A successful capability statement includes, but is not limited, to company overview, core competencies, past performance, differentiators, company data and contact information.

  6. Work with green government contractors: Register on TeamingUSA.com to find potential teaming partners that can help you compete for green contracts.

  7. Visit the Environmental Protection Agency’s website at www.epa.gov/epp/pubs/guidance/index.htm and learn about the 5 Guiding Principles providing a framework for GREEN federal purchases.

  8. Go to the Department of Energy website for free webinars that small businesses can attend to learn more about how to green their businesses.

  9. Learn from those who preceded you: Use available resources to find information that will save you time and money. For more how-to articles, guides, videos and tips for business owners looking to do business with the government, visit OPENForum.com/governmentcontracting.

  10. Remember to dedicate time to pursuing government contracts: Treat this time like a client meeting, and specifically allocate time blocks into your schedule. Without these blocks of time, your strategy becomes a hope or wish and with inconsistent effort, it will be extremely difficult to effectively attract the new business. For example, one successful woman contractor sets up weekly time dedicated to government contracting pursuits.

Think about how you could incorporate those measures into your business. Any small business having the capability to help the government meet their green initiative is definitely going to have a huge edge in the world of government contracting.

Lourdes Martin-Rosa is the American Express OPEN Advisor on Government Contracting and has nearly 20 years of experience in the federal procurement arena. She helps small businesses get contract ready and achieve contract success.

Technology Can Cut Waste Management Costs for Cities

As the country’s fiscal outlook remains uncertain, municipalities are looking for ways to minimize costs while reducing their environmental footprint in any way they can. For decades, cities have used traditional CSO management systems to treat combined sewer discharges to surface waters such as rivers and lakes during heavy rainfall.

Conventional detention systems, such as storage tunnels and retention treatment basins, span miles in length and are difficult to implement in urban environments because of their large footprint. Not to mention, these voluminous contraptions are out-dated, inefficient and expensive.

Combining his background in civil engineering with his commitment to green technology, Saad Ghalib, the founder and CEO of Ann Arbor-based Applied Engineering Technologies (AET), has created a new CSO capture and treatment technology. It simplifies the treatment of waste water discharge while providing significant savings in operational and maintenance costs for municipalities.

Untreated overflows from sewage and storm-based sources pose a serious threat to the nation’s overall water quality. The Environmental Protection Agency has stated that combined sewer overflows are a significant source of pollution to surface waters, and recent legislation has called on municipalities to proactively confront this issue. Because traditional systems used to treat sewage overflows are so entrenched in a city’s logistics, public officials are often slow to respond to new ideas.

Like most green innovation, the successful collaboration between the public and private sectors is critical to improving infrastructure. Dearborn was the first city to adopt AET’s design, after an initial attempt to build a sewage tunnel was hampered by hydrological conditions. Two projects have been completed, and one more project is scheduled for completion at the end of the year. According to State Rep. Gino Polidori, D-Dearborn, the treatment shaft design has saved Dearborn more than $150 million. “Too often, people are content to do what has been done in the past, rather than looking to the future,” Polidori wrote.

As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, implementing infrastructure with a limited footprint is critical to effective city planning. One-eighth the size of a regular wastewater basin, AET’s Treatment Shaft technology is one possible answer. The process provides large-scale storage and treatment, including skimming, settling, screening, and disinfection. This design uses a deep shaft structure, as opposed to the more traditional large surface structures or lengthy tunnels, and thus helps municipalities store and treat wastewater more efficiently. In addition, it is hydraulically efficient with minimal head loss, as the system harnesses the natural forces of gravity to pass waste water flow without causing basement flooding. By implementing gravity operation at all times, AET’s Treatment Shaft technology ensures efficiency through limiting energy use and cutting costs. The product is being marketed by Public Works Consulting LLC, with the assistance of North Carolina-based Process Wastewater Technologies LLC. Jim Heist, the president of Process Wastewater Technologies, recognized the value of AET’s Treatment Shaft technology immediately. “The cities that need this are in the hundreds,” Heist said. “We’re seeing a groundswell of interest. Two years ago, it was hard to convince anyone to abandon tunnels, which has been the go-to for everyone. And if tunnels were too expensive, (cities) would just look for Band-Aids to keep them in the graces of regulators.”

Ghalib earned his PhD in Civil Engineering from Northwestern University in 1985, and has dedicated his career to making public infrastructure more efficient and cost-effective for cities and their inhabitants. His passion for engineering stems from a desire to provide simple solutions to complicated problems. “I enjoy approaching issues from a different angle,” Ghalib says. “I try to challenge the status quo while looking for the most intuitive answer to engineering problems.”

Mohsen Ghazi is a financial analyst for a technology-focused automotive supplier, and is an environmental enthusiast with a passion for writing, investing, and green technology. He can be reached at [email protected].

Off The Deeb End: Lessons On Leadership

Recently, I read Adam Bryant’s column in the New York Times where he interviewed Barry Salzberg, global chief executive of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, about his important leadership lessons (May 21, 2011).

Salzberg recalled one of the firm’s partners teaching one of his early training classes in the 1980s. He said the partner talked about The Five P’s: Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance. He went on to say that here it is in 2011 and that he still guides his leadership style by the five P’s.

During the interview, Salzberg also said when you meet with your staff avoid surprises, always tell it like it is, involve others in discussions, no need to blindside anyone at a meeting, and always do what you say you will do.

He also mentioned that getting feedback is important for both discussion and decision making purposes, and don’t resist change.

Salzberg also provided some recommendations for hiring people. He said you should look for writing skills, experiences, values, priorities and personality.

For the new employees, they should brand themselves, be unique about something, and be known for something. They should also be proud of their work, but never satisfied.

Obviously over the years his leadership lessons have paid off.

How to Hire a Commercial Realtor

You see a glistening glass office building and decide this is a perfect space for locating your company. The place is close to expressways with ample parking and attractive. How do you make it happen?

You -“ like many clients -“ have a variety of ways to reach out for someone to lease this property. Some look in the Yellow Pages, others study listings in the back of regional magazines and some look for a name and telephone number on the side of the building they want to inspect. First you want to find someone to represent you and it may not be the name on the property.

In the real estate business an agent may be referred to as a Realtor if he belongs to the National Association of Realtors, this is a trade marked term as opposed to a real estate agent who may be trained by an agency. A broker must have worked in the industry and completed a number of transactions and passed tests before getting their designation.

Within the realm of buildings, you’ll find brokers and agents representing residential, office, industrial, retail, land and investment. These categories break down into tenant representation and listing agents. Hire an agent who specializes in the kind of property you seek.

If your firm wants to renew its existing lease or relocate, you are best served with someone who specializes in tenant representation. This individual works only for your firm. Never hire the agent whose name is on the building. They work exclusivively for the landlord. Another thing most people don’t realize is that if a building is represented by a commercial agency, every agent in that office has a fiduciary relationship to that landlord. Check websites to see if an office has a lot of listings which will tell you it is most likely a firm that represents primarily landlords. Do not hire the agent who tries to work for both tenants and landlords. Otherwise your firm could be used to help that agent get a listing. In the end you will not get the best deal because that agent needs to keep the landlord happy if he ever hopes of getting a shot at the listing.

Sometimes I run into people who want to negotiate their leases themselves. One nonprofit I called on for years kept negotiating the lease themselves. They didn’t see any reason to bring in a third party. It just so happened I was working on a large acquisition in their building and we were able to get a list from the landlords of all the rents. That nonprofit was paying $8 per square foot higher than the other tenants in the building. They did not have access to what the actual deals were doing in the market so they had no basis when negotiating. You want to hire the right agent to do the job. If you have an office building for sale or lease, don’t go to a firm that works primarily in the retail or residential. They will know all the buzz terms, however they won’t be able to provide as good of service. When listing a property for lease or sale it is beneficial to find a team. The agent should list your property in the following databases: Co-star, CPIX, Loop-net and the Michigan Site Net.

If you are hiring a broker to list real estate for sale or lease ask the broker what type of advertising will the agent do on the property? The larger the property the higher your expectations. The following are a few examples of marketing: brochures, post cards, newspaper or industry specific advertising.

Cold calls are not anyone’s favorite thing to do, but they can bring in good results. Find out if cold calls will be made for the listing. The agent should be able to tell you whom they are targeting for perspective tenants. They should also provide monthly updates.

Questions are vital in the initial interview. Following up on references before hiring a Realtor can save you lots of headache and money. The most important thing to remember is to hire someone who specializes in the type of transaction your firm needs completed for the best results.

Lynn Drake is president of Compass Commercial, a Troy, Mich., -based company specializing in all phases of tenant representation for local and national clients. With 20-plus years of leasing experience she helps entrepreneurs and executives identify the right space at the right cost. This is the second of a three-part series on understanding real estate. Reach her at www.compass-commercial.com.

R&D Tax Credit Incentive Helps Keep Michigan Businesses Competitive

Michael Siegal

Michigan offers several business tax incentives that can help local companies by driving development and creating jobs. Specifically, the Michigan Research and Development (R&D) tax credit has been effective in lightening the load of tax liability and providing companies with additional dollars for new machinery and employees.

We’ve all read in the papers and magazines about the big companies keeping their taxes low -“ and the R&D tax credit is the number one credit that the big companies use to reduce their federal tax burden. Small and medium businesses need to sharpen their pencils and take advantage of the R&D tax credit to reduce their taxes.

The key problem we see in working with Michigan businesses is that they wrongly believe that they don’t qualify for the R&D tax credit. Too often, businesses think that the R&D credit at both the federal and state level is just for businesses with people in labs and patents. Nothing could be more incorrect. The R&D tax credit -“ one of the biggest at the federal level -“ is a applicable to a wide variety of industries. Unless your company is making the exact same widget the exact same way -“ you are probably doing R&D and may be eligible for the credit. We have found particularly in Michigan that architects, engineers, and software developers often do not understand that their work could very well qualify for the R&D credit.

The state of Michigan has adopted the federal criteria to qualify research and development activity -“ so useful for business -“ you qualify for one you qualify for the other. Starting with the 2009 tax year, a taxpayer may claim a credit equal to 1.90 percent of the taxpayer’s research and development expenses in Michigan during the tax year (in 2008, the credit was 1.52 percent of qualified research expenses). Although 1.90 percent may not seem substantial at first, the R&D credit, coupled with the federal credit, has significantly affected Michigan companies taking advantage of the credit.

Here are some examples to highlight how this tax credit can bring real benefit:

Case #1 – A manufacturing and tool and die company (“ManufactureCo”) designs and develops plastic injection and die cast molds that produce parts to the precise specifications for numerous applications including the automotive, home appliance and aeronautic industries. ManufactureCo also designs and develops supporting tools and applications for the molds or molded parts. ManufactureCo’s gross receipts range from $24 million to $27 million throughout 2005 -“ 2010. ManufactureCo conducts qualified research activities that satisfy the requirements of the Federal and Michigan statutes and is eligible for more than $200,000 in Michigan and Federal credits. As a result of these tax savings, ManufactureCo was able to increase its capital investment and employment levels.

Case #2 -“ A tool and die company (TDCo), with gross receipts of $3 million, designs and develops critical machining, distributes products and conducts trial production runs.

TDCo was eligible to claim over $75,000 in Federal and Michigan tax credits. As a result of these tax savings, the company has been able to invest in new capital equipment. Good news indeed in a tough economy.

The R&D tax credit -“ it’s not just for the Fortune 500 -“ it’s for your business as well. Michigan companies benefit from a state R&D that will put significant dollars into the pockets of business owners.

Michael Siegel is a managing director for alliantgroup focused on Business Development in Michigan. Anna Nika is an associate for alliantgroup and a member of its Manufacturing Industry Specialization Program. Contact them at www.alliantgroup.com.

Eats, Friends and Tweets: Restaurants Keep Social Media Marketing on Simmer — For Now

It seems as though everyone has a personal Facebook page and a corporate fan page and hundreds, if not thousands of Twitter followers. Except restaurants.

According to the National Restaurant Association (NRA), repeat customers represent more than 70 percent of the business done by all but “fine dining” establishments -“ and there it’s 60 percent. “How many times do we have to say this?” asks the Association in its recent annual report to its members. Apparently the answer seems to be “a lot.” Many restaurants -“ whether they are full service with wait staff; quick service, where you place your order and then eat at a table; and even ‘off-premises’ or carry-out operations -“ are lagging behind when it comes to connecting with the 70-plus percent of their customers via even the simplest forms of social media.

In a survey conducted in 2010 the NRA found that more than 8 out of 10 of their frequent diners were “social-media savvy” -“ but they’re not planning on connecting with them anytime soon, however-¦ they’re “likely to incorporate several social media tools within their business in the next year or two.” Given the speed of change in the social media sphere “the next year or two” is akin to saying they’ll trade in their Edsels when the warranty runs out.

One mid-sized Midwest group of restaurants has embraced social media to the point where they have nearly 30,000 Facebook fans and a couple thousand Twitter followers. Olga’s Kitchens has outlets in Ohio, Illinois and Michigan and, in addition to promoting specials and new products, they link to their YouTube videos of their new commercials. They also “give back to the community” by promoting special days for local charities to encourage their members to have a sandwich or Orange Cream Cooler and 25 percent of the net goes directly to the charity. More than $50,000 has been raised this way.

On the other hand, what appears to be a more typical situation is occurring at the Meritage Hospitality Group, a management company with more than 80 quick service and “casual dining” locations throughout the country. One of their casual dining concept restaurants, Twisted Rooster, is in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Heather Halligan, Marketing Coordinator for Meritage Hospitality Group.

Heather Halligan is Marketing Coordinator for Meritage and is trying to establish a presence for the Twisted Rooster in the social media scene. It’s been somewhat of a challenge. “The company that I work for has been a little more traditional in their marketing strategy,” Halligan explains. The Twisted Rooster is an original concept and, as Halligan says, “it offered an opportunity to dive into some more non-traditional media.”

“That was a hard sell,” she continues. “Nobody in the company was on Facebook, or had heard of Twitter and didn’t know what it was. My management had a number of colleagues in the area who head large corporations and they had heard horror stories about what people could say about your brand in such a public arena, so they were very nervous. I did a lot of research and saw it was a pretty powerful medium for us to step into but I needed to be able to prove that.”

Halligan started a corporate “fan page” on Facebook that “exploded -“ we had more than 1,000 followers before we had even opened. We saw that people were engaged with the brand, they were interested to hear our story, they wanted to share their experiences and were excited about the restaurant coming. They gave us a lot of feedback about what they were looking for, too.”

Mark Noseda II, the executive chef of Twisted Rooster in Chesterfield Township, shows off some of his menu creations. Photo by Craig Gaffield, Macomb Daily

Halligan says that not only was it good for Meritage to get feedback from potential customers, she was also getting reactions from Mark Noseda, the new Culinary Institute of America-trained executive chef who was making the transition from California to Michigan. ‘”What are they saying, what are they like? Will you post this on Facebook? Will you see what people want?’ he wanted to know,” Halligan explained. “It’s a great way to test out a new idea.”

One of the advantages of using social media in the restaurant business is the instant reaction some customers will provide while they’re dining. Halligan recalls a couple of situations where customers have tweeted about having to wait too long or there was some other problem. “I intercepted the tweet and I was able to contact the manager and he found that person in the restaurant and took care of the situation immediately.”

“They’ve taken the time to let you know they’re not happy, so you can fix it, Halligan says. “Others, who are watching, are seeing that you are invested in that customer and you’re passionate about your brand and willing to address a situation publically. It has helped turn customers around and retain them.” Important, because as noted earlier, the NRA says repeat customers make up the largest portion of a restaurant’s business. Even better for Twisted Rooster, says Halligan, “Those customers have become loyal brand ambassadors for us.”

“People are talking about you whether you have your own page or not. Wouldn’t you rather hear what they’re saying?” Halligan asks. To augment her customer connections, Halligan says she has Google Alerts and other tools to monitor mentions of the restaurant on the Web. “Everybody is a critic, everybody’s a foodie. Everybody who’s ever watched the Food Network is going to tell you what to put on your menu.”

A Twisted Rooster customer tweeting about his dining experience.

Her management is becoming convinced that using social media to promote the Twisted Rooster is, perhaps, a good thing. “It used to be ‘Put out this press release, put it in the newspaper, put it in the newspaper.’ Now, it’s just ‘Put it on Facebook,'” she laughs.

“They’re still not on Facebook but they hear about it,” Halligan explains. “They realize that it’s contributed to the buzz and we’ve gotten a lot of articles written about us because of our social media presence.”

Halligan has done a lot of research on her Facebook fans. “My demo is 25-54 year-olds,” she says in describing her target audience demographic. “We get a lot of women who’ll come in in groups on Thursdays for our half-off bottles of wine. We get families but we also get grown-ups who tell us they’ve left the kids behind so they can have a night out.”

Unlike Olga’s and other restaurants that offer special coupons and other deals for the Facebook fans and Twitter followers, Twisted Rooster isn’t there yet, but some things are on Halligan’s to-do list. “I’d really like to be able to reward our fans and followers -“ and maybe add a Foursquare component as well so you can get a deal when you check in,” she says, talking about the social media site that allows members to use their mobile devices’ GPS capability when they’re at the restaurant.

When Halligan talks about rewarding customers, though, she doesn’t plan to do it with couponing. “People come to our restaurant not because we give them a coupon. We were kind of locked in to coupons with some of our previous restaurants,” she explains, referring to a chain affiliation Meritage no longer has. “You know, the $20 meal for two or the $5-off coupon in Advo.”

Twisted Rooster chef appears on local television and is posted to YouTube.

Groupon is, at the moment anyway, on Halligan’s do-not-call list. “I get calls from them or Groupon-like companies 4-5 times a week. What I find, and this is just my opinion, is that people tend to be loyal to Groupon -“ they’re not necessarily going to be loyal to us. You do this huge giveaway where you’re discounting 70 percent of your product and Groupon says ‘this is free’ -“ but it’s not free! There’s a lot that goes into preparing the food, especially when it’s from scratch. We end up giving away a lot of product to a customer who may not come back -“ not because we didn’t do a good job but because they know that they can get a huge discount somewhere else, too.”

“I’d far rather reward our loyal fans and followers on social media with a deal no one else can get.”

Halligan says that she’d like to expand her social media outreach to Yelp or UrbanSpoon, a “restaurant-specific” site where patrons post comments and reviews. She also works with the award-winning Pure Michigan campaign and has adopted her own buy-local theme which is featured prominently on the Twisted Rooster website -“ Commit to the Mitt (referring, of course to the mitten shape of the state’s lower peninsula.) “I can’t take credit for it as I read it somewhere,” she admits. It’s appropriate for what is now a group of three restaurants that source local products as much as possible -“ and then promote that on their social media pages.

Twisted Rooster has 500 Facebook fans in Kalamazoo, Mich. “We don’t even have a restaurant there but if we put a restaurant down there we’d already have a good start,” Halligan laughs.

Coming in the near future will be YouTube videos that feature “Twisted Tips” -“ short, easy to duplicate suggestions from executive chef Noseda.

Transform your Culture with Strategic Employee Recognition

Your culture plays an important role in attracting talent, retaining employees, and succeeding as an organization. So what do you do if it is described as negative, employees are fighting, and turnover rate is double the industry average? We recently worked with an organization with these symptoms and helped them implement a strategic employee recognition program that delivered dramatic improvements within 30 days.

The Transformation of Grace Haven
Grace Haven Assisted Living in St. John’s, Mich., was feeling powerless after watching turnover soar and morale plummet beginning in early 2010. The company’s nearly 200 percent resident growth in a few short months had clearly put pressure on all staff, but a culture of dissatisfaction had been developing over time as well.

To get to heart of the discontent, Grace Haven supervisors and staff took part in an evaluation process that included interviews, focus groups, and an employee engagement survey. The survey, modeled after one given by The Gallup Organization, helped set benchmarks, as well as identify the key issues that needed to be addressed to reverse the steady decline in morale.

After establishing the most critical issues, a comprehensive, customized employee recognition plan was developed, which set priorities to address them. Implementation included coaching sessions with management and informational meetings with all staff to help acquaint them with the new program.

The change in the organization was exciting! Within one week of the program’s implementation, the level of interest and optimism increased noticeably. An employee engagement survey revealed steady improvement in all areas, and the positivity continued to grow. After 60 days, 78 percent of staff had given recognition and 68 percent had received it.

Transforming Your Organization
The process used at Grace Haven to diagnose the problem, create and implement an employee recognition program, and measure results can be used at any organization looking to improve their culture, morale and employee engagement. We created a seven-step Prescription for Success that you can use to replicate the Grace Haven process.

1. Form a team
You may not be able to dedicate 100 percent of your time to the recognition program, so recruit some help. Build a small team with a mix of employees and managers from several departments. They will serve as your recognition liaisons and champions in their respective teams.

2. Get employee feedback
Gather employee feedback and measure employee engagement by administering an employee survey, holding focus groups, and conducting interviews with employees. Conduct the survey before the program starts and at 30-day intervals after implementation to create a baseline and measure your progress.

3. Determine recognition program goals
The data collection process provides valuable input into what areas your recognition program should focus on. Set goals to make improvements in areas that measured poorly or to maintain areas that performed well in your evaluation. Some example goals include:

  • Improving areas with low scores

  • Reinforcing specific positive behaviors

  • Encouraging innovation, creativity, teamwork, etc.

4. Create programs that align with goals
Your strategic recognition program should be tied to your goals and objectives. At Grace Haven, we created programs to help achieve the goals of increasing morale, building teamwork, and improving attendance. At this step in the process, determine what tools you want to include in your program. Use your survey results and input from your team for ideas.

5. Communicate with your team
Communication is key to a recognition program! Keep employees updated on your progress and make information readily available. At Grace Haven, we attended multiple meetings and held a kick off the day the programs launched. Take the time to explain how the programs work, and how employees can participate.

6. Implement your recognition program
Now, use the program! Your team needs to take the lead and be the champions by practicing recognition regularly and answering any questions from staff.

7. Encourage change
Your recognition program is never complete, so regularly seek feedback from employees. Tweak your program and awards as necessary to keep it exciting for employees. Your constant attention to the program and willingness to make changes will maintain momentum in the long run and ensure long term success of your program.

Get a Case of the Positives
You don’t have to be in a morale crisis to benefit from an employee recognition program. Simple day-to-day acknowledgements improve communication and make team members feel valued. Overall, staff members will feel more satisfied with their jobs, increasing both engagement and retention. With the right tools in place, you can transform your organization into a highly engaged, positive workplace where employees are proud to work.

Brad Darooge is President and CEO of Baudville, the Grand Rapids-based leading provider in day-to-day recognition and award solutions for schools and the workplace. He can be reached at [email protected].

What are you really asking for?

The names have been changed to protect the silly-¦

History teacher Norman Conquest had a very difficult student, Sasha Pandiaz. Sasha was constantly disruptive in class, driving Norman up the wall. Finally, Norman decided on a simple solution: when Sasha misbehaved, he would be sent out into the hall for five minutes. If he misbehaved three times, he spent the entire class sitting in the hall.

Inside of a week, Sasha was spending the entirety of each class in the hall. Sasha, it turns out, didn’t like the class. Although Norman thought he was punishing Sasha, apparently no one bothered to inform Sasha of that. As a result, Sasha was quite happy to miss each class; the long-term negative of a bad grade in the class was simply too far off and abstract to change Sasha’s behavior.

Fred was the VP of Engineering at Root-2 Systems. Fred had the habit of indicating his displeasure with engineers in his department by assigning them projects that were not particularly fun or interesting. At least, Fred didn’t find them particularly fun or interesting. Unfortunately, the engineers did. Rather than feeling punished, they thought they were being rewarded! As one engineer put it, “I thought Fred was ready to kill me, but then he gave me this really cool project.”

Thus, for example, instead of realizing that Fred was punishing them for blowing off a meeting, engineers believed he was rewarding them for skipping a meeting that they thought would be a waste of time. As a result, they kept repeating the behaviors that were infuriating Fred. By the time he figured out what was going on, Fred was bald.

At Mandragora Systems, Joe took over a key product team. He regularly exhorted his employees to work together: “We’re a team!” Joe cried loudly and often. But when it came time to evaluate performance, the song was a bit different:

“What were you doing with your time?”

“I was helping Bob.”

“If you’d finished your work, why didn’t you come to me for more?”

“I hadn’t finished.”

“Then why were you helping Bob?”

“It was something I could do quickly and would have taken him all night.”

“If Bob can’t do his job, that’s his problem. Worry about your own work.”

Astute employees soon realized that the key to a good review was to focus on their own work and devil take the hindmost. While Joe won points with his boss for his aggressive, no-nonsense style, and for his success in identifying weak players and eliminating them, something rather unexpected occurred: team performance declined on his watch. Instead of a team working together and combining their strengths, he ended up with a group of individuals out for themselves and exploiting one another’s weaknesses. The fact that this was damaging to the company in the long-run didn’t really matter as it was very definitely beneficial to the employees in the short-run.

There are several lessons to be drawn from these experiences.

First, it doesn’t matter whether you think you’re rewarding or punishing someone. What matters is what they think. If they think they’re being rewarded, they will naturally attempt to continue to get those rewards. If that means you lose your hair, so be it. If, on the other hand, they think they’re being punished, or at least not rewarded for their efforts, they will change their behavior no matter what you might say. Your actions really do speak louder than your words.

Second, no matter how much we might tell employees to think about the long-term rewards and delayed gratification, short-term rewards offer an almost irresistible lure. If you create a contradiction between the short-term and the long-term, most people will go for the short-term.

Third, if you want a strong team, you must reward team-oriented behaviors. If you only reward individualism, you’ll get a collection of individuals. For some jobs, that really is all you need. For many other jobs, though, it’s virtually impossible to succeed without a team.

In the end, people will do whatever they hear you telling them to do. It pays to make sure that what they are hearing is what you think you are saying.

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead, an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” published by McGraw-Hill, and a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” For more information, or to sign up for Steve’s monthly newsletter, visit www.7stepsahead.com.

High Standards Shine in Atlanta’s Best and Brightest Companies to Work For – A First for the 101 Best and Brightest Program

Atlanta spoke loud and clear about where they love to work and which companies offer the most innovative workplaces in the area. For the first time, companies in Atlanta that are focused on offering quality human resources initiatives were honored with a 101 Best and Brightest Award. This year’s winners were honored at a symposium and awards luncheon held in their honor on June 20th. The honorees clearly demonstrated why each of them would be an ideal place for employees to work and Corp! magazine wanted to share with readers the high standards that these winning companies employ to be considered the best and brightest by the people who know them the best-”their employees.

3C Software
Atlanta
www.3csoftware.com
Founded in 1988 as Computer Concepts Corp., 3C Software supplies cost management solutions to companies with complex or process-intensive manufacturing. The company manages all aspects of software development and implementation at their headquarters in Atlanta. Their strategy for retaining top talent is simple: “Our innovation lies in sticking with the basics and doing it well. We don’t offer flashy benefits, we focus on the things that really count: making sure our employees feel valued, offering excellent compensation and profit sharing plans, and creating work-life balance that ensures our employees can have a life outside of work,” said Matthew Smith, president and CEO. He says that being a small company is why they can provide more to their workforce. “3C Software is somewhat unique because we are a small company that serves the needs of large corporations around the world. We’re able to do this because we are innovative in our approach to solving complicated problems through technology and expertise. Because we do not operate in departmental silos, all of our employees are actively engaged in guiding product and service innovations based on their experiences working with clients and prospects. Our employees are empowered to make decisions and encouraged to share their opinions. The collegial atmosphere of our workplace fosters communication and genuine respect for our colleagues. We don’t micromanage or stifle our employees. Rather, we give them the space to produce creative solutions to our customers’ problems,” he said.

Armchair
Atlanta-¨
www.armchairmedia.com-¨
Armchair is an Atlanta-based interactive agency that specializes in designing and developing multimedia strategies and campaigns that help businesses engage new audiences. Keeping employees happy is the recipe that drives this company forward. “We believe that keeping our employees happy, challenged and motivated comes from a mix of the work we do and how we reward them for their performance. We are very selective about the work we choose to do and we try to involve as much of our staff as possible when exploring creative options for clients. We feel that good ideas can come from anyone who takes the time to think about them, so we cast a wide net when it comes to who participates in our brainstorming sessions. All people and ideas are welcome and no one should be afraid to speak up with a creative idea, or even just a spark of one to make others think. On the compensation side, we strive to help our employees with all the costs of their benefits so they can be free of worry and concentrate on their work,” said Scott Woelfel, managing partner and CEO. “From the very beginning of their employment, people at Armchair know that we want them to have balance in their lives. Together with our small size, this lets everyone make a connection with their co-workers, making the office feel a little less like just a place of work.”

BDO USA, LLP-¨
Atlanta-¨
www.bdo.com-¨
BDO takes great strides to create, implement and sustain innovative strategies to bring out the best in their employees. BDO is the brand name for BDO USA, LLP, a U.S. professional services firm providing assurance, tax, financial advisory and consulting services to a wide range of publicly traded and privately held companies. The firm serves clients through 40 offices and more than 400 independent alliance firm locations nationwide. Providing career advice and mentoring is one method the company uses to retain top talent. “Through our Career Advising program, every employee at BDO is assigned a career adviser to provide personal and professional mentoring throughout his or her career. Career advisers are handpicked for each individual, with the aim at providing a mentor that will help meet the personal needs of each employee. The career adviser is also responsible for regular performance discussions, which includes developing career goals and providing performance feedback,” said CEO Jack Weisbaum. Each BDO employee also has access to a web-based e-learning system that provides instant access to more than 1,200 online training courses that employees can utilize to keep up with industry knowledge, develop technical skills or meet a personal professional goal. Career advisers can even assign these courses to their advisees when they feel it would be beneficial. Weisbaum concludes, “Through programs such as these, BDO continues to develop and engage our employees by providing well defined career paths and opportunities for all BDO talent.”

Conway MacKenzie Inc.
Atlanta
www.ConwayMacKenzie.com
Conway MacKenzie believes in constantly recruiting their current workforce. This mission is supported through innovative employee appreciation programs such as fully stocked kitchens with breakfast and lunch staples as well as free refreshments, daily lunch delivery, an annual family outing to an amusement park, an annual holiday party for employees and their spouses and guests and various mixers throughout the year. As a restructuring and financial advisory firm, Conway MacKenzie’s mission revolves around achieving the best possible outcomes for clients in crisis. Working within the restructuring industry lends itself to stressful experiences and periods of extended hours. “The work that employees perform at Conway MacKenzie is not easy. Although the firm maintains a high standard of excellence expected of all employees, the firm has an undeniable underlying respect for the importance of family and of maintaining a perspective on what’s most important. It is this respect and perspective that acts as the foundation for the Conway MacKenzie culture and its overall basis for employee values. At Conway MacKenzie, an employee is expected to perform to the best of their abilities, whether in the office, on an engagement, at home or in their community,” said CEO Van Conway. “The culture at Conway MacKenzie can be likened to a family atmosphere. Although the firm has high expectations, the bottom line is that the management of the firm cares about the individual.”

Digitas
Atlanta
www.digitas.com
A provider of integrated strategy, technology and marketing solutions to leading Internet-based, e-commerce companies, Digitas is a global integrated brand agency that builds active brands for some of the foremost companies in the world. The company believes strongly that it’s the ongoing encouragement, acknowledgement, praise and appreciation from leaders, managers, colleagues and clients that keeps employees motivated. “Providing recognition is good people management and good business practice. Effective managers know their people and make relevant recognition a part of their normal management practice,” said Laura Lang, CEO. “We provide our leaders with a Recognition Tool Kit where managers can quickly turn around a thank you gift (spa day, gift check, book, etc) as well as offer an employee a spontaneous day off. In addition, we take pride in how we communicate, share and receive feedback from our employees. We are a company that strives to bring creativity and inspiration into our environment, allowing employees to be themselves and have fun at work.”

Digitas boasts a culture of continual learning and growth. They have pride for growing people from within. “We encourage employees to explore ways to grow personally and professionally through various programs and initiatives. We have a full-time staff dedicated to keeping staff nurtured through the content and keeping the content timely. We take the approach of educating employees from within first and foremost, and complementing that learning with externally-based training,” said Lang.

Dodge Communications
Roswell, Ga.
www.dodgecommunications.com-¨
Dodge Communications is an integrated marketing communications firm for companies in of the health care industry. This communications firm is committed to providing work life balance to all of their employees. “Dodge Communications has made a solid commitment to our own excellence and success, and our employees see that and respond to it with enthusiasm and purpose,” said Brad Dodge, CEO. “We believe one of our most important and meaningful characteristic is our emphasis on the employee work life balance. We believe it is critical to have programs in place such as telecommuting, flexible scheduling, summer hours, business casual attire and personal days that enable our employees to grow with our company and stay in the family. The importance of work life balance and making time for family and outside activities is constantly addressed by the company in an effort to support employee satisfaction.” To fulfill their mission of being the industry leader, the Dodge Communications Employee Value Proposition focuses on delivering the best opportunities to employees and retaining top talent. “We strive to offer a world class work environment, competitive compensation, and outstanding benefits programs to our employees. Add to that our strong commitment to work life balance and we believe Dodge Communications is a very desirable place to work. Our excellent employee retention is a testament to the success of our efforts. Employees at Dodge know they’re valued and appreciate it,” Dodge said.

eVestment Alliance LLC
Marietta, Ga.-¨
www.evestment.com-¨
A sense of teamwork is the key to employees at eVestment Alliance LLC remaining committed to the overall success of the company. eVestment Alliance is a global provider of institutional investment data intelligence and analytic solutions. eVestment delivers extensive data through robust, user-friendly products, with an unparalleled commitment to client service. CEO, co-founder and principal, Jim Minnick said, “We promote a fast-paced, fun and exciting team-driven culture that enables an organization with a small company feel to achieve consistent, industry-leading success. The team works collaboratively in a professional, flexible small-office work environment, consistently exceeding the expectations of our clients. We have a passion for excellence and pursue this passion relentlessly in every element of our organization, and we look for similarly passionate employees who demonstrate our core company values of Innovation, Focus, Teamwork, Integrity and Humility in all that they do. We offer a healthy balance with the latitude granted to associates to govern their workday and the shared teamwork model across functional units which helps to keep employees motivated while keeping workloads manageable.” Communications is also a major focus of the company’s management style. Minnick explains, “To maintain transparent communications, regular functional team meetings serve to cultivate open discussion and to keep team members informed, and less frequent all-hands meetings provide a high-level view of overall progress while also emphasizing major wins for the organization. Informally we maintain an ongoing intranet desktop newsfeed through which any employee can update the entire organization.”

Georgia Tank Lines LLC
Doraville, Ga.
www.georgiatanklines.com
Georgia Tank Lines, a petroleum and chemical carrier, has drivers from all ages, races and walks of life. “The older generation is encouraged to share not only knowledge and experience, but work ethics and attitudes with their younger counterparts,” said Deborah Latham, president and CEO. “Most employees actually came to work at Georgia Tank Lines because of their knowledge of our reputation and work ethics, along with our treatment of employees as people. Our employees know that they are welcome to share ideas and solutions and that all suggestions will be considered.” The company offers all employees flexible work schedules and generous paid vacation and personal days that allow employees to deal with family, personal and religious activities. Employees are encouraged to use personal leave days not only for illness but to spend quality time with family and other activities or interests. The company also puts safety at the forefront and offers numerous training activities for employees. “The company provides each employee with extensive and on-going safety training and awareness … making them more confident in being able to do a good job in an industry that inherently has stress from outside sources such as traffic and weather conditions, along with hauling a hazardous and dangerous material. Lastly, every employee knows that the company puts every person’s safety first. First rate, well maintained equipment makes jobs easier, but it is management’s hands-on, very personal relationship with every driver that allows drivers or other employees to come to management with problems (and) ensures that their minds are on their job,” said Latham.

GolinHarris-¨
Atlanta-¨
www.golinharris.com
GolinHarris, a global public relations firm, offers its employees a wide variety of special perks and benefits; some of which are designed to be competitive and others that are unique to the agency. Some of their innovative approaches include: Golin Grants that give recipients both time and money-”$1,000 and a week off-”to explore something new or to get better at an existing hobby, whether it is mountain climbing in Colorado, flamenco lessons in Spain or culinary classes in Chicago; GH PhD, a program focused on high performers offering two-day session on training, mentoring and idea sharing; Al’s Day, a global community service day, and many more. “While there are many things that make GolinHarris an attractive workplace, there is one thing that we believe sets GolinHarris apart from other agencies: commitment. We are 100 percent committed to the success of our clients and our employees,” said Kathy Cosgrove, managing director, Atlanta. “We’ve established processes, policies and systems to ensure that we are able to deliver the creative, results-driven programs, executed flawlessly for our clients, and offer training and professional development programs that give employees opportunities to grow and flourish.” Cosgrove believes strongly in the talents of their employees, “Our company is filled with smart, creative, passionate people who seek to work by the principles set forth by founder Al Golin while embracing the changes in our industry. And we’re proud of that.”

Hitachi Consulting-¨
Atlanta
www.hitachiconsulting.com-¨
Hitachi, Ltd., a business and IT strategies consulting company, supports and encourages employees to shape their own future and grow with the company. “We care about our employees in the same way that we care about our clients and we strive to provide each and every employee with a wide range of professional and personal opportunities to improve the quality of their daily life. Our employees are able to develop their careers both locally and globally across all of our service areas. They have the flexibility to align the pace of their career with their various life stages. By living the Hitachi Consulting values, and actively fostering diversity, our people make Hitachi Consulting an exciting place to work for,” said Phil Parr, president and CEO. “At Hitachi Consulting, we see our people as valuable assets, and with this in mind we strive to keep them balanced. We offer telecommunicating and flex hours, to make sure they have time to take care of their personal life. We offer training and workshops where the more seasoned consultants and managers transfer their knowledge to the younger generation.” These programs will keep their employees prepared for future success.

Jabian Consulting
Atlanta-¨
www.jabian.com
Jabian, an IT and management consultancy, places value on exceptional professional and educational backgrounds and also encourages an enthusiastic entrepreneurial spirit. Jabian consultants are the most important key to the firm’s success. “Ownership of company growth is exciting for consultants and individual accomplishments are rewarded frequently. There is rarely turnover. Jabian’s consultants deliver exceptional work to clients every day, and Jabian continues to earn additional project work from existing clients. As a result, we continuously recruit and hire the best from the consulting industry,” said Chris Reinking, partner. “From a professional development standpoint, employees are reviewed annually in the areas of Client Delivery, Business Development and Business Operations. Each employee has goals in all three areas based on their level and goals for advancement. Jabian consultants are equipped with the tools to be successful. They must, however, be willing to sit in the driver’s seat of their career.” When Jabian was founded in 2006, a commitment was made to maintaining a “local model” for consulting and special attention was paid to the idea of work/life balance for employees. “We work hard to get everything done during normal working hours instead of working around the clock. Jabian’s local focus and commitment to balanced work schedule allows employees to spend more time with friends and family and become involved in activities outside of work for which they have personal passion,” said Reinking.

Kelly Services Inc.-¨
Atlanta
www.kellyservices.com
Keeping company knowledge is one way Kelly Services Inc. maintains quality service for their clients. “Technology, talent and training are three areas we’ve made investments (in) to ensure the transfer of knowledge remains seamless. Whether it’s through documentation of processes or having more than one person in key roles that hold knowledge, we’ve been deliberate in planning for change,” said Carl Camden, president and CEO. Kelly Services offers outsourcing and consulting services as well as staffing on a temporary, temporary-to-hire and direct-hire basis. Putting people first is at the forefront of this firm’s human resources efforts. “Simply put, our business is people. We consult and develop strategic workforce solutions for companies around the globe. As a result of our experience, we clearly understand ‘championing your people’ is and will always be the focus of a thriving company. With the employment market constantly changing it’s crucial to listen to the pulse of your talent. By using yearly engagement surveys it helps us better understand the thoughts and ideas of our staff so we can focus on addressing feedback with career development, training, as well as mentoring and flex-time,” said Camden. “Whether it’s through career guidance, building a sense of community, commitment to diversity, inclusion, and employee growth we believe these values create an environment where our employees can thrive in their careers, and ultimately be happy with their career choice at Kelly Services.”

LeasePlan USA
Alpharetta, Ga.-¨
www.us.leaseplan.com-¨
LeasePlan USA, the premium service provider of vehicle leasing and fleet management solutions, is in an exceptional position because their employee satisfaction has not decreased in this very challenging economic climate. Instead it is the highest it’s ever been. According to the independent company that conducts the annual employee satisfaction survey for LeasePlan, their employee engagement scores were well above the North American benchmark, which places LeasePlan in the top 10 percent. “Our employees are ‘engaged.’ We survey our employees annually because we value their input and use their feedback to implement positive changes, which make us an even better company. And the entire executive management team at LeasePlan reads every word of the surveys to find these opportunities for positive change,” said Michael A. Pitcher, president and CEO. “Our employees feel a sense of accomplishment and have pride in what they do. For example, our goals are set annually. What has made a huge impact on our employees is our stretch objective. I challenged our employees at the beginning of last year to exceed our annual financial goals with the promise of one party with both Atlanta and Chicago employees together. Because we met the stretch goal, the entire company came together for a celebratory gathering. LeasePlan paid to fly everyone from Chicago down to Atlanta for the party. And, having employees from both of our office locations under one roof to celebrate our success was truly a momentous occasion.”

Project Development Services Inc.
Atlanta-¨
www.pdsi.us
Since its inception in 2001, Project Development Services Inc. (PDSI), a hotel project management firm, has developed and executed hotel projects with more than $2 billion total value. Attention to detail, efficiency, economy and engineering innovations are among the hallmarks of every PDSI project. The company prides itself on putting people first. “Our priorities are our people. We want them to work to live, not live to work. Personal time and interests outside of work are encouraged; working excessive hours and coming in on the weekend are discouraged,” said Ralph C. Engelberger, founder and president. “We like to evaluate our employees’ strengths and weaknesses and leverage the strengths. This often means expanding an employee’s work activity to something that is completely outside their job description. We often find that our employees thrive when faced with new challenges outside their ordinary routine.” PDSI believes that knowledge is power. Engelberger says, “Our transfer of knowledge is a constant, ongoing process. At PDSI we are always cross training our employees. It is not uncommon to see an entry level employee visiting a job site with a vice president or an assistant project manager accompanying our president on a sales call. We often find the transfer of knowledge is more of a two way process as the younger generation brings innovative solutions to our projects and more senior employees share the benefit of their past work experience. Companywide communication is encouraged and highlighted each quarter.”

Quality Wine & Spirits Inc.
Atlanta
www.qwine.com
“We encourage and welcome creative contribution outside normal job responsibilities. We don’t set any limits to potential growth. We offer incentive programs offering cash bonuses, international and domestic travel that are related to business, and other bonuses throughout the year. Annual awards are given to top performers in every department at our annual Christmas party,” said Joe Best, president and CEO of Quality Wine & Spirits, Inc. The company is just as proud of its employees as it is of the products and services that it offers its customers. “We accomplish our main branding of being committed and dedicated to excellence to our partners. We have the most experienced talented staff in the industry. Like a family winery, Quality Wine & Spirits is a company with honest, fun, hard working and good individuals. Our culture that has been created here at Quality and our leaders are what drives our competitors’ desire to come and work with us,” said Best. He adds that the company has an open door policy. “We truly understand the craziness of life. We do understand that our employees have many needs outside of work. We approach and evaluate personal challenges that our employees experience and we do everything we can to accommodate with time off, financial assistance, and any other thing that might be needed.”

ThoughtWorks Inc.
Atlanta-¨
www.thoughtworks.com-¨
“At ThoughtWorks, we have shifted how we look at and talk about “quality of life” in our business. By thinking about work as a part of a fulfilling life, it instantly shifts the conversations we have with people when it comes to goals and aspirations. In addition, people come here because of the quality of people we attract. ThoughtWorkers build solid long-lasting relationships that span in and out of work,” said Trevor Mather, president and CEO. ThoughtWorks is a social and commercial community whose purpose is to revolutionize software creation and delivery while advocating for positive social change in the world. Roy Singham, the chairman, founded ThoughtWorks in 1993 to attract and employ the best knowledge workers -””ThoughtWorkers”-” who would share some basic core values: attitude, aptitude and integrity. Mather adds, “Employees have the opportunity to change their roles, grow through formal learning programs, and step up to take advantage of new challenges as they arise. We encourage and believe in offering a work environment that promotes a very flexible career path. People grow as fast as they want to, so there is no pre-determined structure or model they must follow. Growth occurs by learning through ongoing mentoring, sponsoring and coaching of others. ThoughtWorks is continuing to expand at a rapid rate and our recruiters are always seeking the brightest and most talented individuals to join our team.”

WellStar Health System
Marietta, Ga.
www.wellstar.org
WellStar, provides health care in an integrated network of hospitals, physicians’ offices and urgent care centers. The institution is committed to providing quality care to the community as well as providing a quality work environment. “Our commitment to world class health care is based on the values of caring, compassion, understanding and innovative thinking. Our ability to care for our patients with the highest level of clinical expertise is equally balanced with our devotion to showing compassion and concern for their emotional, psychological and mental well being. Our motto, ‘We believe in life well-lived’ applies not only to our patients and community, but to our employees as well,” said CEO Jim Budzinski. “WellStar has made a significant investment in family friendly benefits, work life programs, workplace flexibility options and other employee support programs to ensure their success both at work and at home. Our onsite concierge services, generous job protected time off, wellness programs, on site fitness centers, child care, back up care, elder care services, a robust discounts and tickets program are just some of the amazing programs and practices that are setting us apart from the rest,” he said. “WellStar’s single greatest asset is its workforce. Each and every employee is a valued member of the team and we believe every person is responsible for their goals and is making a difference in people’s lives. WellStar has developed a talent management strategy that focuses on hiring the best, keeping the best and taking care of the best.”

The Robot Garage: Building a Business One LEGO Brick at a Time

What’s a retired General Motors Corp. engineer doing at a birthday party for a couple of 8-year-olds who aren’t his grandkids? He’s helping them learn about robotics.

Walt Hickok (ancestor U.S. Marshall Wild Bill “is from the other branch of the family”) is one of several people who are assisting the youngsters -“ and occasional parents -“ in learning about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) before devouring pizza and cake at The Robot Garage.

Walt Hickok, a retired GM engineer and current robotics mentor.

Hickok is by far the oldest of the assistants -“ most are computer science majors at a nearby Big Ten university -“ as they help form LEGO corrals for little electronic critters called Hex Bugs.

LEGO plays a big part at The Robot Garage, which is in a converted garage in an area evolving from warehouses and commercial buildings into a home for innovative and entrepreneurial types whose businesses include a prospering swimming school, a high-end kitchen design firm and a refurbished furniture shop.

The Garage in Birmingham, Mich., is the creation of Jonathan and Sara Jacobs. While they both had attended the same suburban high school, they had gone their separate ways to college and jobs in New York City. A joint friend got them together, says Jonathan Jacobs. “I was online for a movie -“ not in line because this was New York -“ as was she and we sort of went on from there.”

After successful careers, she with Liz Claiborne and he with a firm that built computer systems for architects such as Michael Graves and Robert A.M. Stern, the Jacobs decided to come back home to raise a family near their parents. “We had watched our friends in New York with kids and they didn’t have back yards and they didn’t see their grandparents, so, although we were never going to have kids, we moved back home to have kids,” Jacobs laughs.

Johnathan Jacobs, c0-founder of the Robot Garage.

Jacobs says that the idea for the Garage was “a way to do all the things that I like -“ as a job.” Inspired by their older daughter, who had joined her middle school robotics team, the Jacobs’ thinking began to coalesce around a way to put the family love for LEGO building and robotics and, as it turned out, education, together in one workable package.

As he spent more time with the school robotics team, “I can’t say I was a mentor, I was just there all the time helping,” Jacobs explains, “I realized there were some holes in the robotics program. The school is part of the FIRST Robotic League (see Corp! interview with Dean Kaman, founder of FIRST: www.corpmagazine.com/features/cover-stories/itemid/1067) and the kids get a game which runs for the season -“ September to December, unless you’re successful in the competition process, in which case it keeps on going.”

“The kids focus on one game,” Jacobs continues, “and they build a robot to work it, but they don’t get a broad sense of robotics. They may build a robot that does something and follows a track -“ but if they need a robot that walks on four legs or six, or has treads or articulated arms -“ they never get to experience the many other things a robot can do. Part of this lies with whether the program is part of a school class or an after-school project or run by a community center. Part of it depends on the quality and experience of the mentor. If it’s a parent who wanted to have the kids have a robotics team but didn’t know anything about robotics -“ yea, Mom or Dad for putting in the time for doing that -“ but they probably don’t have a whole lot of ability to share with the kids what there is to know.”

Jacobs’ concern is what happens to the kids after the official competition is over in December. “If they’ve gotten the robotics ‘bug’ what then?” he asks. “Typically, they just wait around until the next season. We want the Garage to offer them a way to find out more.”

The Robot Garage is in a repurposed garage in a former warehouse district.

The Jacobs as a family attend a number of LEGO events, the biggest of which is the recently completed Brickworld in Chicago. There, says Jacobs, “They’ll have a series of games that last only a day instead of six weeks. You’re given a game, you build a robot to do that game on the spot and at the end of the day you disassemble the robot and start over the next day.”

In the school programs, Jacobs explains, the kids get attached to the robot as a thing instead of as a tool to accomplish a task. “We want to stop making robots so ‘precious’ (he inserts the vocal quotes) -“ ‘we worked on it, don’t touch it’ -“ it’s a tool, build it, see if it does what it needs to do, make adjustments, take it apart then build another one.”

“Our goal is to round out robotics education, to make it a full-year activity for people -“ and not just kids, but anyone -“ who’re interested,” Jacobs says. “It’s filled with other good things -“ like teamwork and scientific research projects -“ but the main thing is to make robotics accessible.”

“We want to infuse everything we do not only with STEM but also with the other education catchphrase, 21st century learning skills -” working in groups, solving problems, that kind of thing.”

“But, my number one goal is fun,” Jacobs emphasizes. “I want everything we do here to be fun. I don’t want anyone thinking that being in The Robot Garage is like being in school. I want it to be like the day in science class where they finally threw the potassium piece into the water and it exploded all over the lab, not the day when you learned why that worked.”

A birthday party in progress inside the Garage, with parents as involved in the building process as the kids.

“Some kids will go ‘wow! that was cool!’ and others will ask why it worked but my feeling is that it’s exposure,” Jacobs continues. “By exposing them over and over again to the cool things they’ll start picking it up. It’s not all fun and games, but it’s primarily fun. Sometimes we have to get into specific details -“ such as ‘this is the NXT brick and this is the switch that turns it on’ but we try to do that quickly and through experience rather than stand in front of the room, teaching.”

Creating The Robot Garage has been an educational experience for Jacobs, who has an Ivy League MBA in addition to his computer science degree. “Things we didn’t expect were just weird things. We have a very open plan, with walls that go up to the ceiling and needed footings that had to be four feet deep. We had the plans from the architect and then we’d get really big quotes from engineers and steel workers and we’d think, ‘oh, good thing we have a little cushion.’ The industrial floors took longer than we expected and the air conditioning units were installed in the rain.”

Unlike many entrepreneurial startups, financing for The Robot Garage is with a family member “who could get a better interest rate with us than with a CD,” Jacobs laughs. “Every bank we went to said if we wanted to borrow money we had to put money into an account with them that was equal to the amount we wanted to borrow. I, of course, said that if I could do that I wouldn’t need the loan.”

Are 4 legs better than 6 if you want to be sure your robot won’t tip over.

Jacobs talked to several existing companies that offered him advice, whether it was in the field of technology or children’s activities or companies that used robots in their business. “We’d tell them what we wanted to do and ask them to tell us why we were wrong, or poke holes in our idea.”

“One of the best things we learned in talking to people,” says Jacobs, “was that every time we did something we should make it a procedure so we don’t have to think about it the next time. Then, we can tell employees ‘this is what you do’ from mopping the floors to running reports at the end of the day. This isn’t so you can immediately open new stores but so you can figure them out, check them off your list and move forward. Sometimes we do 23 new things every day and we can’t find the time to write them all down, but we’re working toward that.”

Jacobs says that another thing they learned from observing other companies that are birthday party venues, is that there was little provision for the parents who had to come pick up their kids after the party was over. “When it’s time for pickup, the parents are sort of huddled in about two square feet of entrance way, trying to stay out of the way. It was important for us to have a lounge, with WiFi and a place to sit while they wait. It’s all those little things that we want to get right.”

“There’s this whole thing where you want to start a business and all of a sudden you’re doing things 24 hours a day that have absolutely nothing to do with what you wanted to start a business about. The people we have working for us are constantly coming up with great ideas and that’s a good thing because I don’t have the time. For our next robotics class I would love to build the prototype for what they’re going to use. Luckily we have people who can do that because I’m busy with the air conditioning and the punch-list we still have from construction. It’s the things you never know about or would ever think about. Even business school doesn’t teach you all that.”

Experiencing The Robot Garage can be compared to what it must have been like when Ray Kroc bought out the McDonald brothers. You can envision Garages all across the land, nestled in repurposed spaces with low rent.

All emblazoned with the Robot symbol. Ah, yes, the Robot symbol. No, Jacobs points out and everyone connected with the Garage is careful to echo, it’s not made of LEGO bricks. It’s made of pegboard pieces that you might find on the walls of any garage. “We’re all about pegboard and that garage theme,” Jacobs emphasizes. “It’s a robot that’s made of pegboard.”

(The robot needs a name and Corp! readers are invited to submit suggestions via our comments section at the conclusion of the article.)

The reason Jacobs is very clear about the robot is because LEGO is very careful about their trademarked bricks and other pieces.

The Robot Garage is an authorized LEGO retailer and is a licensed provider of LEGO Education courseware. In addition to holding classes and competitions, Jacobs has a retail area that sells, besides LEGO parts by the pound and hard-to-find special pieces, even harder-to-find parts for other robot makers. “If you’re on a team and you need a 40-tooth gear, you can’t go to a LEGO store and get it, you could order a parts kit from LEGO which costs about $200 and has thousands of pieces in it, but if you just want one gear -“ well, you can’t do that. So, one of our goals is to be not only a place where you can build robots but also be a place that supports the whole robotics community.”

If the processes and parties and classes continue to be successful there could be a Robot Garage supporting your community as well.

Employee Health Care Costs: How Much Is Too Much

While the HR world is buzzing over changes to health care reform and the changes that slowly find their way into our benefit plans, the cost of health care coverage has continued to steadily increase. Employers, still facing the affects of a recession, are seeing substantial increases to their annual premiums. These increases translate into more financial responsibility placed upon the employee in order to provide them with rich benefits. As employers, we have the responsibility to research how much of an increase the employer can handle and then how much of an increase our employees can bear. As employers, we have to ask ourselves, how much is too much?

How has the recession impacted your employees? What cuts or changes have already been made? Have your employees experienced cuts to wages, frozen wages or cuts to other benefits? All of these issues must be at the forefront when making future plans for your benefit package.

A great place to start is with benchmarking data. This information can be obtained by contacting your benefits agent. They should be able to provide information on what other similar companies are providing their employees and how your plan measures up. Are your employee premiums too high? Is your deductible too low? What about the type of prescription drug coverage you provide? The ultimate goal from benchmarking is to see where you might be able to cut back and where you shouldn’t.

Keeping your employees happy with their benefit package is a key factor in the decisions you make. You have to take a look at your employee population to see where their priorities lie. For instance, is keeping the premium the same as the prior year going to produce a positive reaction? If so, then you may consider alternatives for dispersing your annual increase. Some alternatives may include;

  • Increasing your plan deductible
  • Increasing premiums for dependants
  • Increasing emergency room co-pays

Many of these alternatives will offset the cost of your premium increase, and if you offer a flexible spending account, many of these expenses are eligible for reimbursement using tax-free dollars. If your employee population is not as concerned about the cost of the premium as they are with the richness of their benefit package, then you will probably have an easier time passing along the increase in premium directly to your employees.

Another alternative to continually incurring a premium increase is to go with a self-funded option. Taking on the risk and eliminating administrative costs could be your company’s answer to avoiding higher premiums. Self-funding has proven to work for companies with a higher number of benefit eligible employees and self-funding makes it easier to predict what the exposure will be based on prior experience. Self-funded plans have been very successful for larger companies. However, success can only be measured after self-funding has been in place for a minimum of two years.

As health care reform hovers on the horizon, we are unable at this time to predict how it will affect benefits for the future. At renewal time, it’s important that employees are aware of the rising premiums faced by their employers. Maintaining employee awareness should help your employees see that health care coverage is a positive offering, and while there may be an increase in cost, there is a reason it is referred to as a benefit.

Lisa Rothberger is director of Human Resources for JARC, a non-profit organization based in Oakland County providing residential and support services to people with developmental disabilities. She can be reached at [email protected]. JARC is a 2010 winner of Metro Detroit’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For.

To Get Answers…Start with the Right Questions

One of the easiest, cheapest and perhaps the most important way to find out what is on employee’s minds is to simply ask them. Sounds pretty basic, yet uncovering meaningful information about what employees are really thinking and feeling takes focus, skill and knowing what questions to ask.

In my last article, Strengthen Commitment: Focus on What Employees Think and Feel, I discussed the importance of building both rational and emotional commitment as an important contributor to employee engagement. Uncovering what employees think and feel can be accomplished in a variety of ways. More formal approaches include analyzing performance metrics and employee opinion survey data. Informal day-to-day methods include observing behavior and engaging in meaningful conversation.

Every conversation is a chance to uncover information about what employees think and feel if you know the right questions to ask. The book, “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High,” by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler, describes the aim of dialogue, or the goal of conversation, is to create a pool of shared meaning. Before, during, and after managers and supervisors share information, feedback, objectives, expectations and results, it is important to simultaneously collect information from employees. Uncovering the other person’s thoughts, feelings, perceptions and expectations is crucial to meaningful, productive dialogue and crucial to building a culture of employee engagement.

Asking questions is a primary step in achieving that goal. Unlike the 1940s game of Twenty Questions, where questions had only yes or no answers, open-ended questions yield the most insight. Here are 20 questions you can utilize in employee conversations.

Questions to Uncover Employee’s Thoughts

  1. What do you think about this?
  2. Why do you think that?
  3. How is this different than what you were thinking?
  4. What is your understanding of-¦?
  5. What is your opinion?
  6. What do you believe to be true?
  7. How would this make more sense to you?
  8. How did you come to that conclusion?
  9. What ideas do you have?
  10. What else are you thinking about?

Questions to Uncover Employee’s Feelings

  1. How do you feel about that?
  2. How does this make you feel?
  3. Why do you feel that way?
  4. What does this mean to you?
  5. What outcome would be best for you?
  6. What is your reaction to-¦?
  7. How does this resonate with you?
  8. How comfortable are you with-¦?
  9. How do you think this will affect you?
  10. What is your impression of-¦?

If the response to your questions is often short or even non-existent or if you have difficulty uncovering meaningful information; don’t feel discouraged. The key is to use effective probing techniques. The well known phrase, “peeling back the layers of the onion,” is a great analogy to describe probing. How an employee answers your initial question, will determine your next question, and so on. I recommend starting out with questions to uncover what employees are thinking, then move onto questions about what employees are feeling, alternating back and forth as the opportunity presents itself.

Generally speaking, most managers and supervisors are more comfortable asking questions to uncover what employees are thinking. After all, it seems more businesslike. Asking how employees feel about something can make managers feel awkward or uncomfortable. Employees may also be more reluctant to share their feelings; doing so can make them feel vulnerable.

It’s important that when employees honestly share how they feel, managers don’t discount their feelings, or hold it against them. Instead, managers should demonstrate respect and acknowledge their feelings, using the information as an opportunity to ask “why” and continue peeling back the layers of the onion so to speak. Practice your probing techniques and work at building trust and creating a safe environment for open, honest dialogue. Look for opportunities to take action on ideas and/or concerns. Always be genuine and acknowledge the employee’s feedback.

Getting employees to open up and share their thoughts and feelings starts with asking the right questions. The more you incorporate both thinking and feeling questions into your every day conversations, the more information you will uncover. Your discoveries can lead to variety of positive outcomes, including process improvements, cost savings, increased revenue and increased employee engagement just to name a few.

Diana Moss is senior director of Employee Engagement and Employee Relations for Comcast, one of “Chicago’s 101 Best & Brightest Companies to Work For.” She can be reached at [email protected].

Employee-Driven Community Support Helps Drive a Strong Culture

In all the research done about the keys to fostering a healthy corporate culture, there’s one element that never seems to make it to the top of the list, but can have a tremendous impact: employee-driven community support.

My employer, Plex Systems, believes in supporting employees’ altruistic natures and building engagement by giving back to the community, both for them and through them. We do all of the conventional things, such as matching employee donations, but we also do a lot of “out-of-the-box” things -“ most of which were our employees’ ideas. The following are some practices you might want to consider. Not only can they enhance your business’s reputation in the community, they engage employees in activities that have a lot of meaning for them personally.

Select one or two charities each year, then support them in a big way. Small and midsize companies’ community and charitable activities can quickly get diluted if they support too many organizations. Focus on just one or two charities a year and then support them in a variety of ways.

Each year, the entire workforce is invited to nominate charities, and then we all vote and select one or two to become our “corporate charities” for the next 12 months. During that time, we hold fundraisers ranging from wine tastings to pancake breakfasts. Employees also donate individually, both financially and through volunteer work, to these organizations.

We’ve been able to raise much more money than you would expect from a company with under 200 employees. For example, so far this year, we’ve raised more than $11,000 for each of our 2011 charities: Gleaners Community Food Bank and the St. Clair Butterfly Foundation. Last year we raised more than $30,000 for our two chosen charities.

Involve your business partners but not through “arm-twisting”
If there’s anything that makes executives cringe, it’s that annual request from partners, customers or suppliers to support their pet charities. There should be way, however, for the “extended family” to help out.

One answer is to come up with ways for them to contribute without feeling obligated. For example, Plex turned the annual golf outing and silent auction that was traditionally held at the annual user conference into fundraisers for our corporate charities. Attendees were pleased to know they were helping worthwhile causes.

Be flexible
Smart businesses are always ready to respond to disaster situations that affect their customers, suppliers, and partners.

When the tornado that hit the Joplin, Mo. area last month nearly destroyed one of our customers’ facilities, we immediately began brainstorming ways to help the company and its employees, many of whom were victims as well. We ended up raising $7,500 to help out in less than a week.

Make it personal
The more you can tie your community support to activities that have personal meaning for your employees, the better. Getting started is as easy as paying attention to what’s going on in your employees’ lives and empowering people to help.

One of our employees, Anne Rowland, has a stepson who is serving in Afghanistan. She told a co-worker about a program where the Girl Scouts were sending other troops Girl Scout cookies. After checking out the program online, the co-worker thought, “Why can’t we do that for Anne’s son’s troop?” So the co-worker gathered together a few employees whom he knew had daughters in local Girl Scout troops and developed a plan to do it. Our employees purchased cookies from these scouts, and in just a few short weeks, the team had sent 139 boxes of cookies to the 10th Mountain Division 5-25 Field Artillery Regiment in Afghanistan.

Employees also jumped on board to help another co-worker who is a founder of the Social Philanthropists Foundation. They recently conducted a social media-based fundraising campaign that helped purchase two new iPad 2s for the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders in Birmingham.

The results? Engagement and pride
These are just a few of the many non-traditional things that companies can do to support their communities. Not only will your business benefit from a great reputation in your local community, the employee engagement and pride that result will no doubt spill over into all areas of their work and drive a more positive culture.

Taya Johnston is director of human resources at Plex Systems Inc., which has received several awards over the years for its HR practices, most recently the “Detroit 2010 Best & Brightest Companies to Work For” Elite Award for Work-Life Balance.

Community Improvement and Corporate Responsibility go Hand-in-Hand

As a nonprofit organization serving Chicago’s most at-risk populations, Thresholds has had a long tradition of community partnerships with various businesses and other nonprofit agencies. These partnerships are based upon a mutual understanding that community improvement and corporate responsibility go hand-in-hand, moving far beyond the idea of basic volunteerism.

Encouraging and rewarding employees for their volunteer, philanthropic and advocacy efforts for nonprofit organizations gives businesses a unique chance to be further involved in community building. In addition, many businesses have developed policies and protocols to allow employees great flexibility in their endeavors to pursue opportunities for every aspect of community enhancement -“ be it through fundraising opportunities through sponsorships, running teams or special events; hands-on volunteerism such as Habitat for Humanity; or campaigning for causes.

The key to building corporate responsibility programs that work lies in the partnerships created through those programs. For instance, Thresholds has had a 14-plus year relationship with Banana Republic and The Gap. Employees from both businesses volunteer in every capacity possible -“ whether decorating for the holidays at a residence or program or helping overhaul UrbanMeadows, a floral shop owned by Thresholds that employs people with disabilities.

Additionally, those volunteer hours translate to actual financial donations to our organization. In turn, Banana Republic and The Gap have hired numerous consumers of Thresholds’ services -“ persons with disabilities -“ with great success. In short, the partnership is an amazing display of the power of community-building from a corporate giant such as Gap Inc., and a community provider such as Thresholds.

Equally engaging is a partnership Thresholds has with PWC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers). During a team-building exercise, new employees of PWC are charged with putting together bicycles. However, the exercise doesn’t stop with the construction of the bikes. The bicycles are then donated to local charities -“ Thresholds included -“ so that people in need have a bicycle. These wheels for Thresholds’ consumers translate to freedom through a mode of transportation and an outlet for exercise.

As a business, Thresholds also encourages volunteerism of its own employees as well as community activism. In addition, Thresholds employees regularly seek out other potential community partners to engage them in an understanding of corporate and community responsibility. Because Thresholds works with persons who are disabled from a severe mental illness, these partnerships help to alleviate and eliminate stigma about mental health issues, as well as educate people about recovery services available to those afflicted.

Encouraging volunteerism and community partnerships is a win-win for companies. While there are inherent tax incentives for this work (especially through direct financial donations and philanthropy), there is plenty of incentive for the heart as well. Employees who are engaged in the process of community responsibility and partnerships with nonprofits become more engaged in the company. This sense of accomplishment builds stronger teams, better employees and more socially aware citizens.

Finally, companies and their leadership are recognized in the community as caring leaders who believe in the most important investment -“ human beings. Whatever population an organization serves, or even the type of organization (such as arts, humanities, human services or education), employees and corporate leadership can feel good about the decision to make an impact through volunteerism, philanthropy and advocacy.

Daniel Billingsley is director of communications at Thresholds, a nonprofit organization serving Chicago’s at risk populations. He can be reached at [email protected]. Thresholds is a 2010 and 2011 winner of Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For.

A Shared Approach to Decision Making: Empowering Everyone

Businesses should not shy away from talking about company culture. Businesses should be committed to working hard, achieving results and having fun at the same time. And this means not only taking pride in meeting customer needs and providing exceptional service, but also making it a priority to focus on creating a positive work environment for employees.

A key philosophy that has helped drive results at Service Express Inc. is a shared commitment to making decisions based on what we call Four Core Objectives. These objectives are:

  • Revenue growth,
  • Margin retention,
  • Excellent customer service and
  • Employee engagement.

Before we make any decision, we bounce it off each of these Four Core Objectives. If we can explain how a decision will positively affect each of the four objectives, we feel confident that we’re making a good choice.

Let me share an example. We were considering adding a downtown Chicago office because customers and prospects were asking for it. The decision-making process looked like this:

  • First, we considered that it often took 1.5 hours to get to customers in the Loop from our current office. But, if we were to open a location downtown, we could provide much faster service, which would improve customer service.
  • Employees wouldn’t spend as much time on the road, so that would increase employee engagement.
  • Services in the Loop also meant we could sell more high-end system deals that could offer higher margin.
  • And, of course, more agreements with higher margin equal revenue growth.

The result was a no-brainer and we decided to open the downtown location. Consequently, our growth in that target area increased. Customers experience a much more immediate response time and employees are not spending hours in traffic. The decision was the right one.

To make sure that everyone is able to participate in decision-making, we take time to teach and review using the Four Core Objectives in making company decisions with all of our employees. Understanding the logic of the objectives is essential to confidence in taking the right approach to making the right choices and getting the best results. Being able to analyze a decision with the Four Core Objectives in mind gives employees the green light to address problems in the field. This approach supports a company culture where everyone is empowered, which motivates employees and keeps them pointed in the right direction when faced with challenging issues. For our team, finding the solutions that meet our criteria means more accomplishment, more success and less “let me check with my manager.”

Many of us have worked for companies with departments that have conflicting goals, right? We find that using these objectives also helps us keep our goals consistently aligned. Basing our everyday decisions on our company Vision to “work with our employees to help them achieve their personal, professional and financial goals” and our Four Core Objectives sets the stage for all of us to work together as a cohesive team.

Our leadership team doesn’t promise that everyone will agree with all decisions. But we can promise that we’ll be able to explain why we made the decision based on the Four Core Objectives.

Ron Alvesteffer in president of Service Express Inc. in Grand Rapids, Mich. He can be reached at [email protected]. SEI is a 2010 and 2011 winner of West Michigan’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For.

Focus on Your Team to Create a Winning Corporate Culture

Your organization is made up of people, people who directly contribute to your bottom line. Doesn’t it make sense to have a corporate culture that highlights the people you work with?

Corporate culture is the underlying soul and guiding force within an organization that maintains the highest levels of team member satisfaction, customer loyalty and profitability. It may not seem obvious, but creating a “winning” corporate culture can be the differentiator between a company that drives growth and a company that merely exists.

If you feel your organization’s corporate culture may need rejuvenating, consider trying these steps:

1. Focus on the bigger picture. Where are you headed? What are your organization’s core values? Define and communicate your vision to all employees, giving them the opportunity to find ownership within your goals. If your team members grasp your focus, they can make decisions for their departments with your big picture in mind.

2. Don’t just lead others, empower them. You hired your team for a reason. Provide them with the proper tools and access to the right information to do their job and do it well. You’ll never know someone’s potential if they aren’t given the opportunity to try.

3. Support Mistakes. It’s one thing to encourage your employees to take risks; it’s another thing to give them your full support when they fail. No one is going to take a chance or try something new if it means potentially getting fired. Sometimes, a “mistake” is just another way of doing things.

4. Reward Others. Highlight innovation within your team. A simple verbal recognition in a team or company meeting can go a long way. I know your team members are important, you know they’re important, why not let them know they’re important. Does your organization have employee recognition awards? Simple awards can be a great way to acknowledge a job well done.

5. Promote From Within. Establish a company culture that nurtures talent and promotes high-performing team members on the basis of merit. Seeing a career path within your company can increase the effort and productivity your team members put into their roles and action items. If you take the steps to invest in their career, they most likely will return the favor.

6. Encourage Collaboration. Push your chairs together, take down your cubicle dividers, invest in some new tables, hold off-site meetings -” anything to get your teams talking. Email conversations and shared documents are great tools, but can be limited in supporting effective collaboration.

A poor corporate culture fosters poor employee morale, which leads to poor profits. Nobody wants that. I’ll leave you with these good words from Stephen Covey, author of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”:

“An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.”

Kellee Montgomery serves as the Marketing and Social Media Lead for Billhighway, leading the financial technology platform’s traditional, emerging media and social media marketing strategy and execution. She is responsible for creating effective marketing and branding campaigns utilizing traditional and emerging digital concepts. Montgomery can be reached at [email protected]. Billhighway is 2010 winner of Metro Detroit’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For.

Business Leaders Lose Hours to Disorganization

Express Employment Professionals’ recent hiring trends survey of more than 18,000 business leaders brought to light some interesting statistics about time management. The survey confirmed what many in business have struggled with for years -” there isn’t enough time in the day to accomplish everything.

The survey found that 31 percent of leaders did not consider a lack of time in their day an issue in their roles. For the other leaders in business, the survey revealed some telling information about what causes the lost time and how it can cost companies money. More than half of those surveyed said they lose nine work hours a week due to a lack of organization and 57 percent said they lose six work hours a week because of a lack of time due to disorganization.

Disorganization not only hurts deadlines, projects, and leadership accountability, but can cost companies money in lost hours and missed business opportunities. According to the survey, disorganized employees who earn $50,000 a year can cost companies an estimated $11,000 a year in lost hours. Whether it’s office and desk clutter or a flood of unorganized emails every day, lack of time management can hurt the entire company.

But, the effects of this lost time are not only contained at the workplace. In a 2009 survey conducted by AOL, 62 percent of at-work email users check their work email over the weekend, and 50 percent check it while on vacation. This trend can lead to stress in workers’ lives that can cause more strain and distraction while they are at work. Taking work home leads to health problems, as well. In a 2008 Health of Financial Advisors report, 63 percent of the respondents who said they lacked time management skills also experienced health issues including sleep apnea and high blood pressure.

In the hiring trends survey, 55 percent of those surveyed said their company did not provide training on managing increased workloads. As a company leader, it’s important to take action by holding a class and providing resources for employees to learn from so they become more productive and happier in their careers. As new employees join the organization, provide materials on time management expectations of the job and check back with them to make sure they’re meeting those expectations.

Stress and worry do not have to be the status quo at your organization, and the cost of letting them become part of your culture is too great to let disorganization continue.

Janis Petrini is owner/operator of Express Employment Professionals in Grand Rapids, Mich. She can be reached at [email protected]. Express Employment Professionals is a 2010 and 2011 winner of West Michigan’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For.

How to Create Innovation

Innovation is imperative. It is the most reliable source of growth in a mature economy. Low cost and high quality can only get you so far when there is someone in the world who can do it cheaper.

It differentiates one product or service from everything else that’s on the market. It can be an endless money pit.

Traditionally, companies have invested in innovation in the same way they manufacture products. They ask for a list of potential innovations, select a few, assign a project manager to the project, plan it, put time and money into the “innovative” project, execute and see if the results stick. It sounds good, but it doesn’t work. It ends up creating products that nobody wants. Worse it demoralizes the team that worked on it and the people who backed the project. A stigma starts to grow around “innovative” projects, luring in only the unsuspecting and naïve, pushing their budgets to the fringes of a corporation.

This is no-way to grow. The best and brightest will move to other parts of the company, parts with more stable career paths. Or, they’ll move to another company altogether. Innovation will walk out the door.

It’s no wonder this approach doesn’t work. Innovation is the creation of something new. It is high-risk, uncertain and strange looking. The traditional approach tries to control risk and uncertainty. It constrains innovation. It puts creativity in the same box as manufacturing: pick what you want to make, engineer a production line, manage the line and out comes innovation.

Innovation, though, can’t be manufactured. It is wilder than that. It can’t be measured by a project being on time, on budget or meeting requirements. It can’t be gauged by the ROI of one project. These are the wrong factors to measure or control if you want to be innovative. A quick check against these variables brings the point home.

Budget doesn’t drive innovation. If so, the wealthiest companies would be the most innovative. Microsoft, for example, would lead the world in mobile phones. Exxon-Mobile would lead in profitable alternative fuels.

Schedule performance doesn’t drive innovation. Delivering on time doesn’t matter if the product you’re delivering is not innovative. If this were the case, you’d expect that when a company, like Apple, were late delivering a new product, say a white iPhone, they’d be penalized in the market. Clearly, consumers haven’t cared.

In terms of meeting requirements, this is almost a contradiction when it comes to innovation. Meeting requirements is useless if the requirements miss the mark on innovation. Going back to the Microsoft and mobile phones, I’m sure the team that delivered the Microsoft Kin mobile phone executed perfectly and delivered what was asked of them. But they missed the boat. The Kin was not the innovative product Microsoft needed to make gains in the mobile market.

So, if you can’t manufacture innovation, how do you create it? You forget about the end product and focus on the process. You focus on growing the key factors that lead to innovation. Foster an atmosphere where the right ingredients are present, where lightening can strike and creativity can happen.

The two main factors that lead to innovation are:

  • Experimentation
  • Knowledge integration

Experimentation is the ability to try and fail -“ and try again, without being penalized. It encourages creativity and gives people breathing room to come up with unique solutions.

Implement experimentation by letting people and projects fail. In fact, expect failure. Remember, this is failure in a traditional sense, but not failure when it comes to innovation. Expect good money to go down the drain on products that will not sell. The only caveat is making sure that projects produce something. They have to ship. Stopping a project mid-stream is not an option. It is better to complete a project and ship something that fails, than not get the product out the door.

First off, innovation takes time. Sometimes the best work on a project comes at the end. You never know what you’ve built until its ready to leave the shop. Unlike a traditional project, you can’t use earned-value or mid-project performance indicators to know if the project is on track or not. You have to leave the team alone. Project should not, though, become endless endeavor with unlimited budget. On the contrary, the budget needs to be fixed and the deadline immutable. The team gets freedom but they absolutely must ship by a certain date and within a certain budget.

Secondly, making sure something is produced is the best way to build great teams. Knowledge integration, which we’ll talk about in a moment, comes down to building great teams. Studies have shown that great teams are built when they are engaged in real life tasks. Exercises do not create teams. People know it doesn’t count. They know they won’t be evaluated on the outcome of the exercise in the same way they are evaluated on their daily job performance. The same thing happens when they know an innovation project can be stopped mid-stream, that they don’t have to ship. They endure and hang on until the project gets stopped and they can return to “real” work. If it is not for real, people will phone it in.

Having mentioned knowledge integration, we’ll talk about it in more depth now. Knowledge integration is the intermingling of different subjects and areas of expertise. It broadens the scope of possible solutions and provides a broader perspective on problems. It encourages trust among a team, makes people comfortable experimenting and gives them ideas for experimental approaches.

Knowledge integration differentiates an innovative team from one that is simply competent. A great, innovative team is one that works well together, has a high degree of trust and has a high degree of knowledge integration. They don’t need to explain everything to each other all the time. While not quite an old married couple, in terms of knowing what the other person is going to say, they work well enough together, and know each other well enough, that they can work on a problem without spending time getting each other up to speed. A team with this kind of effective coordination can quickly focus on a problem and start working on solutions.

Trust allows the team to work together and let each one give their individual contribution without another person second-guessing them. Conversations become centered on the effectiveness of a particular approach rather than a second-guessing of someone’s skills or intent. There is a high degree of comfort in trying out different approaches, a willingness to experiment. Equally important, knowledge integration paves a path in which teams can experiment.

Fostering the right elements for innovation, experimentation and knowledge integration, might seem like a daunting task. It’s not. It can be done gradually and within an existing framework of traditional project management. It doesn’t require a sea-change in your corporate culture.

Here are two practical, project management directed steps, that will help build an atmosphere of creativity and allow your company to foster innovation and growth:

  1. Measure investments in innovation over time and over multiple projects, as a portfolio or separate line of business.
  2. Measure the success of any single project against the factors that lead to innovation- namely, are you building great, innovation teams.

Measure these items and encourage them. It is critical to the long-term success of your company and even your department. Innovation can propel your company to the next level or turn your IT department, for example, into a strategic asset rather than a service bureau. The ability to consistently innovate creates value and gives you a competitive advantage in an increasingly small and flat world.

Mark Phillips is the product manager and lead spokesperson at Vertabase project management software. He has presented to numerous professional groups and conferences on the subjects of software design, usability and project management. He blogs about project management at http://www.vertabase.com/blog and can be reached at [email protected].

Build a High-Performance Culture

Imagine this: You’re in an environment where everyone is laser-focused, working with passion and excitement and being optimally productive (wouldn’t that be blissful!?). In world-class athletics, we refer to this as the flow state. At times, individual athletes experience it and teams attain it -” and it creates optimal performance. In business and sports, you must be in a high-performance environment or culture to achieve the flow state and perform optimally.

The effect of a high-performance culture: A high-performance culture creates loyal employees who, in turn, create loyal customers who, in turn, make high-performance culture companies highly profitable.

So what makes a high-performance culture? There are both known characteristics of high-performance cultures and some relatively unknown characteristics of high-performance cultures. Here are seven of the known characteristics of high-performance cultures (there are others):

Seven known characteristics of high-performance cultures:

1. Shared mission and vision. Everyone understands and buys in to the mission (purpose) and vision (ideal future state) of the organization.

2. Aligned. Everyone’s goals and actions are aligned with accomplishing the vision.

3. Customer-focused. The ultimate focus is on the external customer for whom the organization provides services or products. There’s also a focus on internal customers because many people’s deliverables are to somebody within the company.

4. Performance-driven. High-performing organizations purge entitlement and reward performance.

5. Trust. There’s open, honest communication, and people trust others to complete what they commit to in the agreed-on time frame at the level of quality expected and they never have to watch their back.

6. Teamwork. Everyone relies on one another. Nothing gets done in a vacuum.

7. Integrity. All decisions and actions reflect agreed-on moral and ethical principles. The Enron crash exemplified the importance of integrity to sustainable high performance.

If your culture includes the seven characteristics above, you likely have a high-performance culture. If you want to raise the culture bar higher, here’s one of the unknown characteristics of high-performing individuals and organizations that will improve your culture, performance and profitability even more:

An Unknown Characteristic of High-performance Cultures
No whining, complaining or excuses. Most people whine, complain and make excuses. Here’s an excerpt from my conversation with Gary, a typical small-company owner, about a high-performance coaching program for his sales team:

TC: “Gary, there are some specific guidelines for participants in this program, including no whining, complaining or excuses during the coaching period.”

Gary (hearing this, he grabbed his head like he was in pain): “TC, if my salespeople can’t whine, complain or make excuses, I’m gonna have a sales team -¦ that doesn’t talk!”

Unfortunately, this is often the situation. Most people -” certainly most underperformers -” whine, complain and make excuses. It’s comforting to those who don’t want to take responsibility for their bad results or situations.

Whining, complaining and excuses make you a victim of your own negative thinking. They’re also disempowering, and they lower self-esteem and self-confidence. In high-performance cultures and high-performance teams and organizations, there’s little to no whining, complaining or excuses. People take full responsibility for deadlines, goals and mistakes. This is one of the greatest differentiators of all high-performance culture characteristics!

So what can you do? Negative emotions spread like a virus. Avoid exposure and build immunity. How can you help your business team, your family or any other team eliminate whining, complaining and excuses?

The two-buck rule: Here’s a simple and entertaining technique I’ve witnessed working with groups of executives, entrepreneurs and sales professionals. It’s called the two-buck rule. Everyone involved agrees that anytime they whine, complain or make an excuse, they must immediately put $2 in a pot used only for collecting these donations, including $2 for every five minutes they’re late for a meeting (no excuse for being late.) If the person doesn’t have $2, he or she writes an IOU and puts it in the pot. Your group decides in advance what to do with the money collected. My preference is to donate it to a charity.

What would it be like to be free from people’s whining, complaining and excuses?

Make a difference. The two-buck rule is beginning to spread and is helping eliminate the emotional toxicity of whining, complaining and excuses. How about starting the two-buck rule with your team or family? If you do, let me know how it goes!

Dr. TC North is a high-performance executive coach and speaker who accelerates individuals and organizations becoming high performers. Additionally, he’s a professional speaker on “Fearless Leaders” (also the title of his book in progress). Visit www.tcnorth.com, and blog, www.drtcnorth.com, to learn more.

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