Original Date: 08/20/2001
Revision Date: 12/14/2006

Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems-Surface Systems established KeyComm Meetings as a communications tool between the Senior Leadership Team and employees. These monthly meetings are used to address employees’ questions and concerns as well as discuss current business issues and initiatives.

Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems-Surface Systems (NE&SS-SS) instituted KeyComm Meetings as a communications process to facilitate a top-down flow of information from the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) to the employees. This interactive process provides the opportunity for employees to ask questions of senior management regarding business issues and their affect on employees; and for management officials to address these questions in real time.

The KeyComm Meetings are monthly hour-long sessions between the SLT and employees. Prior to the meeting, the SLT establishes an agenda and publishes it on the KeyComm web site. The agenda helps prepare and inform the audience on the subjects to be discussed. Questions are solicited from employees prior to the meeting to encourage participation and interactions. These questions are forwarded to the SLT via the Intranet or other means. At the meeting, formal presentations scheduled on the agenda are conducted first. Employee questions are then answered during the meeting and/or posted on the KeyComm web site. The meeting is held in a large 250-person seating capability auditorium with a dual screen projection system. Since all employees are invited to attend and seating room is limited, those in attendance normally flow down the information to their groups in staff meetings, round tables, and general meetings within their work groups. In addition, non-proprietary presentations are posted on the KeyComm web site in PowerPoint, PDF, and print-friendly black and white versions to facilitate distribution of the information.

By implementing KeyComm Meetings, Lockheed Martin NE&SS-SS keeps its employees abreast of business news and facilitates a sense of ownership within the company. Senior management and employees now have a venue that encourages two-way communication of issues and concerns. An added benefit is that employees no longer feel they must rely on grapevine rumors to learn what is going on with the business. This communications tool reduces the propagation of false information. Future plans call for this tool to be spread to remote sites of the company through the use of new broadcast encoding technology. This improvement will allow even more employees to participate in the meetings on a real-time basis.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.