Its not that hes unfriendly the contrary is true and, although hes smooth, he avoids coming across like a salesman. But the mans a consummate professional and you just know there has to be an iron fist beneath the velvet demeanour for him to have earned a place on the board of a Murdoch-owned company.
McCoys spacious office, clean lines and an absence of clutter, is indicative of a person who concentrates on essentials. A large table sits at one end of the room. There are no sharp edges and the chairs are comfortable. McCoy is a born communicator, a man who has the art of corporate conversation down to an art. He delivers responses as though nothing could faze him, allowing only chinks of informality to show through.
Its surprising to learn that although BSkyB is the cream of the satellite companies, HR is new to the agenda. McCoy is the first person to hold an HR post on the board at BSkyB. He runs a 40-strong team (double the number in place when he joined) just outside London and has 100 HR staff in Scotland, where all the companys call centres, employing 9,000 people, are based.
So why the sudden focus on people? Its hugely important that HR is involved strategically, says McCoy. Its a very trite thing to say but most mergers and acquisitions fail because of an insufficient focus on people and culture. Sometimes you get a fantastic business idea but if its not going to work from a people point of view you may as well forget it and a lot of people have discovered that to their cost.
McCoy believes the appointment of enlightened chief executive Tony Ball two years ago was pivotal to the increased focus on people. He works closely with the rest of the board and is involved in ventures before anything is signed on the dotted line. [Ball] is much more flexible in his approach in terms of what HR can bring to a business whereas Sky in the past didnt have the same degree of focus.
Sky has obviously achieved an awful lot over the years and is an extremely successful business. It has changed the face of British broadcasting but had always been very externally focused... on its commercial deals, its negotiations with football clubs and so on.
Its been very successful and has taken a lot of people along with it. People were attracted to work with Sky and stay with Sky because of the exciting, dynamic nature of the business, not because of its best-practice HR. Its increasingly recognising that focus on people is important in terms of recruitment and retention, career development, performance and so on.
Sky added around 4,000 people to its payroll when it launched Digital in 1998. This sent the customer service requirement soaring and raised the employee headcount to 13,500. Customer care falls under the HR remit. Anything to do with management of people falls under HR, says McCoy. Because customer service is such a key differentiator in our industry, and will increasingly be so, we invest very heavily in change management to ensure that our contact centres are best of breed in terms of technology and business process. Essentially, every aspect of working life in a call centre is going to change and as part of that we are going to change the nature of line management jobs so they are more broadly competent and empowered roles.
HR, he adds, will move away from being an operational role, which has been in some cases substituting for line management, to a much more strategic, business-type role. We spent some time in catch-up mode because we are growing so rapidly. We havent got anything like the same degree of structures and processes that you see in most UK plcs not just HR, but it could be IT infrastructure, it could be financial systems, management information systems.
Because Sky has focused externally, it hasnt developed the same degree of robust internal processes. On the HR front were putting in place strategies and initiatives to raise the game whether its in performance management, management development, total rewards management, areas like internal communications as well, which is formerly what my responsibilities were.
When McCoy arrived, there were no company-wide HR systems in place and there was no staff handbook or written procedures and policies. Now, there is an integrated database (PeopleSoft) which takes over from cobbling together spreadsheets. Everything is under scrutiny.
It is quite a challenge. The danger is you get involved in so many initiatives that you get initiative-itis. Which initiative or which consultant am I dealing with today?
You have to remember whos doing what, whos told what. Who is watching the consultants? He laughs. But you know he isnt joking. Over the years what Sky has done is use outside consultants because that seemed to be the obvious way to drive strong HR. What were doing now is partnering up the [Sky] HR people with the consultancies where we need them and so its much more a true partnership... and also were reducing our dependence on the consultants.
As for employees work-life balance, McCoy admits that Sky has a belief that people work with Sky because they want to work with Sky. Most of them are achievement-oriented, he says. There are no flexible work policies at present even though employees have called for the latter. Employees want more work-life balance, McCoy admits wryly.
Its an area we are going to focus on in terms of improving our attractiveness as an employer, working on our recruitment and retention track record and so on. We cant continue to rely on the fact that people want to work for Sky. In terms of remuneration, Skys always been towards the top end as far as pay is concerned; the benefits structure is mid-market. In some cases some elements of benefits have been slightly below mid-market.
The biggest selling point is that people want to work for this company and are willing to do it in spite of the benefits package. But thats not a long-term retention strategy. You need to get everything right, tick all the boxes.
Sky is revamping its training and development policies. The speed of the companys growth helps people to develop simply by being in a fast-paced environment. Its fast and exciting and you learn on the job and its a big opportunity but on the other hand, theres no structured, formal development programme so you could ask, Well, actually, does the company care about training and development or not?
To discover what employees do want, BSkyB carried out its second annual employee survey this summer. It was the first time that Sky really sat down and, in a structured way, got employee feedback across the whole of the business how they feel about Sky as an employer, what they think of our benefits and pay, training and development, internal communication are the key areas.
The focus at BSkyB is short - to medium-term you wont find five-year plans on the agenda. Its not BP. Its not at that stage in its life cycle to have long-term strategic goals. A lot of it is one to three years but we budget on a year-by-year basis depending on what were spending. Skys reputation is for brinkmanship, which is about bringing it to the edge and taking it a step further.
McCoy obviously thrives on the dynamism engendered by his role. He has more autonomy and more scope for real-time decision making than in previous jobs.
Here you are very much a master of your own destiny, he says, but remains vague about whether he would be involved in the HR side of chairman Rupert Murdochs plans to expand his satellite empire into the US. It would be exciting, he concedes, in terms of what possibilities and opportunities that presents.
Murdoch, he says, has a very significant impact on the business. We are in a good position within News Corp because a lot of investment goes our way, which is not true of some of the other News Corp businesses which have had to reduce their budgets quite substantially, particularly in the new media-dotcom area.
Public debate over which of the younger Murdochs will take over has not had any effect on staff morale, says McCoy: Sky has a strong sense of its own ability to achieve. The attitude tends to be Surely News Corporation will sort itself out. At the end of the day, we are of sufficient size and have relative autonomy so we will drive our own success and it doesnt occupy peoples minds.
Employees are generally well-motivated despite the restructuring that involved 300-400 redundancies, says McCoy. Out of 13,000, its not a big number. Its really in areas that arguably we should have addressed in the past. They are areas that overlap the business had grown up relatively piecemeal and we had to add people very quickly and it wasnt always done in a very co-ordinated way so you had overlap between departments and divisions... so its really rationalisation of areas of duplication.
Thats one area. The other would be non-profitable channels weve closed some TV channels because the demand and the TV viewers dont justify sustaining those TV channels. But thats meant some job losses as well. Sky has been in a high-growth mode for many years so I guess it came as a bit of a shock that we were actually laying people off.
He says the core business is meeting all its targets in terms of subscriber base and revenue. Losses are due to exceptional investment, he explains: We are committed by the end of this [financial] year to be back in the black. So hopefully, well start paying dividends again.
Its hardly surprising to learn that McCoy likes to work with strong people. I expect a lot from people but I give them a lot of support, he says. Theres a tinge of surprise when I ask him whether he is a hard taskmaster. No, I dont think I am. I like to have good people and trust them to do a good job.
I like to give people the opportunity to develop and prove themselves and Im rarely let down. They have got to have sufficient expertise and strengths to work in a complex business but the interpersonal skills are paramount, so is political ability and influencing. Because this company is not strong on structure, the job title itself does not convey the reality of authority.
You can achieve a lot on the strength of personality. We are looking for people who are not dependent on job titles or structures to work with other people. You have to be able to take authority and responsibility, to assume it. You carve your own career but its based on ability, so if you have any ability, youll carry it off. If you havent, youll fall flat on your face.
Ever the diplomat, McCoy says he doesnt know where he sees himself in five years time. That he has no agenda is a tad unconvincing... Id be quite interested in moving to a more general management position. Ive always tried to be quite commercially focused so it shouldnt hopefully be so much of a painful transition. If the right job came up still within an HR function or with an HR focus, then I could still be interested.
McCoy would not work in HR if he was not on the board. Id just see it as a backward step. There would be no point. I think, also, debate about HR and whether it needs a place on the board or not has been going on for years and I think there are peaks and troughs as to what happens from that point of view. I think the best HR directors easily justify a place on the board and they see themselves more as commercial people who are part of the management team of the business. They dont necessarily see themselves first and foremost as HR specialists.
So, try to maintain that sort of healthy commercial approach, I think, and youll be fine. But I believe that people who expect to get a place on the board simply through their HR expertise and experience are going to be disappointed. You need to be sufficiently tuned in to the business and you need to be able to contribute on a broader basis.
McCoy relishes the chance to influence and shape the future from an HR point of view an opportunity he says is rare in a big UK plc because there is usually a prevalence of established processes. Id really like to establish Sky as a best practice HR company and we dont have that reputation in the market at present.
I think that when people think about Sky they think about a pretty aggressive, successful business. But it wouldnt spring to mind if you were told to name the top 20 HR-focused organisations in the UK. So, if I could achieve that, Id be quite happy.
There are things we can learn from other businesses in that respect. I talk to businesses like Cisco to see what they are doing in terms of PR as well as their attractiveness as an employer. There are things we can learn there and I would like to bring some of them to Sky.
At the end of the day its focusing on the results and that people enjoy working here and want to stay working here.
