Workforce issues should be a high priority for management

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June, 1998 by Barbara Love

Publishers used to concentrate on growing revenues and profits, maintaining market leadership, developing new products and a corporate strategy, says Marshall Freeman, chairman, Miller-Freeman Inc. "But in the last few years a new component has surfaced: the workforce. We've had a lot of ideas, but we haven't had the people to implement them.

We have 100 vacancies. We can't fill them. And each year, we need 8 percent more people." There's also a very strong turnover rate in our business. Freeman says he has heard of turnover rates as high as 20, 30 and 40 percent a year. At Miller-Freeman, it's 17 percent. "That means that over half of our workforce will change every 4.2 years," he says. "We have to increase that retention rate. As an industry, we must respond to workforce problems and know why people are coming and leaving," says Freeman. "And we must make sure recruiting and retention efforts respond to that. The value of an employee who stays with you goes up dramatically. You're missing out if you don't keep employees for a long time." There is a definite correlation between a company's attractiveness as a place to work and performance, although it's not clear which comes first. What attracts people today, according to a Fortune study cited by Freeman, are (1) inspired leadership, (2) knockout facilities, (3) a sense of purpose, (4) perks (most common perks today, according to Fortune, are child-care resources and referrals, relocation services, casual dress, eldercare, personal travel services, on-site ATMs and subsidized cafeterias), (5) training, and (6) actual empowerment. How important is compensation in retaining people? "With some people it's critical," Freeman says. "In general, in the long term, that's not it. In most cases the people we lose over compensation issues are butterflies."