Kodak Snapshots

Workforce, June, 2000 by Caroline Louise Cole

Global competition in digital media challenges HR in a 100-year-old American institution.

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.