Nortel’s Star: PR

By Mark Evans | Published: August 8, 2008

While Nortel’s financial performance and strategic focus might be good fodder for critical thought, one part of Nortel that’s humming along is public/media relations.

Along with a progressive approach to social media, Nortel’s PR people have got some pretty good traction with several news campaigns. This include the company’s efforts to be seen as more “green” than Cisco, and the benefits of telecommuting.

Take a look, for example, of this story in the Chicago Sun-Times about telecommuting. It features a Nortel employee in Chicago talking about how telecommuting saves her time and money, along with a Nortel spokewoman – Jamie Moody – who said about 10% of Nortel’s employees telecommute.

Moody said Nortel saves about $9,000 annually per employee in real estate costs. Back of the napkin math suggests that works out to $27-million a year.

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  • http://blogs.nortel.com/buzzboard Bo Gowan

    Mark – by far coolest “PR thing” Nortel has done recently was have BBC come to Dallas to shoot a TV episode about new technology. The PR team got the local fire department involved for a mock emergency, and briefly took over a local employee's house to stage various tech demos. They also got to demo our 100gig solution. You can see more here: http://tinyurl.com/67jpb2

  • The Psychiatrist

    Mark- the savings should read more like $270 million a year

  • http://nortel.com some employee

    telecommuting… yea… what is also referred to as “working at home” which essentially means, you work about 1/2 as much as you would've if you had come into work… the number should really be a loss and not a gain.

  • Mark Evans

    I ran the numbers again just to make sure, and it's $27-million for the 3,000 people who work from home. If everyone worked from home, it would be $270-million.

  • less

    …so long as your group achieves its weekly units as established by Lean Six Sigma its all good…

  • Tired

    Anybody who thinks working from home means working less is ignorant or has sour grapes. In almost every case I know at just about every company I do business with, home based employees put in more hours (and more productive hours) than office-based employees. And certainly in the long run, anybody who slacks off enough as a home-based employee will be identified as a loser.

  • Nortel watcher

    I've yet to come across a home-based employee who wants to go back to an office setting. The main reason is that you can accomodate a lot of personal items that you could not do or would need permission to do so if working at an office.

    From taking an afternoon off because your last business trip took up part of your weekend to babysitting your sick child to taking the car for an oil change or tune-up at 10am on a Wednesday, the perks are there, folks. Like Tired and less say, so long as you don't drop the ball with the important stuff like missing a conference call or a customer appointment , your boss is not going to care.

    Those that work more do because they simply choose to. If you read the above Chicago Sun Times article, the employee in the story admits to dedicating the “saved” commuting time to herself(i.e. family) and not to the Company.

  • Observer

    Tired – I agree with you. By the way, I like your name. I too am tired.

  • less

    It depends on what you're doing at Nortel. Not everyone can stay at home. Can you always build another China-bound lab from the safety and comfort of your home? If a link goes down you phone it in, CYA via e-mail, IM it and sit back, just like the Sigma rules dictate. Because “Simplicity trumps Complexity”.

    What did the telco Neanderthals do ten years ago? Oh, yeah, they wandered down the halls a few cubicles down asked that coworker with a tool pouch:”I got a link down, can you take a look at it?”

  • Tired

    Observer – thanks very much. I think we're all tired now…

  • Tired

    Less – totally agree that not all jobs are suitable for home-based workers. And certainly not all workers are suitable for home-based jobs. And even when telecommuting is appropriate for the individual and the job, there are often instances when its necessary to come into the office or lab and roll up your sleeves with everybody else. But as “Nortel watcher” stated, telecommuting is a great way to balance the workload with your life needs, and it potentially saves money, time, and part of the environment in the process.

  • InAndOut

    It's all a PR game. As a NT employee who has been trying to go as a permanent teleworker for a few years now, it's almost impossible to do. All sorts of excuses come up, but boy do they take advantage of all the PR teleworking gets them!

  • InAndOut

    It's all a PR game. As a NT employee who has been trying to go as a permanent teleworker for a few years now, it's almost impossible to do. All sorts of excuses come up, but boy do they take advantage of all the PR teleworking gets them!

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