Ever thought about combining work and play? Well, you’re not the only one, as Josh Massoud discovered when he tackled footy heads David Gallop and Graham Annesley during a recent visit to NRL territory
Ever thought about combining work and play? Well, you’re not the only one, as Josh Massoud discovered when he tackled footy heads David Gallop and Graham Annesley during a recent visit to NRL territory
Rugby leauge in Australia is played by thousands and watched by millions more each winter. The sport’s seven-month domestic season encompasses almost 200 games across four states and territories and two nations.
Revenue generated by the organisation primarily responsible for running the game’s 15-team competition, the National Rugby League (NRL), even rated in Business Review Weekly’s most recent listing of Australia’s top 500 private companies.
It may then come as a surprise that only 30 people – not even enough to constitute a full strength game of footy – are employed to handle everything from co-coordinating the season’s draw to keeping track of last round’s scores.
Winning against the odds
“We run a very lean operation here,” admits NRL chief operating officer Graham Annesley. “Leaner than other major sports such as cricket and Australian Rules.”
With such a small headcount, the front-end HR onus lands squarely on the shoulders of administrative co-captains, Annesley and chief executive David Gallop.
“Whether or not we ultimately employ a dedicated HR team remains to be seen. Traditionally this game hasn’t done that, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we wouldn’t do it in the future,” Annesley says.
So who can employees turn to when they’ve got a work-related problem?
Ironically enough, by virtue of the nigh-fatal Super League war, a bloody battle advanced by Rupert Murdoch for control of the game almost a decade ago, the people who work hard to promote rugby league today have ample support to turn to when disputes – albeit on a smaller scale – happen to arise.
“The NRL is 50 per cent owned by News Ltd, so we are able to take advantage of the resources of their HR department for advice on employment issues, and we’ve availed ourselves of that assistance on a number of occasions in the past,” Annesley says.
Despite the fact such a large interest is held by one of the world’s most powerful corporations, Annesley maintains that what goes on inside NRL headquarters at glitzy Fox Studios in Sydney bears no resemblance to News’ workplace game plan.
“I wouldn’t say that the culture at News Ltd is something that is duplicated here at the NRL. It’s not about the News Ltd culture permeating through the NRL, because this is a different business altogether,” says Annesley, who, while insisting that Super League is now ancient history, agrees the NRL is still a relatively young organisation.
“We were only formed in 1998, when the game was getting back together, so initially it took a bit of time to bed things down. But that’s so far in the past it’s not funny.”
More than a game ... and a job
Playing out a full season in the world’s toughest football competition exacts a toll not only on the likes of Andrew Johns and Gordon Tallis, two of the codes’ most recognizable gladiators, but also the trim team at NRL headquarters.
The relentless weekly grind and extreme pressures associated with the regularity of fixtures is felt by all staff – from clerical to executive – who quickly learn that carrying out their roles involves hours of overtime and hard work.
“It’s not a nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday job. People here have to be accessible on match days, for functions that are generally held on week-day evenings, media requests and then if an unexpected situation arises that needs to be addressed urgently,” Annesley says.
While he believes the organisation pays “reasonably well”, Annesley spends little time waxing lyrical about salary levels, which are only reviewed annually, or “value ads” like free grand final and State of Origin tickets. Instead, he prefers to discuss the true reason behind the NRL’s miniscule staff turnover rate.
“People willingly put in what ever time is required to get the job done because they love it. They love rugby league,” he explains.
Reaching for a well-worn phrase ardent league fans often rely on to justify their passionate support to the uninitiated, Annesley continues: “It’s more of a lifestyle than a job. We’re not clock watchers here; we don’t bundy on and bundy off. People see it more as a way of life than a job.”
Which leads to the assumption that for employees to flourish, they must first embrace rugby league culture, which, perhaps appropriately, has always smiled upon life’s battlers and survivors.
“There’s been two schools of thought in the past on people’s connection with the game,” says Gallop. “Should we hire people who with a connection to the game or those who are dispassionate about rugby league? I think it’s best to combine a passion for the game with good business skills.”
“There’s been a couple of examples where we’ve tried to bring people in from outside to relatively senior positions that didn’t work out too well,” Annesley adds.
But, according to both men, even employees who can’t tell a 40-20 from a Four n’ Twenty when they begin, soon show symptoms of footy fever. And with almost every square centimetre of workplace wall space festooned with a commemorative jersey or photograph, such osmosis is generally inevitable.
Adding to the fanatical ambiance is the presence of former league protagonists in very visible roles. Annesley himself was a decorated first grade referee, but those with a closer eye on the players of yesteryear would recognise 1988 Rothman’s Medallist Barry Russell and colourful hard man Mario Fenech in the marketing department, as well as former international Ian Shubert, who is employed to monitor the game’s strict $3.25 million salary cap.
“We’ve had people come to us from a non-rugby league background. But it’s not a job in which you can ignore what’s going on; you get sort of sucked into the vacuum. People adapt to that because it’s fun and that’s why they stay here despite the pressures and frustrations,” Annesley says. “Probably the people who didn’t work out that well in the past didn’t share that passion.”
Gallop adds: “It’s infectious, you can get exposed to the passion of rugby league all the time. Particularly during the season, we’re all talking to each other on an hourly basis on the weekend.”
Rotating the bench and rewarding the stars
Gallop describes the detailed collage of stimuli employees must digest as a “moving feast” with an appetite for constant attention.
Contrary to popular belief, NRL staff do not join the players on their end-of-season breathers. Right now, for instance, more than four months before the first ball of 2004 is kicked in anger, all hands remain on deck.
“The strange thing is that things actually seem more hectic on an internal basis during the off-season. We’ve got to organise next season’s draw, look at rule changes, attend board meetings, negotiate commercial arrangements, and do internal staff reviews,” Annesley says. “During the season itself there’s so much going happening on a week-to-week basis, that it sort of just plays out before you. It’s almost as if you go through that regular grind on auto pilot.”
The summer months are, however, the time during which staff performance is reviewed as there is no opportunity during the season for internal naval gazing. Despite not being a trained HR professional, Annesley has witnessed his fair share of review strategies.
“We’ve tried a few performance monitoring ideas, some formal and some less conventional. Staff used to be asked to set their own objectives and review those objectives each quarter,” he says. “But while that was good in one respect, there are limitations here because so much happens that you just can’t plan for. This is a combination between a pro-active and a re-active organisation because it has to be.”
Found out to be too rigid for an environment in which the entire organisation can feel the effects of league’s propensity to throw up a surprise scandal or two each season, the former referee blew the whistle on goal setting in favour of a more “casual, reactive approach”.
“It’s now the responsibility of departmental heads to give staff regular feedback, so there aren’t really any surprises when annual reviews come around,” Annesley continued.
The unpredictable nature of this beast means that Annesley and Gallop also face the impossible task of planning ahead. While they safely predict employees will be very busy during the Finals Series, State of Origin and just before season kick off, event management related tasks can only be finalised on an eleventh hour basis.
“With the normal competition there are deadlines to meet each week, however the pressure increases tenfold at certain times of the year. But while the workload blows out, the time frame doesn’t change,” Annesley says.
To avoid staff running out of steam, managers will often bench them immediately after frenetic periods.
“If someone has worked weekends and into the night, we’ll say ‘Look, we don’t want to see you again for a few days’ and give them some time off,” Annesley says. “We encourage staff to take recovery time if they need it and we’re also extremely flexible with time if they have a commitment they need to meet.”
Instead of predetermined bonus schemes, the NRL prefers to vigilantly ensure it simply tells people they’ve done a good job in order to preserve morale and prevent suspicions that all the hard work is taken for granted.
“We tend to adopt an attitude where it’s very casual and in a lot of cases it’s on the spur of the moment. It’s about recognising performance, not just financially, but also by letting people know they’ve done a good job. We’ll regularly call meetings to thank people in the presence of their peers,” Annesley says.
The greatest risk of all
What sets rugby league apart from other sports? Quiz the average Joe on the street and he or she might mention things like tribalism, toughness, talent and a touch of cheeky larrikinism.
When asked to nominate the one feature that distinguishes working at the NRL apart from other major sporting organisations in Australia, Gallop ruminated deeply before finally concluding: “The level of scrutiny and debate the game generates.”
When covering rugby league, Gallop continues, the media tend to be more concerned with fleshing out off-field, as opposed to on-field, controversies. And it’s hard to argue when one considers the biggest headlines surrounding the game of late – South Sydney’s expulsion and re-admission, the Bulldogs’ salary cap drama, John Hopoate’s anal probing antics and of course Super League – all boil down to a debate surrounding remedies concocted within these corridors of power.
“The level of scrutiny rugby league is under from the media is unparalleled compared to any most other major sports in Australia,” Annesley surmises. “In a nutshell the pressure that people in this sort of sport face as opposed to the local bank is that everything we do is so visible. If we make a stuff up everyone in the world knows about it.”
Mindful that, being members of the public themselves, staff may speak to people outside their jobs about internal goings-on at work, the pair go to extreme lengths to ensure employees are well briefed to sing from the same hymn sheet.
To avoid any costly verbal fumbles, weekly meetings involving all staff are held to explain the reasoning behind decisions that dominate newspaper pages. Gallop accepts that his employees are, in effect, “ambassadors for the NRL”.
“When people here go out for a drink and start talking, others will hang on what they have to say because they work for the NRL. Staff have been taught to understand that what they say is constantly taken notice of and there has to be a sense of responsibility regarding what they say about the organisation.”
A level playing field
Having decision-makers go in boots n’ all with staff entails the added bonus of accelerating training of the NRL’s future leaders.
“We generally try to promote from within,” Annesley says. “In many large organisations there can be that head office syndrome, where managers stay in their ivory towers and are a rarely seen. That was probably the case a few years ago, but I think we’ve gone a long way to repairing a lot of that.”
Gallop credits the level playing field to predecessor, David Moffett, whom he described as a “good delegater”.
“He was very much about us being a team. He was big on all of us taking responsibility. So, I suppose that when I got the call, I was a little more ready. But it still takes a few years for someone to understand the way the planets go round in rugby league. I guess I already had that knowledge.”
But in the eyes of the omnipotent rugby league media, Moffett was better known for his relaxed stance on workplace dress.
Like a frustrated coach witnessing his team make yet another unforced error, Gallop rolls his eyes and grins sheepishly at the mention of the well-documented ‘open-collar policy’.
“We’ve tightened things up a little since then, but we haven’t asked staff to wear ties everyday. When people are working seven days a week and you come in on a day without any external meetings, you can wear casual gear.”
“We want to present the right image that you can be a bit relaxed. We’re running a sport after all, so I don’t think you want to see so people in a suit and tie everyday.”
