Vigor Alaska is a big fish in the small pond of Ketchikan, a town in Southeast Alaska. The town’s 8,500 residents live on an island. It’s surrounded by channels and ocean. The water is a way of life in Ketchikan. The people truly are…people of the sea.
Cruise ships line the docks of downtown Ketchikan during the spring and summer months. The employees of Vigor Alaska spend off hours fishing and crabbing. Their freezers are bursting with halibut and salmon. It rains 160 inches a year, which can make living in Ketchikan challenging. The shipyard has a massive assembly hall for its shipbuilding projects (currently two ferries for the Alaska State Marine System), while all of the repair work is either done in dry dock or pier side. For you non-shipyard people, a dry dock allows a ship to be raised out of the water on a steel platform, so the ship’s hull, propellers and other submerged areas can be worked on.
Vigor Alaska’s Quest is a results-driven approach to becoming the best shipyard in the world. The most profitable. And, the best place for employees to work. That includes safety.
We looked at three key areas to keep the yard ‘on quest’ to becoming the best shipyard in the world:
Profitability
Does it help the shipyard become more profitable? GM Mike Pearson calls it ‘The Profitability Lens’.
The basic premise of The Profitability Lens is this: Everything–every program, initiative, culture change, and training, is looked at through the lens of Profitability. Will it make the shipyard more profitable? Only those programs, trainings, etc., that are backed by data and research that point to profitability are approved.
Safety
Does it help the shipyard become safer? What are the most effective ways to improve safety? The data here is clear: it’s NOT training. It’s caring for each other at a deep level. It’s being seen, heard and valued by your boss. It’s doing your job your way. It’s having a job that contributes to something bigger than you, something that’s meaningful. So, giving employees a real Purpose, Vision and Values is critically important to creating a safe work environment. So is having supervisors who truly care about employees at a personal level.
Engagement
Does it help the employees of the shipyard have a more engaged, more fulfilling work experience? The data on engagement is in lockstep with the data on safety: When employees feel seen, heard and valued, and they have a higher purpose, a big vision to strive for and values that define how they can best ‘be’ with other employees and their work, they’ll give you their very best.
Vigor Alaska has focused all of its efforts: gaining, development, programs…on data and research-backed approaches to impact and improve profitability, safety and engagement.
The Bottom Lines
Vigor Alaska has improved dramatically in the first two years of The Quest.
Profitability
Vigor Alaska is the most profitable shipyard in the Vigor family, as a percentage of revenue, despite doubling in size in the last few years. In 2015 and 2016, the shipyard wrote checks to the State of Alaska, the first time in the history of the shipyard it had paid money into the state. Vigor Alaska believes that as the ship building business matures and becomes more efficient, 2017 will be it’s most profitable year ever.
Safety
Vigor Alaska is the safest shipyard in the Vigor family, and in 2015, the first full year of The Quest, had the best safety record of any shipyard location in Vigor’s history. Vigor Alaska GM Mike Pearson and Safety Director Russ Page believe the shipyard will be even safer in 2017.
Here are Vigor Alaska’s Safety numbers (recordable incidents for every 100,000 hours worked).
- 2013 – 18.0
- 2014 – 8.1
- 2015 – 4.83
- 2016 – 2.5 (as of November 15)
Engagement
Engagement is subjective, yet there is a mountain of data on what impacts employee engagement. As Vigor Alaska’s Leadership development programs, as well as its work on Purpose and Vision, began to produce results, engagement levels have increased significantly. Supervisors are more focused on the individual and what they need to succeed, instead of needing to be right or the person who ‘knows’. Anecdotally, senior leaders and craft supervisors (welding, electrical, etc.) believe employee engagement has increased significantly over the last two years. In 2015, Vigor Alaska’s employee engagement level, as measured in the company’s Gallup 12 Employee Engagement Survey, was the highest of any Vigor location. Visitors universally comment on the positive energy and camaraderie in the yard.