Communication Plan to Improve Employee Satisfaction

Paul Anderson, Sela Britton, Jewel Brundrett, Christian Lehman, Evan Molnar, Chad Stanger

October 19, 2017

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3
The Issue of Employee Satisfaction 3
Where We Stand Today 3
Recommendations to Improve Company Culture 4
Introduction to the Issue of Employee Satisfaction 5
Document Forecast 5
Boeings Internal Narrative: What Can You Do For Us? 5
Boeings External Narrative: Perceived as Overly Political, 5
Inconsiderate, and Outdated 5
Background & Analysis 5
Old Employees Believe Too Political, While New Believe No Room for Promotions 5
Qualitative Data Shows Employees are Unsatisfied 6
Comments from Our Employees 6
Possible Repercussions for Boeing 7
Recommendation 1: Listening Workshops to Facilitate Communication 7
Bridging the Manager/Employee Relationship Gap 7
Implementing Weekly Workshops to Improve Communication 7
Our Employees Are More Than Just A Number 8
Increased Employee Job Satisfaction & Organizational Commitment 8
Boosting Employee Confidence in the Company 8
Recommendation 2: Improve Work-Life Balance to 8
Increase Efficiency at Work 8
Implementing Head Clearing Seminars 8
Seminars Increase Work Efficiency 9
Health & Wellness Field Trips and Their Outcome 9
Costs Associated with Promoting Health and Wellness 9
Recommendation 3: Focus on Developing Our Youth 9
Speed up Promotion Timeline 9
Outcome for Clear Guidelines 9
Relevant Costs Due to Increased Promotions 10
Moving Forward 10
Measuring Progress 10
Bridging the Gap Increases ROI 10
Health and Wellness Decreases Physiological Withdrawal 11
Youth Leads to Increase in Production and Innovation 12
Conclusion 12
References 14
Appendices A-E 16
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Executive Summary
In the past few years as Boeing has reached optimal success, the company has stopped
prioritizing employee satisfaction and its value. Although we attempt to portray a positive work
environment that promotes advancement and wellness, many employees feel that Boeing is on
the decline in terms of the internal structure of the company. The disconnect between our
internal and external image in relation to our employees, provides an opportunity for
improvement within our company. By implementing the three recommendations suggested in
this document and focusing on our employees well-being, self-worth, and voice, Boeing can
become an even better company than it is today.

The Issue of Employee Satisfaction

This report will provide a framework to help tackle the overall issue of employee satisfaction in
order to remain a prevalent industry leader for the future. More specifically, this document will
explain the underlying issues of an overly bureaucratic company culture, poor work-life balance,
and the lack of opportunity to advance within the company (GlassDoor).

Where We Stand Today

Today we are seen as a very strong company externally, but when put under a microscope the
internal issues of unsatisfied employees becomes evident. The root cause analysis shows that
there are three key issues, all falling under the main internal problem of unsatisfied employees.
This helped emphasize the multiple current issues such as outdated policies & culture, too
many hours, and the aging workforce. We understand for this success to continue, our values
are only as strong as our actions.
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Speaking up is a cornerstone for building an open and accountable workplace

culture...raising issues and concerns without fear of retaliation enables openness which
can lead to improved business performance and inspire greater innovation - Boeing

A company's success starts with the internal and over time will flower into the external. We
dove into the disconnect between Boeings values and how employees were being treated by
breaking down 100 random Glassdoor.com employee reviews. This was the basis of their
current or past relationship with Boeing, exposing the three major issues. We further broke
these reviews down based on whether the employee has been with Boeing for 5 years or less,
opposed to 8 years or more allowing us to make the assumption that millennials were being
underutilized.

Recommendations to Improve Company Culture

This proposal will highlight the steps being taken to address the current issues, provide
recommendations, and build an unshakable level of trust for our current and future clients.
Keeping the employee work environment more positive, fluid, and effective will directly impact
our customers positively.
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Introduction to the Issue of Employee Satisfaction

Our team has conducted research to explore Boeings internal and external narratives and
identified a key issue regarding employee satisfaction and the companys internal structure.
After analyzing these two elements, we identified a disconnect between what Boeing wants
their employees to think and what their employees actually think of the company.

Document Forecast
This document will address employees opinions of Boeings overly bureaucratic culture, the
poor work-life balance, and the minimal room for growth within the company. Boeing has
become an extremely successful company in the past five years, outdoing its competitors in
product sales and optimizing its financials, however, its internal structure and employee
satisfaction is often overlooked regardless of importance. This issue presents us with an
opportunity to encompass our core values to their fullest extent and improve company culture
overall. We will provide several recommendations that will each target the root causes of our
issue. Our recommendations will improve employee retention, the efficiency of work days, and
the value our employees feel within the company.

Boeings Internal Narrative: What Can You Do For Us?

Boeings internal view of our employees may be a part of what is causing the problem. On
Boeings website, the commitment to employees page does not actually state what we do for
our employees, saying instead what we expect from our employees. This kind of attitude
exemplifies a corporate culture that prioritizes profit over all else. This practice of placing more
emphasis on the bottom line, and treating employees as only a means to achieve this can result
in the negative effects we are examining within this report.

Boeings External Narrative: Perceived as Overly Political, Inconsiderate, and Outdated

Boeings goals of successful financials over everything else come at a cost however. Employees
have expressed frustration at the way the company is run. Employees are saying that Boeing
has a very political and overly bureaucratic company culture, they feel undervalued in the
system, and that the company culture is outdated and their workforce is too old.

Background and Analysis

In order to gather data regarding this issue, we relied primarily on employee reviews on
Glassdoor.com. We wanted to focus our findings on two main employee groups: employees
that have worked at Boeing for eight or more years and employees that have worked at the
company for five years or less. We wanted to highlight the two age groups in order to see if
they felt differently about the problems at Boeing. With over 5,000 reviews on GlassDoor, we
also wanted to focus on the more recent data, so we limited our sample to reviews written
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within the past year. By randomly selecting 100 reviews that fit our criteria (written in 2017 and
provided the length of employment), we were able to group our findings based on the three
major issues that lead to unsatisfied employees.

Old Employees Believe Too Political, While New Believe No Room for Promotions
When sampling 100 different reviews, we found that 69 out of 100 fell into the 8 or more years
of employment category, while only 31 fell into the five years or less category. This shows that a
heavy majority of Boeings workforce is older in age and has worked in the company for a long
amount of time. Fifty-eight percent of the employees that have worked at Boeing for a eight
years or more believe that the company is too political, taking the largest majority over the
other two issues, while 74 percent of the employees that have been employed for five years or
less believe that the lack of room for promotion is the largest issue. This difference gives us a
better understanding of what the younger and newer employees see problematic, versus the
older vets in the company. By understanding this, we might be able to implement certain
recommendations for each age group, based on what they feel needs to be improved the most.

Qualitative Data Shows Employees are Unsatisfied

Through our research we have found that many employees feel that their voices go unheard
and that upper management does not listen to them, as exemplified by this quote from a
employee review on GlassDoor. There is way too much bureaucracy. It is extremely challenging
to get anything done Leadership will lash out instead of understanding why their idea
wouldn't be feasible (-Materials Engineer in Charleston)

Another comment stated, If you are a high achieving and hard working millennial dont expect
to be rewarded fairly. In Boeings eyes, all millennials are created equal and should get
minimum pay (-Current, Anonymous Employee). This suggests that the newer employees feel
undervalued and there is little room for promotion opportunities.

One employee had this to say, With forced overtime there is no work/life balance. Depending
on where you end up, that's a real possibility. You work to live, you dont live to work (Former
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Employee, Anonymous). This illustrates that several employees feel as though the job takes up
too much of their life, and that they are unhappy about it.

Possible Repercussions for Boeing

This disconnect with our employees could have severe repercussions for Boeing as a company.
Employees who feel as though the company they work for does not care about them are more
likely to leave the company, or not put forth their best effort in their work (-Joe Folkman, as
quoted by Forbes). This can have a major effect on Boeing as a loss of critical employees could
slow down innovation and cause us to fall behind our competitors. A loss of experienced
personnel could also slow down our production rate and cause additional oversight in the
production process. In addition, a loss of effort put forth by employees could cause mistakes to
occur during the construction of our products, which could lead to a catastrophic failure and
cause a major backlash to our company. The beliefs that our employees hold expose us to a
large amount of risk if left untreated, and could impact our future success.

Recommendation 1: Listening Workshops To Facilitate Communication

Bridging the Manager/Employee Relationship Gap
Based on our employee complaints, we would recommend implementing effective listening
workshops to remove the division between upper management and subordinates. To mitigate
the narrative differences, Boeing must teach its leaders to consider all viewpoints, regardless of
the speakers positioning within the company. Currently, employees are not happy because
they feel as though managers put profits at a higher level of importance than themselves. As
workers become more frustrated, our senior management could lose their departments
foundational employees. To prevent such a disaster, we should establish weekly workshops for
upper management and lower-level employees.

Implementing Weekly Workshops to Improve Communication

These workshops will help Boeings managers communicate more effectively with their
subordinates. Every other week, the workshops will consist of lower-level employees sharing
any comments, suggestions, issues, and ideas they have with upper management. Upper
management will address these various concerns, and explore new perspectives on the
companys issues. In the second rotation, employees will participate in team bonding activities,
similar to Googles 20% Time initiative. The program dedicates 20% of Google employees time
to work on whatever interests them. As a result, 50% of Googles products have developed
from this free time, including Gmail and AdSense (Lovejoy, 2013). Although allocated time is
dedicated to work on anything of interest, these workshops improve employee communication
and facilitate innovation within the company.

Our Employees Are More Than Just A Number

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Boeing workers feel as though they are just a number, or a means of generating profit for the
company. Upper management must understand that talented employees are the greatest asset
of any company, especially Boeing. To illustrate each individuals importance, these workshops
will teach managers and lower-level employees to work together. In order for this
recommendation to be successful, managers must remain open-minded to all ideas because
the greatest, new concept can come from any Boeing employee. Active listening is a crucial
component to ensuring to your audience that their requests, comments, and complaints are
heard and considered.

Increased Employee Job Satisfaction & Organizational Commitment

Listening workshops are a highly recommended method to resolving the conflicts within our
internal and external narratives. Managers who actively listen and communicate with
subordinates will notice more affective and normative commitment from workers. This results
from job satisfaction, which correlates strongly with organizational commitment. Boeing
employees can rejoice as their feelings and opinions are considered. Effective management will
benefit as workers feel more inclined to stay with Boeing. Theoretically, this will increase
employees levels of organizational commitment.

Boosting Employee Confidence in the Company

In the midst of consistent layoffs, it is vital that employees understand that we value their hard
work. Remaining workers experience survivor syndrome, but upper management must reassure
employees that they are capable of succeeding at Boeing. As we continue to cut costs, we must
ensure employees that their jobs are secure. If we utilize approaches learned in the workshop,
we can communicate this fact more easily to subordinates. To reiterate our recommendation,
upper management should attend weekly workshops to develop and reinforce the
aforementioned components regarding effective listening.

Recommendation 2: Improve Work-Life Balance to Increase Efficiency at Work

Implementing Head Clearing Seminars
A problem Boeing employees are facing is a unhealthy work-life balance. When talking to
Boeings former Director of Operations, Robert Stanger, he said at one point, I worked 12
hours days 7 days a week. That comes out to 84 hour weeks resulting in no time for personal
growth. In order to improve employees work-life balance, we are suggesting to take out an
hour of work each day and implement a head clearing seminar taught by health and wellness
professionals.

Seminars Increase Work Efficiency

By implementing a head clearing seminar, we are confident this will increase work efficiency
resulting in utilizing their time more productively. Even though employees would be taking an
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hour break each day, their minds will be clear and result in a productive landscape across the
company. We believe that breaks during the work day will actually result in less hours spent at
the office because our employees will be working productively rather than wasting time.

Health & Wellness Field Trips and Their Outcome

Working in a very competitive landscape can be very stressful. Additionally, many employees
travel a considerable amount throughout the year, which also puts strains on our employees
financially and allows for limited time spent with their families. Our team has recognized that it
is very important to stay active, healthy, and have a substantial amount of time with their
family. We are suggesting that our mobile employees receive the opportunity for at least one
day of travel time for personal and expense free leisure.

Costs Associated with Promoting Health and Wellness

Even though we are suggesting to take out an hour of work everyday, we believe this will not
add any extra costs. We would hold our employees accountable to increase their performance
efficiency on daily tasks and monitor for actual results. We believe that if employees work more
efficiently, there would be less hours spent in the office. By promoting health and wellness we
believe the costs would balance out and result in our employees having a positive work-life
balance.

Recommendation 3: Focus on Developing Our Youth

Speed up Promotion Timeline
Currently, 14,000 Boeing employees are 61+ years of age. While millennials are interested in
working for Boeing, new employees find themselves surrounded by an older workforce. Experts
say 35% of Boeing's workforce will be retiring in the upcoming years and it will take 10-20 years
to replace these employees (Aerospace Industries Association). In order to fix this situation, we
believe it is very important develop our youth through growth in the business by having
attainable promotions. One way to increase promotions and make them attainable is through
creating very clear guidelines addressing how to be promoted. These guidelines will set
standards for what is expected out of every position and what actions and behavior is
considered excellent.

Outcome for Clear Guidelines

Every job at Boeing is different and we believe clear guidelines for each one can assist our
youth in growing into the company. Additionally, the guidelines would give millennials the
confidence that there is opportunity to move up within the organization. We are confident that
if there are clear and strict guidelines we will have a higher retention rate, more growth in the
company, and will be able to protect our company if there are potential retiring employees.
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Relevant Costs Due to Increased Promotions

By speeding up the promotion timeline, costs would increase due to more employees requiring
higher salaries. However, the high cost would result in a more protection incase of a large
amount of employees retiring near the same time span. Overall, implementing a faster
promotion timeline would allow employees to understand multiple levels of the business and
increase growth through our youth resulting in a more educated and well rounded age group of
employees.

Moving Forward
We have developed three recommendations going forward that will strengthen employee
satisfaction, performance, and commitment. Appendix C, D, and E will show the next steps and
timeline for each individual recommendation. A detailed and overall forecasted budget of the
recommendations is shown in Appendix B. The following section will cover an in-depth cost of
the recommendations along with the anticipated ROI.

Measuring Progress
To strengthen our results and ensure our anticipated ROI trends upward, surveys to measure
employee satisfaction will be conducted on a rolling basis. Surveys will consist of 5 questions to
find out how effective and enjoyable the programs have been. The responses will be conducted
on a 10-point grading scale, 10 being very enjoyable and crucial to my happiness at Boeing, and
1 being unenjoyable and irrelevant to my happiness at Boeing. Sample questions will include:

1. Do you feel like the head clearing seminars make you more productive and efficient?
2. Do y ou feel as though the leisure days are benefiting to your happiness outside work?

We will analyze these results after a 3-month trial of implementing the programs. To better
understand the effectiveness of our recommendations, we will compare these results to initial
surveys distributed to all employees. This will allow for us to maximize our investments into the
employee satisfaction programs and ultimately improve company culture.

Bridging the Gap Increases ROI

Once a week, we will begin conducting workshops between upper management and our
employees. We will begin this starting the first Tuesday of January and follow the same
schedule on a rolling basis. Statistics suggest that conducting meetings on these days will result
in the lowest number of callouts and fewer paid holidays. These workshops will not have an end
date attached to them as we plan to make this a part of our company culture. The anticipated
budget for this recommendation is outlined in the graphic below.
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Workshops Low-End Avg. Hourly High-End Avg. Hourly Total Hourly Rate
Rate Rate

Wages Expense $1,829,362.50 $3,266,718.75 $5,096,081.25

Per Event Grand Total

Catering Expense $1,200.00 $5,097,281.25

The drawback from hosting these workshops during the work day is the loss on production and
sales during that hour span. We will be paying our employees a total of $5,069,081.25 across
the globe. However, we recommend this because the ROI for this project is high due to the
anticipated increase in efficiency amongst all employees. Our company culture will stand by the
fact that having happier employees leads to more measurable success and employee
satisfaction.

Health and Wellness Decreases Physiological Withdrawal

Implementing the health and wellness program will take preparation and planning. We plan to
wait till the end of the fiscal year, so that we can better prepare a budget associated for the
program. Therefore, the anticipated start date would be second Wednesday of January and
conduct these monthly. The cost associated with allowing employees a daily head clearing
seminar will cost the same as the workshop hourly rate of $5,069,081.25. In addition, we will
have costs for hiring an external third-party vendor to lead these health and wellness seminars.
The field trips will be the most expensive part of this recommendation and the costs
associated with it are explained below.

Health and Airline Expense Hotel Expense Rental Car/Misc. Total

Wellness

Travel Expense $60,978,750.00 $20,907,000.00 $13,938,000.00 $95,823,750.00

Salary Expense Third Party Total Grand Total

(Hourly) Vendor

Seminar Expense $5,069,081.25 $120.00 $5,069,201.25 $100,892,951.00

Although we would like to have the head clearing seminar option available on a daily basis, the
cost associated with allowing down time will diminish the ROI and production. We anticipate
this recommendation will be very profitable in the long-term due to increased employee
satisfaction at the workplace. We believe the continuance of these programs will encourage our
employees to work more efficient and stay on task for longer periods of time.
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Youth Leads to Increase in Production and Innovation

With the upcoming increase in retirees, Boeing plans to see a decrease in salary expenses due
to the high nature of employees of 61+. However, Boeing will have to revamp expenses
associated with training new and current employees who will replace former employees. The
costs for the individual cost drivers associated with this recommendation are listed below. We
anticipate that a large number of our employees will retire within the next 1-3 years, which is
due cause for starting the training at the end of the fiscal year. We can develop a better
understanding of those planning to retire in each division by hosting one-on-ones with each
employee in the 60+ age range. We can then budget the cost of training employees to fulfill
their positions upon retirement.

Developing Youth Hourly Rate

Salaries Expense $5,069,081.25

Hourly Rate

Gain: Salaries Payable $5,069,081.25

Per Employee Total

Training Expense $1,000.00 $61,000,000.00

The ROI on this recommendation will be the highest out of three. We expect to see more
production and innovation due to technology exposure and youthfulness associated with
millennials. This will reduce the transition period between promotions and potentially not
affect sales as we conduct the training beforehand.

Conclusion
With the clear issue of employee satisfaction defined, along with the root causes analyzed,
Boeing can start to develop a plan that will help better the internal structure of the company
and later improve Boeing as a whole. By implementing these programs we will be able to
improve overall employee health, satisfaction, and performance. The disconnects will be
eliminated and Boeing can expect to see a better company culture leading to future financial
success.
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Appendices

Appendix

Appendix B
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Appendix C

Appendix D
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Appendix E