August 21, 1999

A Push From the Top Shatters a Glass Ceiling

By REED ABELSON

But who hurled the rock?

	Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
	Hewlett-Packard's Lewis E. Platt.

The surprising answer: a middle-aged white guy who never thought much about women in the workplace -- until he was thrust suddenly into the challenging role of single parent.

The struggle of Lewis E. Platt, now the company's 58-year-old chairman, to juggle the competing duties of father and breadwinner when he was a rising senior executive nearly two decades ago had a happy ending for Hewlett-Packard. And his success in turning company policy around from the traditional "man rules the roost" culture to a gender-blind ethos holds an important lesson for the rest of corporate America: A little direction at the top can go a long way.

It all began in 1981. Back then, Platt was a general manager, and Hewlett-Packard was what he describes as a "white male haven," populated by graduates of engineering schools in dark suits with starched white shirts. He was, he says, quite comfortable working in that male-dominated environment and leaving the child-rearing and housekeeping chores to his wife of 16 years, Susan.

Then, his world fell apart: Susan died of cancer, and suddenly, he was the one who had to make dinner for his two daughters, Laura and Caryn, then 9 and 11, get them to school, make sure they did their homework in the evenings and even find the time to go grocery shopping.

"My mother had really been the one running the show on the home front," said Caryn, now 29, who runs her own social services business. She has memories of standing with her father and her sister in a supermarket aisle wondering whether there were enough varieties of Hamburger Helper, one of the few dishes Platt could prepare, to dine on that week.

His sudden vulnerability, Platt says, shattered his old assumption that any difficulties women had in the workplace were of their own making.

"Here I was a white male, doing really well at H.P.," Platt recalled in an interview at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. "I was suddenly thrust into a different role." In the position of having double duty at home and at work, "I couldn't cope any better than they did," he said.

For six months after his wife's death, he said, his co-workers allowed him to grieve and concentrate on getting his personal life in order instead of putting his full energy into his career. "I was probably a pretty marginal performer," he admitted, but he came to understand the ebb and flow of careers. "One day I would be back and give the time and energy to be a senior manager," he said.

As the months rolled by, his life remained frantic, he says, a never-ending grind of traveling, working late in the office, getting up early to be with his children and turning to grandparents or nannies to care for them when he was not around. At one point, he debated leaving Hewlett-Packard; but as a lifelong employee, who had joined right out of business school in 1966 and worked his way up the ladder, he soldiered on.

The Associated Press
Carleton Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard's new president and chief executive.

When he married again in 1983, his second wife, Joan, took over the household responsibilities, freeing him to indulge his workaholic tendencies.

But rather than retreating to his old way of thinking, he found he sympathized with the plight of the average working woman more than ever.

The new Mrs. Platt had two daughters of her own, Amanda and Hillary, then 9 and 7, and surrounded as he was as the sole male, he had little choice but to look at their side of things, noted his daughter, Caryn. "We would gang up on him pretty mercilessly," she recalled. All four daughters are now working.

Named a vice president in 1983, Platt continued his ascent at Hewlett-Packard, managing various parts of the company's computer business before becoming an executive vice president in 1987. During that time, more women were rising to the level of manager, but few were making it to the highest ranks.

By the time he became chief executive in 1992, he says, droves of those women managers were leaving. "The pipeline didn't look very good," he said. After an outside consultant conducted interviews with many of these women, he came to realize that despite his own open-mindedness on the subject, the company's policies were not flexible enough to accommodate their lives outside the workplace.

What concerned him in particular were the women in their late 30's who left the company to devote more time to their children, never to be seen again. "They were gone," Platt said. "We were no longer connected to them."

So he decided to take action.

Working with other top executives, Platt developed what for Hewlett-Packard was a new workplace strategy. Over the next several years, the company began to encourage employees to adjust their workweeks, arrange flexible work schedules, work at home if necessary and even share jobs -- all so that they could meet their personal responsibilities. They could even take sabbaticals -- yearlong unpaid leaves from the company -- no questions asked.

While many companies offer these options, few corporations actually encourage their use. Hewlett-Packard did. Platt made speeches, reminding managers that they needed to consider seriously any of their employees' requests to take advantage of this new flexibility, and he put his name on memos sent to managers across the world. "Work/life issues are a business priority," one statement said. "Attention to work/ life issues strengthens H.P.'s competitive edge and improves teamwork within H.P."

Even high-level employees take advantage of the new flexibility. Janice Chaffin, an 18-year Hewlett-Packard employee and general manager in charge of providing large computer systems to companies, for example, shared that position, just one rank below division president at the company, for a year.

Ms. Chaffin says she has never come under any pressure to put in time in the office for the sake of appearance -- her bosses' boss even encouraged her to make clear to her own manager, who was known for spending nearly every waking hour at the office, that she would not do the same.

"It was never an issue," she said.

Nearly all employees determine their own hours to some extent, according to the company, and large numbers opt to work at home at least some of the time. About 12 percent have formal telecommuting arrangements, and employees are routinely asked about how receptive their managers are to their needs in balancing work with the rest of their lives.

Perhaps most important, Platt has been vocal on the issue, according to Jerry Cashman, the company's director of programs that encourage work-life balance and diversity. He also likes to remind male colleagues of some of the built-in disadvantages women operate under; he never tires of noting that while the vast majority of them are married to men who work, two-thirds of male managers have stay-at-home wives.

Platt says the new policy is not just the right thing to do -- it is the smart thing. "Anything you can do to attract and retain the best talent is really critical," he said.

The results, in fact, have been dramatic. In the early 90's, the turnover for women was twice that of men, according to the company; now, the gap has been eliminated and the rates are almost identical. Moreover, the company says it loses fewer than 5 percent of its employees each year, compared with an industry average that the consulting firm William M. Mercer puts at 17 percent.

Brenda Vathauer, a high-powered marketing manager, says the freedom to set her own agenda persuaded her to return to Hewlett-Packard after her maternity leave. But she found herself in an odd position: She did not want a part-time job, which she noted is too often considered a "subjob" at most companies, but she did not want to work the 60 hours of a typical full-time job, either.

The solution: She teamed up with another working mother to share a full-time management position in customer service. Each woman now puts in three 10-hour days a week, each receives three-quarters pay and benefits -- and each gets to spend four days a week at home, counting weekends. "You can keep your career more on track," explained Karen Walker, her partner in the enterprise and a mother of three.

Men make use of the company's programs, too. Bill Hornung, also a customer-service manager, describes himself as "a telecommuter poster child" for other men because he works at home so can he care for his two children, 5 and 9, when his wife, a flight attendant, is in the air.

To be sure, Hewlett-Packard is not an equal-opportunity utopia. Platt readily admits that the company has had difficulty recruiting and promoting blacks. The company said it does not disclose the percentage of managers within certain ethnic groups.

Even so, to the outside world, the promotion of Ms. Fiorina to chief executive -- she is only the third woman now heading a Fortune 500 company -- was seen as a groundbreaking event. And though it was greeted as policy as usual inside the company, some Hewlett-Packard employees reveled in the symbolism. Just as the victory of the American women's soccer team provided important role models for young women, so did the selection of Ms. Fiorina, they say.

Bart Coddington, who works with analysts studying the computer industry for the company, says his 3-year-old granddaughter, Sydney, "will grow up with all that.

"I'm just so excited for her," he said.

Now that the white, middle-aged guy responsible for ushering in this era of equality will step down as chairman at the end of the year, what about the woman who replaced him as chief executive? When she was appointed, Ms. Fiorina made a widely reported, controversial assertion that there was no glass ceiling. She has since told colleagues that her remark may not apply throughout corporate America, and she has emphasized the need to look for talent wherever it can be found, regardless of sex, race or age. She is not giving interviews.

As for Platt, he is leaving it up to the company's employees to make sure Hewlett-Packard does not revert to its old self. Specific programs are not important, he says. "It's the core values."

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company