Diversity In Action

Rockwell Collins builds a model
of diversity

Most of the company’s college hiring is in engineering. Diversity is a key element of the company’s “value proposition for people”

Rockwell Collins develops communication and aviation electronics for a variety of applications: pilot communication and navigation, military GPS receivers, network communications for ground vehicle fleets and more. The company’s clients are evenly split between military and commercial.

“We have a huge engineering workforce that does work for the commercial and military environments,” says Ron Kirchenbauer, senior VP of HR. The company has 7,000 engineers, he reports. Half work in Cedar Rapids, but there are also sizable engineering centers in Melbourne, FL; Richardson, TX, and in the Los Angeles area. Smaller engineering centers are located in Portland, OR and Sterling, VA.

About a third of Rockwell Collins’ annual new hires are new graduates. In 2007 the company hired 400, most of them in engineering, says Andy Day, director of talent acquisition.

The company also recruits for internships. “We have several hundred people a year in our internship and co-op programs,” notes Kirchenbauer.

The majority of college hiring done by Rockwell Collins is in engineering. “We look for computer, electrical and industrial engineers,” Kirchenbauer says. “We bring in new grads and develop them into systems engineers. They have the opportunity to work across the various engineering domains they were taught at the university level.

“We are committed to growing our folks,” he adds. “We call it our value proposition for people.”
When new employees are brought on board at Rockwell Collins, they are matched up with new-hire sponsors who “assist us in integrating them into the community here,” says Kirchenbauer. “The sponsors stay with them the first six months and help them with things they need to learn. We also have events to build social networks.”

Diversity is a key dimension of the “value proposition,” and an important part of the Rockwell Collins culture. “When we look at changing demographics in America and its impact on us, and the fact that we’re becoming a global company, we have to focus on being much more diverse,” says Kirchenbauer.

“We know that our headquarters state is not the most diverse, but we have had great results bringing people into Iowa. We are a company of 20,000 people, and over the last three years we have filled 10,000 positions at Rockwell Collins. Six thousand came from outside the company and the rest were developed from within. We put a substantive value on developing our own people,” he says.

Rockwell Collins is working to support diversity both inside and outside its own walls. The company is one of the founding sponsors of Diversity Focus, a three-year-old nonprofit organization devoted to enhancing the diversity of the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City area. The company has also adjusted its university-recruiting model in order to find the best talent with diverse backgrounds. “We have been able to bring significant diversity into this state and the community of Cedar Rapids,” Kirchenbauer comments.

For all its employees, the company has “built a model that treats our employees as adults,” and offers considerably flexibility both in work arrangements and in benefits offered. “We educate people on what the options are, and let them make their own decision as to what is appropriate for them and their families.”

The company works with each employee to lay out an individual development plan. “We have well-defined career paths and job profiles that say what knowledge and skills you need to move up or change direction. We build all our systems to pay people for the value they deliver,” Kirchenbauer notes.

D/C