Author: Caroline Cole

Shortly after taking the helm of General Semiconductor, Ronald Ostertag discovered just how much work he had ahead of him when two senior managers began bickering during a presentation before his board of directors.

    Not ten minutes after he asked his team to show a united front, the pair traded insults and verbal barbs with no concern for who they were embarrassing.

    “It was then I realized that not only were people at the very top of the company going in different directions, they were not listening to each other or respecting what others had to say,” says Ostertag, recalling the events of a decade ago.

    Ostertag did what he had to do. He replaced nearly every member of his senior team. “But that quickly manifested itself in job insecurity further down the ranks, and I realized we needed to do something to develop a sense of teamwork,” he says. “We needed a mission statement and we needed to develop a culture of mutual respect that fostered cooperation and innovation.”

    This was particularly important because, as a global company, General Semiconductor had a workforce that was spread from North America to Asia and involved employees who spoke five languages. With only 200 workers located inside the United States, Ostertag had to find a formula that worked across cultures and job classifications.

    Headquartered in a modest office building in an industrial park on Long Island, New York, General Semiconductor makes power management components for the high-tech industry.

    From its manufacturing centers in Europe, Taiwan, Ireland, the United States, and China, the company makes the tiny transistors, diodes, and rectifiers that control the electronic impulses that power everything from automobiles and cell phones to dishwashers and personal computers.

    General Semiconductor turns out over 17 million of these minute parts a day, each wholesaling for well under a dollar. Customers include all the major electronics manufacturers, among them Phillips, Sony, and Delta.

    Originally a division of General Instrument, General Semiconductor is an independent entity employing 5,600, with revenues approaching $500 million.

    Looking back, Ostertag says he brought his new team together at a brainstorming session to come up with the company’s core principles.

    “From the get-go, this company was a cash producer, a profit center for General Instrument, so in general terms, the company was in good shape,” Ostertag says. “But if we wanted to grow, I realized, our task was to put down on paper what our core values were and then make sure everyone was on the same page.”

    From around the table came words like “quality” and “integrity” and phrases like “good customer service” and “on-time delivery.” From that starting point came a cohesive mission statement and a list of eight company values, what Ostertag now refers to as General Semiconductor’s “culture points.”

    “The work was sound because we haven’t changed them since they were created.”The next challenge was to spread the word throughout the company. Thus was born People Plus, an in-house leadership and problem-solving program developed by the company’s HR staff of six that uses the company’s mission and values as a starting point for individual growth.

    “We’re quite serious when we talk about leadership even to a bench worker on the assembly line,” says Gary Barello, a human resources staffer. “Lots of people will say, ‘Oh, I’m not a leader,’ but when we point out that the essence of leadership is influence, they realize everyone has leadership qualities and responsibilities.”

    The company instituted a program called People Plus that involves a conventional 360-degree review of each employee using a comprehensive self-assessment matched with feedback from supervisors, managers, peers, and subordinates chosen by the employee. But it includes a twist. Once the written evaluations are completed, each staffer, from Ostertag down, meets privately with an outside psychologist to discuss what the reports said and what behavioral adjustments the staffer might consider.

    Ostertag says that People Plus focuses on bringing out the unique talents and contributions of every employee and helping to blend them with those of others on the work team.

    The results were immediately measurable. Two years after the program was implemented, another survey of the 145-member worldwide senior management group indicated that out of 39 development areas, 36 showed improvement.

    “It is great to know how other people see you, because each of us does things that might be bothering others without our knowing it,” says Selena Chai-lin Wang, a manager of information systems applications. Wang can vouch for the program’s cross-cultural utility. A native of Taiwan, she began her career at General Semiconductor in 1989 as an industrial engineer in Taipei. She now works out of the company’s main office in Melville, New York.

    Applications engineer Neven Soric says that People Plus has helped bring the company together despite its far-flung locations. “It is good to know that everyone has done this program, especially since it is presented as providing constructive criticism,” he says. “It provides continuity from the top down.”

    Employees from the newest shop worker to a number-cruncher in corporate know that Ostertag takes his culture points seriously. “In fact, it wasn’t long after we put them in place that someone printed up a credit card version,” he says. “They knew when they saw me coming, whether it was in the factory in Taiwan or Ireland or here, that I might come up to anyone and ask them to rattle off four or five of those values. I didn’t mean it as a test, but more to show that that is what everyone here is striving for.”

    Five years after People Plus was in place, it gave birth to a sister training program, the Employee Development and Certification Program, also devised by the company’s own in-house HR staff.

    “As I traveled around the company, especially during the time we were preparing to go it on our own, I was getting some very basic questions from our workers,” Ostertag says. “I really believe that empowering employees is the key to any company’s success, but you can’t do that unless everyone is working from the same knowledge base.” So he set his HR staff to the task of finding out what employees wanted to know about the company.

    “No question was off-base; we took everyone seriously,” says Barello, the project’s manager. Once he had the questions in hand, he then assembled a group of “subject matter experts” to answer them.

    What HR eventually produced was a 135-page standard three-ring binder of information that includes everything from a list of the company’s board of directors and history to a description of products, customers, and competitors to basic financials.

    Ostertag credits the attention to staff interaction and cooperation with helping the company to nearly double revenues since 1996 and achieve greater market share.

    “From our perspective in HR, these programs have translated into a very stable workforce with little turnover, whether we are talking about our manufacturing plant in Ireland or in Europe,” HR director Linda Perry says. The average length of service among the six-member human resources team is 13 and a half years. For the technical marketing support group, staff longevity is about 12 years, 9 months.

    Ostertag says that revenues have grown from $361.9 million in 1996 to nearly $500 million for 2000. Employment has grown during the same period by 2,400. Of the company’s many successes, General Semiconductor prides itself most “on having the most knowledgeable and well-trained employees in the industry.”

Workforce, March 2001, pp. 44-45 Subscribe Now!

The food is gourmet quality and the service four-star, making a one-ortwo-week stay at Boeing’s Leadership Center a refreshing change of pace fromthe day-to-day pressures of ordinary work responsibilities. But for the morethan 7,000 Boeing executives and up-and-coming managers who will attend atraining session here this year, the experience is not intended to be allrelaxation.

“The one word everyone used in describing their experience before I wentwas ‘intense’ and now that I’ve been, I’m finding myself using the sameword,” said Tom Young, director of advertising for the company’s militaryaircraft and missile division, and a former fighter pilot familiar with”intense” experiences. “It was intense,but it was one of the mostuseful intense experiences I’ve ever had.”

Added Larry Milligan, a facilities manager at the company’s Anaheim,California, location, “Before I went, I heard it referred to as the ‘velvetprison,’ because once you get there you’re stuck. You can’t leave becauseyou have no car. But the truth is once you are there you don’t need to leaveand you don’t want to leave. You are learning too much.”

On the 286- acre campus snuggled against a hillside that overlooks theconfluence of the Missouri, Illinois, and Mississippi Rivers in northwestsuburban St. Louis, the three lodge buildings that make up Boeing’s LeadershipCenter provide just the right mix of a secluded, well-appointed, andwell-equipped location for the task at hand.

And that task is part academic and part social, providing a central locationto help everyone from the company’s chief executive down to newly mintedmanagers hone their work and leadership skills within a custom-designedcurriculum.

“Here participants can think about the whole company and their role init,” said Steve Mercer, 60, the executive director of the facility.”The intention is to free the students of all distractions. I tell them,‘Once you leave the airport you can lock your wallet away. We’ll take careof everything. We just want you to immerse yourself in everything Boeing.’”

The idea of concentrating its ongoing training program at one centralfacility is a relatively new concept for Boeing, Mercer noted. “Prior tohaving this facility, Boeing would develop a program and then run everyonethrough it in a year or so,” said Mercer, who came to Boeing from GeneralElectric and its model-learning center in Crotonville, New York. “What’sdifferent about this is that the programs here are ongoing. It shows the company’scommitment to learning as a life-long pursuit.”

And because Boeing is in control of what its students are learning, Mercerand his staff of 15 instructors can take the time to design a curriculum thatmeets the rapidly changing demands of Boeing’s particular businessenvironment.

“I am not the learning czar and I believe in decentralization, thatlearning can happen anywhere,” Mercer said. “But we do need to bringpeople together to integrate our operation and build cultural and companyvalues.” The facility, the former Desloges estate and gentleman’s farm,came to the aerospace giant through its merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.The main building was originally an underground ballroom. Today it serves as ameeting room and dining area. The old carriage house has been renovated forseminar rooms.

“There was never any question that we weren’t going to continue thisproject, which Harry Stonecipher, my counterpart at McDonnell Douglas, hadinitiated with the purchase of the property in 1995,” said Phil Condit,Boeing’s chief executive officer, after addressing a fresh crop of students inthe Executive Program. “During our negotiations he asked me how I feltabout it and I said it was full-steam ahead. We both have very similar attitudesabout learning being a life-long pursuit. People are our most important resourceand we have some very talented people.

“Having said that, when they are here we want to push them to thinkabout ideas that are too risky to try out at home,” he said. “Our guysare obsessed with quality because ours is a business that is focused on safety.Here, though, we want them to try out ideas that fail once in a while, becausethrough that failure is a learning experience that builds confidence to find newlimits. You can’t crash a plane on purpose but you can crash a flightsimulator and learn something.”

The $60 million Boeing Leadership Center opened in March of 1999. Stonecipher,now Boeing’s chief operating officer, gave the opening address and along withCondit continues as a regular lecturer. The university-like facility has 120private residence rooms, a workshop with a large lecture hall, three largeclassrooms, and 21 breakout rooms where students work in teams on collaborativeprojects. The dining room, with its panoramic view of the bluffs overlooking theIllinois River, seats 156. There is also a fitness center.

Since opening, the center has proven so popular that Boeing is preparing toadd a seven-story residence hall, doubling the space provided by the currentwings, Mercer said. With its own training programs well underway, Mercer isputting energy into developing a Web-based program to augment his residentialprogram. In May, the center also hosted a meeting of the Global Forum onBusiness-Driven Action Learning and Executive Development, a four-day consortiumof 90 executives representing 40 companies in more than 20 countries. The eventincluded representatives of Alcoa, Motorola, DuPont and Eli Lilly.

There is one thing you won’t find at the Leadership Center: a golf course.Instead, Boeing has chosen to maintain the fields of corn that have been farmedon the property for more than 100 years, Mercer said.

“We have nothing against golf but we wanted to get away from a countryclub atmosphere,” he said. “For recreation we offer team sports likevolleyball, softball, basketball, and tennis. We also have billiards and milesof natural hiking trails. But right off, we wanted to destroy the idea that thiswas going to be some kind of executive hideaway.” Participants are here byinvitation only, though, and are intentionally matched up in working groups withpeople they don’t meet in their normal work assignment. And every Boeingmanager will come here at a key point in his or her career, Mercer said.

This bringing together of workers from diverse business units is a key to thecenter’s success. It’s particularly important as Boeing works on integratingits newer employees, who came to the company through its merger with McDonnellDouglas in 1997, North American Rockwell a year earlier, and those from HughesSpace and Communications, who will join the company later this year. Boeingcurrently has 180,000 employees. “The classroom program I participated in,like the computer simulations we did, could very well have been done at my worksite but I realized as soon as I got here, a critical part of the program wasthe people I met,” said Milligan, the facilities manager from California.”Since coming home in July, I have traded dozens of e-mails. The emphasisis on working out common processes together, whether you are working in Anaheim,Seattle, or Houston.”

Mercer said the facility has been designed to promote networking so thatstudents go home with dozens of new e-mail addresses and the knowledge that theyare not alone in solving problems and challenges. For instance, outside the mainlecture hall, the center posts photos of all participants, their titles andworksites, so identifications can be easily made. The executive program for thecompany’s top 2,000 managers is scheduled at the same time as the Transitionto Management Program for those recently promoted to supervisory level. Thatway, participants at all work levels have a chance to meet in the dining areasand residence hall.

In addition to the facility’s education-oriented architectural design is adeep-seated commitment to the value of learning from both top qualityinstructors and the students themselves. “What amazed me was the level ofinstruction,” said Anne Toulouse, 42, who is vice president of brandmanagement and advertising and who works at the company’s Seattleheadquarters. “I expected one or two great presentations but the caliber ofevery one of the presentations was phenomenal. We were engaged nearly everymoment.”

Toulouse said she still marvels at the thought put into the curriculum of theexecutive leadership program, which she attended with 60 others in July.”One of our simulations involved dealing with union negotiators, and forthis segment they brought in people in our company who negotiate with theunions, except they were role-playing their counterparts,” she said. AndMilligan, 43, said it was refreshing for the company to teach its managers whenit is okay to push a project back to the boss because a request is unrealistic.

“That the company would put that concept before us shows they areinterested in our success, that Boeing feels it’s important that managers atall levels treat their employees decently,” Milligan said. Added Young,”There are a zillion books and articles on coaching tips, which is onething we talked a lot about in my sessions, but somehow working on them togetherthere makes it easier to apply them at home.”

Workforce, October 2000, Vol. 79, No. 10, pp. 62-69— Subscribenow!

Thursday, May 11, 2000. 9:50 a.m.

Think film, and the first thought that comes to mind is Kodak and their ubiquitous yellow film boxes. It’s been 100 years since George Eastman introduced the Brownie camera to the American public, and since then the company has dominated the consumer picture-taking market. In the last century, Eastman Kodak has branched out, developing strong professional and industrial markets for its imaging products, which now include everything from X-rays and microfilm to satellite photography and large-format film for the motion-picture industry. But it is those 4 x 5 snapshots taken by ordinary people to record important family events from birthdays and anniversaries to graduations and the first prom dress that remain the core of Kodak’s thriving $14 billion business.

Last year Eastman Kodak, based in Rochester, New York, sold close to three billion rolls of film, representing about 80 billion exposures, and almost 100 million more rolls of film in the United States alone than the year before. Innovation has always driven this company, founded in 1880, and Kodak saw sales of its new easy-to-use Max film grow by 40 percent last year and its flexible Advantix Photo System gain momentum.

As we move forward into the digital age, Kodak is uniquely poised to further expand its ownership of the imaging industry by helping consumers and commercial customers alike take advantage of computerized formats for displaying pictures. The company’s strong technical and engineering skills can provide the continued invention and follow-through that the fast-paced world of the Internet demands.

Key to Kodak’s continued profitable performance as its traditional businesses grow and its new e-commerce sectors evolve is its worldwide operation. Five years ago, Kodak turned its attention to its offshore operations and began an integration process in an effort to globalize its business practices on a market basis rather than a geographic basis.

That’s where Marty Britt comes in. As director of Worldwide Human Resources for Kodak’s consumer imaging division, Britt, 41, is in charge of managing a worldwide strategy for attracting and retaining top talent here and abroad. Working under her are the HR directors of Kodak’s five geographic regions and four office staff, in a department that is a shared resource for the company’s 89,650 employees, 43,000 of whom are in the United States.

Until 1995, its European, South American, and Pacific Rim business units operated as independent entities. The corporate office had trouble coming up with numbers as basic as how many people work for the company worldwide, especially when they were asked to break down numbers into categories such as full- and part-time, race, and gender, Britt explains.

Today Kodak is putting an emphasis on consistency and continuity to make sure that everyone is working toward the same goals, Britt says. At the same time, the company is moving from a culture of producing what it could invent to inventing products that consumers are demanding.

Like many others at Kodak, Britt grew up in Rochester and is the second generation in her family to work there. However, she never expected to follow in her father’s footsteps when she graduated from Cornell with a master’s degree in industrial and human relations. After a short stint in Florida, her hometown beckoned, though, and she took an entry-level human resources position at Kodak in 1985. Since then, she has worked her way up through the ranks, proving to be an intense, high-energy strategist who can make you laugh while giving you serious, on-target advice.

When I catch up with Britt on this gorgeous spring morning, she is already three hours into her workday. Surrounding her is a bevy of stuffed animals, photos of her dogs, and a vase of congratulatory fresh flowers, a reminder that she is only four weeks into her current position. In her last job, she served as director of corporate human resources.

On her agenda this morning is a meeting with senior managers in the research and development division to discuss an attrition problem. “We’ve lost three key people to other Kodak divisions, so what we’re concerned with here is trying to figure out if they left for another great opportunity or whether they just wanted to get away from something we need to fix,” she says.

At the meeting are Jack Wylam, senior human resources manager for the research and development division; Jim Patton, the chief technology officer; and Patton’s boss, Bill Atkinson, the director of output system development. Patton lays out the problem, quickly pointing out that the three women who left went to Kodak’s fast-growing Internet division, Kodak.com. “The question I have is whether we have created our own chaos here. Have we created a company but then failed to give them the tools to find their own talent other than stealing them from other divisions?” he asks.

Britt immediately jumps in and suggests that an analysis of career paths and the division’s own talent pool is in order. “I view this problem as a potentially positive move. What kind of talent do we have to backfill these positions? What are we doing to bring in new talent?”

Wylam agrees that managers at all levels need to realize that old-line companies such as Kodak can no longer expect to control their workers’ employment tracks. “It used to be that workers waited for their managers to hand out the promotions,” he says. “Now we are seeing employees take charge of their careers, find their own opportunities.”

Britt reinforces Wylam’s point, noting that Kodak always attracted top talent right out of college because Rochester was a great place to develop a career and raise a family. “What distinguished Kodak as a place to work was that people came here because they knew they could have a great career without moving.”

But since Kodak was forced to disrupt its own history of lifetime employment in the early 1990s with workforce cutbacks, the concept of loyalty has fallen out of the employment lexicon, Britt says.

Today, few Kodak workers are under 30, and many are nearing retirement. Nonetheless, Kodak has retained its reputation as an innovator and inventor.

Given the worldwide demand for talent, human resources managers have had to replace the old laid-back recruitment system by going on the offensive and making sure Kodak is the kind of place that astute, qualified workers will choose. “That means addressing everything from work schedules and dress codes to the basic element of respect for employees,” Britt notes, adding that Kodak currently has 600 to 700 open jobs in the U.S. alone.

10:35 a.m.

The issue of respect for employees comes up again when Britt meets one-on-one with Cindy High, her manager of human resources for worldwide information systems. Britt serves as High’s mentor, checking in with her from time to time and guiding her as she works with this key sector of Kodak’s workforce.

High knows she is in a war for talent and is working on a project to diversify her workforce. At Kodak, thanks largely to Britt’s personal vision, diversity goes far beyond racial and gender profiles.

“Diversity is recognizing each one of us as an individual and drawing on these unique talents and skills,” Britt says. “We have to find out what makes each employee unique because unless we do, we won’t get the value of their individual talents and experience.”

Diversity is important when it comes to inventing products, Britt notes, because of the cause-and-effect relationship between what is produced and what is purchased. “Women make up 70 percent of all consumer imaging purchases, which suggests that we need to make sure women are well represented around the table here when we are brainstorming those products,” she says.

Britt suggests that High involve Kodak’s own workforce in her executive-level recruitment efforts. She also recommends that High meet with the African American Leadership Team, Kodak Leaders Who Are Women, and the Hispanic Leadership Team and ask for their help in finding more talent among their own contacts. “This is the kind of outreach that makes everyone feel involved.”

She also encourages High to publicize her successes. “Don’t underestimate the value of telling stories, what exactly you are doing to attract top talent,” Britt says, pointing out that a manager in a key position in Singapore was offered special travel and vacation allowances so she could spend time with her husband and child. “The stories are what people remember.”

Britt excuses herself for a private meeting, sending me off to lunch with Greg Giles, her senior human resource manager for consumer imaging.

1:00 p.m.

Salad in hand, Britt is back in her office to meet with Paula Dolan, the company’s director of worldwide compensation. Dolan has come by because she needs something from Britt, specifically her comments on a new stock ownership plan being offered as performance-based compensation for exempt, non-management employees.

Britt notes that this type of bonus system is relatively new at Kodak and is part of an effort to align Kodak with high-flying “Silicon Valley dot-coms.” Although Britt protests that her recommendations are not as complete as she would like, given her newness in the job, Dolan is delighted with her effort, pointing out that several veterans haven’t yet gotten the hang of this reward program.

2:00 p.m.

After taking a few minutes to listen to her voice mails that have accumulated during the morning, Britt is off to a roundtable discussion with eight members of her human resource staff. They have signed up to talk about their jobs and to hear about company initiatives. Because Britt is new in the position, the man whom she replaced, Bob Berman, joins her as a co-facilitator. Berman, now the human resources director for global operations, brings with him that broader perspective. Also present are two members of the human resources education team, two secretaries, and four human resources managers.

Berman begins the session by tackling the prickly topic of employee advocacy on the part of human resource managers. He argues that HR staff can serve as important intermediaries, bringing employee concerns to top management. They also can intercede before a problem becomes a crisis.

The challenge, notes Jody Dietz, a senior educational consultant, is gaining an employee’s trust that his or her concerns will be held in confidence. “We are not lawyers, but we can create a model, for instance, showing that it is just as important to return a call from an employee as a manager,” she says.

Dietz also talks about her visit to a high-tech company, which gave her a new appreciation for what could be done to improve Kodak’s workforce. “I saw a lot of energy and creativity, a place where the word failure is not considered a bad thing.”

Asked about her plans for hiring a new diversity director, Britt replies that she is looking for someone with global experience.

The session ends with brainstorming ways to encourage more members of the human resources team to sign up for the roundtables, among them improving the visibility of HR News, which is published on the company’s intranet.

Just the Facts Organization: Eastman Kodak Company Responsibility: Inventor and manufacturer of photographic imaging products Headquarters: Rochester, New York Employees: 80,650 worldwide (42,300 USA) HR Staff: 9 direct reports HR Challenges: Building employee confidence on the future following period of layoffs Effectively competing in the war for talent Understanding the implications of e-business in Kodak’s traditional organizational culture You should know: Founded during the era of glass-plate photography, Eastman Kodak Co. has been a pioneer in the picture-making business for over 100 years. As the company moves increasingly into the digital age, George Eastman’s slogan coined for the marketing of his original $1 Brownie camera remains relevant:”You push the button, we do the rest.” Kodak is committed to mass-producing its products at low cost, always with a focus on the consumer.

Thursday, April 20, 8:20 a.m.

Harvard University may own the most recognizable brand name in academia, yet few people would think of this leading university and research facility as one of the major employers in Massachusetts.

As many as 13,824 people report to work daily at this picturesque campus hugging the Charles River in Cambridge or at its associated locations throughout the Boston area. That number puts Harvard University fourth on the list of top state employers, behind telephone carrier Bell Atlantic (18,000), Stop & Shop Supermarkets (16,340), and Raytheon (14,000), the defense contractor.

Less than one-quarter of that total, or 2,588, are faculty, with the vast majority providing a host of support services. In addition to the school’s employee population, the student population is 18,541, including 6,684 in undergraduate programs.

Polly Price serves as Harvard’s associate vice president for human resources, reporting to Sally Zeckhauser, the university’s vice president for administration. Price, 56, has worked in human resources for 15 years and has been in her present position as head of the university’s Office of Human Resources since 1996. Her mission is lofty but, in her view, attainable–to help make Harvard not only the World’s Greatest University but also the greatest place to work in the universe.

As she heads to work on this crisp, clear April morning, the kind that coaxes us New Englanders through the dark winter months, Price is looking forward to a day that will illustrate just how big a challenge her mission is. Wearing a muted brown houndstooth jacket, contrasting skirt, and comfortable flats, Price will begin her day in a breakfast meeting with two professors at the Faculty Club. She wants to get their help with a survey her department administered to some of Harvard’s professional staff to gauge job satisfaction.

A meeting with nine of her key staffers and an update session with her information technology team will take up the better part of the mid-day. Finally, she will end this day in Massachusetts Hall hearing about Harvard’s efforts to improve the working conditions of its lowest-paid employees.

As head of the university’s Office of Human Resources, Price is responsible for making Harvard an attractive place to work as well as study. On a day-to-day basis, OHR ensures that the University complies with the host of governmental regulations that guide any employer from a Fortune 500 heavyweight to the neighborhood mom-and-pop grocery.

The Office of Human Resources is ground zero for all benefits programs because workplace enhancements such as health insurance and retirement benefits have been standardized across the university. But that is about all that has been standardized at Harvard when it comes to human resource issues, she explains.

When it comes to hiring, Price faces competing demands. Harvard University is made up of eight different academic schools and divisions, from Harvard Medical School and Harvard Law School to its various libraries and associated departments. Price, then, heads an HR department that is by its very nature decentralized, with a number of different people in top decision-making positions who do not report to her.

“What that means,” she says as we chat for a few minutes before the breakfast meeting, “is that my office does not do the hiring for all Harvard staff. Although everyone comes to us for information on benefits, we handle the hiring only for the central administration.” Practically speaking, that means that prospective employees looking for jobs at Harvard go directly to the departments they are interested in working for.

Price, however, is very interested in what goes on in the other HR departments across Harvard’s dispersed campus. Given the state’s 2.9 percent unemployment rate and the hot competition for the best employees, particularly in the information technology sector, Price has to keep up with how everyone at Harvard is recruiting and retaining their staffers so that the day-to-day work gets done.

“That can be an enormous challenge in this environment,” she says. “Up until a year ago, we were losing qualified applicants because we had no system for referring prospective employees who didn’t get a particular job on to other departments. Those names just sat in a file.”

Communication, then, is key to harnessing the Harvard brain trust. Price must nurture relationships with the deans and directors of Harvard’s schools and departments even though she is not ultimately responsible for who is hired. And she must provide the leadership to help Harvard meet its vision of being a model employer.

Price tells me what she finds so attractive about her job: “You are working with the smartest students, the smartest professors in the world,” she says succinctly. “People say to me all the time they could go to work for a dot-com and make a lot of money or come here and work beside a Nobel laureate. What I bring to this job is a solid understanding of how organizations, particularly academic institutions, work.”

8:35 a.m.

Harvard’s Faculty Club is just what you’d imagine an Ivy League university would offer as an amenity to its teaching staff. The two-story neo-Georgian brick structure is located just outside Harvard Yard, and is set off by a soothing fountain and lush landscaping.

Inside, oriental rugs, classic furnishings, and highly polished wood paneling greet visitors. The dining room tables are covered with linen and set with sterling silver. Fresh flowers decorate each table, and the staff await to meet any dining desire. You can’t help but speak in hushed tones.

Here Price is meeting two of Harvard’s internationally known sociology professors, Peter Marsden and Richard Hackman, to get their opinions of the Workplace Environment Survey conducted last November by the Office of Human Resources for the central administration’s staff of 3,400.

Also in attendance is David Jones, a member of Price’s staff who, as director of workforce initiatives, managed the survey. Hackman has brought along a graduate student, Josephine Pichanick, who is considering using the survey as the basis of a future research project.

Jones begins the meeting by explaining that OHR hired A Great Place to Work, a San Francisco consulting firm, to design and administer the survey, which was completed by 1,370 individuals.

Price adds that the employees at the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Divinity School will be taking the survey in the next several weeks and that both the School of Public Health and the Education School are considering using it soon.

“Clearly there is interest from these administrators in finding out how their workers perceive their jobs and what they could do to make the environment better,” she says.

What is before the group this morning are the raw results of the initial survey that came back in February. Price has asked Marsden and Hackman to help her analyze the responses.

They are polite but immediately want to know why OHR hired an outside consultant rather than using Harvard’s own in-house expertise. “We’ve got people at the Business School that hire themselves out to do just this kind of work,” Hackman observes. Price is ready for that criticism, saying, “We hired these consultants because they are able to tie their analysis to ‘best practices’ in other companies,” she responds. “Also, sometimes professors here don’t have time for us.”

Price also points out that the survey has already caught the attention of Harvard’s top administration. “The provost has agreed to sit down and have lunch with staffers on a regular basis to discuss their concerns. Until we did the survey, we didn’t have that kind of support for change.”

For the moment Hackman accepts that. He notes that Harvard faces an unusual problem as an employer. Workers report that they love working at Harvard, but many don’t like their jobs or their bosses.

Price agrees with Hackman that the university needs to put more emphasis on management training.

9:40 a.m.

The breakfast meeting breaks up with assurances that the professors will continue to provide guidance. Price is out the door for a brisk three-minute walk across Harvard Yard to her office and a scheduled weekly staff meeting. “First, though, I am stopping for a big cup of coffee,” she says with a smile, ducking into a nearby Au Bon Pain.

Then it is up to the sixth floor of the Holyoke Center, in the middle of Harvard Square, where Price is warmly greeted by her receptionist and others in her office of 94. She sheds her coat in her tidy office overlooking the square and heads into the staff meeting.

10:02 a.m.

Around a table in a small conference room waiting for her are Mary Christakis, director of finance and administration; Rita Moore, director of information systems; Kim Roberts, director of employee and labor relations; Merry Touborg, director of communications; Gina Perris, director of benefits; Mary Cronin, director of human resources; Jane Hill, project ADEPT team leader; Heidi Conway, a benefits manager; and Jones, whom we met at breakfast.

Each reports on projects under way in his or her area of expertise. The meeting runs for a full two hours, and conversation never lags. Price mostly just listens, occasionally adding a word of encouragement or asking an on-target question. “We are all so busy that this is really the only chance we have to connect and listen to each other,” she had said going in.

Conway gives a brief report on a customer-service survey sent out to those who have used a Harvard benefit service recently. Jones then gives a report on preparations for an upcoming conference on workforce management that his department is organizing entitled “Staff Diversity: The Roadblocks-A Middle Management Perspective.”

Jane Hill reports on the progress of the university’s conversion to a multimillion-dollar Oracle-based computer system dubbed ADEPT. Routine HR processes ranging from payroll to benefits accounting are scheduled to move onto the system shortly, and Hill and her department are bracing themselves for the inevitable snafus that come with major changes.

The group also discusses how to sell top administration on a suggestion to provide personal computers to the university’s service employees for their home use. Moore notes that the idea becomes more cost effective as the price of personal computers drops. “This will not only promote literacy among these workers but will be especially important as we move to employee self-service with our benefits information,” she says. “These are the employees that are least likely to have a computer on their desk at work.”

Perris reports that Harvard has contracted with a service to provide child care at the next job recruitment fair, hoping this will be a good marketing tool.

The meeting breaks up just after noon, and Price goes to a private lunch meeting with Roberts and the Joint Council, a group of university administrators and representatives of its largest union, Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers.

2:00 p.m.

Price is at Joanne Doherty’s employment training office suite, in a neighboring office building, to get an update on Harvard HIRES, the university’s 11-month-old custom-designed online recruitment program. In addition to Doherty, John Kendzior, Price’s manager of recruitment, is at the meeting, along with Deanna Demert Myers, a computer specialist who can walk Price through the program.

The initial results are exciting, she learns in minutes. Kendzior reports that while the number of jobs in the sensitive IT division has dropped only slightly compared to a year ago, the total number of open university jobs has fallen dramatically from 419 in March 1999 to 303 in March 2000. He credits HIRES. “What we’re seeing is that the number of applicants applying over the Internet is increasing steadily, and that the applicants who do submit their r sum s online are being hired faster than those mailing or faxing them in,” he says.

At the same time, Doherty notes, the cost of recruiting candidates via the university’s own computer Web page and through other Internet services is a fraction of that of more traditional methods like newspaper advertising.

But what most excites Price is the function that allows recruiting managers across the university to see r sum s submitted to any other departments. “We have not had that ability before, and we knew we were losing good people,” she says, after hearing that in the first eight months, over 200 people were placed in jobs when their names became available in the general candidates’ pool. That function alone will save the university in two years the cost of designing the HIRES program, she adds.

2:50 p.m.

Price is on a schedule, so she excuses herself for another fast-paced walk across busy Harvard Square to make a meeting in Massachusetts Hall with her boss and a committee looking at Harvard’s nagging low-wage issue. But even though Price is in a hurry, she pauses for a brief moment to watch a pair of street performers giving a ballet demonstration. Their stage is a large sheet of cardboard, and the backdrop is the Harvard Square MBTA station.

In a second-floor conference room in the building that houses the university president’s office, the topic is a tough one. For a year now, the Ad Hoc Committee on Employment Policies has been considering the university’s responsibility to its contingent and service employees. Among the recommendations is spending $1.4 million for a workplace education program. Another is extending benefits to many of these workers who are part-timers but have worked for the university for many years.

The spotlight is on Harvard to come up with a model solution to a problem plaguing many employers. The university has come to depend on long-term part-time workers to staff its low-skill custodial, maid service, and dining room jobs. Many of the workers are recent immigrants who can’t read in their native languages let alone English, Price tells me.

Just two weeks earlier, nearly a hundred Harvard students calling themselves the Progressive Student Labor Movement set up tents in Harvard Yard for an overnight rally protesting what they claim is the school’s lack of commitment to a living wage for all workers.

As we walk into Massachusetts Hall, Price explains that those in the top administration are concerned about more than just the wage issue.

“The question we are asking is, What is the obligation of the university to improve these people’s lives? Perhaps it is more important to improve their job skills, not just raise their wages.”

Toward that end, Harvard has launched a pilot workplace literacy program called Harvard Bridge to Learning and Literacy. At this session called to discuss its performance is June Cuomo, director of the Faculty Club; Judy Della Barba, human resources manager for Harvard’s dining service; Carol Kolenik, a training specialist; Jim LaBua, deputy director of labor; Tom Vautin, head of operations and services; and Sally Zeckhauser.

Kolenik reports that since September, 38 people have voluntarily attended Harvard-run English-as-a-second-language classes during their regular work hours so they don’t lose pay. Harvard is now prepared to double the enrollment next year, with an eventual target of 250 a year.

Vautin and Cuomo add their expertise when the discussion turns to incorporating the classes into the regular workday without upsetting work schedules as the enrollment increases. Zeckhauser wants to make sure that students are being invited to volunteer as tutors. Price’s role here is to listen, and the meeting runs well past 4 p.m. It is clear that there is more to discuss in the coming days and weeks.

But as Price leaves the meeting and ends her day, she still has an enthusiastic spring in her step. She is looking forward to tomorrow, another day of working through these and other challenges toward her eventual goal.

“We know we have the resources here to make this the very best place to work.”

Just the Facts Organization: Harvard University Responsibility: Recruitment and training for the university s central administration, as well as benefits for the entire university workforce Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts Employees: 13,824 total at all Harvard campuses; 3,400 at the university s central administration HR Challenges: Nurturing relationships with various schools and departments in a decentralized hiring environment. Dealing with student protests regarding wages for the university s employees. You should know: Harvard University is the fourth-largest employer in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.