HP finds new resource: Its loyal former workers
SANTA CLARA, California: On a recent Saturday, John Toppel, a retired Hewlett-Packard sales manager, did not spend his leisure time golfing or mowing the lawn. He spent it at a local electronics store extolling the virtues of HP laptop computers to customers.
He was not paid by the store or by Hewlett-Packard, for that matter. Toppel, 62, left the technology company four years ago, but he remains a volunteer cheerleader for Hewlett-Packard, one of thousands of its retirees whom the company is trying to galvanize into an auxiliary army of senior marketers, good-will ambassadors and volunteer sales people. None of them get paid. They do it, they say, because of their affection for the company.
“I feel like I have two marriages: a wonderful marriage at home for 36 years and a wonderful marriage at HP,” Toppel said. “I guess thats now a former marriage, but I still have strong feelings for it.”
Across the United States, companies are making use of retirees as part-time or temporary workers. They are taking advantage of not only their expertise, but also their desire to stay involved and engaged with the world through work.
Hewlett-Packards twist is particularly unusual in Silicon Valley, where long-term company loyalty is as rare as pinstripe suits. Here, people switch jobs and companies on Internet time, chasing the latest technology developments and the chance to cash in stock options or catch initial public offerings.
But Hewlett-Packard, founded in 1939 before there even was a Silicon Valley, has tens of thousands of alumni, many of whom spent decades at the company, which is based in Palo Alto, California. Old-timers express a familial loyalty, telling stories of eating meals and drinking coffee with the founders, David Packard and William Hewlett, or receiving baby blankets from Packards wife, Lucile, when their children were born.
In a move that Hewlett-Packard says reflects a renewed emphasis on grass-roots marketing in the Internet era, the company is seeking to turn its retirees into a valuable asset that other, younger technology companies lack.
“Were moving forward with an effort to capitalize on the fact we have these great brand stewards,” said Michael Mendenhall, chief marketing office of Hewlett-Packard. “When you look at the importance of great word of mouth and great third-party endorsement - who better to do that than your own employees?”
Mendenhall appeared recently at the retirees annual gathering with Hewlett-Packards chief executive, Mark Hurd. The two executives urged more than 500 retirees who had gathered at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California - hundreds more watched over the Internet - to do volunteer sales, join local alumni clubs, get involved in legislative issues that the company cares about and represent Hewlett-Packard in philanthropic and community events. The companys goal is to inspire involvement by as many as 40,000 retirees.
The idea of encouraging retirees to work free has inspired some criticism. Susan Ayers Walker, founder of SmartSilvers Alliance, which offers consulting services to business looking to connect with older consumers, says she is offended that Hewlett-Packard cannot find some way to compensate volunteer workers, particularly salespeople.
HP said participation was the reward. “Its about being part of the HP community and its rich heritage,” Mendenhall said. “Thats what they get.”
The involvement can be bittersweet, said some of Hewlett-Packard retirees. The oldest among them - now into their 90s - are the last of the generation that helped build Silicon Valley, watching it evolve from endless fields of almond, plum and cherry orchards into laboratories, semiconductor companies and software makers.
They also are workers from a bygone era of paternalistic employers that promised lifelong employment. That era is largely gone in the United States, including at Hewlett-Packard, which broke a tradition of avoiding layoffs and has dropped more than 30,000 workers in the past five years.
The contrast between the Hewlett-Packard of yesterday and the typical Silicon Valley company of today is especially pronounced, said Joe Schoendorf, 62, who spent 18 years at Hewlett-Packard and is now a venture capitalist.
“If I look at a rйsumй today, it says two years at Netscape, two years at Google, two years at Amazon, and then Facebook. That used to be a bad rйsumй: That meant the person couldnt keep a job,” Schoendorf said. “There is no institutional loyalty.”
Leslie Berlin, a project historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University, said the ethos had probably changed at Hewlett-Packard, which has 172,000 employees. But in Silicon Valleys history, the loyalty engendered by Hewlett-Packard stands alone, she said.
