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Going to the Company Elders for Help

The New York Times, 3/10/08

Abstract:

On a recent Saturday afternoon, John Toppel, a retired Hewlett-Packard sales manager, did not spend his leisure time golfing or mowing the lawn. He spent it at a local electronics store extolling the virtues of H.P. laptop computers to customers.

He was not paid by the store or by Hewlett-Packard, for that matter. Mr. Toppel, 62, left the technology company four years ago, but he remains a volunteer cheerleader for H.P., one of the thousands of its retirees whom the company is trying to galvanize into an auxiliary army of senior marketers, good-will ambassadors and volunteer sales people. None of them get paid; they do it, they say, because of their affection for the company....

...Across the country, companies are making use of retirees as part-time or temporary workers. They are taking advantage of not only their expertise, but also their desire to stay involved and engaged with the world through their work...

...But Hewlett-Packard, founded in 1939 before there even was a Silicon Valley, has tens of thousands of alumni, many who spend decades at the company, based in Palo Alto, Calif. Old-timers express a familial loyalty, telling stories of eating meals and drinking coffee with the founders, David Packard and William Hewlett, or receiving a baby blanket from Mr. Packard's wife, Lucile, on the birth of a child.

In a move it says reflects a renewed emphasis on grass-roots marketing in the Internet era, Hewlett-Packard is seeking to turn its retirees into a valuable asset that other, younger tech companies lack.

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