Stop here if you still refuse to wear white shoes after Labor Day.
After years of restructuring and so-called change-management techniques that have invaded the business world, some long-held but unwritten corporate rules are breaking down as fast as fashion commandments from our mothers’ era. And it pays to know which ones to toss out with last year’s buttoned-down suit. For example:
Stay in your first job at least 18 months. It used to be an unwritten requirement that newly minted college graduates hang onto their first job at least 18 months, even if they were miserably filing the boss’s unread memos or fetching lunch for the higher-ups. The theory was that it was better to endure a bad situation than explain a quick departure to a prospective employer. Not true today, as younger workers are rewriting the protocols about job-hopping, says career expert Marilyn Moats Kennedy. It’s even happening before the first job starts.
“Last spring, a number of graduates had accepted two or three jobs and decided in June where they were going to show up for work,” she says. That might have been bad form a decade ago, but corporate job-slashing in recent years put workers on notice that their jobs could disappear in a heartbeat and workers are protecting themselves with contingencies where they can, Moats Kennedy says.
Don’t talk to the press. Despite an expanding pile of case studies on companies that took major public relations hits after stonewalling the media, many still admonish employees never to talk to a reporter unchaperoned by a company public relations manager. But some executives are beginning to realize their own careers–and the company’s public image–can be helped by some carefully tended relationships with key reporters.
“There’s been a real transition in the last few years, with more progressive companies being keen on giving women a platform to speak. This gives companies a tool to recruit more women,” says Lisabeth Weiner, a longtime Chicago public relations executive who now is a vice president with Ogilvy Adams & Rinehart.
Admittedly, the changes are coming slowly. Many times, a newly elevated executive will simply tow the company line as instructed or even not return a reporter’s phone call, creating zero credibility with the press.
Of course, gossiping away with a reporter you hardly know can get you labeled a loose cannon. Instead, suggests Weiner, start slowly by writing an article for an industry publication about an idea you’re championing. Get input from colleagues so it becomes a team effort, and tie the message to a company goal. Up front, talk with a company spokeswoman about what the procedure should be for follow-up phone calls if a reporter happens to see the piece and wants more details.
“A lot of (public relations departments) are still so focused on control that they create barriers” to getting positive publicity, Weiner says. But done right, such contacts can provide valuable information from the industry grapevine for you and some good press for the company.
Don’t rock the boat. Keeping your head down and not bothering the boss used to be the first rule of corporate life. The reward for quietly toiling away was the promise of a promotion someday in the future. Today, if a worker doesn’t dig in right away and start to contribute, she may be the first to be cut loose in a layoff. By the same token, no one will automatically change office procedures to fit your lifestyle: You have to push for them.
“(Baby) Boomer women accepted what the company told them (about hours required to do a job). Generation X says, `These are the hours I’m available,’ ” says Moats Kennedy.
Before Judy DeAngelo, founder of JADE Carpentry Contractors Inc. in Chicago started her own business, she managed a department of a large company whose workers routinely traveled out of town, sometimes for weeks at a time. It was common company practice to pay workers for added child-care expenses during those times, but upper management “had a fit” when DeAngelo offered to pay dog-keeping expenses for one of her single workers.
“It caused such a flap at first,” says DeAngelo, “but in the end they saw it was a logical expense to keep an employee happy.”
