Name: Skipper Kendrick
Company Name: Textron Inc.
City: Fort Worth, TX
Number of Employees: 42,000

Nomination Essay:

Listed in this narrative are some of Skipper's accomplishments as Director of EHS Training for Textron:

He produced an 8 1/2 minute video titled "Safety Starts With Me" featuring our CEO and a whole lot of Textron employees giving their thoughts as to why they should be safe, what safety means to them and how to show they are personally accountable for their own safety. The video was translated into 9 different languages and over 1,500 training guides which included the video, discussion points for supervisors to use, a Powerpoint slide presentation on personal accountability and one on the safety ZONE concept - how you control safety in your ZONE (work area). The video was downloaded to our internal video delivery system and was downloaded by over 26,000 employees. It was a great message and reached nearly all employees world wide.

Access to corporate training materials had been an ongoing issue. It always took too long, was to hard to find and in many cases while trying to find something you timed out in the process. Using six sigma LEAN tools, he developed a training site accessible to all employees worldwide. Based on data collected before the new system and after implementation, he reduced access time by over 90%. Now anybody, anywhere in the world can get to the training materials in less than one minute and with four or less mouse clicks.

Skipper has solved another problem and that being availability of training. Even before current economic conditions, it was very hard to get budget money and time to travel to receive training. He set up a series of web based training events called Webex Wednesday and Fundamental Friday. Every other Wednesday, once in the morning and again in the afternoon, a one hour training presentation is given on a timely topic. The last Friday of every month, a one hour session is given on one of our EHS Fundamental modules. These fundamental topics are things we need to know at the plant level in order to better do our EHS jobs. Many of us cannot get to the week long face-to-face session conducted so this format has been extremely beneficial. Last year over 60 of the web based sessions were conducted and attended by over 1300 persons who may not have been able to attend training otherwise.

Finally, he is producing a series of hazard awareness training events. Based on the single-point lesson concept, each event, called SHARP EYES, focuses on a single topic and presents no more than two narrated slides on the topic with instructions for either an inspection for similar hazards in the workplace or group discussion concerning the hazard. These are a great way to focus in on a topic in a timely manner - short, concise and to the point. One session is produced each month.

Your consideration of Skipper as the trainer of the year is appreciated.