**Building a Workforce at Huntington Ingalls Industries**

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) is the largest U.S. shipbuilding company serving the military; its products include aircraft carriers, submarines, Coast Guard cutters, and more. A military ship is a hugely complex product, and the sailors' lives depend on it being precisely made to specifications. To meet its motto of "Hard stuff done right" in the hands-on work of shipbuilding, HII combines careful hiring with a commitment to training. Overall, to ensure a pool of qualified employees and to improve the communities where HII operates, they invest more than $110 million a year in workforce development—from early childhood education to post-hire training programs.

Building military ships is highly specialized, possibly requiring a military clearance as well as technical skills and physical strength, so positions are hard to fill. HII finds educated, strong people and then trains them to do the job. One aspect of training is a set of apprenticeship programs. These run for four to eight years and combine classroom learning with on-the-job training. The latter may include training in crafts like welding and pipe fitting or in specialized areas such as rigging or nuclear testing. The program at the Newport News, Virginia, shipbuilding facility covers 19 trades, along with the choice to participate in eight advanced programs. Another facility, in Mississippi, offers apprenticeships in 13 trades. The two programs together have 130 instructors, many of whom themselves attended one of the schools. Employees are paid for a 40-hour week, including their time on the job and in classes. A first-year apprentice can earn $35,000 a year, with raises bringing the salary up to $58,000 after completion of the program—and because the program is paid for, they graduate without student loans to repay. The training culminates in an apprentice degree that comes close to meeting the standards for an associate's degree, so employees with a desire to continue on toward a college degree are well on their way.

Employees who stay with HII for 40 years also can apply that experience to becoming designated a master shipbuilder. HII's 1,400 master shipbuilders are another source of instructors for its apprenticeship program. To help ensure that it has a pool of new workers with the skills needed for shipbuilding, HII invests in pre-hire training programs in basic skills needed to become an electrician, welder, pipefitter, or shipfitter. The courses, which range in length from four to twelve weeks, are free to job applicants and are held at the company or at a local community college or high school.

Another way in which HII seeks excellence through training is in its use of technology. Several years ago, it began researching ways to employ "augmented reality" in business applications including training. Augmented reality refers to displaying an overlay of digital information over a view of the physical world, the way football broadcasts on television draw lines on the field to illustrate plays. In HII's training, it is used for showing the steps required to operate equipment while the trainee is at the equipment, viewing it on a tablet computer. HII's success with this method has drawn the interest of the U.S. Navy, which may begin using HII's augmented-reality technology to help sailors learn how to conduct maintenance.

**Questions**

1. How does the apprenticeship and augmented reality training described in the case facilitate learning and transfer of training?

2. What evaluation outcomes should Huntington Ingalls measure to determine the effectiveness of its apprenticeship program, pre-hire training, and augmented reality training?

3. What challenges do you think that Huntington Ingalls faces in designing apprenticeship programs? Explain your answer.