WP Glimcher also has been divided into business units to stay lean and efficient.
“We obviously share information and we share systems and everything else, but each unit has responsibility for their group of assets,” he says. “We have aligned all functions within the company from legal to construction to sales to accounting, and they work in teams on those groups of assets like smaller companies within the larger company.”
Offset the extra work
Glimcher says they built those new systems and added people, while also continuing to run WP Glimcher’s assets.
“You have to collect rent and plow parking lots and do all of the things that you do when you’re running a center,” he says.
Dealing with consumers, investors, lenders, shareholders and the public doesn’t stop. So, it was almost like doing two jobs.
“For almost everyone in the company, they had their day job of what they were doing and then they had the job of the integration,” he says.
To help offset that, WP Glimcher worked with integration consultants to put together an integration team. The former CFO of Washington Prime, luckily, stayed on as the integration team leader — that was his full-time job. Glimcher also was on the integration team, but he wasn’t the leader. He was at many of the meetings, but not all.
The business spent extra money on personnel dedicated specifically to integration, to minimize the distraction from the employees’ day jobs. Spending extra capital for that calendar year provided a safety net for mistakes, Glimcher says.
“Was it challenging? Yeah,” he says. “I can’t say we’re at 100 percent complete. [But] we’re at the tail end of it, and we’re feeling really good about it.”
Preserve the culture
In a difficult environment, the culture helped carry it through.
Glimcher says, even before the merger, the culture has always been positive — the employees are empowered to do their work and ideas come from the field and salespeople.
“We’ve always been a believer that no one is a tougher critic of them than themselves, so we don’t need to be critical of people,” he says.
When you have smart employees, they want to have challenges and an opportunity to have a sense of accomplishment, Glimcher says.
“What we said is we’re going to try to take some things off your plate so you can focus on integrating the company, but we also want you to be balanced,” he says.
Balance is important. You want your employees to have time for health and wellness and being involved in the community, as well as working hard.
“We were a little out of balance for the last year and we probably still will be for the first half of this year, and then we’ll get back into balance,” Glimcher says. “It’s been very difficult and for anyone to say that it’s not, they wouldn’t be telling you the truth.”
One of his goals has been to try to preserve the culture that made Glimcher Realty Trust such a great organization in the first place. The buildings aren’t the most valuable assets — it’s the culture that needs to be held sacred, he says.
That culture was bruised during the integration, but its strength helped it survive. And that strength came from the employees who work at the company.
People are at the core of everything, so Glimcher says he spends the majority of his time hiring, interviewing and meeting with people.
“When I do a pie chart of my time, people had to be the biggest piece of the pie,” he says. “Asset visits had to be the second biggest, and then everything else fell in.”
De-stress through transparency
During times of change, communication is key. People were understandably apprehensive of change and the duplication of some positions, but Glimcher says they were given opportunities to talk to the senior team.
WP Glimcher expanded its mentor program for the mall teams, in order to take some of the burden off the home office. Glimcher also held town hall meetings and hosted breakfast meeting with new associates.
“You may find someone who didn’t take advantage of the opportunity,” he says. “Are 100 percent of the people happy 100 percent of the time? No one’s batting a thousand. But the thing I’m proud of is that we have given people the opportunity.”
