The Principal Financial Group just published their annual selection of the 10 Best Small Companies for Employee Financial Security. If you are a small or medium sized business owner, I know the challenges you face in recruiting, retaining, and caring for your valuable workforce, small as it may be. You face the daily challenge of operating your business in an unbelievably challenging environment of tough competitors, tough regulations and legislation, and even tougher expectations…yours and your people.

The scriptural admonitions ring in our ears to “know the condition of our flock,” and to making sure that the laborer is receiving the wages that are their due. We feel the tension between keeping our businesses afloat and caring for those that we can come to regard as our own “church.”

I believe that many of the challenges to workplace issues whether it is healthcare, employee retention, employee education, retirement benefits, the list goes on…can and will be met by the innovation of small and medium sized businesses.

To that end, I’m suggesting this annual report and the practices that are described can be food for thought. The companies represented are a cross section from engineering to insurance to agriculture to book manufacturing. I trust that we can learn from these examples and go on to create new standards of practice that truly help the people we employ from a practical and biblical perspective.