What makes a great smaller company, especially from the HR point of view? The Wall Street Journal's 15 Top Small Workplaces seem to know. Here are their secrets.

Winning Workplaces, an Evanston, Illinois-based nonprofit that helps companies create better work environments, recently teamed up with The Wall Street Journal to select 15 winning small companies from an initial pool of 850 nominees.

What Put These Companies in the Winners' Circle?

There was surprising commonality in the characteristics of the finalists. According to Winning Workplaces, the winners tend to share:

  • Clear values and a sense of mission and vision that permeates the culture
  • Values that extend beyond the workplace and impact the larger society
  • Honest and transparent communication that creates trust, enhances commitment, and encourages innovation
  • Extraordinary focus on the customer and on building long-term relationships
  • Strong sense of community
  • Long view with a focus on sustainability
  • An understanding that their competitiveness is tied to the talents and commitment of their workforce
  • Belief that most of their future leaders are already working for the company
  • Constant hunt for new ways to improve employee experience
  • Structure around teamwork, minimizing hierarchy, and maximizing goal achievement

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    As for how they treat their employees, the winners tend to:

  • Let employees at all levels make key decisions
  • Offer generous traditional and untraditional benefits
  • Create a family-like atmosphere
  • Share a sizable slice of their profits with employees

    The result, WSJ says, is that employees act more like owners, committed to the long-term success of the company.

    Up from the Ranks

    Here are examples of how some of the 15 winners groomed leaders from within:

  • An Alaskan Safari driver began as an intern, then was promoted to natural history guide, safari manager, program director, operations manager, and now general manager.

  • At Gentle Giant Moving, an employee started during a college summer break to keep in shape and earn some cash. He's now assistant manager of an office and is considering opening his own office

    Barclay Water Management says, "We have a history of home-growing successful people, and very few people today are doing the job they were hired for." The HR manager started as an administrative assistant, and the IT manager and president were both originally hired as chemists.

    Training and Communications

    Other small winners had important programs for employee development:

    Exactech hired an outside facilitator to host a yearlong course on emotional intelligence for 23 team leaders and promising employees—because at higher levels, they believe, EI is more important than technical skills.

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    FRCH Design Worldwide regularly encourages employees to openly discuss what needs improvement, with town meetings of the whole staff every 4 to 6 weeks and monthly meetings of smaller groups. In addition, they host an annual, anonymous survey that asks employees to raise any concerns they have.

    It's by no means a democracy, they say, but they try to maintain a collaborative spirit. "There is a conscious effort to make sure that the people are excited to come to work," said one employee.

    How about your workplace? Are people excited to come to work?

    In the next issue, we’ll will look at a trait that popped up again and again with the winning companies—teamwork, as described by a unique BLR program especially for smaller companies, Managing an HR Department of One.