Engage Employees

Sustainability is often defined as businesses and other activities that take into account people, planet, and profit. “Planet” clearly refers to environmental impacts, and “profit” means making money and being financially sustainable. But the “people” side is less well defined.

One of SJF Advisory Services’ goals is to help provide this definition.

A recent Wall Street Journal article, "Who Has Innovative Ideas? Employees," once again underscores the incredible resource companies have just waiting to be tapped -- their people.

Do you like your job?

Jim Baron’s students at the Yale School of Management often comment that creating a great company culture is easy when business is booming but can go by the wayside when conditions head south. Their skepticism prompted the widely published management professor to find examples of firms that use their culture to get though economic downturns. He recently caught us up on his research in an interview -- below are some of his insights.

Over beach vacation last week, I hijacked my dad's copy of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. You may have heard about it on NPR. Hsieh built and sold a company right out of college and, with the proceeds, as well as a venture fund he raised called Venture Frogs, did some early stage investing. Hsieh ended up investing in, and later helping to build, Zappos.com as CEO.

A new book, Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder, just published by Harvard University Press (and recently reviewed in this post in the New York Times’ Economix blog) makes the case for why workforce best practices should include engaging employees at the bottom of the ladder (in other words, entry level workers).  In a six year study of a handful of medium sized firms from several countries around the globe, researc

Why is WD40 called by that name? Because the first 39 formulas did not work. The company just celebrated their 50^th anniversary of the winning formula – and it attests to the idea that a willingness to try, fail, and try again is a critically important piece of innovation.

SJF Ventures portfolio companies Cleanscapes, a sustainable solid waste and recycling collection management service, and groSolar, a premier provider of solar energy systems, are great examples of entrepreneurial companies that are leading the new green economy. These firms provide products and services that lessen environmental impact, reduce natural resource use and also create high-quality jobs.

We posted a few weeks ago about the new green cooperative laundry that is creating a new model for building thriving businesses that create wealth for low- to moderate-income individuals in Cleveland. The project has a very inspiring video that we highly recommend.

Workplace flexibility has long been seen as mainly the province of middle and upper wage workers, but a recent report by Corporate Voices for Working Families looked into the potential benefits of flexible scheduling for lower-wage employees (those who earn $10 per hour or less than $20,000 annually, which they estimate at more than 25 percent of the US workforce and growing).