By Michael Harvey
Meredith Kinder
John Kohl
Pat Moell
Lisa Pappas
and Linda Roberts
It’s got to be the free M&Ms. How else could SAS, a North Carolina-based company that produces business analytics software and services, attract the kind of talent to have six of its technical communicators named STC Associate Fellow or STC Fellow?
Of course that’s a comical explanation. The culture based on trust and flexibility; amenities including a full-service Health Care Center, four cafes, and a full-service gym on a meticulously landscaped campus; and other resources are often cited when SAS consistently places on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in the United States. In fact, SAS recently was ranked number 1 on that list two years in a row. But it’s more than amenities that attract and keep talent. The corporate culture that helps SAS enjoy an employee retention rate of close to 96% substantially contributes to its ability to hire and retain top technical communicators.
That culture cultivates ongoing learning and professional growth. How? For starters, the company stocks a full-service library that provides research services and resources comparable to those available at a university. It offers subscriptions to online reference libraries, collections of journal articles, and conference proceedings. If a publication is not available online, SAS librarians obtain it through interlibrary loan from local universities.
To encourage professional growth, management allows employees to spend work hours pursuing research interests. During the day, they can speak at conferences and to university classes and write articles or columns for publications and newsletters as long as it doesn’t get in the way of work. This is as true for technical communicators as it is for R&D personnel.
Professional growth is further nurtured by mentoring and networking within the company. The publications division, which employs over 70 writers and editors, follows a formal process to mentor new hires. The assigned mentor explains division processes, provides access to company policies and procedures, and serves as the go-to person while the new employee gets settled in their new role. Division processes are based on standards of excellence cultivated from industry-wide best practices. A dedicated mentoring team trains mentors, creating and updating materials for that purpose. Departments in the publications division hold regular meetings to discuss current work, technical issues, and hot topics. In other divisions, there might be a lone technical communicator or a smaller group. Mentoring within these small groups might be a bit less formal, but it is expected. Across divisions, the sense of community among technical communicators is strong and full of mutual respect.
Another important reason that SAS boasts so many high-achieving STC members is that management actively supports involvement in STC activities. For example, Fellow Pat Moell and Associate Fellow Meredith Kinder each had a two-year commitment as the co-manager of the STC Technical Editing SIG. While at work, they held volunteer teleconferences to help run the SIG, ran co-manager meetings, and hosted quarterly SIG teleconference meetings with invited speakers. Meredith worked on the chapter newsletter during work breaks. While Fellow Michael Harvey served as STC Carolina chapter president, he was able to transact some chapter business from his office. Fellow Lisa Pappas and Associate Fellow Linda Roberts currently co-author a regular column about accessibility named "All Access" for Intercom.
If SAS employees are actively involved in STC, the company pays membership fees each year. SAS also provides the time to attend regional and national conferences, especially when an employee is speaking or receiving awards or honors. When writers return from conferences, they post highlights so that other writers and editors at SAS can benefit from their experience. The company publically lauds the STC honors that employees receive. After the latest STC Fellowships and Assistant Fellowships were announced, the company’s internal website posted a picture gallery of each honoree. SAS highly values STC awards. Each year, technical communicators at SAS submit a number of entries to be evaluated for documentation awards. The hallways at Building J, which houses publications, are filled with the past-won awards.
At SAS, the technical communication profession has a great deal of visibility. One reason is that the publications division started a company-wide terminology management initiative. Representatives from several divisions have collaborated on tools and processes for standardizing terminology, and the team’s efforts and goals have gotten a lot of internal publicity. Another reason involves Global English, which provides guidelines that make information more suitable for translation and easier for non-native speakers to understand, which also has received a lot of internal publicity. When SAS Press published The Global English Style Guide by Associate Fellow John Kohl in 2008, it was their first book that wasn’t about SAS software. "It was gratifying that SAS recognized the importance of the guidelines and was willing to make them available outside of the company," says Kohl. "And by promoting the book internally as well as externally, SAS Press gave people in all divisions at SAS a better understanding of the value that skilled technical communicators can add to all types of publications."
In short, SAS truly understands the value of communication in general and technical communication specifically. Fellow Lisa Pappas says, "as an accessibility advocate, I have shared how, as we age, we may develop functional impairments that make it harder for us to use computers and technology. Through ergonomic assessments, SAS helps employees adjust their working environment to meet their changing functional needs, such as providing custom workstations to enable standing or sitting, voice-input or screen magnification software, and so forth." Associate Fellow Linda Roberts says, "I came to SAS after working as a contract technical writer at a small start-up. At the start-up, I was a lone writer who wore all the hats—writing, editing, testing, and production—trying to do what I could to help the development team. I found SAS to be quite different. It was one of the few companies left that is fully staffed and has resources dedicated to writing, editing, production, project management, tools, and terminology."
Someone becomes an Associate Fellow when recognized by their peers as having attained distinction in the field. They then become Fellow after demonstrating that they’ve continued to make exemplary contributions. The SAS corporate culture provides a natural incubator for these qualities.
Every one of these Associate Fellows and Fellows would be happy to retire from SAS when the day comes. Because until that day, they know that their work is appreciated and that they will have opportunities to get better. And of course the free M&Ms help them stay energized.
Michael Harvey (michael.harvey@sas.com), STC Fellow, is a senior technical writer at SAS. He has served in various leadership positions for STC Carolina and has presented at local and international STC conferences. His last article for Intercom was "Back to Basics: Skills that Never Lose Value." His professional profile is available at www.linkedin.com/in/mtharvey .
Meredith Kinder (meredith.kinder@sas.com), STC Associate Fellow, is a documentation specialist at SAS. She facilitates communication between the company, its customers, and the 2,600 employees of the global consulting division. She served twice as Carolina Chapter president and is past co-manager and treasurer of the Technical Editing SIG.
John Kohl (john.kohl@sas.com), STC Associate Fellow, is a senior technical editor at SAS. For the past several years, John has devoted much of his time to terminology issues and to refining the Global English guidelines. As a linguistic engineer, John customizes and supports tools and processes that help make SAS documentation more consistent, easier to translate, and easier for non-native speakers of English to understand. He is a charter member of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas.
Patricia G. Moell (pat.moell@sas.com), STC Fellow, is a manager of the technical editing department at SAS with over 20 years’ experience as a technical editor and manager. She served as co-manager of the STC Technical Editing SIG and has presented at the STC annual conference on several occasions. She is the recipient of the Frank R. Smith Outstanding Journal Article Award for "Technical Editing as Quality Assurance: Adding Value to Content" in Technical Communication .
Lisa Pappas (lisa.pappas@sas.com), STC Fellow, is a senior development tester at SAS. While in SAS R&D, she developed strategies to assess and improve conformance of SAS products to international standards for accessibility. Before joining SAS, Lisa’s career in the software industry has included engineering project management, Web design and development, and technical communication of various genres. She has served STC as co-manager of the Accessibility SIG and as a Director-at-Large.
Linda Enders Roberts (linda.roberts@sas.com), STC Associate Fellow, is a technical writer for SAS Institute. She co-authors a regular column about accessibility, "All Access," in Intercom and has presented at the STC annual conference on several occasions.
