Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1964)

Record Details:

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any business, not just through higher management levels alone, but at all levels, right down to the men in overalls. Seeking ultimately to increase Buick sales, Rolled thought first of restoring the company's slipping prestige. He wanted to recreate the company image of quality and reliability that had been strong in the past. The secret to everything, the new general manager felt, was to get Buick's production employees to take greater pride in their work. He believed the best way to do so was somehow to make all workers feel they were on the same team as foremen and managers and to give them recognition as individuals. Because Rollert felt the company's previous employee-relations program was unequal to so great a task, he charged his p.r. staff with originating some new ideas. At the outset, thinking was in terms of a company newspaper or magazine, the regular house-organ approach. According to several bids submitted, the cost to Buick would have run about $66,000 a year for staff and printing, or about $1250 a week. This allowed nothing for overhead, secretaries, photography, traveling or circulation. Other considerations: The publication would appear only once a month. It would have been a tabloid. only four pages. The prospect of its achieving true newsworthincss seemed dim. There was no chance for high-frequency communication. Worst of all was the strong possibility that such a publication would become a one-sided mouthpiece representing only management's point of view, permitting little response and no participation by the men in the factory. Instead, Buick wanted a highfrequency two-way communication. The use of radio was proposed — and bypassed — several times because Buick owned no radio stations and wasn't certain the medium could be used for internal relations. As far as Buick knew, companies had never talked with their own employees on commercial radio while the general public listened — except, perhaps, via emergency spot announcements hastily purchased during or after a strike. But the fringe benefits of radio began to become clear: • Broadcasts could mean daily communications, with a spanking new program each and every day, maybe lasting as long as an hour or two. • The fact that the public, too, could hsten might be a good idea after all. While 25 percent of the community's industrial workers were employed by Buick, more than 50,000 others worked at GM sister divisions. Additional listeners beyond that would simply be an extra public: relations dividend. • Radio would not only permit Buick to pat its employees on the back, but — in the best traditions of applied psychology — to do so publicly. • Radio would permit continuous employee participation, with company workmen on the air telling about themselves — and, incidentally, Buick as well. • Employees would gain a marked sense of individual importance by hearing their friends' and their own taped voices on the air. • The price was right. A fringe hour a day of radio (including both time and talent) ran only 40 percent of the estimated expense of a monthly newspaper (staff and printing costs only). • Above all — and this moved Buick toward radio more than anything else — because of the number of employees and the great percentage that drove to work, the audience was known to be there and ready. Factory Whistle debuted in November, 1960. Undoubtedly a major testament of its efficiency is the unadorned fact that since then, a dozen more major industrial firms have borrowed the concept and format to communicate with tJieir employees. ♦ COMPANIES WITH EMPLOYEE RADIO PROGRAMS IN FACTORY TOWNS American Motors Buick Clark Equipment Delco-Remy Granite Steel Guide Lamp Hammermill Paper Leesono Corp. Packard Electric Sprague Electric Texas Instruments Walker Manufacturing Weirton Steel United in their uncommon jobs by a single product, 85 percent of daytime workers listen. 48 SPONSOR I Dt„