By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

Nowadays, when too many American companies focus coldly and narrowly on the bottom line, Verizon Wireless offers a breath of fresh air reminiscent of how things used to be.

It used to be that many U.S. companies actually cared about their employees. For instance, at Eastman Kodak Co., where I worked once upon a time, employees received annual bonuses (even during the Great Depression, Kodak dished out bonuses), tuition assistance to further their education, superb medical benefits (you could get your annual physical on site, and you could go to the hospital without fear of going bankrupt), training to upgrade their skills, a retirement program second to none and, last but certainly not least, salaries that enabled them to afford houses.

Also, employees were expected to take vacations and, when the workday was through, to leave the job in the office, not take it home.

No wonder, then, that when you sifted through the Kodakery, the company’s monthly newsletter, you’d regularly find on the retirement page people who were leaving the company after 30 and 40-plus years of service.

Some folks joined the company right after high school and stayed there until retirement. Their loyalty to Kodak was absolutely iron-clad.

True, Kodak’s been going through tough times for the past 20 years, but that’s due more to misjudging the marketplace rather than over-providing (and I use that word reservedly) for their employees.

Earlier this month I met with Howard Waterman, Verizon’s executive director of public relations.

Waterman flew down from corporate headquarters in New Jersey on a routine trip to the Lowcountry, where Verizon has a massive, 1,100-employee call center in North Charleston plus a number of retail stores scattered throughout the tri-county area.

Like a good PR guy, Waterman promoted his company. And he had lots to promote. Verizon was coming off a sweet first quarter: $22.6 billion in revenues, up 6.4% from first quarter 2006; $3.8 billion in operating income, up 19.6% from first quarter 2006; 1.7 million net new customers, increasing Verizon’s nationwide customer base to 60.7 million.

The reason for Verizon’s booming business goes beyond the popularity of its products, Waterman said. A major factor in Verizon’s success has to do with the way the company treats its employees.

Verizon employees get bonuses. They participate in profit sharing. They get medical, dental, disability and life insurance, plus vision care and prescription drug benefits.

They get tuition assistance for education ($8,000 per year for full-time workers, $4,000 for part-timers; so far this year, Verizon has spent about $250,000 on tuition assistance for its North Charleston call center employees) and they get on-the-job training. If employees have problems at home, Verizon offers family assistance. If employees want to adopt a child, the company offers help with that, too.

Verizon also has what Waterman calls a “$10 baby” program, in which employees pay a $10 co-pay to cover the cost of their newborn’s delivery. Naturally, Verizon employees get paid vacations, holidays and personal days; they also get flexible work hours.

Verizon executives tend to get out of their offices and meet face to face with the workers to see how things are going. And the execs recognize employees for a job well done, Waterman said.

Waterman’s description of Verizon’s culture swept me back to my Kodak days. The company’s philosophy, laid down by George Eastman, was simple: Treat employees well, and they’ll perform well and remain loyal.

They’ll do anything for you if you treat them right. Milton Hershey, founder of the chocolate company and the Pennsylvania town which bear his name, had the same philosophy.

So did many other founders of famous U.S. companies, companies which spawned America’s middle class, an entity which today, sadly, is dwindling, as jobs get shipped overseas; as corporate executives receive astronomical paychecks while their workers find it challenging to pay for gasoline, not to mention a house; as the human element of running a company gets smothered by the bean counter’s profit-and-loss spreadsheet.

Verizon has 66,000 employees nationwide, nearly twice as many as it had seven years ago when it formed. It has 25 call centers across the nation. As Verizon gains more customers, more employees will be needed to serve those customers, Waterman said.

Thanks to its culture, Verizon will have little difficulty attracting additional employees.

This means the company is destined to continue along its successful business path because Verizon seems to understand what Eastman, Hershey and other business leaders of yesteryear understood: Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers. That’s the key to a healthy bottom line.

“We’re making money with our culture,” Waterman said.

Dennis Quick is senior staff writer at the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.

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