Hi everyone, it’s Kevin, today is Thursday, July 23rd. (Podcast)
We’ve had a few additional cases of COVID-19, with several at Quonset Point. One is for an individual who has been out since March who did 2852 (voluntary unpaid leave used by employees at the start of COVID) and then as we tried to find out how to get that individual back to work, we learned that they had been sick and are in the hospital, currently up at Massachusetts General. While we can’t give any details about that particular employee, I just want to make sure that you all are putting him in your thoughts and prayers and hoping he makes a full recovery. Another case is at the Newport engineering office, a Quonset Point employee who tested positive as a result of EB-provided screening. As you’ve seen in the news, some of these test results are coming in very late; it took about seven days before we learned about the results and that one individual was positive. Fortunately, that individual has been out of work, so we don’t see that as a significant spread issue for us.
Finally, we had one additional employee who attended a funeral down in Florida—as you well know, Florida has been a hotspot. Per the protocol, individuals traveling to Florida are quarantined for 14 days before coming back to Rhode Island; that individual was tested in the meantime, and fortunately for us, we identified the individual as positive for COVID before they came back to EB, so the protocol worked, the quarantined worked, and our processes are working for the company to keep the spread across all of our facilities down. We are going to start posting this type of information about individual cases on EB Landing within the next few days. So you can look there for positive case data information moving forward. (*One additional case came through after the podcast was recorded. The employee works in New London in department 416, building 800. Their last day at work was July 9, 2020 and they were tested on July 13, 2020.)
For today’s broadcast I’m joined by Andrew Bond, our new Vice President of Human Resources. I’m proud to have him on the team. Andrew joined the leadership team on June 29th. We’re going to talk a little bit about Andrew and his priorities for the HR organization now that he’s had all of four weeks on board. We’ll also talk a little bit about what we’re doing with the employee incentive program. As we’ve previously advertised, next week all employees will receive the details on our incentive program for the second half of this year, and we expect the checks for the first-half incentive to be out the week of July 27th.
Andrew, welcome to the podcast and to Electric Boat, it’s great to have you on board. So tell me a little bit about yourself.
AB: Thank you Kevin, I’m very proud to be here. I’m joining Electric Boat after 22 years at General Dynamics Bath Iron Works up in Bath, Maine building destroyers for the United States Navy. I started my career as a naval architect and worked through all parts of the business. For the past four years I’ve been leading the HR organization up at Bath. I understand the strong linkage between the business need and the services and support that human resources really needs to provide. I’m also passionate about shipbuilding and the people that work in our business.
On the personal side, my wife and children and I are really settling into Connecticut; we really appreciate the warm welcome that everyone has given us.
KG: Thanks Andrew, it’s great to have you aboard. You’ve joined EB at an incredibly exciting time. We’re going to see, over the course of the next ten years, our sales and earnings double; it’s an incredible time to be part of this business and contributing to our nation’s defense. I know you share my passion for the work that we do in support of our nation.
With your combined background in shipbuilding and HR, I’m confident you will help us continue to strengthen our company’s culture and develop our people. So you’ve had a little bit of run time since you joined us; talk about your priorities. What’s uppermost on your list and why?
AB: Fundamentally, we’re all shipbuilders, no matter what we do, and no part of our business can work effectively without the right people with the right skills. The key priority for me and our team is to strengthen and grow the shipbuilders of Electric Boat. We have been and continue to hire and train the next generation of shipbuilders and the key to that, given the unique nature of our business, is to leverage the experience that we have and ensure that knowledge transfer as we see record levels of retirements. These are folks that have long and proud careers here; we really need the benefit of their knowledge as we transition to the next generation. We also have a great opportunity to broaden the diversity of our workforce to bring new thoughts and new innovations which will make us stronger as a company. One thing we can’t ever forget is that shipbuilding is unique in that we offer a career, not just a job. It’s in our best interest and the individual’s best interest that we continue to prepare and develop people for new and different roles across the business. That’s a key priority.
As I look at the HR organization, we are a support organization—we exist to support everyone here. We’re taking a look at our key processes to make sure we’re providing good and efficient service. We want to make sure that people have access to the information they need, across the board, whether that be a benefits question or knowing what’s going on in the business with vehicles like these podcasts, access to Homeport or EB Landing, and later this year, the rollout of EB-TV. Stay tuned for that. Also, I’m looking forward to continuing our strong partnerships with the leadership across our unions.
KG: I agree, and recognize that your team is an integral part of the success of Electric Boat. The people who listen to this broadcast have heard me say, many times, we are, as a leadership team and as employees across this business, responsible for knocking down obstacles that impact our production supervisors and our tradesmen and women. From my perspective, they are on a pedestal, and we serve them. With that kind of team-based mindset throughout the organization, EB will continue to improve, and I’m looking forward to continuing that effort.
Let’s now talk a little bit about what we’re doing to evolve our culture to one that is more focused on pay for performance. For me it’s vital that every one of us feels accountability and ownership for achieving our goals. That’s why this year we’ve established a significant number of goals for the organization, and we’re making good progress to those ends. I also believe our incentive program should reward individual efforts that advance the collective mission of Electric Boat. I’d like you to give me a little perspective on what we’ve been doing to get the incentive program on the right foot.
AB: Let me say upfront that one thing that won’t change in the incentive program is that safety remains paramount and our number one-priority, so that piece of the program will remain the same. But in an effort to achieve those goals that you just described, we’ve restructured the program to be more relatable to each organization so that the goals that will roll out really enable each employee to feel ownership and see how their day-to-day performance moves EB forward and gets us closer to our goals as an organization. Next week we’ll roll out the program across the company. Each Vice President will communicate the details and the goals of their specific business area, and each Vice President will also do a podcast to their organization with those details.
KG: I think this is a needed change. The purpose of the goals is to make sure that we have a detailed listing of key milestones. When we think about the way EB is structured, there are different business segments that work on this business from different directions. So it’s important that as we pay for performance, that we all better understand and are better connected on how the work we do fits into the larger whole of Electric Boat looking both upstream and downstream at our product value stream.
We made this change in response to feedback that we received from all of the employee focus groups undertaken by our values team over the course of the past year. That’s really what this is about— having an incentive program that one, recognizes the impact each of us can have on the company’s success and two, fosters an environment where employees feel valued, behave with integrity and purpose, and commit themselves to excellence in what they do.
Andrew, thanks for taking the time today to help our employees get to know you little bit better.
AB: Thank you for the opportunity and my pleasure.
KG: Thanks everyone; we’ll talk again soon.
