10-time Top Workplaces challenge employees, show appreciation and foster family feeling

Likeable co-workers and a family atmosphere. A challenging environment that encourages career-long learning. A sense of being appreciated for what you contribute.

The elements making for a strong workplace culture that both values employees and is valued by them are no mystery. Or at least they shouldn’t be.

They’re do-unto-others practices that spring from basic human decency. They help shape the kinds of businesses and organizations where people want to work.

And they’re the threads linking companies that have been cited by their employees year after year as Top Workplaces — every one of the 10 years, in fact, that the program has been conducted here.

FULL COVERAGE:Top Workplaces section

Since 2010, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has partnered with Energage LLC, a Philadelphia-area workplace consulting company, to survey employees at for-profit and nonprofit organizations across southeastern Wisconsin.

Energage confidentially surveys workers at those places, asking whether they agree or disagree, on a seven-point scale, with an array of questions about where they work.

Energage tallies the results and designates “Top Workplaces” among large, midsize and small organizations.

This year, 1,576 organizations here with at least 50 employees were invited to participate. Two hundred and twenty-eight accepted, with 150 receiving the Top Workplace designation.

Since 2010, 32 companies have participated each year, and 13 of them have being named Top Workplaces every time. For those 10-time winners, it’s a good feeling.

“We feel completely honored, since that is an employee-engagement survey,” said Linda Evans, vice president of human resources at Douglas Dynamics Inc.

The Milwaukee-based snowplow manufacturer is one of the 13, along with Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, First Bank Financial Centre, Godfrey & Kahn SC, HNI Risk Services LLC, Inpro Corp., Kapur & Associates Inc., MGIC Investment Corp., Nucor Cold Finish Wisconsin Inc., Oberlin Filter Co., QPS Employment Group Inc., C.G. Schmidt Inc. and von Briesen & Roper SC.

So, how do they do it?

One way is to take the approach of Ramesh Kapur, president of Kapur & Associates.

Kapur said he didn't enjoy working at other firms in part because they focused on short-term profits instead of long-term relationships. When he started his own company, an engineering consulting firm, he wanted to do things differently.

"It's a simple thing," Kapur said. "You've got to treat people like people."

That theme — along with a desire to be challenged and to get opportunities to learn on the job — runs through the confidential comments of employees at the 10-time Top Workplace winners.

“I get to work with people of great character who genuinely care about each other and our clients,” said a C.G. Schmidt employee.

“Inpro takes care of their employees in so many ways,” said a worker at the Muskego building-materials firm, which among other things gives workers passes to the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee Public Museum and Milwaukee County Zoo; provides lunch every other Thursday; and operates a honey bee sanctuary. “They go above and beyond.”

“Our team is like one big family and we all look out for each other,” a Nucor employee said.

In an analysis of more than 1,000 comments by employees of 10-time Top Workplaces over the years, three broad characteristics stood out:

Employees at those organizations feel appreciated. They feel challenged. And they like the people they work with.

That finding “has a very familiar ring,” said Jay Finkelman, a professor at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

“Everything that you brought it down to makes very good sense in industrial-organizational psychology,” said Finkelman, who teaches at the school’s Los Angeles campus. “Part of what you are describing ties nicely into the concept called the psychologically healthy workplace.”

Providing a psychologically healthy work environment doesn’t guarantee profitability, but there’s a correlation between the two, Finkelman said.

Showing appreciation seems basic, but Finkelman said employees often feel that their hard work “is just expected as a given.”

“People are motivated by recognition,” he said. “People have egos. People have self-esteem, self-respect, and to the degree that an organization is … feeding into their need for self-esteem, their need for recognition, that’s the degree to which people feel good about an organization for being appreciated.”

Challenging employees and giving them opportunities to learn also fosters that feeling.

The days of practicing a single set of skills over an entire career are largely gone, and employees recognize that continuing education on the job enriches their experience, potentially prepares them for promotion and makes them more marketable elsewhere, Finkelman said.

“And that’s something people appreciate in organizations,” he said.

Finally, there’s the people issue.

“The work group is the most salient reference point that most employees have for the organization,” Finkelman said. “They spend more time with that work group in most instances than they do with their families and in essence … that becomes the family.”

So good feeling among co-workers is critical to fostering good feeling about the employer.

“It’s very hard to be excited about an organization and hate the people you work with,” Finkelman said.

Contact Rick Romell at (414) 224-2130 or rick.romell@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @RickRomell