MCBASSI & COMPANY

Replay of “How to Get to Good” webinar now available

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If you missed last week’s webinar by Laurie Bassi and JJ Jordan (“Good Company = Great Performance: How to ‘Get to Good’”), the recording is now available for download so you can watch at your leisure.

Just click here to download the Windows Media file from our Dropbox location.

Upcoming webinar: does your company make the grade?

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You’ll find out at our September 20 webinar “2012 Good Company Index: What Every CFO Needs to Know.”  And do be sure to bring your CFO – he or she will really get into this stuff!  We’ll be talking about the significant financial outperformance by good companies.

You (and your CFO) will leave the webinar with an understanding of the following:

  • Where you are
  • How you can get good (or better!)
  • A process that sticks

The Good Company Index™ grades companies in areas that predict their future profitability, based on the principles described in Good Company: Business Success in the Worthiness Era. The 2012 grades were just released for 300 of the largest US companies, with grades ranging from A to F based on their behavior as employer, seller, and steward.

Companies with top grades in previous years outperformed their competitors in the stock market by 15 percentage points per year.

See how your company stacks up (and even if your company isn’t yet rated in the Good Company Index, we’ll show you how to take a first pass at calculating a quick Good Company grade).

Most important, you’ll learn how to take action to get better, moving from “program du jour” to a competitive advantage sustainable over the long term.  Laurie Bassi and Jim Shaffer will lead the webinar presentation and discussion.

Join us for the webinar on Thursday, September 20, 2012, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., EDT.

Click here to register today!

Join us for McBassi webinar: It Pays to Be Good!

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Wondering how Disney, FedEx, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Abbott, and other companies are making “goodness” pay off?

Please join us next Tuesday, March 13, 2012, at 2:00 p.m. EST, for a dynamic McBassi webinar featuring authors Laurie Bassi (Good Company and HR Analytics Handbook) and Jim Shaffer (The Leadership Solution), facilitated by Dave Basarab.  You’ll leave with:

  • Hard-nosed evidence that good companies outperform their competitors.
  • Insights into the convergence of forces giving rise to the new rules for business success.
  • Understanding of the 6 systems that underpin Good Company results.
  • The strategic framework to integrate Good Company principles and practices into ongoing efforts to improve your company’s performance.
  • Ways to sustain the gains rather than create just another “program of the day.”

Click here to register now.

Does your company make the grade?

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I recently blogged on Glassdoor.com about the importance of your company doing business in an “all-win” way.  Your career may depend on it!

Interested in what your company’s grade might be?  Try our fun, interactive new self-assessment and find out instantly.

 

Where to shop this holiday season?

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Glad you asked!  To help identify companies worthy of your shopping dollars this holiday season, we created the 2011 Good Company Retail Index.  It ranks 52 of the largest retailers in the US, assessing how they treat employees, customers, and the planet.

Each company’s score reflects its most recent performance on three measurements (these represent a subset of the full range of metrics we used to calculate Good Company scores in the book, and includes updated scores on each of the three):

  • Glassdoor.com rankings (employees’ assessments of their companies as employers)
  • wRatings scores (customers’ opinions of companies on quality, fair price, and trust)
  • 2011 Newsweek Green Rankings (assess companies’ environmental footprint, management of that footprint, and transparency)

The big winner?  Apple, whose top ranking reflects not only an excellent track record on customer satisfaction, but positive employee feedback at Glassdoor and a top 10 percent score on the Green Rankings.

The full top 10 list is as follows:

1.  Apple
2.  Ace Hardware
3 (tie).  Dell
3 (tie).  Office Depot
3 (tie).  Staples
6.  Whole Foods Market
7.  Lowe’s
8.  The Home Depot
9.  O’Reilly Automotive
10.  Costco

Bringing up the rear?  Dillard’s, RadioShack, and Big Lots.  Dillard’s scored in the bottom quarter of the Green Rankings, failed to impress customers in wRatings research, and earned a “dissatisfied” rating from employees at Glassdoor.

So enjoy the holiday season – and while you’re at it, consider doing business with those companies that have demonstrated they’re worthy of your business.

Click to go to full 2011 Good Company Retail Index scores.

This post also appeared on the Good Company blog.

Good Company blog launches today

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Check it out at http://www.goodcompanyindex.com/blogcommunity/.  Please do keep an eye on it (and feel free to participate in the conversation) in the coming days and weeks!

The payoffs to being a good company

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This year, our sister company Bassi Investments (a registered investment advisory firm) enters its tenth year of managing portfolios based on many of the concepts we’ve outlined in our forthcoming book (Good Company: Business Success in the Worthiness Era).

By and large, these portfolios knock the socks off the S&P 500, the standard performance benchmark.  (In the spirit of full disclosure, one portfolio has slightly underperformed the market: an experimental one based on a particularly narrow concept of human capital management.)

Our longest running portfolio, which we launched in December 2001, has outperformed the S&P 500 by 40 percentage points since inception, before fees.  (In the graph below, the Bassi Investments portfolio is the top line and the S&P 500, excluding dividends, is the bottom line).

 

As registered investment advisors, we must add the important disclaimer that past performance is no guarantee of future results.  Additional information is available by contacting Bassi Investments.

In Chapter 5 of Good Company, we review this and other “hard-nosed” evidence on whether it pays to be a good company.  The answer?  A strong YES.

(This post was sent via email to our monthly newsletter subscribers last week. Click here if you’d like to subscribe.)

Environmental impact of great importance to prospective employees

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The findings from a newly released survey indicate that a company’s environmental impact is as important a consideration as the company’s profitability to people when they are considering a new job.  Sixty-three percent of those surveyed report that “a company’s impact on the environment is vital when evaluating a new workplace, and 61 percent say the same about the company’s profit margin.”

This finding is consistent with a great deal of other evidence that we explore in our forthcoming book (Good Company: Business Success in the Worthiness Era, to be released on Labor Day).  One of our key findings is that the stock performance of companies that succeed on multiple fronts – those that are good to their employees, customers, communities, and the environment – outperform their less worthy counterparts (roughly ‘the bad guys’).  If you’d like a sneak preview of the book, we’d be happy to send you a copy of Chapter 1 – please just send your request via email to info@mcbassi.com.

Good Company now available for pre-order

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Exciting news as the publication process for our book continues to move right along: Good Company will be released on Labor Day 2011, and is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com and at other booksellers.

A business decision with social benefit

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Today’s New York Times describes a terrific and heartening example of what we are talking about in our forthcoming book, Good Company: Business Success in the Worthiness Era.

In a new joint venture, PepsiCo buys corn directly from small farmers (most of whom are very poor) – rather than go through a middleman.   “The social benefits of the corn program are obvious in higher incomes that have improved nutritional and educational standards among the participating farmers, not to mention its impact on illegal immigration and possibly even the reduction of marijuana production.” 

PepsiCo, in turn, enjoys lower transportation costs for crops and is able to purchase the type of corn that is best suited for its products.  According to Gaurav Gupta of Dalberg Global Development Advisors, “We are seeing an increased focus by companies looking to see how they can use their core capabilities for public good rather than simply writing a big check.  They’re starting to realize that the marginal cost of doing a little extra good produces such a great impact — and not only in terms of good will, but also because it’s good for business.”

This is one of the defining attributes of “good companies.”  They look for win-wins that are good for business and good for the communities in which they do business.