20 Under 40 - 2002 Profile: Bill Barker

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: November 2002

Manages change

Change is never easy–especially when it involves staff reductions. Operations Director Bill Barker found a way to help his employees cope when four departments—advertising, creative services, engraving and composition—were combined to create the Pre-Press Design Services center at the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch.
The center handles all of the paper's creative and production work plus editorial pagination. Merging the departments meant reducing the full-time staff by 50 and dropping from 22 managers to eight.

"It was the greatest challenge," says Barker. Many employees had worked together for 20 years.

The key to managing change, he says, is to be honest, upfront and truthful. Despite the loss of jobs, morale remains high because Barker brings people together with better communication and a peer-recognition program called "You Deserve a Star." It allows co-workers to recognize each other for achievements such as meeting a tight deadline, developing a creative concept or having a great attitude. Recognized employees participate in lotteries for monthly and annual prizes.

Other ways he shows employees that they matter include a mailroom-recognition program for attendance and a monthly in-house newsletter. Barker also does things a little differently. On the manufacturing side, for instance, workers are free to go home after they publish the paper. If the goal is to publish by 3 a.m. and they finish at 2:30, they can clean up and leave.

Employees probably best know Barker for his barbecues. At least twice a year, he dons an apron and cooks for his staff on a 60-by-40-foot grill built from scrap metal by the engineering department. Because the operations department has three shifts, Barker often cooks all day and half the night. And since operations staffers work in two locations–downtown and Hanover, Va.–Barker fires up the grill at both locations at events usually within a month of each other.

Education: 1986, A.S., chemistry, Jackson State Community College, Jackson, Tenn.; 1988, B.S., management and marketing, Union University, Jackson, Tenn.
Career: 1984-90, executive development program and assistant production director, Gannett Co. in Gainesville, Ga., Jackson, Tenn., Melbourne, Fla., and St. Louis; 1990-present, assistant production director, production director, operations director, Richmond (Va.) Times Dispatch.
Personal: Age, 39. Born, Nashville. Married, wife Rita, one son, one daughter.
Diversions: Spending time with family, fishing, skeet shooting and playing golf.
Connections: Richmond Times-Dispatch, 300 E. Franklin St., Richmond, Va. 23293, (804) 649-6603, wbarker@timesdispatch.com.