An Interview with Allison Mullis, Executive VP of Human Resources, Bell
On July 10, 2020, Bell celebrated 85 years of business, marking a huge milestone as aviation pioneers. Besides certifying the first commercial helicopter in 1946, Bell built the X-1 plane that the incredible pilot Chuck Yeager used to break the sound barrier; debuted advanced tiltrotor systems into the military market; and supported NASA’s first lunar mission. Today, it’s a tech company focused on reimagining the future of flight. Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Textron Inc., its employees continue to think big and innovate.
“Eighty-five years is an incredibly long time for a company to be in business,” says Allison Mullis, executive vice president of Human Resources for Bell. “I think our big accomplishment is that throughout that time, we have continued to redefine flight. From tiltrotors to unmanned aerial vehicles, our teams are always focused on how we can support our customers with the best technology.”
A VISIONARY CEO
Mullis credits Bell President and CEO Mitch Snyder with leading the charge for innovation in every department and redefining the business. “What we had was a company that had done amazing things and built outstanding products but was truly a very typical aerospace and defense manufacturing company,” Mullis says. “Because of the incredible specificity of the work we do and the government regulations on aircraft, we were very process-driven. We had processes on top of processes. Our decision-making capability was very centralized, slow, and time-consuming.”
Under Snyder, the company is going through a major evolution from a more traditional mindset to being agile and taking smart risks. “Mitch’s early steps focused on empowering employees to make decisions at the level of impact. He wanted us to move from overly processed and slow-moving operations to taking action and trying new things,” Mullis says.
A CULTURE CHANGE JOURNEY
“We’ve been on a culture change journey over the past four years. It’s ongoing, but we’re well on our way to shifting our business towards a more agile, innovative company,” says Mullis. “And we realized that our values had to evolve with our new vision. So, we came up with new values:
- Thrill our Customers
- Act Swiftly and Decisively
- Make the Impossible Possible
- Find a Better Way
- Lift Each Other Up
“When we took our new values and combined them with our concepts of camaraderie, a dedication to work-life opportunities and celebrating differences, we came up with new opportunities to push our boundaries from an employee experience standpoint,” Mullis says. “The first big change was adopting a 9/80 schedule where we have every other Friday off. So that’s an extra 26 days each year which, as you can imagine, was very warmly received.
“We also moved to a ‘Dress for Your Day’ policy. We recognize that people do best when they feel comfortable. It’s not a requirement that every employee dress in what is commonly known as “business professional” or even “business casual.” If you don’t have any meetings and are in your cubicle or your office all day, you’re perfectly fine to be in a T-shirt and jeans,” Mullis says. “We continue to challenge ourselves to do a better job with diversity, inclusion and belonging,” she says. “We’ve started four new employee-affinity groups in the past couple of years including an LGBTQ+ group called ‘Fusion’, which is actually the one I contribute to as an executive sponsor.
REDEFINING THE FUTURE OF FLIGHT
In summation, Mullis returns to the overriding fact that it’s Bell’s mission to remain on the cutting edge of future flight experiences that power employees’ passions.
“It’s different from a typical technology company where your work supports a website or computer program. Here, you’re writing code that is going into the next generation of the Army’s future vertical lift program, which could revolutionize the way the U.S. Army operates by enabling longer range, fewer troops on the ground, fewer people at risk, faster flight, potentially unmanned flight. Why wouldn’t people want to come work on that?”
With this dedication to innovation, Bell has managed to be as forward-thinking about its internal culture and employer brand as it is about debuting exciting flight tech. That’s because to Bell, these things are inherently connected. The company knows that its future depends on a diverse pool of employees with a passion for taking the future of flight to new heights.
