QinetiQ NA’s Roger Duke: Encouraging employee accountability promotes cost-savings, staff morale

Roger Duke is head of contracts and procurement policies for QinetiQ North America. Here’s his take on the current contracts environment:

ExecutiveBiz: How, if at all, is the current discussion of insourcing affecting your overall approach to business?

Roger Duke: Well, it’s no mystery that our employees are our most valued asset; we try to establish both short- and long-term objectives for them. In light of insourcing, when a decision is made to vacate a position, we make sure our people have advanced notification, so we can establish other opportunities for them within the company or with industry partners.

ExecutiveBiz: So, it’s about keeping morale high despite the shifting landscape.

Roger Duke: Yes, absolutely. If our prized possession is our employee base, it’s essential we demonstrate we have their best interest in mind. We will do our best for both our customers and our employees.

ExecutiveBiz: What advice would you offer other contracts professionals on navigating the current environment?

Roger Duke: The first would be to deepen your subject matter knowledge … the ability to both see and understand the changes, and to react to them in a professional way.

ExecutiveBiz: How do you and your team amass that knowledge?

Roger Duke: We’ve adopted something called, “Lessons Learned.” When individuals learn a lesson, they share — on a no-fault, no-blame basis — with other members of the contracts supply chain team. We do this through a common contracts website with “Lessons Learned.” The discussion occurs during bi-weekly leadership team meetings, not just the leaders but all managers in the contracts organization throughout the geographic disbursement of our businesses. There is a cost savings to this approach; we don’t repeat the sins of the past.

ExecutiveBiz: In an economy where people are more concerned about their jobs, do you ever find hesitation among employees to provide “lessons learned”?

Roger Duke: No, I have two philosophies; the first is ask for help when you need it. The second is to provide help when asked. Those are the basic tenets under which we operate. Nobody is yelled at or accused or embarrassed for asking for help. Actually, we try to reward people for asking for help early. Problems are not like wine, they don’t get better with age.

ExecutiveBiz: What other tips can you impart?

Roger Duke: Second is maintaining agility to be competitive. Our business model is one of decentralized leadership. We have acquired a lot of innovative and entrepreneurial companies and, in many cases, those leaders have stayed with us in leadership roles. We provide common tools and processes for governance and ethics control but we pay particular attention to not strangle them with bureaucracy or extra layers. We’ve provided policies, procedures, and common tools to help these businesses, but we’ve allowed them to make their own decisions as long as they are within the parameters of the governing policies.

ExecutiveBiz: What role does mentoring play in nurturing your workforce?

Roger Duke: We spend a lot of time mentoring and growing entry-level people; succession planning and building the pipeline of talented personnel is something I would also recommend. Getting entry-level people up to speed as fast as we can is critical to the longevity and success of the organization. When we hire individuals we make every effort to allow them to identify somebody senior within the organization whom they would like to have mentor them and maintain a relationship in which they can share issues without the scrutiny of a supervisor or a manager.  It’s very informal right now but it is one that has worked well and helped us retain and recruit.

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Posted by Staff Writer on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009. Filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry