Search
There are few things more frustrating than spending time and money to find, hire and train a new employee, only to have that person leave in six months for a few thousand dollars more with a different employer.
NewMedia Inc. owner Len Pagon realizes it wasn’t the money that was turning his entryway from a front door into a revolving one; it was a lack of attention and recognition — in short, a communication problem.
“About three years ago, Cleveland started having a bunch of turnover issues,” Pagon says. “People were generally pretty happy, but we were still losing people. We focused for about a year to 18 months on trying to do all kinds of things to make it a better place to work. That didn’t change our turnover, we (just) started getting really nice resignation letters.”
Keeping NewMedia’s 130 employees in three offices — Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati — happy is only half the battle. Keeping them informed is the other half.
“We found the most important thing is for people to feel connected,” Pagon says. “That, and a rapport and a sense of trust with the other people that are working at the branch. If the management cares and is keeping them connected and keeping communications (flowing), they’re going to have a lot less turnover than another branch manager who is totally focused on sales and not paying enough attention to his folks.”
With all the latest technological wizardry at his fingertips, it would be easy for Pagon to run his business and technology-integrating firm without ever leaving the cozy confines of his office. With e-mail and voice mail, pagers and faxes whisking about like bees around a hive, Pagon could direct his workers and run a successful organization.
But he knows that to make his enterprise thrive, it needs human contact.
“It’s the face-to-face stuff that none of this replaces,” he says. “There’s nothing magical about it. (Promise) little creative fun things, but then actually making sure you do them. It’s not any one thing. It’s many tens of little things that you do collectively that make it kind of neat and fun.”
That doesn’t mean that NewMedia doesn’t use technology. In fact, the company utilizes an intranet that allows employees access to all kinds of company information. In addition to the company handbook and monthly newsletter, employees can access their 401(k) accounts and make changes, and log their billable hours (which saves time and mistakes which could happen when they were faxed or e-mailed, then entered by someone at the home office).
According to Pagon, technology (read: e-commerce) has “had a fundamental, yet important change in the way we do business. We can order tickets, books, computers and just about everything else online. I’ve done that online without having any personal contact.
“And now the brand or position that they have in my head is based totally on the virtual experience that I have with their Web site. What happens is not so much that technology shifts out in front, what happens is that the information shifts out in front of your organization.”
Suddenly, your customers, and your competition, have information about your operations. It has huge strategic implications for marketing. It’s what e-business all about, he says.
“We’ve not only applied that externally, but we’ve applied it internally as well. So what you do is you effectively open up your systems and online knowledge management, knowledge sharing, information sharing throughout the entire organization.”
Again, the challenge is to not let the technology dwarf the message.
“For the past 15 to 20 years, people have been trying to give access to all information any place, any time,” he says. “The Internet and the intranet are the ultimate manifestation of the information. The question becomes, ‘How do I deliver the right information at the right place at the right time?’ That’s why we’re overwhelmed with information.
“Everybody’s blasting everything and the tools aren’t that good for sorting it out.”
Pagon cites the company’s own intranet as an example. It started as just a few pages of the handbook and other useful information, and has grown enormously. It has to be culled periodically to make sure it remains a useful tool.
And Pagon makes sure that he keeps a human face as part of his bag of communication tricks. Every Monday, the company president personally signs birthday cards, anniversary cards, whatever the occasion may be. He even sends them to ex-employees.
But to be really successful, Pagon says, communication has to run both ways.
“Communication isn’t always management to staff,” he says. “What we’re trying to do is foster contact between people. To me, it’s not really communication; it’s being acknowledged and made to feel important and that you matter.”
The company’s vacation policy is just one example. As employees worked, they accrued vacation time, but they weren’t using it. So NewMedia implemented a use it or lose it policy. That didn’t sit too well with the employees and the company realized it would have to shut down for about two months if it enforced the rule. New guidelines were put in, which allowed the company to better manage vacation days and made sure that employees got the time off they needed.
“I think it goes back to being part of a company that you want to work for,” Pagon says. “Our business is all about people. What sometimes is the most difficult part is when people are kind of upset or they’re thinking about leaving.
“On the flip side, what makes this job a lot of fun is working with people that are having fun and care about what they’re doing.”
And the first step in making that happen is communication.
How to reach: NewMedia (216) 518-7900 or www.nmedia.com
Daniel G. Jacobs ([email protected]) is senior editor at SBN.
Giving new meaning to family business
You don’t just marry your spouse, you marry his or her family as well. The adage also applies, it seems, to the hiring of a new employee.
According to the 1999 America@Work study, the most important thing a company can do to create loyalty is to understand the importance of personal and family life. More than 50 percent of those polled said they believe their employer recognizes they have a life outside of work.
Respondents to another study, conducted by CCH Inc., cite family issues most often as the reason for unscheduled absences. It surpassed personal illness for the first time since the survey was conducted.
And here we thought they had just taken off to catch those Indians game last summer.
