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Two recent posts, both in Fast Company, are a great reminder that when it comes to cultivating a company culture, sometimes it’s the little things that matter most.

In “It Isn’t Just a Myth: A Little Thanks Goes A Long Way,” Robert I. Sutton quotes an academic study that provides evidence for the value of a simple thank you:

“The simple act of having a boss come by and offer a public thanks to one group, and but not the other, really packed a wallop. These fundraisers were paid a fixed salary, so Grant and Gino compared the number of phone calls made be each fundraiser before and after the “thank you” intervention. The results were pretty impressive, as while there was no change in the average number of calls made by the group that was not offered thanks, the folks who heard a warm two sentence thank you from a boss made an average of about 50% more calls during the subsequent week.”

In “Chip Conley Took the Maslow Pyramid, Made It an Employee Pyramid and Saved His Company,” Kermit Patterson interviews the founder of the Joie de Vivre hotel chain, who’s just published a new book called Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. Conley says, “What really is meaningful to people is genuine appreciation shown in real time. My basic belief is that life and business is all about where you pay your attention. Let’s pay some attention in our management and leadership to the idea of recognition. It’s not just platitude.”

What is the best way to make “thank you” a consistent part of a company’s culture?

A new study from the venerable Pew Research Center provides interesting insights on how the ongoing recession is affecting hopes, dreams, and fears in the U.S.

The study goes beyond the markers we typically look at (unemployment, for example) to try to gauge the overall impact of the recession, and the results are striking. For example, more than half - 55% - of adults in the labor force say they’ve felt some effect, from layoffs to wage or hour cuts, far more than the number captured by the official unemployment rate. Almost the same number, 54%, say the country is still in a recession. Two thirds have cut back on their spending, and a third say they’ll continue this new frugality even after the recession ends.

The surge in long-term unemployment and the meltdown in household wealth are the two things that make this recession different from other twentieth-century recessions, and both will have long term effects.

Why is this important? I believe those of us who spend time thinking about how to engage employees need to understand the larger forces that shape their hopes and expectations. “A Balance Sheet at 30 Months: How the Great Recession has Changed Life in America” is a thought-provoking starting point.

The Conference Board’s quarterly survey of CEO ConfidenceTM is down slightly for the first quarter, reversing direction from Q4’09. What does that mean? Possibly not much – it’s a drop of only two points, and only time will tell if it’s an exception or a trend. But if you want to read something into it, I’d say it indicates a slow, uneven recovery with the potential for a one-step-forward-two-steps-back twist. And that means communication with employees and other stakeholders will be challenging, and more important than ever.

Think about it. When things are really good, there’s a lot to talk about. Success breeds confidence and confidence breeds communication. CEOs love to tell investors they are making money and employees that they will get bonuses. Bad news, believe it or not, functions similarly, because there’s no choice. Companies are legally obligated to disclose material news to stakeholders, negative as well as positive. CEOs may not enjoy announcing layoffs, but it has to be done. It’s when things are uncertain that executives tend to want to crawl in a cave and wait to see which way the wind is blowing. That’s a mistake.

Yes, things are iffy. Hiring may pick up, but it may not. Consumer spending may increase, but it may not (after decreasing in February, the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence index increased slightly in March – go figure). There’s no need to go out on a limb predicting the future, and someone will just cut it off anyway if they get the chance. But in times of uncertainty it’s really important to communicate regularly with employees. Don’t know what to say? Here are some ideas:

• I know there’s a lot of uncertainty out there
• Here’s what I can tell you
• We have a strategy: it is XXX
• We know how to tell if that strategy is working: we monitor YYY carefully
• We are taking steps to meet the challenges we face
• We will keep you informed about how the company is doing
• We are grateful for your hard work and commitment
• We appreciate all your ideas on how to do this better

What else should executives be communicating in this age of uncertainty? How often should they communicate?

Today’s Dilbert cartoon is the perfect commentary on employee engagement - and a useful “heads up” for employers about how engagement efforts may be perceived in an atmosphere of cost-cutting. Just food for thought. Happy Thanksgiving!

I stumbled across a great list of “Morale Mantras” today. It’s from David Lee, who writes the Mindful Manager blog for Maine Business. If every leader kept this list posted by their phone, there would be a lot fewer unhappy employees in the world! Thanks David.

Morale Mantras:
“Everything matters.”
“It’s the little things.”
“Don’t expect employees to care if they don’t feel you care about them.” “Whenever there is conflict, change, or morale issue, seek first to understand.”
“You don’t know what employees think until you ask.”
“When in doubt, ask. Don’t assume you know.”
“Don’t try to make employees feel like they matter; make sure they have the opportunity to matter.”
“Stay wired into the voice of your internal customers…your employees.”
“Make sure employees know that asking for feedback doesn’t mean you will act on every request or suggestion. But also make sure you let them know why you didn’t act.”
“An employee’s maturity level is strongly influenced by their manager’s behavior and the organization’s climate.”
“Having low expectations or being indulgent doesn’t create high morale, it creates an entitled, ‘what have you done for me lately’ workforce.”
“You get what you settle for.”
“How you interview, hire, and orient employees, tells them a lot about your organization and sets the tone for their stay with you.”
“You are a business, not a rehab center.”
“You are a manager, not a therapist.”
“Uncertainty breeds fear. Remove the unnecessary uncertainty caused by poor communication.”
“The more employees know about what’s going on, the less they fear what they don’t know about.”
“When employees have a strong ‘why’ they can deal with almost any ‘what’.”

Almost 33,000 Detroit workers recently participated in a survey about what distinguishes southeast Michigan’s top workplaces. Pay? Benefits? How their manager treats them? No – instead, workers said the key factors were how engaged their employers are with their workers, the direction the employer is heading, and how decisions are carried out.

We hear a lot about employee engagement, but this survey seems to suggest there’s a workplace version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” For example, in general employees at small companies were more positive than those at large ones. Could be that at small companies, employers are more likely to engage with their employees directly?

Recessions are typically followed by recoveries, which engender a higher-than-normal rate of employees quitting and moving to new jobs – a phenomenon researchers at Deloitte have called a “resume tsunami.”

With a variety of signs pointing, if somewhat tentatively, toward an economic recovery, it’s not too soon for companies to begin thinking about how they’ll keep their top performers.

What caught my eye in a recent article on this topic was the phrase “social contract“: “The employee expects to be paid fairly, get merit raises, receive job training and have job security. In turn, the employer expects hard work, two weeks’ notice before leaving, overtime work when necessary and loyalty to the company.”

I’m guessing many employers aren’t aware of the extent to which this contract has been invalidated in their employees’ eyes by the events of the past couple of years. Think about it: if you don’t feel you’re paid fairly, you didn’t get a merit raise, you haven’t received training because the budget’s been cut, and you don’t feel secure because you’ve seen three rounds of layoffs, is hard work and loyalty the result? Not likely.

Smart employers are thinking now about what to do – how to reach out to the employees they most want to keep and what to do to demonstrate their commitment to retaining them.

A new survey* finds – surprise, surprise – that women lawyers in New Jersey are more likely to quite their jobs if their employer does not offer flexible working arrangements, and are moving to firms that do offer flexibility.

The study offers recommended best practices, including offering flexible work arrangements to everyone (there’s a stigma attached to taking advantage of such arrangements if they’re only offered to women) and providing the technological support (cell phones, blackberries, etc.) needed to make them work.

To me, the survey was interesting, if not particularly surprising – but the main implication for employers is that what you DO is more important than what you SAY.

Our equation at OgilvyImpact is Know + Feel = Do. Our emphasis is on helping businesses get their employees to do what’s needed to advance the business agenda and strategy, and part of that is figuring out what they need to know and feel to want to take that action.

Sometimes, though, we need to turn that equation around. What do you as an employer need to DO to make it possible for your employees to do what you need them to? What do you need to know and feel in order to take that action?

Heads of New Jersey law firms now know that they will lose good people if they don’t evolve their behaviors. What they’ll feel and do remains to be seen.

*The study was conducted by Rutgers University Center for Women and Work and the New Jersey State Employment and Training Commission Council on Gender Parity in Labor and Education.

According to the study The Road to an Engaged Workforce, the four areas that most affect employee engagement are reduced role conflict, appropriate training, personal autonomy, and personal power.

Interestingly, as Paul Hebert, managing director at influency consultancy i2i notes, these are all controlled by managers, NOT by employees.

Hebert suggests that employers could save money and increase engagement by focusing not on convincing frontline employees that they’re engaged, but on motivating managers to engage them and rewarding them for doing so. His suggestions include rewarding managers for seeking input, for changing work processes to maximize employee autonomy and power, for prioritizing training, and for communicating openly and frequently with their teams.

It’s a truism in employee communications that employees prefer to receive most information from their direct manager. Why wouldn’t engagement follow the same path?