View from the Corner Office
Keeping the Team Pumped Up
05/16/2010 - It's no secret that the last few years haven't been the best of times for any advertising media in general, and certainly not for the Yellow Pages industry. As the economy went sour all around them, many company leaders needed to just focus on keeping the lights on and the business up and operational. Now as the economy shows early signs of starting a recovery, and the darkest days seem to have passed, CEOs/business leaders are now facing a new challenge after a couple of years of drastic expense cutbacks, layoff/force reductions, reduced promotion budgets, and meager pay increases (if any were received at all) to now boosting morale, solicit new ideas on how to move the business forward, and better understand where their batter staffs psyche stand. It's a great time for some staff TLC.
A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that many CEO's of non-industry company's are working hard to bring some much needed TLC to their staffs. For example, at US Airways Group's CEO Douglas Parker is making monthly appearances at pilot-training sessions to meet and talk with his people. Quicken Loans CEO Bill Emerson began holding weekly two-hour lunch meetings with employees in January. And PricewaterhouseCoopers Chairman Robert Moritz has asked his senior executives to get out from hiding behind their desks and start roaming the hallways. As Mortiz noted in the WSJ article "as the economy turns around, there's more of a risk of losing people so we've increased the efforts to talk with workers."
Perhaps no company in the Yellow Page industry could be expected to have low morale and overly concerned employees than SuperMedia. In March of 2009, the then Idearc Media declared bankruptcy in effort to restructure their balance sheet and get back on stable ground. The company emerged from the financial restructuring in January of 2010, and with a new and branding strategy as SuperMedia.
Supermedia CEO Scott Klein insisted that his team has weathered the storm well. Starting with his joining the company in its pre-bankruptcy days in June of 2008, he has implemented a series of increased communications efforts which continue to this day. Once a month he gathers his top 75 leaders for a brutally honest, open two way dialog about the status of the company. Those leaders are them expected to carry that message forward in their direct face-to-face meeting with their people.
Klein has also tried to maintain a very open, accessible profile with his staff and advertiser base. "Every employee has my personal email addresses" and is encouraged to email him with comments and ideas. About every two weeks many of those emails and their responses are assembled into a company communication to the entire team. Every four weeks Klein hosts a talk show type companywide broadcast video (the "Tomorrow Show Today") conference with himself as the moderator and a varying range of sales and non-sales managers as the show participants where the current issues of the day are discussed.
The net result of all of these efforts is that Klein believes that "none of our employees should have been surprised when we announced the bankruptcy filing. I had been telling them of our efforts to restructure the company's financial position for months prior."
Other publishers with small organizations that SuperMedia have taken steps such as face-to-face monthly all manager meetings, increased visits to local sales offices, and more one on one opportunity through events such as "lunch with the CEO". Each and every senior manager we talked to is spending more time visiting their operations and spending as much time with their teams as they can to ensure every employee understands the company's current position and the importance of their contribution each and every day. As Klein of SuperMedia noted, at these town hall type meetings "I learn a lot about what is going on out there from these meetings", much more than he would have learned but just delivering a scripted slide deck.
Other publishers such as Yellow Book are making increased investments into their organizations as a sign of their commitment to move ahead and further grow their business. For example, the company noted three primary efforts:
"Staying in touch" through increased ride alongs, office visits, video updates and other efforts to ensure plenty of two-way communication with both employees and advertisers
- "Rep efficiency" achieved through the implementation of new tablet PC's to all of the sales reps to make them more productive, put all of the tools they need at their finger tips, and provide them a neat, new cool factor to match their increased digital product offerings
- "More value to the advertiser" with enhancements to YellowBook.com, promotions that increase usage/look-ups online, slick new mobile apps, and expanded local search options
Joe Walsh, the CEO of YellowBook USA insists these efforts are yielding positive results in their team, and are being matched by an increased confidence they are seeing among the advertisers they talk to, confidence that is leading to more hiring, access to loans, and increased advertising expenditures, nationwide.
Klein also echoed similar findings indicating that receivables are falling, a decrease in the number of businesses needed to cancel advertising, and a much more positive feeling from small businesses in general.