Garden party

By Gerhart Trüb

As venues go, Madison Square Garden is right up as one of the most iconic and famous arenas in the world. But behind all the razzamatazz is a dedicated and diverse workforce, as Dwight Tierney, SVP of HR and Admin explains.

“You have to take a look at the competition to see what they are doing and make sure you are an attractive employer.”
-Dwitgh Tierney

Known colloquially as "The Garden", New York City's Madison Square Garden has played host to world-famous sports stars, musicians and performers since it first opened its doors in 1968. The multi-purpose sports arena situated in the heart of Manhattan on 7^th Avenue between 31^st and 33^rd Street continues to be an integral part of the Big Apple and top visitor attraction. This is despite the fact it is neither situated near Madison Square, nor is it a garden. Located above Pennsylvania Station, this is the fourth incarnation of the Garden - the first was constructed on Madison Avenue way back in 1879.

As well as staging the famous first Muhammad Ali v Joe Fraser fight in 1971, it is today home to basketball team the New York Nicks and hockey's New York Rangers - both side's home games accommodate almost 20,000 spectators. There are 270 music events a year while over the years it has provided the backdrop for a catalogue of films, including one of my personal favourites: the rematch between Rocky Balboa and Clubber Lang in the box office smash hit Rocky III.

Despite the Garden's notoriety, it's just one part of a wide range of business activities under the MSG umbrella. The company Madison Square Garden (MSG) is a fully integrated, entertainment and media business comprising of three segments: MSG Sports, MSG Entertainment and MSG Media. The man charged with overseeing HR for a 6000-strong workforce across the business units is Dwight Tierney, SVP of HR and Admin. HRM catches Tierney at a time when staff are working "flat out" approaching the holiday season, traditionally the busiest time of the year, although there is rarely a quiet period for MSG. When the busy periods start, MSG can take on between 500 and 1000 new staff for all the venues. "It's heavy and intensive recruiting," says Tierney.

MSG boasts workforce with diverse jobs and Tierney is firm believer that creative people should be managed differently to corporate employees. "That doesn't mean or creative employees are not required to uphold the same standards as everybody else, but you approach it and communicate differently and you advise and counsel differently," he explains. "It's basically about respecting and understanding that the creative process is a little bit different that your standard corporate employee." Tierney himself is a creative industry veteran - in 1981 he was on the management team of the groundbreaking music video channel MTV. He was later based in London for 11 years working for Viacom's EMEA operations.

Tierney says contrasting agendas between corporate and creative employees can lead to clashes. He clenches his fists and bumps his knuckles together to symbolise staff at loggerheads with one another. "You need to get to a situation where you have people intertwining instead of clashing," he suggests, opening his fists and slides all ten fingers and thumbs together in a gesture of unity. "While it's important that people understand and respect the creative process, there is a also a business to run."

The Garden itself is undergoing a radical transformation costing upwards of $750 million. Already $100 million has been spent to give this 32-year-old arena a new lease of life as it fights to compete with sporting venues in town like the new City Field (Yankees stadium) and New Meadowlands (now home to the New York Giants and New York Jets). And akin to this makeover, the recruitment process has been given an overhaul to turn it into a more rigorous and thorough process. "We've improved and streamlined our quality control by doing a different kind of interviewing style and a more in-depth drilling and interviewing when it comes to our service-oriented jobs, like customer-facing jobs in our venues."

MSG has recently completed a full year of the improved interview process and the results have been tangible, says Tierney. "The quality of people we now have are those who interested in being helpful to our customers, happy to be in a public environment and just have that willingness and eagerness to be helpful and supportive to our clients. The deep-drill interview process and selection process has been a remarkably successful thing for us and we've certified our HR people in the interview process."

The interviewing stage now helps deliver better future ROI and eliminates the need for having to re-hire an applicant when the first hire doesn't pan out. "It's equally important that we are not wasting our resources recruiting and having the wrong person before an extended period of mediocrity and an exit.

By giving ourselves a better opportunity to identify positive people, everybody wins. We have a happy employee, it minimizes the recruiting process, and the payoff is for our clients and our customers in the arena."

As well as using the power of the brand to attract new staff, MSG also harnesses its social media and online presence to attract would-be employees. "We've also tried to be more creative in the way we find people such as using social networking to some extent," he says. "It's also been about understanding and embracing the differences that a younger generation brings to the marketplace, especially the 'technofreaks', not the 'technophobes' - guys who are able to absorb information from six different directions at the same time."

Surveys show that more than 50 percent of employees are now visiting social networking sites to screen would-be employees. Tierney, however, stresses that websites like Facebook and Twitter are not used to "check on" applicants. "We use it to reach people - we're not interesting in using it to check on people. We make our decision based on the interview, the quality of the person and their appropriateness for the role. You could look at somebody's Facebook page and you see something that you don't really think is appropriate for your business and you make a decision based on it. We're not doing that; we're looking at it as way to communicate with people."

For Tieney, using social networking sites for background screening comes with far too much legal and ethical baggage. "There are companies that do that but I think it's fraught with questions and issues," he says. "There's trepidation because you wonder what the legal pitfalls are going to be here and what the exposures that some companies may have if they are seen using this as a decision-making tool."

Those who do make it over the threshold come face-to-face with a wide spectrum of demographics - the Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y and the latest generation dubbed Millenials. "I would say it's the first time in history that you've had four generations in the workforce at the same time, although a lot of this has to with the economy and the Baby Boomers not being able to leave as quickly as they thought they might." This difference in ages and experience doesn't necessarily create friction, says Tierney, but sometimes "puzzlement". He offers and example to illustrate the point: "There is this young guy that we just hired, and the other day I was walking past his desk and he had his iPod on. The question is whether he is getting his work done? Is its high quality work? So we have to be more adoptive when it comes to new generations."

Tierney says he finds the Millennials to be generally tech savvy, able to absorb information from numerous sources and are receptive to feedback. It would appear this willingness to accept feedback is not a trait always found with other generations at MSG. "This is something that is difficult for the Baby Boomers and Generation X and Y because they feel the work speaks for itself and that unless they hear from us, then the work was fine. In a way, though, this is a good thing because it forces communication between the boss and the employee - where the boss has not communicated effectively in the past, they are now being challenged a lot more, which can make them a little crazy." He continues: "But as a Baby Boomer or even a Generation X or Y you are being challenged provide good feedback and constructive information for the Millennials that they taken onboard to make them better."

Of course, Millennials' new skills and work methods will shape MSG in the future. It could lead to more emphasis being placed on communications. "If these Millennials continue to be successful then it will be their style that manages and runs the company in the next 10 to 15 years, which will mean a much more open way of communicating," Tierney reveals. Working with the Millenials has revitalised the older generations, he muses, because they appreciate the value of looking at things from a different perspective. However, Tierney, a self-confessed Baby Boomer, says technology today can leave some of his peers feeling left behind. "I see friends and colleagues completely freaked out by technology and unable or unwilling to embrace it."

Another pertinent issue that needs discussing is incentives. Obviously applicants are attracted jobs with good salaries, but employee benefits can prove the deciding factor when choosing a job. MSG has a robust and progressive compensation and benefits program in order to attract and retain the best employees. "You have to take a look at the competition to see what they are doing and make sure you are an attractive employer," Tierney explains. "But you have to consider the cost of all the programs like health and welfare plans".    

Diversity is more than just a recruitment buzzword nowadays - it's a priority for business. Being located is diverse city's like New York, Boston and Chicago means MSG can recruit from a variety of backgrounds. "We need to be reflective of the demographics and the communities of where we work. We don't do it from a business standpoint, but rather because we think it is important to be in our community."

Madison Square Garden: the facts

There have been four Madison Square Gardens over the past 125 years

Touted as 'the world's most famous arena', the present and 4^th entertainment complex was built in 1968

Cost $123 million to construct

Seats 19,763 for basketball and 18,200 for ice hockey

Hosts 270 music events a year