The other part of the communications story,
though, is that we want to make sure, from
the very beginning, that with all of the noise
that's out there, that you would be able to
count on us to be able to tell you the truth
and be able to tell you what's happening,
when it's happening, how it's happening.
We want to be your trusted source of information.
So we started using zoom to do video interviews
with not only with our senior leadership and
subject matter experts.
We've started using zoom also to do media
interviews.
The other thing we learned is that we didn't
need to have necessarily a broadcast quality
production put together to produce a video
to put out across the enterprise to communicate
a certain issue.
As we aligned with our corporate HII approach
we immediately set up an internal portal where
employees are able to hop online and understand
the latest and what we understand as a business.
And then about mid-March is when the intensity
rose, when employees and everyone was really
hearing about the coronavirus from every angle.
We are still in the middle of an acquisition,
right, so on top of all this we're preparing
to welcome hundreds of new employees to HII.
So on day one, instead of having an in-person
kickoff and welcome session, we took it virtual
-- probably the first-ever virtual “Day
One” for any acquisition.
Instead of going to Pocasset at their headquarters,
we did it online.
We had Andy [Green] give an overview of the
business and a welcome to our employees, and
we had Dwayne [Blake] speak as well.
All of our employees were on video, so at
least we were still able to see each other
and really go through a very extensive and
real comprehensive orientation to the business.
I think it was very effective, still being
able to hear from our leaders and receive
questions.
We actually had at least an hour of just Q&A.
So there are tons of tools out there to communicate
to our employees, but they have to be effective
and we developed effective tools like our
COVID-19 411 website, our ideas mailbox through
email where you can submit ideas, and our
social media pages.
The president of our company, Jennifer Boykin,
has a Facebook page, and the amount of ideas
and feedback that we're getting is incredible
to help us communicate the right information
to our employees.
So, going forward in this new environment
where we're socially distancing and keeping
crowds down, one of the things that we also
did was just a town hall -- a virtual town
hall -- where the president of the company,
Jennifer Boykin, talked to shipbuilders about
their concerns and about their ideas on ways
to handle this pandemic.
It's a great way to get feedback, it's a great
way to be safe and it's a great way to get
new ideas that we need.
Right before the pandemic in February we launched
our new IngallsConnect app 2.0.
We re-redid our platforms and it was a brand
new app.
Within two months of the coronavirus hitting
and us starting to put more information on
the app relating to coronavirus for our employees
and their families, downloads had more than
doubled that of our previous version of the
app before coronavirus.
That kind of feedback told us that this is
a great tool for reaching employees and their
families.
So with that knowledge we put more information,
created a hub for coronavirus and made sure
that all updates we send have push notifications.
It's really become a great source of information
or documents and just overall information
for employees and their families.
So while the pandemic has put us all in a
difficult situation it has allowed us to leverage
the transformation culture that we began several
years ago and has made us more agile and adaptive.
It's an exciting time for communications it's
an exciting time in the company because we
are learning new ways to do business.
We are learning new ways to communicate with
all of our various stakeholders and it's going
to be something we will continue as we move
forward, even after the pandemic has come
and gone.
We will continue to adapt.
We will continue to be agile.
We'll continue to leverage the new tools that
are out there to more effectively communicate
with all of our audiences.
