No stranger to unconventional business methods

Sheena Dempsey points to nine coloured hard hats hanging on a wall behind her. On the hats are different phrases such as "constructive criticism", "authority", "optimistic", "emotion and intuition" and "coaching".

While she concedes they are "a bit American" she says the "thinking hats" are there to get her employees to reflect on what they do every day.

Images of the hats are printed on mousepads which sit beside employees' PCs. As each employee uses a computer mouse, there is an opportunity to look again at the messages written on the hats and reflect on their potential meanings.

While this may seem strange to many, such unconventional methods are not unusual in the computer sector and in the area of localisation in which Ms Dempsey's company, Lionbridge, specialises.

In one recent recruitment advertisement, the company asked people to consider a career with Lionbridge because they would not be required to wear a suit.

Another factor cited in the company's favour was that it operated flexitime working arrangements, divorced from the "nine-to-five" structure in most firms.

Ms Dempsey has also been involved in implementing a "recommend-a-friend" programme at the company, where somebody already working there suggests to suitably qualified friends that they enquire about vacancies.

Much of this is new thinking and thinking with which Ms Dempsey is comfortable. But she is less content with other aspects of the computer sector, such as the mountains of acronyms and jargon which she has to deal with on a daily basis. "Some day I am going to write a book on all the endless jargon I have come across," she says.

However, at 32 she admits to being a dedicated follower of new management techniques and is glad not to be in a "job where I am low down the pecking order".

She says her youth is an advantage in the job because most of the staff are in their twenties or thirties.

She believes that if she worked in a more conventional industry, at 32 she would not be general manager. So the sector has not only infused her with new ideas on staff relations and productivity, but also given her personal opportunities, she says.

Lionbridge, a US company headquartered in Boston, currently has an annual turnover of $40 million (£27 million) and employs 280 people in a variety of localisation centres around the world.

However, more than half of that employment is provided at Ms Dempsey's two centres - in Blackrock, Co Dublin and Ballina, Co Mayo.

The company's main business is localisation - the modification of software products for local markets - and 40 per cent growth in revenues this year is expected to prompt it to seek a listing on Nasdaq in the near future.

If this happens, Ms Dempsey, with generous stock options, will be well placed to benefit.

However, while she is personally fulfilled by her job, she is frustrated that the localisation industry, which employs 5,000 people in the Republic, is little understood and often neglected. She says that people's eyes "glaze over" when she uses the word localisation and she praises anyone in Lionbridge who can explain what it means in five seconds to a stranger.

Simply put, it means translating software products into the language of the market in which they are being sold.

But she points out that this is only a small part of what Lionbridge does and other areas of importance are testing and engineering software. In future, the company will also provide website localisation and e-support as part of its portfolio.

The extension to the range of services offered by the company is an important development in an industry that is never stationary. She knows this because she has been in it for most of her working years in some capacity.

A native southside Dubliner, after graduating with an Applied Languages degree from DCU, Ms Dempsey spent seven years working for Siemens Nixdorf in Dublin, when she first got involved in localisation.

It was during this period she realised that sitting in front of a computer terminal translating material did not fulfil her needs. Instead she moved quickly into project management which proved to be a valuable experience when she later moved to Lionbridge.

She then left the German company and was soon working for her current employer in several positions, including senior business unit manager. She became general manager this year. The company has 30 major clients - Novell, Sun, Corel and Oracle among them - and Ms Dempsey says all activity revolves around "repeatable, sustainable business".

Apart from doing business with the large software producers, Ms Dempsey says one of the biggest achievements of Lionbridge in the Republic has been retaining staff. "We have a less than 4 per cent turnover in staff each year and that is very low for this industry," she points out.

She claims that pay is not the sole factor in retaining people. She says her employees may be able to get higher wages elsewhere, but they may have to work 12 and 14-hour days. An added bonus, she says, is the approximate 50:50 ratio of men to women which has been maintained in the company.

Translating software products can often be a difficult compromise, she explains. While everyone wants a product which reflects its local market, customers are not always prepared to pay the resulting cost.

The pressure in her job comes mostly from clients. Most of them are large blue-chip companies and they expect their products to be translated, tested or re-engineered quickly. For example, Lionbridge's contract with Sony involves translation of product within 24 hours.

This results in intense bursts of activity at the company, she says, and this is what she likes about the job. She says most employees seem to thrive on the energy too.

The company has been conducting a series of talks with local schools about the IT industry, particularly trying to coax girls into the sector.

She believes the reluctance of many girls to enter the industry "stems from long-established cultural patterns".

"From day one, it is girls who play with dolls and boys play with cars and nobody ever seems to ask why this is so," she says. "Many men may not like it, but women are more logical, so this area is made for them." Surrounded by the accessories of the electronic age in Lionbridge's offices in Blackrock, Ms Dempsey likes to circulate among staff and says she is not one "to hide in my office".

One problem which she and her staff have to grapple with is Dublin's chronic traffic problem. "Commuting is a huge topic here and it is a constant headache for those that live a long distance from Blackrock," she says.

She adds that Lionbridge is "maxed out" in terms of space at Blackrock and a move elsewhere might have to be considered in the future. However, with the bleak traffic picture, she jokes that if the company moved to a new location further north she might have to consider her own position as she lives five minutes from Blackrock.

The likely future of the company on Nasdaq is not something Lionbridge or Ms Dempsey feel like rushing into. "The company is being advised by Morgan Stanley and we will only go onto the market when the company is ready and the international markets are looking up," she says.