The benefits of creating a Great Workplace cannot be more evident than when the economy turns south.  The U.S. and World economies are subject to cyclical movements in both positive and negative directions.  It is a given; there will be periods of growth and expansion, and conversely, there will be periods of restriction and conservation. We know with certainty that each cycle, and the period in-between, is coming.  Companies ride high during times of expansion, growth and spending, and hunker down during the slow, restricted and conservative economic periods.

Unfortunately, the companies who live in a short-term world and do not develop a long-term Great Workplace strategy will eventually succumb to the enemy of average and/or economic conditions.  At best, they are only prepared for economic high times.  The moment trouble comes, however, these ill-prepared organizations eventually close their doors.

On the other hand, companies who have conscientiously developed Great Workplaces where people thrive are prepared for both sides of economic weather conditions.  They ride the waves when they are high, taking advantage of all the good momentum.  And when economic conditions turn bad - and they will - companies with great work environments seem to ride out the storm in a calm and collected fashion; even picking up business from alternative sources, adding new clients, capturing untapped markets, pulling in revenues from varied sources and innovating their way out of an economic disturbance.

Why do companies with Great Workplaces survive economic storms?

The people inside Great Workplaces make the difference because their company truly cares for them by creating a sustainable, flourishing culture.  As a result, a majority of their energized employees are engaged and running on all cylinders.

The benefits of creating a Great Workplace are numerous.  As chairman of the board, CEO, business owner or start-up entrepreneur, the proven benefits of building a Great Workplace will likely make your company a powerful force even in the most difficult of times.  Why? The benefits of creating a Great Workplace have been researched and proven by the Great Place to Work Institute:

• Higher productivity
• Higher profitability
• Better customer satisfaction
• Lower staff turnover rates
• Greater number of applicants for open positions
• Attraction of the best and brightest talent
• Less resistance to change
• Lower health care costs
• Lower workers’ compensation costs
• Lower absenteeism rates
• Lower presenteeism rates
• Higher levels of cooperation
• Higher quality products and services
• Increased innovation and risk taking
• Higher returns to stockholders

When you build a winning team with a great work environment, employees will take care of business during both good and bad times. It is a winning formula for building a long-term, growing and profitable organization.

The Good News

It is never too late to begin the process of building a Great Workplace.  Any company can get there from where they are today as long as the top business leader is the one leading the charge.  It is better to invest your time and resources to develop a Great Workplace and survive an economic storm than to carelessly leave your company culture to chance and file Chapter 11 when the next storm blows in.

During the recruiting process, Mr. Iam Screwed was given an impressive tour of eVille Unlimited’s headquarters, and he was absolutely ecstatic.  A dream job come true, eVille Unlimited had highly recruited Mr. Iam Screwed.

As he toured the extensive headquarters facilities, their professional employees were friendly, helpful and motivated. Plus, the campus included all the latest perks, including a gym, spa, doctor’s office and hair stylist, dry cleaners, restaurants and concierge services, just to name a few.  His potential new boss, Ms. Dee Generate was smart, open, cordial and answered all his questions with utmost patience.  He accepted their generous job offer later that week.

Leaving a very good job, Mr. Iam Screwed showed up two weeks later for his first day at corporate paradise, eVille Unlimited’s headquarters, only to find the workplace in shambles.  The environment was chaotic and cluttered with employees yelling at each other, and many of the elaborate on-site perks closed.  As he approached the receptionist, who now had the appearance of the ghost in The Grudge, a terrible, sickening feeling was oozing all over him.  When Ms. Dee Generate, his new boss, appeared in a red pant suit with a pitchfork and horns protruding from her forehead, he realized he had made the biggest mistake of his life.

Changing jobs should not be so scary.

Seriously, remember what it was like to change jobs and begin learning the behavioral norms of the new company?  Do you recall learning the management style of your new boss?  Adjusting to the new company culture?  Discovering who possessed the real political power?  Were you a little nervous you might uncover something terrible you didn’t discover during the interview process?  Like your new boss was Satan?  Or your new company was a front for Hell?

Thanks to a new career site, GreatPlaceJobs.com, unfortunate first day scenarios like the one above can be avoided because the only companies who are allowed to post jobs on this site are officially recognized great workplaces.

According to Asher Adelman, founder and president of eBossWatch.com and creator of GreatPlaceJobs.com, “Only companies that have been recognized as a great workplace and have received one of the prestigious best employer awards are eligible to list their jobs with GreatPlaceJobs.com.”  To further clarify the quality of the companies on his website, Adelman stated “excellent employers are those that are successful in providing their employees with satisfying careers, a positive and pleasant work environment, and good compensation and benefits packages.”

As one who promotes positive people practices through the many services provided by The People Group, I highly recommend employers who qualify and employees who would like to work for the best companies, visit the site and sign up for their services.  My congratulations to Asher Adelman and his team!  Keep up the great work!

Edward R. Murrow, the famous American broadcaster depicted in the movie Good Night, and Good Luck once said, “The obscure we eventually see, the completely obvious takes longer.”  In your quest to building a successful company, do not assume the creation of a great work environment is complicated.  In fact, the steps are quite simple, if not completely obvious from a people practice perspective.

Company Culture Flows from the Top

In the people practice profession, there is the tendency to over-complicate work culture and how it impacts the bottom line.  The basic principles of a great work environment are quite straightforward, and rest entirely on the leadership’s shoulders.

One of the most important business strategy questions leaders can ask themselves is, “How do I create a great work environment that attracts, motivates and retains the best and brightest talent?”  You might be surprised the answer is not any of these; above market compensation, best in class benefits, top trends in office space design or technological superiority.  The answer is summed up in one, very important, highly-relational, powerful word: trust.

Definition of a Great Workplace

The Great Place to Work Institute, after twenty years of thorough research on the top high-performance companies in America, formulated their definition of a great workplace as a place where employees “trust the people they work for, have pride in what they do, and enjoy the people they work with.”

A leadership team who can be trusted by employees is well on its way from average performance to a great workplace where magic happens.  The good news is employees are not necessarily looking for expensive perks, like coffee bars, gyms, restaurants, game rooms, hair salons and spas, daycare, on-site doctors and nurses, media centers, theaters, dry cleaning, or concierge services.  Although these benefits are very nice options, they do not guarantee a great work environment.

When leaders sincerely care for their people and build an environment of trust, employees will believe in the company mission and develop respect for their co-workers.  Trust is like the secret ingredient found in Coke.  Without it, the recipe will not work.  Many have tried to copy great workplaces without trust and failed.  Without trust, the environment will not click, no matter how grandiose the company’s compensation, benefit and work/life programs.  It is amazing how creating an environment of trust, the missing ingredient in many average performing companies, will hasten the transformation of your company into a great workplace with the potential to outperform your competition many times over.

The Seven Leadership Principles

How does a leader create a great workplace through the simple ingredient of trust?  Robert Levering, founder of the Great Place to Work Institute, who has many years of experience researching successful companies, states there are seven principles leaders must follow to build and maintain trust in their organization:

#1 - Leaders share information. The leaders of great work environments are willing to share information with their entire workforce.  They are not afraid to provide employees of all levels important updates about the company’s status, whether financial, non-financial, positive or negative.  Withholding important company information drives a wedge between employees and leaders, creates misunderstandings, fear and distrust among employees who spend most of their waking hours at your place of business.  Since employees are investing their lives with you, isn’t it likely they deserve to know where the company has been, where it needs to go, how it’s performing and how their efforts make a difference?  Open up the internal information highway and you are well on your way to greatness.

#2 - Leaders are accessible. Leaders in great workplaces do not hide in their execu-caves.  Effective leaders get out of their offices and walk around and mingle with employees.  These same leaders allow employees to voice concerns without fear of reprisals or losing their jobs.  Many of the 100 Best Companies hold regular lunches with employees where leadership shares information, shows sincere concern for employees and listens to their concerns.  More importantly, leaders follow-up on employee concerns and improve the work environment with each interaction.

#3 - Leaders are willing to answer the hard questions. Trust is built when employees see leaders who are not afraid to stand up and field the hard questions.  Employees do not expect leaders to have all the answers, but develop strong trusting relationships with leaders who honestly state they do not have an answer but will respond at a later date.

#4 - Leaders emphasize two-way communication. Leaders who actively listen to employees concerns and engage in two-way communications earn the trust of employees.  Most management teams are good at sending communications or orders down the pipelines, but not necessarily comfortable with receiving feedback from their workforce.  Great workplaces have open, two-way channels of communication.

#5 - Leaders always deliver on their promises. Miss this one and you’re done.  Making a promise and not following through is like going thermal nuclear on your workplace; people get burned.  Employees want to know if leaders will deliver on their promises.  This includes the small things as well as the big things.  Treat your employees like your best customers and you should perform very well in this area.

#6 - Leaders show recognition and appreciation. Deep down employees crave recognition for a job well done.  Receiving recognition and appreciation is one of the biggest unmet needs employees have in today’s society.  Go ahead and make a big deal about employee and team accomplishments.  Brag on your employees in front of other employees  Then sit back and watch a special, positive, energizing, company culture develop in front of your eyes.

#7 - Leaders demonstrate sincere, personal concern. According to the most recent Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study, the number one driver leading to employee engagement is determined by whether senior management is sincerely interested in an employee’s well-being.  You can’t fake sincerity.  It shows in your attitude and other non-verbal clues.  If the leaders are not sincerely concerned for their employees as people, your best talent will likely move to a place where they are better appreciated.

Live by these leadership principles and your organization will soon be inundated with resumes from the best and brightest talent in your industry wanting to work for your organization.

* * * * * * *

This article was originally written for The Business Owner Journal and will appear in the November/December 2008 issue.

Does your company allow bullying to occur in your workplace? If so, does your company also promote themselves as a responsible corporate citizen, espouse social responsibility, healthy living, nutrition and exercise, and charitable giving? If you answered yes to both these questions, welcome to Corporate America’s Hall of Contradictions.

Let’s talk about one of those big, nasty, dirty secrets hanging in the Corporate Hall of Contradictions: workplace bullies and the adverse health affects levied on their targets.  Left alone, workplace bullies cause a rolling tide of unjustified terminations, needless resignations, disrupted careers, tormented families, plus excessive and needless medical expenses on their unsuspecting targets.  With limited support, denials and misunderstandings by coworkers and family members, feelings of embarrassment, suicide is sometimes the  eventual self-prescription for targets looking for escape from these ruthless corporate terrorists. Does this sound like corporate social responsibility?

Workplace Bullying Defined

The Workplace Bullying Institute’s definition of workplace bullying is “repeated, health-harming, mistreatment of one or more persons by one or more perpetrators that takes one or more of the following forms:

• verbal abuse,
• offensive conduct/behaviors (including nonverbal) which are threatening, humiliating, or intimidating,
• work interference - sabotage - which prevents work from getting done.”

Workplace bullying is much more than simple incivility. It goes way beyond rudeness.  The problem is that bullies are quite clever in their attacks.  With limited or no training to deal with ruthless workplace bullies, the executive team rarely comes to the aid of the target.

When Human Resources is Not Humane

Think your human resources department will help?  Think again. Human resource professionals have largely sided with workplace bullies because they lack the fortitude to stand up against tyrants who typically carry political clout inside the organization. Most human resource professionals are more interested in career preservation than upholding a positive and humane corporate culture.  Without a CEO who demands zero tolerance for bullies, the inmates soon take control over the prison, if you know what I mean.

The Health Effects

As a result, the continued abuse leads to health-harming treatment.  According to the 2007 Workplace Bullying Institute - Zogby Survey, 45% of targeted individuals suffer stress-related health problems, which include:

• Hypertension, strokes and heart attacks
• Neurotransmitter disruption, hippocampus shrinkage
• Immunological impairment; more frequent infections of greater severity
• Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Debilitating anxiety, panic disorders
• Clinical depression
• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder from deliberate human-inflicted abuse
• Lost ability to be left alone to do the once-loved job

The Career Affects

According to the WBI-Zogby Survey, the future is not very bright for the targets of bullying.  In most cases, the clever corporate terrorist wins, as depicted below:

• 13% of targets are forced to transfer from their once loved job (a punitive transfer)
• 24% of targets experience constructive discharge without reasonable cause
• 40% of targets quit to reverse decline in health and sanity

Take a Stand

If you have a coworker currently encountering a workplace bully, assemble as many employees and managers as possible to calmly and respectfully fight back.  Faced with numbers, a bully will typically back down because deep down they are weak and frightened.  Silence, fear and a culture where employees do not come to the aid of their coworkers is an environment that allows this corporate terrorism to thrive.

If you have a friend or family member who is currently encountering a workplace bully, listen to them and become their advocate.  Encourage them to seek professional help from a qualified counselor who has dealt with workplace bullying cases. At some point a decision will need to be made whether a job change should be made and the target will likely need your objective opinion and guidance during a tumultuous time.

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

– Edmund Burke