Chris Braccio
VP of Human Resources
American Systems
As VP of human resources, Chris Braccio oversees the American Systems entire human capital function, including talent management, compensation, benefits, and HRIS.
Chris Braccio joined American Systems in 2007, and is responsible for the strategic alignment of human talent to achieve the corporate mission. As vice president of human resources, Braccio oversees the company’s entire human capital function, including talent management, compensation, benefits, and HRIS, as well as community affairs and charitable programs.
In 2014, she received the Human Resources Leadership Award for Innovation.
Q: Late in 2012, American Systems had an instant 25 percent surge in the size of its workforce as a result of acquiring SAIC’s test and evaluation business. How did you and your team remove obstacles to onboarding so many people at once?
A: This particular transaction was quick; we didn’t have months to work on it. We literally had only a few weeks. The workforce joining our organization was a skilled, seasoned, professional team. At American Systems, we don’t make a product; we’re a service business. The product we have is the great talent of our individuals; our people are our product. It was important to maintain a stellar workforce while we were transitioning this new team into our business.
HR touches all parts of a business, whether it’s operations or other business functions. I coordinated and served as touch point for both my organization and SAIC. I needed to be aware of what was important to the employees who knew their business unit was up for sale. Such transitions make people uncomfortable and prompt such questions as: Do I have a job? Will I have the same title? Will I get the same benefits and the same pay? What does this mean for me?
We knew we needed to change the way we approached onboarding, which in the past, involved small groups of people and was a labor-intensive administrative process. This time we would be onboarding a large, decentralized group of people in different time zones. There were lots of people we had to connect through technology and communications.
The big question was how to effectively have them learn what they needed to know so on day one they would be ready to focus on our customers, continue to do exceptional work, and pull off a seamless transition. We wanted to ensure their needs and wants were met, that they had a good platform supporting them, and all of the ‘what’s happening to me’ questions were answered. They needed to know how to do things in their new organization.
Q: How did you bridge the gap between the business side and the employee side of the integration?
A: We were aggressive with communications, and we partnered with the seller on communications up to the close date. There were administrative questions such as: How do I do my time sheets? What’s the culture here? What’s the chain of command? How does something get approved? How do I get paid? When do I get paid? Whether that information was given through a webinar, onsite presentations, or written communications, it was always a partnership.
We spent time going through gap analyses to find which key processes and organizational structures were the same or different at the two companies. We had to determine if a particular difference was major or minor from an employee’s perspective.
Paid time off was a major concern. SAIC had a similar pay cycle to ours; however, they had employees on their books with a lot of paid time off. American Systems was not able to work out something with SAIC to bring over that paid time off. Year-end holidays were approaching. The transferred employees wanted to know about their pay, their days off, and their year-end vacations.
As a solution, American Systems created extra floating holidays during the transition period so all transferring employees could enjoy paid time off immediately if they wanted to. We made sure employees knew if they had a two-week vacation planned for the end of the year, they could take it even though they didn’t have hours on our books.
During the transition, some employees were traveling overseas. When you travel overseas in a government contract environment, you don’t simply book your own ticket. There are lots of administrative procedures that must occur beforehand, so we figured out a sequence of steps to execute an employee’s overseas work-travel flawlessly. Not only did we train for it, we also gave out checklists and a quick summary of what each new hire needed to do if planning travel during the transition.
American Systems has a number of government contracts and our workforce holds numerous security clearances. In order to work for an American Systems’ customer, an employee’s clearance needs to be active. For some people making the transition, that meant Friday would be their last working day at SAIC, and on Saturday they became employees of American Systems. On Monday, they needed to be cleared to work with our customers.
We’re an employee-owned business, so it was also important that everyone who joined American Systems would receive some type of employer allocation under the Employee Stock Ownership Plan. The transferred employees were joining us only six or seven weeks before the end of the year, and wouldn’t have been eligible for this plan under its rules. We went to our board of directors and researched the legalities of the situation, and we amended the plan for this group so they could get a special employer allocation. This seasoned group of new hires understood the value of what we did for them.
Q: Can you talk about creating an innovative, web-based, onboarding portal to help employees navigate through the transition with Q& A forums, access to important forms, benefits information, and so forth?
A: The portal, called Navigate American Systems, was one of the best things we created. Everyone who received an offer also received information on how to access the secure portal which included an onboarding process, a frequently-asked-questions section, a company branding area, and a registration area.
Branding was particularly important, because our talent is one of our big selling points. We wanted to make sure the team coming on board had materials that told their customers what American Systems does. We wanted them to have easy access to our marketing and branding materials in advance of the transition so they could be familiar with them and share that knowledge with customers and potential customers.
Every incoming employee started with the registration process on the portal where we had loaded information about them. Each employee reviewed his information and made sure it was accurate. On day one, records were set up, time cards were done, emergency contacts were noted, expenses were paid, and benefits were covered.
All the FAQs were searchable, so employees could type in questions. If a question wasn’t covered in an FAQ, we could reply electronically and publish the answer for everyone to see. If something affected many people, we pushed messages to them. For example: “Reminder: your first timesheet period ends on Friday, November X. You need to pay attention to this date.”
We provided a checklist a week before the transition of things employees needed to do. For example: “On the day of closing, update your voice mail. We kept your phone number but you need to change your message from SAIC to American Systems. Change your auto-reply message. Get new business cards.”
We also invited new employees and their spouses to join our phone-in and on-site presentations on benefits.
Q: What did you learn from surveying all the transitioning employees a year after their arrival to obtain lessons learned and collect feedback?
A: One of the things we looked at was whether those new employees stayed or left. Happily, we had a retention rate of more than 90 percent. To me, that affirmed the success of the execution of the integration, including communication and onboarding. An acquisition is not an individual project; it’s a team sport.
We also looked at whether the new group met its business metrics. They not only accomplished what we believed they would, but also exceeded their goals by more than $10 million in revenue. That’s when you sit back and say, “Wow!”
