- Once the deal was closed, much effort, both
structured interventions/meetings and hours
of off-line, 1-on-1 coaching was put into this
assimilation. Most employees and managers
made the transition (it didn’t hurt that they
saw financial prosperity like they had never
known with DEC). It is a credit to both the
Oracle management at the time and to the
DEC senior team; that so much of RdB
technology is now embedded in the Oracle
database product, and that the senior
manager of the DEC team at the time of the
acquisition, is now the senior manager of the
Oracle database development group.
As the senior HR person (for s/w development) on the East Coast for
Oracle, I also worked their acquisition of a Waltham, MA data-
warehousing business some 9 months after joining them in the RdB
deal. Many of the same issues surfaced…but the learnings from the
first process were most helpful. In both cases the dynamics of small,
autonomous business units being brought into a large, fast paced,
industry dominating player posed tough and rewarding HR challenges.
After a year-and-a-half as HR Manager for Oracle’s New England
Development Center I was asked to take the HR Director role for the
Americas Sales and Marketing organization. I hesitated because the
job was to be based in Redwood Shores, CA and I was not open to
moving the family from Boston. The SVP/HR really wanted me in the
role, so I agreed to commute from Boston to San Francisco 3 weeks
per month. This was a great opportunity, I was made a Director and
received a nice increase in salary… but the pace, travel and living at
the San Francisco Hyatt and later the AmeriSuites in Redwood Shores
would bring back the memories of Robbie Robertson’s comment about
the ‘road’.
This was a ‘life-in-the-fast-lane’ organization, Oracle was growing by
leaps and bounds… it was the early to mid ’90’s… there was money
and opportunity. We put in the first nation wide recruiting organization
for the US Sales group. Did a fair amount of Performance Management
training, helped some folks leave the organization with dignity (and
minimal litigation) … and in general, tried to safety net the company as
it embarked upon a culture of “we’ll hire you, pay you a lot of money,
work you to death; but when you leave you’ll have a great credential
and a decent bank account”. This began to be true of my own
association with the Company.
Things got to a point where I resented the travel and started working
out of my Waltham office more than was needed to be effective in CA. I
started to look for a MA based HR job and was fortunate to find one
just as the travel/pace at Oracle was becoming untenable.
- Boston Scientific is a medical device company
based in Natick Massachusetts. A colleague of my
wife was putting in Peoplesoft as their HR database
system. (now that I think of it … several of my
career moves have been the result of contacts
through my wife…and in earlier days, she even
typed and mailed all my resumes as I did my first
job search after college ! What would I have
done without her.) He learned of an HR Director
job that was opening up there and passed my
resume along. As it turned out, the SVP of HR at
Boston Scientific knew my old boss at Oracle as
they were both senior HR people in the Bay area,
several years prior. A quick phone call… and I
finally had a job in the same state that I lived in !
This was a newly created position and the first HR position dedicated
to and reporting to the President of a division of BSC located in HQ
(before this, they got their HR support from Corporate HR). I had the
Sales/Marketing teams in Natick, Field Sales across the US and an
Engineering and Production facility in Watertown, MA One of the first
things I did was hire an HR Manager for the Watertown plant …. And it
turned out to be that HR colleague who was the other finalist for the
Oracle position – small world !
During this first half of my time at BSC, as the HR Director for the
Meditech division, we acquired and integrated the Schneider business
from Pfizer. I met some nice Pfizer HR colleagues. Many of their
employees did not stay with BSC and I saw shades of the GE/RCA
acquisition, but from the other (acquiring) side. It was unfortunate to
have senior BSC execs make statements and quasi-promises in public
regarding employee retention and ‘keeping the best’ regardless of
which company they were with, only to have it play out as a BSC
dominated process. It is amazing what an individual, a management
team or an organization can rationalize in the name of colleague
loyalty. I don’t know that it’s necessarily bad … it might be … but it is
real.
Better work during these early years included a voluntary separation
program we did for the Watertown Plant. The facility was a 100 year
old mill that had outlived its usefulness as a manufacturing facility;
given the increasingly ‘clean’ and precise processes being required.
We needed to reduce the mfg population significantly and I
orchestrated a process that got us 93% of the needed staff reductions
via volunteers…. With no litigation or increase in plant
vandalism/disruption. There wasn’t even a major problem with morale.
People were sad these decisions had been made, but were not unduly
angry or disruptive during the process. This was also an example of
great HR staff collaboration and the Plant Manager was a skilled and
committed leader who saw that this was done right.
Another fond memory of this era ironically includes a trip to the Boston
office of the Mass Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD). We had
an issue with a former employee (a story too long and confidential to
go into here). But the point is that when the time came to go to the
hearing and state our recent changes and current organizational
status regarding non-discriminatory business practices, I asked my
client business partner, the General Manager/Corporate VP of the
business, to attend the hearing. He did, and the impact on the MCAD
officer/hearing was most positive. Plus, the impact on this executive,
seeing what was really at stake in these matters, gave him the impetus
and conviction to make all the recent organizational changes much
more that a ‘management memo’ that collects digital dust after 2
weeks. The organization is better because of that one day.
The second half of my tenure at Boston Scientific was as VP Corporate
Staffing. It was mid 2000, the economy and the “War For Talent” were
still raging (though not for long, unbeknownst to all of us) … BSC had
never had a centralized, corporate recruiting function. All hiring was
managed at the plant or Division level. At a tactical/logistical level this
is OK, but there was no ‘employment brand’ for the company,
candidates were contacted by multiple divisions at the same time,
there was no ‘forecasting’ of hiring or Human Resource Planning, etc,
etc. The SVP HR decided to establish a Corporate Staffing role and
asked that I consider it. I was looking to step out of my ‘Division HR
Generalist / Director’ comfort zone, so I gratefully and enthusiastically
accepted.
This was my first ‘specialist’ HR assignment (as opposed the
‘Generalist’ HR business partner role I had in all previous jobs, since
the Sales Training job at Dennison). It was also my first ‘Corporate’ HR
role. I had always been embedded in a Plant or an Operating Division.
The challenges were significant. We made real progress in the
employment branding, advertising, college recruiting, applicant
tracking, relocation and EEO/AAP compliance areas. There were
significant improvements in “cost-per-hire” and “time-to-fill” metrics..
We created a team of dedicated recruiters (as opposed to HR reps
doing some recruiting in addition to their other duties) and based them
in the sites and divisions; side by side with their HR colleagues… that
went well in most places, typical HR vs. Staffing turf issues surfaced in
other places.
What I learned from this chapter is that life at Corporate is much more
tenuous than life in a Division or Plant. The expectations and success
criteria are much more fluid. The need to reach out and accommodate
a larger client base is challenging in itself and requires a personal
style and patience for consensus rarely needed elsewhere. Even so,
some things were very rewarding. I saw some junior colleagues and
direct reports grow and flourish professionally and the tangible metrics
of the function improved markedly. In the end, decisions were made to
now ‘de-centralize’ the recruiting organization. Advertising, applicant
tracking and other activities went to a Corp HR Operations group.
Relocation went to International HR (for some reason…) and front line
recruiting and College Relations went back to the sites/divisions.
I actually helped with the re-organization (it was part of a larger HR
transformation that ultimately impacted several of my senior colleagues
as well). As 2004 progressed into the March/April timeframe I knew this
chapter was over, so I offered my resignation, post-dated to the end of
July to lock in some stock options, and looked forward to the rest of the
summer and a new chapter.
The new chapter has been ‘semi-retirement’. I’m playing more music
(see the rest of this web site) and recently have done some HR
consulting at a local company in Foxboro Massachusetts. Who knows
what’s next … but if , as the James Taylor song says, “The secret of
life is enjoying the passage of time”… then life is pretty good right now.
Kevin Fandel
March 2005
| For a more traditional view of my career, see my resume. |
