LAUNCH FAILURE? Inside SSPI’s 2016 Industry Workforce Report: Available now
Photos from the 2016 SSPI Hall of Fame Benefit Dinner!
Better Satellite World: Filling Up Your Car By Satellite!
Important satellite industry events that you don’t want to miss!
MARCH 2016
CONTENTS 4 Launch Failure?
The 2016 SSPI Industry Workforce Study
Advertising Opportunities are available! As you know, SSPI has transformed its monthly news vehicle, The Orbiter, into a beautiful, page-turning digital magazine you can read from your desktop, tablet or phone, or as a handy print-out to carry with you on travel trips. The Orbiter brings Society news, coverage of the Better Satellite World campaign, and the annual Workforce Study to more than 6,000 members and industry contacts. Advertise With Us We invite companies to advertise in the new Orbiter. Full-page and half-page ads are available Some SSPI sponsorships include one or more ads with the sponsorship – but now you can purchase an ad directly! Download the media kit or email Tamara Bond-Williams for more information.
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Photos from the 2016 SSPI Hall of Fame Benefit Dinner
Sterling Geo works with UK Space Agency, inviting interest from other public sector agencies
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What is the first question to ask before hiring talent?
SSPI’s Mid-Atlantic Chapter funds over 800 students’ participation in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program’s Mission 10 to the ISS
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Better Satellite World: Filling Up Your Car By Satellite
Upcoming Events Space Innovation Congress, April 7 & 8 - St Paul’s – 200 Aldersgate Street, London EC1A, United Kingdom Visit to Orbital ATK Beltsville Facility, April 7 - Beltsville, Maryland, USA Space 2.0 Summit: New Partners + New Money, April 26-28, 777 Bellew Drive, Milpitas, California, USA The 2016 SSPI Northeast Chapter Golf Outing, June 6 - 1323 King Street, Greenwich, Connecticut, USA Learn more about upcoming events at www.SSPI.org
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Now Available from SSPI:
LAUNCH FAILURE? Can we attract and retain the talent that powers innovation?
42%
Two numbers sum up the key workforce management challenges facing the satellite industry. The industry relies heavily on a cadre of experienced workers ages 45-54, who make up 42% of employees. According to interviews with human resources executives, they form a relatively small pool of talent in which every company goes fishing. On the other hand, the voluntary attrition rate – people leaving their jobs by choice – for employees with 1-5 years of service is a shocking 67%. Consider these two numbers together, and what can you conclude?
67%
The data suggest that this is an industry that is failing to invest in career paths that retain younger talent. At the same time, it relies heavily on older workers who know how things are done – but may not be as good at devising ways for things to be done differently and better. Is it high attrition among younger employees that leads companies to rely on veterans, or does the reliance on veterans close off career paths for the next generation? What seems indisputable is that a healthy, growing technology industry should have a lower attrition rate for newer employees and a flatter age curve overall.
Coming and Going
Sixty-four percent of companies reported new hires in Operations, 57% in Design & Engineering and 50% in Sales & Marketing in the past 12 months. Much higher percentages of companies reported making new hires than seeing their headcounts reduced, which is good news for the people working in the industry.
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Headcount reductions in Design & Engineering and Operations personnel were reported by the largest percentage of companies, followed by Sales & Marketing and Administration. Comparing these responses with the data drawn from our employee survey shows that, for the most part, voluntary and involuntary attrition are proportional to the percentage of employees in the various job categories.
Engagement and Attrition
One of the best recognized measures of employee engagement in their work was developed by the polling organization Gallup. It measures engagement on a five-point scale in which 5 is highest. By itself, an engagement score does not reveal very much. Greater insight is available from a “favorability rating, in which we measure how many respondents gave a “strong” rating, how many gave a “neutral” rating, and how many a “weak” rating. The result is a picture of the strength of engagement in the organization and its mission. In terms of job categories, Administration (76%) and Finance (67%) lead all others in terms of having a strong engagement with satellite companies. The three categories with the weakest engagement are Sales & Marketing, Design & Engineering and Operations. That is, in a word, odd. Administration and Finance are, generally speaking, one step removed from the core mission of the organization, whether it is to build technology, launch satellites or deliver services. Sales & Marketing, Design & Engineering and Operations are at the functional heart of a satellite company. The disturbing implication is that the closer an employee is to the creation of new customers or the delivery of value to current customers, the weaker is the level of engagement with the company. Analyzing engagement by the age of employees reveals a related issue. The age group most strongly and enthusiastically engaged in the organization and its mission is 18-24 years old – those most likely to be in a starting position with the company. Surely companies in the industry should be doing more to retain these “newbies” long enough to turn them into productive designers, operators and salespeople – particularly given the disruptive innovation sweeping through the satellite business today.
Want to read more?
The report is now available from SSPI. It is free to download for SSPI members, and costs US$1,600 for non-members. Click here to get the report. Fashion Magazine April2012 5
SSPI was proud to induct six new members into the Satellite Hall of Fame at this year’s SSPI Hall of Fame Benefit Dinner. For more information on these inductees, you can read January’s issue of The Orbiter or go to www.sspi.org.
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BUILDING THE FUTURE FOR 100 YEARS. In less than a century, Boeing took the world from seaplanes to spaceplanes, across the universe and beyond. If you thought that was amazing, just wait.
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Sterling Geo works with UK Space Agency, inviting interest from other public sector agencies Sterling Geo is working closely with Hexagon Geospatial and the UK Space Agency as part of the Space for Smarter Government Programme (SSGP). It wants others to get involved. SSGP is supporting government bodies interested in harnessing space technologies, like earth observation, to save time, money and enable new services. Sterling says: “We are working with local and national government organisations to identify whether we can deliver the required value using the new Hexagon Smart M.Apps portfolio… We believe there are many other possible apps that earth observation data can support, but we need your ideas.” Click here to read more.
SSPI’s Mid-Atlantic Chapter funds over 800 students’ participation in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program’s Mission 10 to the ISS The SSPI Mid-Atlantic (SSPI-MA) Chapter is reaching new heights: about 330 Km above the earth’s surface, to be more precise. SSPI-MA is providing funding to support over 800 students from Everett Meredith Middle School, in Middletown, DE, in their participation in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program’s (SSEP) Mission 10 to the International Space Station. This opportunity is made possible by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE), and its international arm, the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education. They this is the twelfth SSEP flight opportunity since program inception in 2010. Mission 10 to ISS officially began on February 22, 2016. More information is available at http://ssep.ncesse.org/2016/02/ssep-mission-10-to-the-international-space-station-has-begun10 Fashion Magazine April2012 welcome-aboard-to-4800-participating-students-across-12-communities-in-the-u-s/
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What is the
first question
to ask before hiring talent? By Bert Sadtler
Regardless of your business sector or your business focus or your business location or your business’s product or service; your business requires talent in order to exist and in order to grow. As a CEO, business leader or hiring manager, more and more analytical tools have become available that provide psychological insights into candidates interested in joining your organization. While these tools can offer a deeper view, shouldn’t there be a simple “first question” that you can ask to quickly determine if there is clear value in continuing a conversation with a the right candidate or abbreviating a conversation with the wrong candidate? For this first question to be viable, it has to be simple and easy for anyone in the business-world to answer. More importantly, this question has to be first answered by the leader since I believe that best practice recruiting starts with the leadership first determining and declaring the business problem that they need critically hired talent to solve. Here’s the question:
If you as the CEO, business leader or hiring manager were to respond as being 51% or more of these two options, which one would you choose? Option A) More than 51% focused on your business making money Option B) More than 51% focused on your business making a difference This is the classic “mission vs. money” question. It is a very simply question. One that should be easily answered by the leader. It should be easily answered by candidates as well. Before getting into the deeper psychological insights, in my experience, mission focused candidates tend to perform well working for mission focused companies. Money focused candidates tend to work well working for money focused companies.
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Worth noting: Remember, this is the first question to ask, not the deep, penetrating discussion of: “How will you solve my business problem if I hire you?� For example, as a general rule, the men and women who served our country in the armed forces did not volunteer in order to make millions of dollars. They joined the military because they wanted to make a difference. Teachers are another example of professionals who want to make a difference. Disclaimer: There is nothing more complicated in the business world than human beings. Nothing is 100% when recruiting and hiring critical talent. A successful hiring model involves a proven and deliberate process that is designed to filter out the wrong talent and filter in the right candidates. If you are the leader, are you spending your time speaking with the candidates who match your mission vs. money preference? If you are a talented, job-seeking professional, are you spending your time interviewing with the hiring managers who match your mission vs. money preference? How are you getting your business to the next level? What are you doing to embrace change and drive continuous improvement?
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Better Satellite World:
Filling Up Your Car By Satellite When you start your car in the morning or cook your dinner at night, chances are a satellite is helping you do it. Sound unlikely? Here’s how it works. We depend on fossil fuels pulled from the Earth’s crust for 82% of the energy we use. The world may not need more carbon dioxide in the air, but we still rely on fossil fuels to power our businesses, heat and cool our homes, cook our meals and move our vehicles. Investment in renewable energy has grown fivefold since 2000, but experts expect us to still be getting 75% of our energy from fossil fuels in 2035. Why? In developed nations, demand is largely flat, except for transportation. But emerging economies are growing fast, lifting billions out of poverty, and the rise of their middle classes is powered by fossil fuels. So there is no end in sight in our quest for the Earth’s hydrocarbon wealth. There is a new quest, however, to recover those hydrocarbons in smarter, safer ways that have less impact on the environment. As companies search in ever more challenging places, they also need higher efficiency and lower costs so they can better handle the unpredictable rise and fall of prices. And that’s where satellite and information technology are leading the way. The Digital Oilfield Oil and gas wells may depend on “roughnecks” to man the heavy equipment, but decisions about where to explore and how to produce are driven by Big Data. Energy companies use sensors to search, manage drilling and inspect for problems. “Digital oilfield” technology finds energy sources we could never find before. It estimates reserves and provides data that helps engineers figure out the best ways to get at them. It monitors equipment and detects failures and potential failures fast. Together, they are getting more out of known reserves and lowering the environmental and safety risks of doing it. Stallion Oilfield Services is a customer of the satellite operator SES. It operates hundreds of drilling and production rigs across the United States. The company depends on satellite for voice communications and real-time monitoring of
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drilling. “Voice and data communications are the lifeline of any oil and drilling operation,” says Pedro Buhigas, Director of Technology. “We never know from one day to the next where we may be asked to go, and what type of communications we may need.” Spreading the Intelligence As Pedro noted, today’s energy companies need the talents of engineers, geologists and data analysts in more corners of the world than ever before. But that demand far outstrips the supply. Satellite links let experts work on multiple sites at the same time without ever leaving home. By spreading the talents of their best people around the globe, energy companies can run more of their operations at peak performance and reduce their risks. SpeedCast is a service provider with operations across Asia and Africa. For a UK-based oilfield services company, it created a network that connected all of the client’s offshore rigs to a single global service center. “They estimate,” said a SpeedCast executive, “that centralizing their support for the rigs let them reduce overall costs by 30%.” When things go wrong in the energy business, it can have terrible impacts, from the burning oilfields of Kuwait in the first Gulf War to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The same satellite and information technology that boosts performance can also help companies comply better and faster with environmental and safety rules. By capturing and recording data in real-time, satellites show companies where their real risks lie and give regulators powerful tools to drive enforcement. A Better Place to Work Satellites and IT make the wellhead a better place to work. They bring in media and Internet connections that let crewmembers keep up with the world and connect with home. In Australia, NewSat and Amstar developed a network for Gorgon, one of the world’s largest natural gas projects, which offers entertainment, Internet and telephone service to crewmembers living on the site. In boom times, the energy sector can have as many as one million job openings going unfilled, according to McKinsey, and a better workplace can help companies compete. Satellite also makes possible remote medical care that improves the lives of crewmembers while saving their employers money. Transporting a sick crewmember just 50 miles by helicopter for medical care can cost up to $10,000. A boat ride from the Gulf of Thailand and emergency jet to Singapore can cost up to $150,000. Remote medical systems let medics at the wellhead collect health data and share it with faraway doctors, who can diagnose, prescribe care and make the decision to evacuate if needed. According to one firm, InPlace Medical, telemedicine lets teams resolve 80-85% of situations quickly without the need for transport, which delivers better care as well as saving money. Click here to read the rest of this story at www.bettersatelliteworld.com Fashion Magazine
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