Michael Bloomberg is definitely among the public personas whose persistence, inventiveness and meticulousness became the foundation of successful entrepreneurship and overall affluence in financial, political and media realms. In addition to political career, Bloomberg’s greatest achievements in business are a global media empire and a financial data network bearing – quite naturally – the name of their decisive founder, Bloomberg LP. Having created a Wall Street company in 1981 (Anders, 2009) with an intention to collect, structure and deliver financial and trading information (Bainbridge, 2008, p. 27), Bloomberg has been expanding his empire further until today. According to Winfrey (2009, p. 158), “the core product of Bloomberg is its subscription service that provides data, news, analytics, multimedia reports and messaging, and trading functions to any personal computer”. Michael Bloomberg himself is a founder, owner and CEO of his corporation, and his personal views of work and life have produced a great impact on the strategy of work organization and human resource management.
Bloomberg has been described as a rather decisive, competitive and demanding person, with these qualities having a great impact on his strategy of human resource management and attitudes towards employees. For instance, Encyclopedia Britannica provides a description of Bloomberg characterizing him by “tyrannical outbursts”, browbeating of his employees and rather vengeful treatment of those who leave Bloomberg LP (Michael Bloomberg, 2016).
Opinions on the CEO’s approach towards management and work with human resources might differ greatly, but one can hardly deny that this remarkable businessman and philanthropist would not have achieved such success or accumulated such wealth without a good efficient HR management strategy. In 1997, Bloomberg released an eponymous autobiographical book where he describes the story of his success and, at the same time, outlines the principles of human resource management he adheres to throughout his career as a CEO. The traits distinguishing Bloomberg’s approach towards management of human resources include the following:
Transparency and visibility
High performance demands and high workload
Hard work in return for decent wages and multiple bonuses
Personal approach towards each employee constructing Bloomberg’s authority for each and every employee personally
Strong disapproval of nepotism
Culture-sensitive HR approach for each country
Constant innovation and fresh expertise for the HR domain
Strong preference for skilled professional over relatives and family members in selection of job candidates
Best rewards for skilled professionals who thrive in the company’s competitive environments.
The company employed 3000 people in 1997 (Whitford, 1997) and around 8000 people in 55 countries as for 2009 (Winfrey, 2009, p. 158). Many of them work in the famous Bloomberg Tower in Manhattan, in the company headquarters. Bloomberg’s attitude towards human resources can be traced through the conditions faced by the headquarters employees. First of all, Mike Bloomberg’s top priority going through his entrepreneurial and HR approaches is transparency: being visible and transparent means being trusted.
Thereby, the headquarters building is a manifestation of this priority: open-plan and constructed from glass, it has nonhierarchical work layout “with employees stationed every six linear feet in a long row of desks” (Winfrey, 2009, p. 159). In Bloomberg, the Michael Bloomberg relates that employees work in close proximity and in conditions of complete visibility with each other (Bloomberg, 1997, p. 163), being encouraged for team work and cooperation. At the same time, however, transparency overrides privacy in Bloomberg’s working environment. In addition, security plays a crucial role in management strategies applied in Bloomberg’s company: a set of security rules existing in the company’s offices is unchangeable for all of its employees, promoting discipline and impartiality, with all employees going through compulsory security checks and ‘badge-ins’ in the buildings.
In other words, Bloomberg’s approach does involve attention the employees’ interests (which are, if viewed from the pluralist viewpoint, are high wages) as HR system of the company has been marked by decent wages, various benefits, perks and bonuses. The employees are offered car services, annual bonuses for terminal subscriptions, museum memberships and many other benefits from the company. However, the policy demands much in return, imposing high performance standards and long working days – sometimes lasting twelve to fourteen hours, as noted by the former employees of Bloomberg LP (Purnick, 2010, p. 53). Bloomberg imposes tough working conditions and rather tense atmosphere, offering high wages as a motivation. However, it is also interesting that there have been numerous accusations and even lawsuits against the company and its CEO caused by “the culture of discrimination” and tough working conditions for women, e.g., intolerance towards pregnancy leaves (Purnick, 2010, p. 53).
While Mike Bloomberg’s demanding and critical approach towards human resources management awes many of his employees – and awed members of his administration during his three terms as a mayor of New York City – his policy is reported to be direct in the sense of close contact with immediate stakeholder and employees. That is, despite tense working conditions and rather complex hierarchical structure of the company, and the administration, Bloomberg as an executive prefers to remain in close contact with his employees of different levels and maintain communication personally. Particularly, Purnick provides examples of former Bloomberg LP employees who praise Bloomberg’s personal approach fostering personal accountability of each employee in front of the high-ranking manager. The employees speak of themselves as “Mike’s people” and state that it is Bloomberg’s devotion to the cause – in addition to his strictness and high demands – that make them willing to work for that cause (Purnick, 2010, p. 52).
However, another principle of Bloomberg’s CEO strategy that wins devotion of employers is the culture of innovation and advancement created by him. Particularly, innovations are constantly introduced in methods of data collection and presentation in order to enhance the content of the Bloomberg ‘machine’ and win/keep more customers (Purnick, 2010, p. 52). Similarly, flexibility and innovation are praised by Bloomberg in relation to human resource management as a whole: “As a company expands, growth, flexibility and fresh expertise in the human resources department must occur” (Bloomberg, 1997, p. 171). In addition, considering the international character of the company, Bloomberg stresses the need for adjustment and flexibility of HR managers in different countries as employment practices – from hiring to compensation laws – might differ from one culture to another.
One more remarkable part of Bloomberg’s human resources management principles comes with his stance towards nepotism in corporate environments. The CEO imposes high performance and proficiency demands on workers and applicants, seeking to yield the best possible results for the company. Therefore, the company hires only high-skilled and well-trained professionals ready to contribute their best efforts to the company’s success. A good instance is the headquarters’ staff consisting of high-grade professionals providing 24/7 assistance for customers. Thereby, Bloomberg as a CEO opposes nepotism and urges business owners not to give preferences to their relatives in the choice of suitable job candidates. This year, Mike Bloomberg mentioned this point in his speech at LaGuardia Community College stating that he will not let his daughters work in his company due to the preference for real professionalism over family ties (La Roche, 2016).
Mike Bloomberg is self-confident and decisive in his entrepreneurial and political initiatives, which makes him an authoritative executive for workers of all levels and has ensured long-lasting and unchangeable success for his company – and for his three-term mayoral administration. His competitive nature drives the company to pursue big concrete goals which engage all employees and create competitive atmosphere within the company as well. Although such strategy of human resource management is rather tough for those longing for privacy and easy tasks, Bloomberg’s approach makes it possible to achieve good results for those who thrive in tense and highly competitive environments and are ready to contribute much time, discipline and effort to the common cause.
As Mike Bloomberg notes himself in his book, “it’s the doers, the lean and hungry ones, those with ambition in their eyes and fire in their bellies of social caste, who go the furthest and achieve the most” (Bloomberg, 1997, p. 16). And Bloomberg’s policy of human resource managements is directed exactly at such workers, creating tough and rewarding conditions endurable for them only and relying on them in the matters of the company’s efficiency and productivity.
Reference List
Anders, G. (2009). Meet the Mayor. New York Times. Retrieved December 28, 2016 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/books/review/Anders-t.html?_r=0
Bainbridge, D. I. (2008). Introduction to Information Technology Law. Pearson Education.
Bloomberg, M. (1997). Bloomberg. J. Wiley.
La Roche, J. (2016). Michael Bloomberg: I will not let my daughters work for my company. Yahoo Finance. Retrieved December 28, 2016 from http://finance.yahoo.com/news/michael-bloomberg-won-t-let-his-kids-work-for-his-company-142543002.html
Michael Bloomberg. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://academic.eb.com.ezproxy.library.csn.edu/levels/collegiate/article/438078
Purnick, J. (2010). Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics. Public Affairs.
Whitford, D. (1997). Fire in his belly, ambition in his eyes Michael Bloomberg could have sat on the millions he made at Salomon. Instead he built a media empire that gives Wall Streeters crucial information in a flash. FORTUNE Magazine. Retrieved December 28, 2016 from http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1997/05/12/226240/index.htm
Winfrey, F. L. (2009). Bloomberg. In C. Wankel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Business in Today's World (Vol. 1, pp. 158-159). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.library.csn.edu/ps/i.do?p=GVRL&sw=w&u=las55353&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CCX3201500105&sid=summon&asid=670f426e1ab4dc17ec7f986ee3c9fe3b
