Engage employees
From Keebaugh’s first day on the job, he began discussing the
new growth targets with employees.
“We had to explain to everybody, ‘This is why it’s important that
we change our mode,’” Keebaugh says. “‘We can go on and on in
our legacy business, but the markets in that legacy and sole-source
(in which Raytheon is the only source for a certain product) are
not going to grow to the level we want to grow as a company, and
here is our strategy for accomplishing this.’ There was an education part to it.”
Reaching all of the employees was challenging because
Keebaugh has associates spread across 14 different locations. But
he made a point of personally visiting each location — and continues to do so once a year — in what’s called a road show.
“We discuss, ‘Here is our strategy; here’s what we need to do to
implement the strategy,’” Keebaugh says. “We talk about the markets in addition to our strategy. Then we follow that up with a
question-and-answer period.”
Also, quarterly, he holds a town-hall teleconference that reports
on performance for the past quarter, and then branches into topics
of general interest to all employees. Each employee can view the
town hall on his or her desktop computer and can e-mail questions
directly to the host of the session, who poses them to Keebaugh.
The company also uses a newsletter and an internal Web site that is
updated daily with company news and information, all in an effort to
keep in touch with employees and to make sure the dialogue can flow
both ways.
“The idea is to get this down and personalized so that their goals
and objectives are totally aligned with where the business is headed,” Keebaugh says.
Reporting back on how the company is doing is key to keeping
employees engaged and focused.
“They take pride in the fact that they are contributing to that,
when we report back to them here’s how we did,” Keebaugh says.
“We do a lot that personalizes it with specific projects and recognizing individual performance.”
All nonunion employees participate in profit-sharing, and the
company also has a bonus system, which further ensures that
employees are truly invested in the company’s growth, Keebaugh
says.
“They have some skin in the game,” he says.
Match talent to the challenge
Squeezing a few percentage points of growth out of the company
meant that there needed to be some changes, both in the current
employee mindset as well as the type of person that was recruited
in the future.
A growth culture and mindset didn’t exist within his business at
Raytheon, so Keebaugh turned to other businesses in the company that had the culture he wanted to emulate and asked for
their help. He also hired outside consultants to infuse fresh ideas.
“We had to develop the processes that were best practices,”
Keebaugh says. “We had to get the discipline so that we pursue the
opportunities in a structured way to take advantage of the lessons
learned not only from what we’ve learned from our pursuits but
other businesses in Raytheon.”
He also hired retirees from some of Raytheon’s key customers to
come in to the company and help them look for opportunities. The
new hires had inside knowledge of the customers’ future directions and also what problems the customers had that were constant pains that Raytheon could perhaps solve.
“These are people who had been essentially systems engineers
and program managers of our customer set, who understood not
only what the customer’s current problems were but what the hot
buttons and focus areas for the future are,” Keebaugh says. “Then,
we could tailor our solutions to where the customer was headed
and be able to show them a path forward.”
The other challenge was making sure there were enough talented
recruits to fill openings created by growth. Raytheon developed an
executive liaison program that pairs executives with particular colleges and universities. The executives spend time on campus in
social settings, speaking in classes, representing the company at job
fairs and keeping an eye out for the next recruits. Keebaugh himself
is the executive liaison to Penn State University, his alma mater. The
company has about 50 relationships with schools, particularly with
those that are strong in engineering and supply chain management.
“Our business recruited slightly under 200 college people last
year,” Keebaugh says. “We also recruit at the experienced level.”
To recruit more senior leaders, Raytheon encourages its employees to refer friends and family for jobs at Raytheon. Employees are
paid a bonus if the person they recommend is hired.
“If you are working here, you know the kind of people we want
to bring on board,” Keebaugh says. “That pays off.”
The success rate is higher for referrals than for people who just
send in an application off the street.
You also have to make sure pay rates are keeping up with the
local competition, something Raytheon does at a local level.
“The thing you have to make sure with surveys is that they are
local,” Keebaugh says. “Recruiting for California is different than
recruiting for Dallas, Texas.”
To attract the best available talent, the company also uses a flexible work schedule, including an option at some sites for employees to work what’s called a 9/80, which means they work nine
hours a day for nine days, and take off on the 10th day, which is
every other Friday.