Aviation Week & Space Technology
08/20/2007, page 86
Carole Rickard Hedden
Phoenix
To remain competitive, U.S. A&D companies respond to employee needs and preferences
Printed headline: The Future: Flexibility
Four generations of workers occupy the cubicles and factory floors of the aerospace/defense industry. Among them are individuals who benefited from Sputnik-era education benefits and used slide rules, as well as employees who use instant-messaging to resolve complex design issues.
Despite this broad band, the workplace of 2007 looks largely the same as it did 20 years ago. Mail codes indicate the closest structural column and office location. Offices are arranged by rank, and conference rooms provide an area suitable for greeting customers and the bosses.
Job descriptions are edited and revised versions of what were used decades previously, and career plans tend to look just as those of the 1990s did—the last time major change took place and engineers moved closer to production to force collaboration.
All of this is likely to change if the aerospace/defense industry plans to compete effectively with other high-tech industries for highly talented workers. While all-new organizations can stand up 21st-century work environments, it is usually more difficult for larger, mature corporations comprised of multiple legacy organizations to do so.
Several senior A&D leaders are seeking change to processes and technology advancements. While integrated product and high-performance work teams are hallmarks of such workforce transformation, Lean and Six Sigma don’t have the capacity to improve motivation, creativity and passion, which these executives believe are essential in attracting top talent and sustaining the development of new technologies.
These 21st-century efforts target how to fully engage workers. The two key concepts they identify are recognition that there are four generations of people working together for a common goal, with each generation and every individual having unique sets of motivators, and creation of a work environment that capitalizes on the skills of the multigenerational workforce.
The four generations—Matures, Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials—were educated differently, with different tools and different measures of capability. The newest generation’s requirements were captured in a study conducted by NAS Recruitment, an agency of McCann Worldgroup. They want to learn and participate in decision-making, they want mentors, they are skeptical and they value fairness and ethical behavior. They also expect customized career paths molded to the individual, “creating a sense of control,” and they value the newest and best technology and tools to do their jobs.
Northrop Grumman is piloting new-age workspace design to support increased productivity and create an environment for how people work today.Credit: NORTHROP GRUMMAN |
Ed Hoffman, director of NASA’s Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership (Appel), Office of the Chief Engineer, has worked to cross the generational divide through his own work assignments, mentoring mid-level and new-hire NASA employees, and teaching university courses.
“People need to reach out, speak out and look for opportunities to connect with others,” Hoffman says. “However, we need to look at the workforce as a system, which is difficult because we work in a fragmented mode. It’s a system, just as is a system we design.
“I’m excited to see the talent that is graduating from our universities,” Hoffman adds. “I believe they are exceptional [compared] to where I was 20 years ago. They’re more attuned to working on teams and have more of a project/systems sensibility. But we let them flounder. We continue to misread their need for networks, for forums, for faces they can talk to. If we can answer these needs, it will help them develop a sense of the history that they need, the understanding of the strategies behind defense or space exploration or mass transportation. I see people who walk through our corridors who don’t have that sense of history.”
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Part of the answer is in putting the right people in the right jobs. William Bonstetter, founder and president of TTI Performance Systems, says the tendency is to hire individuals based on broad job descriptions. Instead, he says organizations need to identify a list of 4-5 specific skills and compare the individual to these skills. “If you get beyond four or five, it’s a guarantee for frustration,” Bonstetter notes.
A one-size-fits-all approach isn’t the solution, he adds. “A&D is an industry of exploration and curiosity, of constant learning. It’s in your best interest to determine what that means to the individual and respond to it. The better the organization does with this, the more intense the commitment and effort by the individual.”
Bonstetter says how people work is just as important as what they do. He examines what drives a person’s performance in the work environment using six values. For instance, someone who responds to the assessment with high regard for the theoretical has a drive for knowledge. “This is a person whose rewards need to include a large budget for books, research, seminars,” he explains.
Bonstetter’s observations are reflected in this year’s Aviation Week Workforce Study. Employees responding to the survey put ongoing learning and development on par with compensation in terms of influencing career decisions.
Northrop Grumman Corp. President and COO Wes Bush and Lockheed Martin Aeronautics President Ralph Heath do more than talk about valuing individuals and looking to the future when it comes to the A&D workforce. They’re piloting programs, gathering data and making shifts within their organizations.
Lockheed Martin is absent a generation, according to Heath, and it’s difficult to fill the void of employees in the mid-level experience area. There would be some value to attracting people from other industries, but Heath is focused on developing the people already in place.
“We must maintain a level of new-graduate hiring, regardless of the situation,” he says. Lockheed Martin continued to hire new college graduates through the last defense cycle downturn, bringing in nearly 10,000 each year between 1998 and 2002.
Heath pulled together his top 30 leaders for three days in February to discuss nothing but workforce success and the work environment.
“We can’t attract or retain the younger workforce unless we change the environment in all respects,” Heath told his leaders. “It’s not just the physical properties, though flexibility and life expectations are important. We’re talking about the content of the work. We know that the interaction between an employee and his or her immediate boss is the single most important parameter in keeping [that employee].”
To address this reality, Heath called for a new focus on leadership development. But he’s changed the model. Instead of more experienced employees mentoring new employees, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics leaders are being mentored by new hires.
“We need them to train us as to how to be better bosses,” says Heath. “My ‘ah-hah’ moment: young people are very well-equipped, and it’s exciting for me to see how well the universities have prepared them. Now I need to figure how to help them fill the void that experience provides.”
A second challenge is transitioning more experienced workers. “I’m not talking about just keeping them around longer,” Heath asserts. “I need them to serve as consultants to the rest of the organization.”
Such a process is a major concern for Northrop Grumman, as well. In addition to putting in place a variety of knowledge-management processes (some highly informal and personal, others relying on technology), the company is testing a program to transition employees from full-time work to filling the very real void of K-12 science and math teachers. The goal is to assure a qualified source of teachers and provide K-12 students with accurate information about aerospace/defense careers.
Bush has put in place a continuous planning process to support innovation, strategy, technology and optimizing the work-life balance. The goal is to gather ideas from throughout the organization, not just from managers.
“One of the central things we are looking at is flexibility. If we’re going to attract people to Northrop Grumman, we have to be flexible and diverse in how we respond to people,” notes Bush. There are pilot programs to look at alternative work schedules, satellite offices to reduce commute times and new and different workspaces.
A second floor at one of the corporation’s El Segundo, Calif., buildings is a template for testing new ideas about physical workspace.
To promote this kind of work environment, the group is also piloting the policies and procedures that will allow greater flexibility.
To measure the pilot’s success, Sandra Evers-Manley, Northrop Grumman’s vice president of corporate responsibility, and her team are measuring everything from retention and attrition to space usage and productivity.
Another pilot program underway in developing future leaders is Leading One Northrop Grumman (Lead1NG). As with other process-oriented development programs (such as Six Sigma and Lean) a diverse group from across the company comes together to tackle a problem the business faces.
Similar to the leadership programs in cities across the U.S., the Northrop Grumman approach pushes class members to research, test and develop a solution presented in a white paper. The leadership program targets professional development. However, it also creates a sense of responsibility among a broader group of employees for the corporation and its success, beyond the vice presidents who head parts of the organization.
“If you’re going to have a competitive advantage, it inherently involves risk and doing some things differently,” Bush says when queried about the expense in today’s Wall Street-driven business world. “These are steps we need to take.”
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