Hasbro GC molds stable, high-quality legal department

Barry Nagler has a successfully molded a top-notch legal team at Hasbro, Inc. with little turnover.

His 21-attorney staff has an average tenure of eight years and no one has left over the last three years.

What’s his secret?

“A commitment to people,” he says. “Even in a flat organization without enormous opportunities for advancement, there’s still a commitment to growth and development. This isn’t a static situation. We’re preparing them for the next step, hopefully in Hasbro. If not, they still can hopefully grow and develop.”

His stable team provides a significant “value-add” to the company: Institutional knowledge and an ability to cut to the chase.

“You know who the players are and how things get done,” Nagler offers. “You cut through the bureaucracy.”

The Pawtucket, R.I.-based maker of Monopoly and other board games and toys is perhaps a little more kinder and gentler than most workplaces, Nagler admits.

“We work for a toy company. People just seem to smile and laugh more,” says Nagler, who currently chairs the national board of the Association of Corporate Counsel. “It’s a fun, collegial atmosphere. This is an underappreciated reason why people stay on their jobs.”

Nagler emphasizes that competitive salaries are only part of the puzzle. Equally important are flexible hours, varied and interesting work, and a long-term commitment to professional growth.

Nagler recently shared with Paul Boynton of In-House his thoughts on what it takes to keep the best and brightest.

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In House: Staff retention is near and dear to your heart. Why is that so?

Nagler: At the end of the day, what we deliver to our clients are legal services. If I find really good people, then that guarantees we’re providing high quality service. If you keep high quality lawyers, then you get their valuable experience and institutional knowledge, which are underappreciated factors.

In-House: How successful have you been in maintaining your staff?

Nagler: Happily, we’ve been very successful. We’ve not had any lawyer or paralegal in the U.S. leave us in more than three years.

In-House: Does keeping your team together offer you concrete benefits within Hasbro?

Nagler: Absolutely. Continuity brings institutional knowledge. We offer benefits to our clients beyond legal services. We can say to management, for example, “Your predecessor eight years ago tried this promotion, and here’s how it went wrong.” This is a significant value-add for our client. Continuity brings efficiency. Continuity also brings collegiality. Like on any team, you anticipate where your teammates are going to be at any given time. You know what their strengths and weaknesses are, which makes the team more effective.

In-House: What strategies and techniques do you use to help keep your legal team intact?

Nagler: There are two categories. One is compensation; the other is non-monetary retention tools. On the compensation side, we engage in active benchmarking at least once a year to stay competitive. We do everything within our power and budget constraints to address compensation issues where we need to. It’s a challenge to do that, given what’s happening in corporate America, where 5 to 10 percent annual salary increases are passé. Employees need to understand that there is a commitment to pay fairly. You have to be willing to get in there and fight for your people and be committed to getting there over time.

On the non-monetary side, there three main buckets. One is quality of work. We do everything we can to make sure our legal professionals are doing intellectually challenging work that’s also varied and fun. This is perhaps an underappreciated factor. What we decide to keep in-house and what to send to outside counsel depends in part on what the staff wants to do. We keep the fun and interesting stuff in-house. It’s also important to recognize the importance of delegation and not micromanaging.

A related, but distinct factor is professional development. At Hasbro, the managers and employees jointly develop individual development plans, which essentially identify skill sets that can be enhanced. We allow lawyers to broaden their substantive areas of expertise, depending on their career objectives and the needs of the legal department. We also make sure they take on leadership roles on department task forces, and that they have exposure to senior management and perhaps the board of directors
The third bucket relates to quality of life. I’m a big believer in part-time working arrangements. One third of our staff attorneys are on a part-time basis of some sort. If you have the right people, which we do, you get great productivity. It can be opaque to the client. They don’t realize they don’t have someone at their beck and call on a full-time basis. What’s unique to Hasbro is our flexible-hours program. We have Friday afternoons off every week, work permitting. Our staff attorneys work longer hours Monday through Thursday. This is a tremendous differentiating factor.

Hasbro is committed to community service. The company policy is that employees can do paid community service up to four hours each month. We also have a get-out-of-work-free card, which is a play on the get-out-of-jail card in Monopoly. If someone in the department has worked unusually hard to conclude litigation or close a deal, the manager has discretion to give that employee a half-day off from work. This reflects our conscious commitment to quality of life and using tools available to us. Working for Hasbro, perhaps we have more tools than managers in other companies.

A point to emphasize is that this is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. For each individual, you have to use various alternatives and tools that have resonance with particular employees. It’s important for a manager to understand what alternatives should be brought to bear for people that work for them.