| |
‘As soon as I got to Pitney Bowes I saw the tremendous diversity. In the technology department, for example, people are speaking many different languages, and there are women and minority executives at the senior level,” says Carole Bilson, vice president of the global design, usability and technology support operations center.
Pitney Bowes is headquartered in Stamford, CT and is a world leader in mailstream management. Its products include hardware and software for both physical and digital mail and documents. The company employs more than 35,000 people in 130 different countries.
Over the next twelve months Pitney Bowes expects to fill approximately forty positions in its engineering group, half of them with new graduates. Between a quarter and a third of new grads coming into the company have bachelors degrees in mechanical or industrial engineering. Because usability of equipment is an important aspect of design, advanced degrees in human factor engineering are also important. A technical career ladder is available for employees who want to advance in the organization without moving to management.
Jobs and departments are highly specific at Pitney Bowes. The industrial design department focuses on the physical nature of a product, everything the user interacts with or touches. The human factors department considers how intuitive the products are. The competitive analysis department evaluates Pitney Bowes equipment in relation to the competition. And the regulatory compliance department tests and certifies products before they are launched; this is particularly important when products must conform to Underwriters Laboratories, Inc (UL) or the overseas equivalent, Conformance European (CE).
At Pitney Bowes, Bilson says, new employees are bound to see someone who looks like them. “It made a huge impact on me. We have great diversity and that makes a difference in the overall culture and day-to-day interactions and work style.” Pitney Bowes sponsors an annual diversity festival with participation from across the company.
Individual divisions hold speed networking events, a concept Bilson brought to the company. “Each speed networking event has a target group, like women, and a theme, like career development, and lasts about twenty to thirty minutes,” Bilson says. “There are typically eight to ten participants at each table and one senior manager. It’s a chance to quickly meet people from around the company and listen to senior managers you wouldn’t normally hear from.” Employees from engineering, marketing, business and product supply can make contacts across organizational boundaries. There have been several such events in the engineering department in the last two years, Bilson adds.
Speed networking is just one of many programs offered to employees. Another is PB Voice, which brings groups of a dozen employees together with a senior manager for a free-ranging, two-hour conversation. “We talk about many things, from the corporate strategy to performance rating and how our salaries are given out to how to improve the lighting for people working on computer terminals,” says Joe Wall, PhD, senior VP and chief technology officer. “You can imagine that when you get a different group of people each time, the conversation can go anywhere.”
Project Rainbow was initiated in 2003 and invites high-potential early-career employees to make a thirty-minute presentation to a senior management team. “They usually start out with a brief biography and then highlight one or two projects,” Bilson explains. “You would think they’d be nervous, but usually they are just excited to have the opportunity.”
“It’s management’s responsibility to help employees realize their potential and understand the career options available to them,” Wall notes.
D/C
Pitney Bowes, Inc
www.pb.com
|
Headquarters: |
Stamford, CT |
|
Employees: |
35,000 |
|
Revenues: |
$5.9 billion |
|
Business: |
Mailstream technology that provides comprehensive hardware and software solutions |
|
|
|
