Hi everyone, this is Kevin. Today is Monday, September 20th (date recorded).
Because we are expanding and growing our business to meet the needs of the Navy, Electric Boat continues to grow at a level not seen in a generation—we’ve hired about 18,000 employees in the last decade. Our goal is to hire more than 3,000 more people this year, and we could use your help to reach that goal. Andrew Bond, our VP of Human Resources, is with me today. Andrew; thanks for joining. Let’s talk about the new employee referral program.
Thanks Kevin, great to be here. The idea behind the new employee referral program, called “Referral Radar,” is that there’s no better resource for finding our future employees than our current employees. EB is already a leader referring great candidates for hire, and we want to increase that even more and create a little friendly competition in the process.
We’re asking employees to identify people who would be a good fit for our company, and then tell those people about why they like working at EB and how to apply to work here. When these folks apply and list the employee as the referral, the employee is automatically entered into a raffle for a variety of prizes each month. If the referral is hired, the employee who made the referral is entered into a second drawing for a larger prize.
So we get to benefit by having new team members join EB who are vetted by our employees and our referring employees get the added benefit of being eligible for some fabulous prizes. Let’s give people an idea about the kind of prizes they might win and the program’s guidelines.
There will be a variety of prizes; for example, there will be tickets to local tourist attractions and venues, restaurants, gift cards, along with cash. We launched the pilot for the program on September 1st and the first drawing was held last week and that included all system-documented referrals from January 1st of this year through August 31st, which represents more than 300 new hires this year alone.
For each referral, employees will receive one entry into the raffle. There is no limit on the number of people who can apply and list an employee as a referral; however, the same person applying for different positions will count as only one referral. Applicants just need to list the name of the current employee that referred them on their profile and the employee will be entered into the drawing.
Raffle prizes will fall into two categories: Tier I and Tier II. A Tier I prize will be awarded to employees when their referral is hired and a Tier II prize when a referral applies for a position. If someone wins both a Tier I and Tier II prize in the same month, they will be given the option as to which prize they would like to receive. For example, the prizes for this first drawing are $2,500 dollars for Tier I and $500 dollars for Tier 2. Employees can refer to the recent article published on Homeport for referral eligibility and further details about the program.
Kevin, I do have some exciting news. We are going to change the schedule a little bit for the month of September because we just received a special prize of two tickets to the Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers game on October 3rd. I encourage everyone to enter your referrals now for the drawing on September 29th to get a chance to see the Patriots take on Tom Brady and Gronk at Foxboro!
As a diehard Bills fan, it gives me some pleasure to consider Patriots fans there at Foxboro trying to figure out, do they root for their Patriots, and a new quarterback who has only thrown for one touchdown in two weeks, or do they root for Brady, the greatest of all time, and Gronk? Brady has thrown nine touchdowns in just two weeks. It’s easy to see there will be some confused Patriot fans at Foxboro that particular game.
Thanks Andrew. Electric Boat is the largest private employer in CT and RI, and this referral program is a great way to further expand our ranks and continue to provide our region with life-long, high-paying, skilled careers in service to our nation.
Thanks everyone; we’ll talk again soon.
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