Corrections or additions?
This article by Kathleen McGinn Spring was prepared for the March
20, 2002 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
HBO Thinks About The Unthinkable
Paul Mohan, HBO’s manager of HR Information
Systems,
says that before September 11, his company thought it was prepared
for any disaster that might knock it off the air. “We thought
about fire or water main breaks,” he says. “We thought about
what would happen if we couldn’t get in the building.”
Then, a few miles south, well within walking distance, the World Trade
Center was attacked and toppled. “We did have some sort of
disaster
recovery,” says Mohan, “but in terms of IT, our disaster
recovery
changed drastically. We were looking at it from a different angle.
No one had ever thought of three blocks being torn apart.”
Mohan speaks on “Strategies of the New Reality: the IT Weapon”
on Tuesday, March 26, at 4 p.m. at a meeting of the New Jersey
Technology
Council at Cisco Systems’ Edison offices. Cost: $40. Call
856-787-9700.
A native of British Guyana, Mohan studied medicine before emigrating
to the United States and pursuing a career in information technology.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the State University
of New York and an M.B.A. in management from C.W. Post. He has been
with HBO for 13 years.
September 11 occasioned a “very, very major change” at HBO,
says Mohan. Physical security was evaluated and tightened, and the
company spent millions of dollars to protect its product. “That’s
the core of the business,” says Mahon, “keeping movies on
the air. If we can’t do that we’re in trouble.”
HBO’s offices are on 6th Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets, and
with the altered way of thinking brought on by September 11 Mohan
describes the location as “within destructible distance of the
Empire State Building.”
For HBO, the keys to protecting its IT assets and infrastructure,
as well as its ability to shoot out its movies to subscribers around
the world, include decentralization, redundancy, and replication.
“We have live replication and a lot of redundancies in different
states and in different parts of the city,” says Mohan.
“Because
it is replication of a live system, people can be anywhere and can
get into the system. It’s like taking your job and putting it in three
or four places.”
The effort was expensive, but, says Mohan, “in terms of what you
get, it’s well worth it.”
Corporate America has some adjusting to do. In order
to keep operations humming well in the early decades of this century,
companies will need to bend enough to attract grandma and grandpa
— and the seniors’ grandchildren too. Workers at both ends of
the age scale will be essential employees as the workforce shrinks
through 2030. And, surprisingly, the same recruitment tactics that
will net the best of youngsters will bring in the cream of the over-60
crowd, too.
On Tuesday, March 26, at 8 a.m. Greg Hamill, executive director
of the Center for Human Resources Management at Fairleigh Dickinson
University, speaks on “Harnessing and Directing Multi-Generational
Employees.” He appears at an all-day event at Seton Hall called
Coming Together and Getting the Job Done. Call 973-313-6103.
Two-years in the planning, the management conference is sponsored
by the Employers Association of New Jersey, and co-sponsored by
Fairleigh
Dickinson, Seton Hall, and Cornell. Other speakers include Ellen
Bravo co-director of 9to5; Hylton Senior of Memorial Sloan
Kettering; John Sarno of the Employers Association of New
Jersey;
and Charles Tharp of Bristol-Myers Squibb. Topics include
contingent
workers, legal issues, work/life strategies, recruitment, and managing
stress in the workplace.
Hamill, a graduate of Colorado State University (Class of 1964),
joined
AT&T right out of college, leaving his home state for assignments
on the east coast. (“Some people will go anyplace for money,”
he quips.) He spent 30 years with AT&T, 15 of them in human resources.
His last title was director of employment. When he left the behemoth
multi-national, he went to the other end of the employment spectrum,
heading up a 10-person, non-profit dot-com.
Called the Talent Alliance, it was conceived, he says, as partly as
balm for CEOs’ consciences, and partly as a PR tactic. “In
1995,”
he recounts, “there was a big CEO roundtable. It had been set
up by 10 large companies in response to their downsizing on one hand,
and giving huge salaries to CEOs on the other hand.” The CEOs
asked themselves, he says, “What can we do to show we care about
people?”
The answer was the creation of a joint online employee assistance
program. It provided guidance, largely through self-guided
questionnaires,
on issues such as continuing education and relocation. Participating
companies included TRW, Lucent Technologies, AT&T, J&J, and DuPont.
The website no longer exists. It was not terribly expensive to run,
but Hamill says that in the current economic climate every
discretionary
program was scrutinized, and many, including the Talent Alliance,
were scrapped.
Hamill had been active in Fairleigh Dickinson’s mentor program, which
matches students with businesspeople, and knew the former head of
the Center for Human Resources Management Studies. When he left,
Hamill
was recruited for the job.
From the perspective of a working life spent in human resources, he
says that many companies let great candidates get away because their
work policies are too rigid, and because they fail to realize that
different generations have different needs, expectations, and ways
of expressing themselves. Employers need to get up to speed fast,
though, because demographics will soon force them to look carefully
into every possible labor source.
“Over the next 20 to 30 years, we have a huge aging
workforce,”
Hamill says. “By 2010, there will be 67 million Americans over
65. In 1970 the median age of workers was 28. Now it’s 35. By 2030,
it will be over 40.”
With more retirees and fewer young workers, there will be a labor
crunch. Says Hamill, “Boomers, as they get into their 50s, are
saying `I don’t mind retiring, but I want to work part-time.’
Companies
aren’t capturing that, and they’re going to have to. It’s a huge
untapped
market.”
At the same time employers have to embrace some younger workers who
sometimes don’t appear — at first blush — to be prime
corporate
material. Here are some of the issues.
Boomers are known for a strong work ethic. The Baby Boomgeneration — born from the mid-1940s through the mid-1960s —got over its youthful protest stage quickly and went on to becomeideal fodder for the corporate mill. This group is characterized byits strong work ethic, says Hamill. Boomers know how to interview,dressing carefully, presenting neat resumes, and answering questionsarticulately and respectfully. When given a job offer, they generallyaccept the terms with a minimum of fuss, and go on to work long hoursand relocate when and where their bosses tell them to. Anything fora promotion is the name of their game. (Perhaps this is why they can’twait to retire?)Gen X doesn’t mirror their dads’ work behavior. Childrenof the older Boomers, these workers, born between 1965 and 1975, arenot, by and large, the dark blue suit crowd. “They might cometo an interview in blue jeans,” Hamill says. “They may ormay not have a resume. They’re more cynical, more independent.”Still, he has seen, the younger workers have a lot to offer.Interviewersshould not dismiss them out of hand, but rather should translate theirlanguage and style of presentation, looking for the skills that couldmake them perfect for a job.Get past appearances and ask specific questions is Hamill’s adviceto interviewers. Pose hypothetical situations to find out how thecandidates have handled themselves at work in the past. If the answersindicate a good fit for the job opening, don’t worry too much aboutthe blue jeans.Gen Y drives a hard bargain. “They questioneverything,”says Hamill. Offer a job to a Gen Y candidate, a person in his orher 20s, and don’t expect a quick yes or no. “They will negotiateeverything,” says Hamill. “Vacation, hours, benefits, pay,everything.”After accepting a job, this group, as a whole, can not be countedon to be at their desks long into the night, or to pick up theirfamiliesand move to Cincinnati or Cairo at the boss’s whim. Gen Y grew upin families where, says Hamill, their Boomer parents often made worka top priority. They saw how little time and energy their parentshad left for anything else. Now it’s their turn to work, and, Hamillsays, “they want work/life balance.”Retired folks and their grandchildren seek flexibility.This is where the two ends of the age spectrum come together. Bothlook for opportunities to telecommute, work flexible hours, andperhapseven to take off large chunks of time during the year. Very differentfrom the Baby Boomers’ job-first way of thinking, this style can workwell for corporations, says Hamill.”Corporations can have a core staff — maybe 20 to 30 percentof their employees,” he says. This group, those with specializedknowledge and those in top management positions, would work standardhours year round. The rest of a company’s staff could be made up ofcontingent workers, reporting part-time or on a project basis. Thisarrangement keeps personnel costs down, staffs work efficiently asit ebbs and flows, and appeals to a 22-year-old — and to hisgrandfathertoo. Both are at a time in their lives when they are as interestedin travel, golf, and skiing as they are in work.Hamill is seeing this phenomenon in his own family. He and hiswife have five children between them, all age 28 to 32. “Theyall want a much better work/life balance,” he reports. As forHamill, he and his wife are planning a trip to Fort Collins, Colorado,soon to scout out a good house in which to retire. But Hamill doesn’texpect to spend much time rocking on the front porch, glorious scenerynot withstanding.Working now, at a time when his 30 years at AT&T would provide himwith a comfortable retirement, he has no plans to slow down. “I’llkeep busy,” he says. He may not seek a part-time job after a moveto Colorado, but will step up an already active life as a volunteer.For some time he has been going on trips with his church to Hondurasand to other impoverished places — including some in this country— to help build schools and medical facilities. He will do moreof that in retirement — unless some wily employer lures him backinto the workforce.Previous StoryNext StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
