In this era of downsizing and re-engineering, studies show that employee satisfaction has hit rock bottom. Should management care?
"Managers have to care about em-ployee satisfaction," says Lotte Lazarsfeld Bailyn '51, professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and visiting professor at Radcliffe College's public policy institute. "There are some down-the-road negative consequences of what they're now doing to employees. Obviously, they're not providing an environment that allows employees to be creative, adaptive, self-managing, and all the other good things they actually want employees to be."
That employees are fearful and feel more like widgets than individuals is exacerbated, Bailyn says, by the move toward contingency work, which "creates even more uncertainties."
Bailyn, who majored in mathematics at Swarthmore and received a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard, studies the relationship between management practices and employees' personal lives. Being able to fulfill family responsibilities is part of employee satisfaction. She was part of a team of experts who did research for a project funded by the Ford Foundation called "Relinking Work and Life."
They studied Xerox Corp., Corning Inc., and Tandem Computers, and the results indicate that paying attention to employees' personal lives increases corporate productivity.
Though employers once exhorted employees to "leave family responsibilities at the factory door," the study shows that the concept is unrealistic." At a time when corporate America is being assailed for putting profits above all else, this study establishes that the best business strategy recognizes that greater employee satisfaction means greater productivity, and, in turn, better business results," said Paul Allaire, chief executive officer of Xerox.
Bailyn says the purpose of her research was both to ascertain facts and bring about change. "We found the real answer is to figure out how to restructure work, instead of focusing on helping individual employees, one at a time," she said, pointing to the work her team did from 1991 to 1995 at a Xerox office in Webster, N.Y., with a group of 18 engineers who worked day and night, were constantly interrupted, and whose family lives suffered.
"We restructured the work day into periods of quiet time to do individual work and other time for meetings and collaboration," said Bailyn. "As a result they did their work better, met deadlines despite tight schedules, eliminated inefficient work, and had more time for their families."
At another Xerox site in Dallas, 320 people were allowed to arrange their own flex time. The only caveat: The work had to get done. Through group decisions the new arrangements worked&emdash;absenteeism dropped by 30 percent, and creativity rose.
What both work groups now have is more control. What the company has is better business results. The ability of employees "to have control over their work and personal lives has to come from business," said Patricia M. Naze-metz, director of human resources policy and practice at Xerox. Management gives workers responsibility and accountability but usually not control, the director observed. "Having control results in better teamwork and collaboration."
And the impact on the bottom line is that employee "empowerment here has resulted in improved quality and customer satisfaction," Nazemetz said. "The work is done on time, under budget, and with less absenteeism."
Another result: "Our employees are satisfied overall and are more satisfied
over time," she said.
And it's because management cares.
This article first appeared as a column by Carol Kleiman in the Feb. 16 Chicago Tribune. It is reprinted by permission.
Broadcasting the network news used to be a lot simpler. You put your venerable anchor in front of the camera and let him tell the nation the way things were. Now&emdash;in the age of MTV, seemingly infinite cable channels, and remote control&emdash;you have to keep something catchy on the screen at all times to keep the channel surfers from straying. Such is the daily challenge facing Ann Benjamin '73, the longtime co-director of ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
"The MTV generation is so attuned to fast, catchy graphics," Benjamin says. "There's an emphasis on how things look. It's my job to keep the audience from deciding it's time to check what's on ESPN."
If a network's priorities are revealed by its latest technology investments, graphics indeed are the new big thing at ABC. As Benjamin showed a recent visitor, ABC headquarters in New York is stocked with numerous new computers&emdash;big, fast, art-producing work stations manned by computer-whiz artists. Competitor NBC has gone even further and faster in that direction, Benjamin says. The most tangible evidence of the new emphasis appears over the anchors' shoulders while they read&emdash;a graphic proclaiming "Economy" or "Health," for instance. And then there are the "teasers," the visual plugs for must-see stories coming up after the next set of commercials.
It's the job of Benjamin and her longtime co-directing partner, Charles Heintz, to develop these visuals and get them lined up for the newscast. It's often a last-minute scramble, since the slate of stories for any given day isn't finalized until air time, if then. Though increasingly important, the graphics are just one part of what goes into staging a newscast, however. As a director Benjamin has general responsibility for the way things look&emdash;how Jennings and any on-set guests are shot, for example&emdash;and for coordinating footage as well as live feeds from other cities.
The culmination of the work day is the half-hour (19 minutes when you subtract commercials) during which the program is shot and aired, live. Then you'll find the director in the center chair in the control room, tethered to a headset and focused on a bank of controls and monitors while calling the shots: "Stand by ... roll ... change graphic ... dissolve," Benjamin orders, instantly changing what millions of viewers see on their TV screens. And when it's finally over: "Fade to black."
Benjamin, who occupies that chair at ABC on the weekends and sometimes on the weekday newscasts, describes it as an experience that would subject most people to information overload. During the show, the voices of as many as six different cameramen, producers, artists, and correspondents are coming through her earphones with various needs and crises. In the meantime she's trying to keep up with the anchor, whom she's watching through the monitor. Since it's live, there's no time to edit or do it over when things go wrong.
"You don't have time for fine-tuning," Benjamin says. "You go on the air, ready or not. All your nerve endings are stimulated during a live broadcast; there are a lot of inputs. It's fun, though. It's exhilarating when it works."
The pressure would drive many people to drink, but Benjamin has found a different outlet for the anxiety of network news. She vents it at the gym, where she spends two hours a day before reporting for duty.
Benjamin grew up with the television news business as it existed in the "old days," when a news watcher's options were limited to ABC, NBC, CBS, or bust. Her father, Burton Benjamin, was executive producer of the newscasts of Mr. Anchor himself, Walter Cronkite. But dancing was Ann Benjamin's passion during her time at Swarthmore, and she continued in that direction after graduation, spending a year in France teaching and performing.
Homesick and pessi-mistic about her chance of forging a career on the stage, she came back home and took a secretarial job at CBS, her father's employer. Her first assignment didn't suit her acrophobia, though. She had a desk in the corner on the 44th floor, with nothing but glass separating her from thin air. She asked the Personnel Department for something closer to terra firma and ended up working as a secretary in the windowless newsroom of WCBS, the network-owned New York affiliate.
Apparently news was in her blood. Following her own initiative and curiosity, she gravitated toward directing and started making her way up that ladder. Often volunteering for the worst assignments and hours, she had advanced to associate director at CBS by the time ABC wooed her away in 1978.
She has worked closely with Jennings&emdash;in the studio and at locations around the world&emdash;since he became ABC's principal anchor in 1983. "I give Peter a lot of credit," Benjamin says. "I don't know how many people would accept a woman director the way he has. He works incredibly hard. He's not just a reader&emdash;he gets involved in every single aspect of the broadcast."
Benjamin likes to crack grim jokes about the demands of the job&emdash;like having her beeper going off next to her bed in the middle of the night, calling her in to help handle a breaking story.
"But that," she adds with a grin, "is exactly what you sign on for. It's what makes this profession exciting."
&emdash;Tom Krattenmaker
Photo: John Farrell '81 and his alter ego Rocky Bluewinkle
It's about 20 minutes before game time at Frawley Stadium in Wilmington, Del., and aging athlete John Farrell '81 is suiting up for an afternoon contest against the Salem, Va., Avalanche. Farrell isn't exactly lacing up his baseball spikes, however. He's donning a blue moose suit.
John Farrell is about to become Rocky Bluewinkle, the popular mascot of the Wilmington Blue Rocks, a Class A Carolina League team.
"New fur this year," quips the unreconstructed frat-boy Farrell. "They may tell you different but chicks really do dig fur." He reaches into the freezer for a vest of frozen gel packs. Even on a 50-degree April day, the 40-pound suit is hot. By midsummer Farrell will be losing up to 10 pounds during a game.
"It's all water weight," says the former wrestler and still-active rugby player. "I drank a half-gallon of Gatorade before I got to the park today. I gotta do this 70 times this year, so it's a matter of recovery, of staying in shape." Over the ice vest goes a padded cotton underbody that makes the six-foot, 230-pound Farrell look, well, enormous. Zip up the jumpsuit, add an oversized Blue Rocks jersey (#0), pull on a moose head with yard-wide antlers, and, as the stadium announcer intones at the beginning of every Blue Rocks game, the moose is loose.
Farrell leans out the door of the cluttered storage area that doubles as his dressing room and calls for his trusty assistant and guide, Lauren Hazewski, a high school senior whose mother has written her an excuse so that she can work the 1 p.m. game. They go over the day's schedule, which includes all the usual minor league antics.
"Lots of new toys this year," says Farrell with a prankster's twinkle in his eye&emdash;like an air gun that can shoot a balled-up T-shirt to the last row of seats. "If you really crank up the pressure," he marvels, "you can shoot it over the stands into the parking lot. It's the silliest damn thing."
As if all of this weren't silly. But that's the whole point of a blue moose, isn't it? Rocky's first appearance each game is a wobbly bicycle ride along the backstop, a sight that gets the giggles going. They don't stop for the whole nine innings.
A grown man with a beard and a beer high-fives Rocky as he wades into the box seats behind the third-base dugout. "Hey, it's the moose!" calls another fan. The seven-foot mascot leans down and tenderly shakes the hand of a toddler dressed in Blue Rocks pinstripes. The kid then high-fives the blue moose paw. At 2 he seems to know exactly how to do it&emdash;just like the big guy with the beer.
Farrell became Rocky in May 1996. He had auditioned when the Blue Rocks franchise was inaugurated in 1993, but despite his excellent resumé he was "beaten out by a professional dancer." (The resumé included stints as the Domino's Pizza "Noid" during Daytona Spring Break and for a couple of summers at Myrtle Beach.) Farrell's "day jobs" have been mostly in the restaurant and hospitality business&emdash;running bars and restaurants, training for Domino's, managing a bed-and-breakfast. But right now the former McCabe Scholar is unemployed&emdash;except for Rocky. He's hoping the moose will open doors into other aspects of sports marketing.
"Baseball is becoming a theme park with a game going on," observes Farrell, while taking a third-inning break in the clubhouse. "People want a clean, safe family environment. They want to have fun, be entertained by a good product&emdash;which includes a winning team." And a winning mascot. Rocky Bluewinkle has helped pull the 4-year-old Blue Rocks franchise into the top 10 in merchandise marketing among all minor league teams. There are Rocky dolls, Rocky shirts, Rocky hats, even Rocky sweatbands and refrigerator magnets.
During the seventh-inning stretch, he's out on the field again, dancing and miming to the Village People's "YMCA." At least half of the crowd&emdash;and most of the kids&emdash;stand and wave their arms along with him. By the time the song is over, Rocky's showing fatigue. "I wish they'd edit that damn song to a shorter version," puffs Farrell through the moose mouth, breaking Rocky's usual Marcel Marceau-like silence.
Farrell says the best part of the job is the children. He remembers their reaction last June when a player for the Winston-Salem Warthogs tackled him roughly from behind. (It was a hot day and Rocky had been dousing the Warthog dugout with a Super Soaker.) "The little kids were crying. Even though I was hurt pretty bad, I had to go out again to show them I was OK. It was touching, their concern."
As the game ends, Rocky takes another turn on his bike, waving goodbye to the departing fans. The Blue Rocks have won 2&endash;0, but Farrell doesn't even know the score. Back in the dressing room, he strips off the costume, spraying each piece with Lysol before hanging it on a crucifix-like clothes tree. The now-thawed vest goes back in the freezer.
"Well, that was OK," he says, talking about the game the way an actor talks about his performance in a show. "I think I'm ready for tomorrow night. It's fireworks night, and a Friday too. The place will be packed."
Farrell, who says he learned a lot in college ("but not much of it was in books"), doesn't see being Rocky Bluewinkle as a career. It's something to do in the here and now, and it will probably lead to something else tomorrow. Today he made Frawley Stadium a place of joy for 1,145 fans, and it was fun doing it. "Anybody can win a Nobel Prize," he jokes, "but who else gets to wear a moose suit to work?"
&emdash;Jeffrey Lott
Swarthmore College 1997. All rights reserved.