Managing your most valuable resource: Your staff

Six executives share their strategies for attracting, retaining and managing staff.

More than other industries, the magazine industry is defined by its people. The equipment is a commodity and the good will of the individual brands is the currency. The company's real assets do walk out the front door in the evening. This has always been true. But it's even more critical today, for a variety of reasons--most notably, the prolonged strong economy and the emergence of the Internet. FOLIO: editorial director Tony Silber began this discussion by asking participants how many had lost staff to the Internet. Not surprisingly, all raised their hands.

Tony Silber: These are good times for magazine companies. Revenues and profits have been up for several years. Investment money is pouring in. What a change from the early nineties, when the name of the game was downsizing. The unemployment rate is low. So it's really tough to find good people. Ironically, a lot of this has to do with the downsizing of the early nineties. Many people who were laid off moved on to other industries. The magazine business has lost them. This is especially true in circulation, where it's extremely difficult to find qualified mid-level circulators.

And in this era of consolidation, where big strategic publishers and financial players alike are buying up smaller companies, the competitive balance has been altered, underscoring the need for a strong team--especially among smaller publishers, which generally don't have the same level of resources.

Combine all this with the emergence of the Internet and you have a sense of the scope of the challenge. The Net is a hot industry with a content-based, cross-discipline team orientation that parallels the magazine industry. The result is predictable: an intense competition for the services of talented people. In the face of this New Economy, what kind of work environment do you create to attract and retain quality staff?

Preston McMurry: I've created the company that I've always wanted to work at. My experience working for others taught me what I needed to create. We have a proactive staff-supporting culture supported by our Tremendous People Department, a euphemism for Human Resources. We're flat-out open-book. We share our financials in detail each quarter. Our eight departments have their own bottom lines and operate as virtual companies. Employees come to their department's quarterly financial meetings armed with questions. I want them asking questions, making decisions and managing the company at every level. And they do. Even on a month's vacation, I don't call the office--ever. Sure, people make mistakes. But when you have good people, and we do, mistakes are simply the cost of continuing education.

Michela O'Connor Abrams: We don't think of Computerworld anymore as centered in print. We are an information-services company. In practice, this means that we have 72 editors, all of whom write for our Web site. From that, they develop the analysis for all of their stories. So instead of having an online editorial staff and a print staff, I have one staff that thinks of itself holistically. This has made recruiting easier because people don't think, "Okay, do I choose between a start-up or traditional media?"

John Wickersham: The biggest challenge in talent retention and recruitment is creating a strong growth environment. The best people are looking for growth opportunities. You lose good people when you're static. But as you grow, I think it's important to create a small-company environment within that larger-company setting. Because, ultimately, our kind of business succeeds in small, market-focused cultures. If you just have this big bureaucracy, you re simply not going to get the most creative and ambitious people. This concept is particularly relevant, I feel, given the tremendous consolidation we've seen in publishing in recent years.

Silber: What are the characteristics of a "growth culture," and how do you create a small-company environment within a big company?

Wickersham: You need to make a commitment to a truly decentralized, decision-making environment. With that kind of thinking, you should have enough confidence in your unit managers that perhaps you can, indeed, as Preston said, go on vacation and not call in so much. A growth culture is also enhanced by fundamentally solid financial support and meaningful incentives.

Kerry Bessey: One of the great things about a large company is having a variety of environments to choose from. If you give people choices internally, you're less likely to lose them to the outside. That's really the Time Inc. culture: letting the smaller businesses define themselves.

Carrie Holler: We have a very strong corporate culture. Our healthy/active lifestyle culture mirrors the magazines that we publish, and I think that's one key reason we can keep people. For instance, Rodale really does value the work-and-life balance. It's valued so seriously, employees can't even get into our offices Saturday afternoons through Monday morning. Consequently, retention isn't as critical an issue for us as attracting people.

The diversity challenge

Vaughn Benjamin: One problem that needs to be addressed in magazine publishing is that it's really perceived as a closed industry. Diversity is part of the problem, but it's also lack of talent in magazines in general. Students might go to journalism school or work on the school paper, but there aren't many magazine programs on the college level. Young adults who want to become members of the middle class often pursue professions like medicine or law. How many people aspire to be circulation directors?

Silber: In July, I moderated a panel on careers in the business press at Unity '99, the conference for minority journalists. There were more panelists than attendees at the start of the session. What is that telling me about what I should do in terms of recruiting from a diverse group of applicants?

Benjamin: When we search for talent to bring into the industry, we should cast our nets wider than the obvious places like Ivy League schools. I'm not talking about hiring a person of color for the sake of that person's color, but rather looking at more candidates when you have an open position. It may seem like we don't have that luxury, but we're going to have to start because there's a lack of talent in the channel--not only with people of color, but with everyone.

Wickersham: If you look at the diversity of Bill Communications' work force--race, gender, religion and sexual orientation--we have a highly diverse group. But our management remains predominantly middle-aged to older white males. And that's also the profile I observe when I go to industry events. I think the business press is especially burdened in terms of projecting an engaging image to aspiring communication talent from all walks of life. To tap into developing pools of potential creative management, we need to become more active, more out-reaching in our search approach, as well. Fortunately, the American Business Press has some initiatives going on with journalism schools. Among those, Bill, BPI and Lebhar-Friedman are currently cosponsoring a project in which the University of Georgia is publishing a trade magazine to, hopefully, increase understanding of what the business press is all about.

O'Connor Abrams: Also, when you talk about looking at diversity, you have to take region into consideration. If you look at Computerworld's work forces in San Mateo, California, or Framingham, Massachusetts, relative to the complexion of those areas, we are doing very, very well.

Bessey: Time Inc. has the advantage of name recognition. We exploit our brands to attract people who hadn't even thought about a career in publishing. Teen People, for instance, has really helped us connect with young people. So the intake is not as big an issue for us as the progression and representation in middle and senior management. We have some very good intake programs at the university level, and good support and affinity groups such as Out at Time Inc., a network of gay and lesbian employees, and a primarily African-American diversity network. But we're more interested in results. And when you look at our middle and senior management, we still are not where we'd like to be. I think we need to be doing a better job of tracking what happens to our diverse candidates as they move through our system.

Holler: Gender-wise, Rodale is doing very well. But on ethnic diversity, we're not doing so well. That's partially due to the regional demographics of the Lehigh Valley. We do rely on and draw on our relationships with local colleges and universities. One of my goals is to broaden our geographic diversity, at least at the entry level, starting with our interns.

Creating competitive compensation packages

Silber: In other industries, particularly the Internet industry, equity especially--but also perks--is part of the compensation formula. What do you offer to attract and keep top performers?

Wickersham: In our business, traditionally only some of the people at the top are rewarded with specific long-term incentive plans. I think the Internet startups are creating the pressure to push that down the ranks, and a lot of companies are wrestling with that. The Internet start-ups are also challenging us in terms of how we compensate people even in the short term.

Silber: How do you respond? Primedia, for example, is working on a Web-only portal site called Industryclick.com. At a recent meeting, somebody asked whether the compensation of those employees would follow an options model or a traditional print-publishing model. They were still wrestling with that.

Wickersham: It's tricky, because you can't have the have and the have-nots. And it can be an issue of equity and fairness within your top management ranks.

O'Connor Abrams: Exactly. You're making people on the print side feel like they're being told, "You stay there and work on the foundation a bit longer. We'll be doing this really exciting thing."

Bessey: And you print-side people just keep the cash coming in.

O'Connor Abrams: At IDG, we have 12,000 employees, but they are all part of separate companies. So as CEO of the Computerworld brand, my own business, I can spin out and go public. We offer a very competitive employee stock-ownership program.

Silber: What kind of evidence do you have that extraordinary benefits packages pay off with increased productivity, happier employees or lower turnover?

McMurry: We have a number of programs that you're not likely to see elsewhere. We provide a home-health program for our mothers of newborns. And my moms come back to work because they can bring their babies with them--we have a private mother's room. I'd rather have them at work with their baby than worried about someone not taking care of their child at a daycare center. Also, if one of our staff is experiencing domestic violence, we'll support her in any way necessary, including a safe-house apartment we maintain for however long it takes to get that problem solved--and we'll pay her wages.

Bessey: We have an on-site daycare center, and an employee can bring his or her child in 20 days per year, as needed. But increasingly, because we're competing with other kinds of businesses and consequently trying to attract a younger generation, we're finding that these aren't nearly as compelling attractions as they've been in the past. Many younger people are more interested in salary than in rich benefits packages. It's a problem, because our compensation has always been biased toward benefits.

Holler: It's a cultural issue for Rodale, as well: How does the company choose to spend money? On site we have a free fitness center, and a subsidized daycare center and cafeteria. We support employees in activities like races. We want to define a certain kind of culture.

Identifying and nurturing talent Silber: People ultimately are going to act on what's best for them and their careers. They want to increase their incomes, they want to move to the next level, they want to achieve. Our job is to align our businesses with those personal objectives for as long as we can. How do you achieve this?

McMurry: We have all seen situations where talented people have been put in the situation of doing something that people didn't enjoy doing. So the key to success is finding people who want to do what has to be done.

Benjamin: The reality is that people are moving from shop to shop. As long as you can find another body, you're okay. But talent is being siphoned off from other industries, so there's a scarcity of depth. So we have to keep training people.

Bessey: Depth has been a huge problem for us. People often move to other opportunities within our company, and we often end up splitting jobs because we don't have anyone who has all the necessary pieces.

People are getting opportunities sooner at Time because the company's had so many opportunities but hasn't been able to grow that horizontal breadth. When people arrive at a fairly senior position, they're often suddenly responsible for managing parts of the business that they might not ever have been exposed to. We're trying to create more opportunities for people to get exposure to more facets of the business. So we use coaching a lot.

O'Connor Abrams: One of the things that I've noticed across the industry is that we've lowered the bar on certain functions. Not too long ago, the tech publisher was extremely experienced and knowledgeable about every discipline in the company. They truly were the leaders. Increasingly, I'm noticing that the publisher is a glorified sales director. It's really kind of devalued everything right on down the line, so all of a sudden, being associate publisher is not such a big deal. At Computerworld, we still think of those functions as serious general-management responsibilities.

Wickersham: We see the publisher as the general manager, not the super salesperson. Increasingly, we're trying to put P&L responsibility on their desks, so they have to have the ability to totally control that seat.

Tony Silber is publisher of FOLIO: and former editorial director.

PARTICIPANTS

VAUGHN BENJAMIN

Vice President, Media Credit Association/MPA Workforce Diversity Committee

KERRY BESSEY

Vice President, human resources, Time Inc.

CARRIE HOLLER

Human resources director, Rodale Inc.

PRESTOM MCMURRY

Chairman/President McMurry Publishing

MICHELA O'CONNOR ABRAMS

President/CEO, Computerworld, Inc.

JOHN WICKERSHAM

President/CEO, Bill Communications

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