Good Work: Best Workplaces for Finance Professionals, 2001

Patmore sees much of her workplace development as a reaction to employee needs and feedback. She notes, for example, that branding was meant to counteract the "geographically challenged" nature of her department, which has large concentrations of personnel in St. Charles, Missouri; Melville, New York; and Denver; as well as a small group at its Atlanta headquarters. She also prides herself on getting ideas from employee surveys she conducts every 18 months. "I don't come out and pontificate that we ought to be doing certain things," she says. First Data also maintains a 90 percent retention rate.

But it's the personal way the company tracks individuals--attempting to identify what Patmore calls their "towering strengths" through annual talent audits--that wins the most accolades. Anne Breslow- Davies, who joined First Data in November 1994, found her earliest assignments as a supervisor in general accounting "definitely developmental." In her first months at the company, she had to learn the existing general ledger system for year-end, and then quickly master the new Oracle system that was replacing it. Within a year, she got her first promotion, and she's now director of general accounting.

Another person the audits have recognized is 39-year-old Cort Norman, who became part of First Data through its 1995 acquisition of Western Union. He is now vice president of Six Sigma, a new position at First Data that manages the quality-control system for its payments organization. The talent audits, including some before a panel led by Patmore, were "a great tool," he says. In addition to strengths, he was told of "areas for improvement"--networking, in his case. Not coincidentally, his Six Sigma job, "mainly involving outreach to the businesses," is a networking paradise.

At First Data, much of the training for high-potential staffers takes place in leadership programs geared to specific missions. Right now, 25 of its 1,500 finance staffers are engaged in these enterprises. One project is to identify new metrics for First Data's Western Union operation, while another involves forecasting and planning for the merchant business. "We've selected mentors, and we're doing 360-degree feedback," says Patmore. "But what we're really trying to do is retain employees and create career paths that enable them to feel they can really make a difference."

FLEETBOSTON: BANKING ON TECHNOLOGY

With everything it's been through--merging three large banks into one 60,000-employee, $23 billion behemoth--one might expect FleetBoston's finance department to be in chaos. But attention to changing technology helps keep staffers thinking like a team. And this technological emphasis turned up on the Best Workplaces scorecard, as FleetBoston rated a 3.8 out of a possible 4.0 in technology and tools.

"The youngest employees want more cutting-edge machines; the more- experienced people are less concerned with the hardware, but insist on the state-of-the-art software," says CFO McQuade. Finance desktop technology was standardized last year to a Windows 2000 environment, while "drill-down" tools for management planning and analysis and an activity-based cost-analysis system were also introduced.

The cutting-edge technology is supplemented with strong HR support. Maria Carlino, for example, moved from the corporate tax department four years ago to become one of several finance people focused on HR issues. And as part of that function, she manages the 18-month-long Finance Development Program, which assigns high-potential participants to 2-to-4-month division rotations. Carlino also serves on the 12- member Finance Employee Advisory Team. That group played a role after the Fleet­Bank Boston merger, when the CFO "came to us during the integration process and said, 'You folks are my eyes and ears; I want to hear about problems and what we can do about them.'"

It may be surprising, but like First Data and Cargill, FleetBoston has found that the company's growth--in this case by acquisition--has actually helped advance the cause of job flexibility. "It's much easier to make [flextime and telecommuting] work when you have a larger number of employees," says McQuade, noting that alternative schedules now apply to one in five finance employees. Another advantage of size: it gives him enough staff so that "I can be further from the day-to-day operations, and can focus on the strategic elements," such as planning the environment for finance employees.

One pet project has been "You Are My Customer," a finance training program in which staffers learn to treat FleetBoston employees outside finance the same way a teller ideally treats a customer. Operating risk manager Erfan Karim, in Johnston, Rhode Island, says his training taught him to "never say no" when consulting with any fellow FleetBoston employee. The training supplements FleetBoston's concurrent $50 million investment in improving relations with those "real" customers. Says McQuade: "We've had every finance manager go through the program." And now, when an interdepartmental issue does arise that a finance person can help with, "there's a responsiveness to help them solve their problem."

Roy Harris (royharris@cfo.com) is a senior editor at CFO.

METHODOLOGY

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