Strategies to Improve Performance at a High-Turnover Engineering Organization

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team at Virginia Tech is an automotive engineering design team that competes in Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and managed by Argonne National Laboratory. The team is comprised of graduate and undergraduate engineers who work together to reengineer a production vehicle to reduce its environmental impact while maintaining its marketability. As a student organization primarily encompassing seniors, who graduate and depart from the teamat the end of each academic year, the Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team experienced an average annual turnover rate of 84%. A recently developed strategy currently being implemented reduces the turnover rate to 39%. Other projected benefits of this strategy include more experienced senior team members (733% increase), overall team schedule savings (17%), and better opportunities to evaluate future team members. The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team is accomplishing these goals by reorganizing the team structure and implementing innovative onboarding strategies with new students. Together, these changes are transforming the Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team into a more sustainable organization that is better acclimated for the environment in which it operates.