One of my favorite qualitative questions that Winning Workplaces asked applicants of our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award is, How have your organization's people practices contributed to your top line revenue and bottom line profitability?

Naturally, we received some stellar answers from our 497 applicants, and especially from our 40 finalist organizations.  I pulled out some of the best ways that the latter group, this year's finalists, use to assess their payoff of employee engagement.

They appear below.  Enjoy, and feel free to share them with your colleagues and friends using the Share button below.

  1. Employees on average more likely to give 110% in tough times.
  2. More employee referrals.
  3. Reputation as a great employer (including industry or other accolades) results in more qualified job applicants for open positions.
  4. More satisfied employees = lower turnover.
  5. Less lost productivity due to employee stress.
  6. Greater innovation and creativity.
  7. Greater customer satisfaction and loyalty.
  8. Healthy and manageable year-over-year growth.
  9. Ability to hire more staff that are directly tasked with generating revenue.
  10. Company in the top percentile nationally for quality, financial (gross margin, EBITDA), and/or improvement metrics.
  11. Regular employee payouts whose dollars are increasing as part of a performance bonus program.
  12. Greater share of projects employees undertake as part of a Google-style "20 percent" program result in new, bottom line-enhancing initiatives.
  13. Creating a workplace culture of ownership in which employees don't just act like owners, but like owners that care about customers.  This helps the company to deliver on service, quality, and professionalism, rather than on price, which can undercut the bottom line.
  14. Better relationships with vendors, which helps control costs.
  15. More customer "wow" moments that turn them into evangelists for your brand.  The result of this on revenue and profitability can be measured with the Net Promoter Score.
  16. Over 50% of business from repeat customers and/or referrals.
  17. Increase in safe working man-hours, which can lower or keep steady health insurance premiums.
  18. Focus on cross-training provides supervisors with additional manpower when needed, helping to maintain customer service delivery.
  19. More involvement from the bottom-up in process improvement and identifying cost-saving opportunities.
  20. Greater ability to fill open positions from within decreases recruiting costs.
  21. Sales teams more open to team building strategies such as contests designed to increase competencies and, ultimately, close rates.
  22. Internship programs tend to be more meaningful for interns, which help them grow as the company benefits in terms of labor costs and productivity.
  23. Ability to benefit from bad economies by hiring top talent laid off from competing organizations.
  24. Increased ability to enlist employees and even outside stakeholders (suppliers) in cutting inventory.  The increased cash that results is particularly helpful in an economic climate in which lending is tight.
  25. Better customer support infrastructure in place to respond if a product/service launch or revamp is not received on par with company standards.
  26. Increased ability to scale up customers at a greater rate than employees.
  27. Greater tendency for employees to represent their companies while "off the clock," which can lead to new business and referrals.  One company added 2% in annual sales from the associated effort of just one employee.
  28. Much more likely that all staff will agree to pay cuts or other short-term, cost-cutting measures to keep the company afloat in tough times, versus the alternative of layoffs and losing that talent for when conditions improve.
  29. The development of new, in-house competencies reduces the risk and costs of mis-hires and turnover due to employees seeking growth and opportunity elsewhere.
  30. More effective internal recruitment function reduces external recruiter costs.

Related: The June issue of Inc. Magazine will reveal the winners of this year's Top Small Company Workplaces competition.  It will be out next week – don't miss it!

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