for those interested they'll be holding an event tonight from six thirty to eight pm district library unsustainable government and economic development if you're interested they'll be out in his play table in the foyer you can visit them on your way out we'd also like to give a special thank you to her back response or chemical bank has been providing personalized financial solutions for over one hundred years and i'd like to invite mark johnson community president of chemical bank to join me on stage to save you words thank you kelly morning happy new year everyone chemical bank is very proud to be this morning's breakfast sponsor as kelly said for over one hundred years chemical banks approach has remained focused on community banking highlighted by local leadership and decision making with a devotion to personalized service we're committed to delivering the guidance and support our customers need to plan for the future and reach their financial goals using a team approach we provide an array of expertise that spans personal business and investment services our experience professionals spend much of their time working closely with our customers to learn about their goals in order to develop personalized financial solutions to help meet their needs were inspired by the dreams of each customer and business alike focusing on the potential of each resident and community member were also devoted to being a good corporate citizen as a community bank chemical they actively invest in the holland and the surrounding communities we know the success of every community member is paramount to our own success through support of many local organizations we're proud to make an impact in the communities where we live work and play some of the organizations we support are the lake shore habitat for humanity lake shore advantage holland museum spread the news foundation muskegon museum of our love inc in tulip time and there are many others in early october our employees played an active role in holland with their annual cares day effort each year on columbus day our offices are closed allowing our bake employees to volunteer in their communities on a variety of different projects our team spent time at local organizations and agencies including the early learning collaborative fendel schools boys and girls club among others some project examples include framing children's artwork for display at him in high school cleaning kennels and caring for animals at allegan animal shelter and many others  chemical bakers work across our footprint on that day so there is roughly three thousand employees throughout the organization that worked in the various communities where they live and work in addition to the direct community support we're able to offer a unique set of products that can be personalized to fit any customer's needs from large and small businesses to credit building loans and a variety of home financing options our local decision making and personalized service allows us to match our a variety of customer needs we're proud to support this morning's breakfast and look forward to seeing you in our offices soon thank you at this time i'd like to introduce teeth taste panel moderator carrie mccarthy had to share carey is well versed in the world of staffing management with over twenty one years of experience in town attraction retention talent branding implementation problem mean giving a warm welcome to carrie mccarthy thank you and thank you for joining the talent panel this morning in may of two thousand and seventeen a group of small the medium sized manufacturers gathered in dishes whiteboard wednesday space to discuss topics that c covered it chamber vents like these as you might imagine finding keeping and developing talent top the list according to lake shore advantage two thousand and seventeen business intelligence report forty nine percent of the lake shore employer stated talent is one of the primary barriers to growth this morning we have a group of human resources organizational development and talent and acquisition leaders here to answer the first part of the panel discussions will come from prepared questions that we have we want to answer your questions to their cards in the middle of your table so please fill out questions and then hand those to the raise your hand and then hand those to the chamber staff that are walking about ten talent panel are we ready cassandra realizing the make up of the workforce has shifted significantly how did you find out what today's workforce wanted so we discovered in about two thousand and fifteen that the market and the individuals looking for jobs were looking for something different it was there was a shift going on something we hadn't seen before and so we tried a lot of our traditional efforts to hire and it wasn't working and we were hiring and we were losing talent as quickly as we could bring him in the door so we started by looking inward and we started talking to some of the contract workers that we have and staff we started talking to some of our full time members and asking them why did you choose hayworth in the first place why do you stay if you were to leave what would cause you to leave and we started to look at some of those drivers to then say ok how many of those needs are we meeting where the gaps and what can we do differently to try to maybe attract somebody by using those same motivators of our internal force workforce you actually did some actual groups to try to put you know we actually did focus groups were repulsed our contract workers together in all three shifts we did that with our full time members as well and just you know we had a series of questions that we would ask everybody in and tr create an environment where it was safe for them to give us the true feedback and we learned a lot we learned a lot about what we thought maybe it was happening in our manufacturing facilities that wasn't and we learned about a lot about what drew someone here and to hayworth and when they got to hear what did they find it we're living up to what may be the recruiters are selling when we're out selling a job or they coming in living and vironment once they get the tamra when you realize the talent pool had shifted and you experienced the shortage that everyone has seen you decided to face it head on and you modify your talent attraction hiring model would you please speak to what you did well as i have just explained having the data was an important starting point and we knew we had an issue with hiring drivers and our case there's a mated shorts of about fifty thousand drivers nationally so it's a big problem for us we had a lot of reports and i mean a lot of reports telling us this on a weekly basis on a monthly basis and we had a war cry of higher higher higher constantly higher higher higher and in the in the report were telling us this so we knew what we had a we knew we had a problem but we use the data to specifically look at is that a hiring problem is an attraction problem is that a selection problem or is it a turnover problem our team last year hired more than two thousand employees we didn't retain them all so using the data that was available to us and we saw that retention was our biggest issue and what we did was we consolidated all of that data into score cards that could be viewed across all of our fifty three terminal locations so we could see exactly where the problem was from the data without you know getting stuck in the analysis of that data from these weekly emailed reports that were coming to us so we used the microsoft office three sixty five and microsoft office power many of you probably have that you don't even realize it or you might not be using that  to create a data warehouse and then we were able to get out of the analysis phase and get into action what are we going to do about it now and i think sometimes that's where people get stuck is oh my god the problem is so big what are we going to do and then we spend our wheels talking about that over and over again so i think the data is important analyzing that to that is important but i has to turn into action action that is aligned to the business strategy to the operational strategy and now that we've got better data that's real time  we're able to have measured results from the actions that we're taking here you actually took that internal research in completely then started marketing to your talent pool differently you speak to that  of all so we've gotten that retention was our bigger issue and we found that when we invest in our employees this is going to come as probably no surprise from the rest of our panels and from what you're experiencing when we invest in our employees from the onset we have a higher retention so we started emphasizing you know no experience no problem come work for holland because will train you to be a driver in our case that's our primary concern strikers  just want to add on as i was listening to talk about the gathering of the data and the analysis and trying find to find the root cause of the problem how much time that takes that is meetings upon meetings upon meetings and getting all the right stakeholders into a room to first understand we have a problem everyone knows we have a problem you're not hiring people nobody understands why we have a problem and once get to the point of ok here's our problem and these are all the things we think we need to do that becomes a huge organizational shift in the amount of influence it takes up the organization to drive that change with that research you also really change the marketing strategy so no more billboards no more well we are still doing that because employment branding having a positive impressions is important ok so we still do those things but we did definitely shift our marketing dollars because now we're measuring we're measuring the marketing in the same way we're measuring you know things like turnover and so we're looking at is that impressions that lead to employment branding that's important or is it leading to action click through rates  actual applicants so we shifted a lot of traditional marketing into digital marketing i mean most of our drivers there on the phone so we've they've got to be able to see our name on their mobile devices and they've got to be able to see it when they're on the computers in the hotels that they're staying overnight so we social media that we found that more joined our drivers are on facebook so we start advertising on facebook things like that and then also we develop vertical  marketing campaigns to get to transitioning military women in trucking and then of course you know the emerging young adults and the workforce thank you jeanine trans a has some unique ways of getting new hires into the hiring pipeline workers that are a good fit for your organization what channels of hiring are you pursuing outside the traditional methods you know great question kerry so obviously tool makers are key to transplant expose misstates what we do and i think those of you in the room who work in the skilled trade space know how difficult it is to find that talent so we've learned over the years we do better when we grow that talent internally ourselves versus focusing our efforts on trying to attract skilled toolmakers so traditionally we've recruited from local schools you know people coming out with the two year degree and roughly about five years ago we found that that pool was really shrinking there were fewer students going into the two year degrees skilled trades programming and the competition for those students coming out w fierce but we looked we realized we had to do something different so we began partnering with grand rapids community college with advanced being a partnership or am program that's been in place since two thousand and twelve and transparent it has been partnering for the last four years closed since two thousand and fourteen and for those of you who are not familiar with the program it's a collaboration of west michigan employers local see so how it works the transmat it pays for their two year degree and they go to school and then they work for trans matic part time it takes them about two and a half years to complete the program and parents love it because students graduate with a two year degree debt free what could be better right and we're considering them homegrown external candidates we believe so strongly in the program  back in two thousand and seventeen g or c c took a year off from the programming and we ran our own internal program we managed it ourselves and we are filling our apprentice pipeline with and we're really happy about it  jack we're going to switch gears a little bit we learn really learning more and more about the value of leadership development that results in retention with both leadership and their teams in your opinion why is leadership development such a key component in retention and then the second question what's the difference between a leader and a traditional supervisor thanks for the opportunity to be here  first of we all know that leadership is where the organization rises and falls right so if we're not investing in our leaders we this is where the company will go right we also have a problem with really young leaders right we're a growing company so we have people with in experience in leadership and in supervision so it starts by really picking the right supervisors the right leaders that know the culture embody the values of the company and then pouring into them by mentoring them one of my roles at g and so they have enjoyed is really getting alongside of young leaders in pouring into them in modeling where we would like to see them develop as as leaders and supervisors and then and then pointing them in the or the right direction as as they learn right so they're going to make mistakes we all make mistakes in leadership we want somebody alongside of us to be there to encourage us the next time and build into us so training is also important from a leadership standpoint but they got to see it model d the difference between a traditional supervisor and a leader i think starts with it starts with the embodiment of the values that they have the company values we really focus right on the interview stage with operator level positions skilled trade level positions we talk about our company's values and we the way we put this in a phrase as we hire character we build competence well if you're a tool and die maker you have no competence we realize there has to be some top of that level competence level certain positions but if we can hire character and bill competence we're going to move the company in the right direction  cassandra can you speak about the alternative work forces that are at hayworth in the benefits to the workers and the hiring organization share as we were looking at how do we market differently how do we pull in a different applicant pool we started looking at alternative talent pools and some of those are a vocational program for returning citizens so we partner with the vocational village of ionia county prison we've partnered with m c t i we've had a longstanding partnership with mc t i and they train individuals with disabilities and give them life skills they give them job training skills disabilities and partnerships that we can create and how we bring those individuals then set them up for success is huge learning for hayworth it's one thing to say we're going to take this program on and it's another to actually create the straw model to bring these individuals in to set the organization for success to set the individuals up for success but what we found is some of those individuals who come in have been some of our best workers they are so committed and they are so loyal and they are so thankful for the opportunity they are the ones that are there every single day they're the ones that absorb all the training they're the ones that are just so motivated and  give us the best reward disher we encourage companies to hire employees based on their potential to accomplish forward looking longer term objectives i know what us have holland that something you do as well you follow that same practice so hiring people that you can train and grow how do you see that benefiting your organization as well as we talked a little bit about earlier when we invest in our boys on the on side retention is significantly higher than what we don't and i'd love to hear you janine and jack talk about the apprentice program and through mentorship because again we we talk about the things that we started with last year at this time to what we have now massive changes based on that model of if we can't buy our talent we have to build our talent how are we going to do that so we had some of the core training materials for our driver training program we just needed to wrap it up in a way so that we could have  greater impact with it so as of three weeks ago it's now registered with the department of labor as an approved apprentice program we're happy about that and it's also providing us a baseline framework for having a process program for  mechanics because again we have a lot of the training material it's just wrapping that up and make it a little more formalized and then we have opportunity to expand that into entry level sales roles and entry level operations management rol like supervisors so we're looking for a opportunities to build our talent much in the same way that you guys have talked about but it goes beyond that we recognize that process we operate in fourteen states fifty three terminal locations for more in canada that we're partnership with so we can't do that i have a team of recruiters at the beginning of the year that we grew this year today i'm expanding not in recruiters but i'm expanding my team and driver instructors so they're out in the field and they're doing some training for us they're doing some recruiting forests very little there mostly training because we know that's where we're going to get a higher return on our investment the training through our driver training program bring in and sometimes dock employees they have absolutely no experience no indorsements they do not have their cd l a license and were taken home from you know here and get them all the way up to where they need to be which is a fully qualified driver of the thing we're doing is we're launching a formalized in turn program again the company had much of this already in place bits and pieces of it but it just needed to be wrapped up finished and put into action so once we pilot that this year then we plan to expand that again across the fourteen states so that it's providing emerging talent that's part of that vertical platform a giving them an opportunity to come into the organization and grow but to the point we can't do this with just my team we have to invest in the entire organization saying we can't buy our tower anymore that isn't working we've got to build our talent and so we also we have mentors drivers like talking to drivers accountants probably like talking to when our drivers are training our driver it's having a signal it can impact again on retention especially during the first ninety days so we're increasing our driver mentor program by about twenty twenty five percent so that we've got more  employees in the field training employees and providing the support that you talked about jack well jack that's a good segue into a question for you your key areas of focus are in relationships and retention considering today's workforce would you speak about some of the key elements every tension in your opinion starts with relationships for sure and that relationship starts right from the interview stage talking about values  in explaining that you know i can't send you to a class to teach you how to be more honest in your paperwork that you're going to have to do right this is what you are when you walk in the door and you'll find your way out the door very quickly if you do if you're not in line with these values so we we really start there is ok this is about you as a person as opposed to us as a as an operator right so you start there and then you  really focus on again the leadership development the mentoring thing is also something that we're developing you know we're growing like crazy in i'm sure all of you have in your business have plenty of time for training right as you're busy not the case right this is probably where we fail in our development is taking enough time with people and training them properly and bringing them to the next level of competence right so it it's truly an investment from a relationship standpoint you've got to get everybody involved it's not just one person everyone coming into the organization has to be a look at things as who are you following know that you're getting hired into right so who are you bringing along and who are you following and and you make those connections personal you can't just do a i'm buying an organizational chart and say this is so and so is mentor right it needs  follow up it needs encouraged it needs discipline you have to tell people you need to do this this is your role right when we do that we push that and the people see the fruit of it then is if you're if you're looking for ways to attract people to your company i think it's really good to have a robust referral program come you know when you're i'd like to brag a little bit want to one hundred one best and brightest to work  for west michigan as a manufacturing company that's a huge thing that all companies can that can get to that point because manufacturing is tough it's a tough environment but when you are and you have that referral program and people actually individuals that come in i surprise i get frustrated why did they leave why are they here anymore what did we do wrong i think there's still data that we can learn in that process and i know that  you've done some great things in terms of transplant alumni kind of developing and setting them up as a law from relationship standpoint and then also exit interviews so can you talk to that please sir so i realize that probably phones a little strange to talk about exit interviews when we are trying to talk about attracting and retaining talent but we really look at that as another data point of tamarin cassandra been taught we've had our program in place for roughly three years that we've been working at pretty heavily and we sit down with each person who's leaving the organization meet with them in person and then really look at that data from three different angles you know what should we keep doing were doing one of the lowest rated items was about performance appraisals and getting feedback i think the question is my performance appraisals were conducted on have in a fair and timely manner and stepping back and looking at that we realize our system was really complicated we were doing performance appraisals on the anniversary dates which was really difficult to track and some people hadn't received that sat down formally with their leader for two years which is a long time so we step back we simplified our process as we moved it moved everybody to a common review date which i know leaders don't necessarily like but it does work well and we made it more r t with an individual development plan and formal goal setting and i or feedback has been very positive on that so that's just one minor example of using the data and then improving your processes we also use the exit interview as an  opportunity to create the alumni that you referred to kerry i talk about recruiting somebody and having that positive experience with talking to them about it let's stay in touch you know there are certain individuals of course we'd love to bring back to the organization if nothing else to your point about what referrals it's a great opportunity who knows your organization better than somebody who's worked there and we've gotten some great referrals from former employees that while and just continue to build build their organization jack in your opinion what well retention look like in the future what do you think companies need to start doing right now well i think that  a lot of it has to do with developing relationships i think that you know we have to focus on that as as leaders because eventually that that's what's go moving forward in the future that's what's going to keep you at the level that you you want to be in attracting the other other talent if you don't have if it's just a matter of do a job and you know do it we tell you this is this is not going to retain the you're not going to in the in the long run in the future you're not going to be the company that people really are lining up to to get in the door  that investment in that and boarding and creating that community when someone starts is huge the investment in your talent but we also have to understand what the younger worker watson in a manufacturing world it's not the traditional manufacturing on a first shift a second shift or third shift and that is very difficult for long term operations managers to wrap their head around the younger worker comes in and they want work life balance they want control over their schedule they don't want to work fifty five hours every single week they don't and they won't stay for it because they have choices our community is offering them a lot of choices and people will leave for control of their schedule a manageable work schedule hours for the same amount of money so that retention does require us to think differently about how the work gets done does it have to be a traditional first shift second shift or third shift or can we think out of the box which that's a great segue into your part time work yeah well graham yep so we challenged our operations professionals to think differently can you have a part time workforce in hurry can we target maybe mothers who want to be home with their children part time and they want to be in the office can we target a student who wants to work and go to school at the same time and help them pay for their college can we think about that differently and in some pockets of the organization it's worked well in some manufacturing facilities it's been a little bit more difficult but we've also challenge them to say does it have to be first second or third can it be a twelve hour shift three days a week can we look for someone who works to live lives to work and so we've launched a few of those different programs with some success and i think there's some interest in the market for those organizations that are willing to think about how we can work differently which additionally cassandra you talked about the alternative work forces that you've been implementing at hayworth and one of the things when we talked you said it was just super important that you had buy  n from the management team and support from the people that are working on the floor and you talked about a scenario where you brought in a team and it was successful and you went right ahead on to the next one and it wasn't successful and there was a reason why so can you talk to that place so the best learning comes from the failures along the way and it is really important when you make the commitment to work with al pools that everybody is on board and everybody is passionate about it and committed to it it can't be just h r it can't be one tap manufacturing leader who's going to force it down we had a great experience the organization was m c t i these kids come and they are well trained and they give them life skills but this is the first time that they've lived on their own it is like the first time they've had a real full time job and so we really invested in that first cohort we sent manufacturing teams there we learned how they studied we learned how they worked as a group we put them out all on second shift i had leadership from the v p of operations the director and the plant manager i had all the supervisors that were like yes this is going to work first call her it was fantastic those kids were great we have a team leader from that will forte it was just fantastic hands down profits thing i've done in twenty five years and hayworth that program and we brought the next cohort in we were so excited hire every single graduate was the direction from the c e o and we did well what changed i have a new director of operations i have a new plant manager i have many new supervisors and the program failed same kids same training same leadership at the end c t a organization the change was that hayworth and soon every single one of those students went somewhere else probably for more money and probably to a place where they could fit in and be comfortable and that is the learning from hayworth that you have to be culturally ready it takes a village to accept and to work with and to put the right structure in place if it's one or two people it will fail and the failure is more than just the failure of the organization the failure then is also to those students who deserve to be in the right place in an organization that will work with their different abilities and they are different abilities they have come with so much skill but they do need more support their onboarding has to look different their mentorship has to look different third it  looks different than the person who comes in off the street with twenty five years of experience and as well versed in how business gets done these kids didn't know why they could not call in sick because their friends turned twenty one and that's a true story and they were honest about it we're all calling in tomorrow because sam's turning twenty one like no and they still did it that's the learning right there with us the reality so janine we talked a little bit about boarding and how i'm more successfully is is key we know that a bad first day can make or break and employees in experience overall what did you are going to say she need to do to find the right tone for your workforce and i'm going to focus more on the technical aspects of it and my answer i mean the relationships and everything in the culture is critical the mechanics though matter as well and we found that we were losing a lot of our entry level employees you know within that first year and then our safety recordable record was going up as well and so when we step back and looked at it we found that we were trying to fit in a lot of information on day one and you know we run them through all the safety orientation we do their paperwork we tell him about their benefits given to their supervisor we say go and step back and realize we were providing way too much information on day one so we've figured out ways to piece that out a little bit differently so just to give you an example now on day one we just do the basics we're trying to introduce them into our culture make them feel comfortable do that all important paperwork that has to be done the really important safety information that they need to go out on to the production floor then we bring the crew back during that first month and we rea view the information that they got in safety that first day and leave build on it we've built some training specific to transmit at first this using off the shelf videos and so it's more what it looks like in their work environment we also look to training for both entry level positions and found that our traditional math giving them it's a normal manual to go in to read i don't think anybody was reading on it they certainly weren't retaining it so we've moved a lot that is improving both the safety record and it's showing them how to do things correctly and effectively and then from there we build a quarterly orientation thing as well but again just trying to keep making them feel part of things and providing them information well now we have some questions from you tamra we get the first question how do you address and aging workforce that doesn't necessarily have younger we're trying to attract military into those positions so we have military recruiters so that military people talk to military people so it doesn't matter the age we have women recruiters that are focused on hiring women so women talking to women and that are driving instructors in the field are there experienced drivers they've been doing this for years so again it's not a younger recruiting team doing as much of it as have local middle schools coming in as well to introduce them to the concept of skilled trades and what a career of looks like in the skilled trades i'm sure many of you have participated in manufacturing we locally i think we had like two hundred students through debian's matic store in the span of three days that we and then of course we do jobs shadow's we do pretty much anything that a student would ask we want them at our doors and you talked about expanding to middle schools in started our promise program right after the new year so we're pretty happy about that jack here's a question for you how do you short employee benefits package health dental four  it's a good question in we really really look at benefits packages being under communicated so in the initial interview we make it very clear to them what the value  add is to the benefits package so that they understand that it's not just about the almighty you know it hourly rate that they're going to get paid it's about your joining this for the long run  we you know i joke with people and say you know i don't know if i'll be around for your retirement party but hopefully you know you'll be here some day to retire and this is why these things are important so we talk about the benefits right in the national stage and addition to that for any of the panelists it is there anything you'd say as part of the benefit package is that a better a tractor or a retainer than others maybe not so much the whole package but one of the things that we do and it goes back to getting the data we were asking the question what attracted you to holland in the first place or through our state interview process what keeps you at holland and benefits was one of the number one responses so our marketing if you look at any of our marketing online you'll see that we pay for our early employees one hundred percent of their medical and dental premiums hundred percent that's a differentiator you talked about state interviews you know we know how to exit interviews we know about we just talk a little bit about the state interview and how you guys have used that implemented while we were seeing a lot of our turnover was in the first ninety days and we had to get a pass the first ninety days so  five find out what their initial impression is are they likely to stay longer past that first week and then on day forty five midway point after they've gone through some of that initial on board in an orientation training our how are they doing and are they likely to stay beyond that last question for casandra how did you get enough management attention to make strategic changes and not just tactical changes i'm very dramatic the driver at the end of the day i can hold me to the fire and tell me i have to hire one hundred people but if we aren't thinking about what the people want and i'm going to hire and they're not going to stay we are gaining and truth in advertising we did that two thousand and fifteen we hired like mad people and in two thousand and sixteen we spent the whole year trying to fix our retention problem we just said we went crazy and then we had to kind of swing that pendulum back and it's a learning and two thousand and seventeen we made headway we've lowered our turnover we had more retention we were able to you know gain and headcount and it's that learning and it's the influence and the drive for change comes from business need it comes from the critical ness of what has happened in the organization that is the best way to drive change there's nothing like a fire to rally everyone in the room and to be able to try a lot of things that you can't try when it's status quo it's crazy but i've learned you want to try new things you need  able to spend some time one on one with each of the individuals prior to this and our hope in this was that we would have no small bits and pieces we know there's not one silver bullet where talents concerned so we hope that there were just little nuggets that you could learn along the way that could help change thank you message we're so proud to have all of you as members of the west coast chamber as leading employers in our community and thank you for everything you're doing following the breakfast our panelists will still be available if you'd like to continue conversations with them certainly hang around the chamber is all about networking it's your morning mingle time so we're in no rush to see you head out the doors to stay as long as you'd like and which come back a month from today february thirteenth to hear a great and inspiring story from a college student w de who's tell us his story of turning an obstacle into an opportunity so with that thank you very much and have a great day we'll see you next month