Background
We are honored to be the trusted HR consulting partner for our esteemed client, a manufacturing organization located in Connecticut, who specializes in manufacturing components for the aerospace industry. Having been in business for 55 years, and employing 37 people, the company faced a lot of mission-critical issues and challenges that needed to be solved in a cost-effective way.
The Human Resource Consulting Group (HRCG) was selected and quickly came in to assess the current team, workplace environment, and get a clear understanding of both the issues facing the business and how the culture of the company needed to evolve.
After a clear understanding of the human resources (HR) challenges from pre-hire to employee engagement, an HR service plan was developed to provide a roadmap for a successful human capital management (HCM) strategy.
Challenge #1: Ensuring Regulatory Compliance
There have been increasing regulation changes in the past few years in Connecticut, and throughout the United States, which posed a challenge for this manufacturer who already had an experienced office manager. Even with the experienced manager, keeping up with the regulatory changes and new compliance requirements proved difficult alone.
HRCG understood the importance of ensuring regulatory compliance and mitigating risks in the company’s daily operations. Utilizing a compliance checklist for the client, HRCG reviewed the company’s current policies and practices to ensure alignment and compliance with the current regulations in Connecticut. After identifying areas of potential non-compliance, HRCG provided thorough training to the company’s management team on the applicable federal and Connecticut labor laws, ensuring everyone understood their responsibilities to meet regulatory requirements. This included a plan for new hire Sexual Harassment Prevention Training, taking on the management of two active paid family leave requests, and ensuring compliance with wage transparency laws in CT.
HRCG also helps the client stay on top of any new regulatory changes, providing practical guidance on how to address each change. As a result, the company is able to minimize risks associated with penalties and lawsuits, ensuring smooth daily operations.
Challenge #2: Improving Performance and Productivity
There were also challenges with improving employee performance and productivity within the manufacturing team. As a family-owned business, this company was specifically struggling with front-line managers driving individual performance and accountability within their teams, and finding or developing skilled operators.
Utilizing one of HRCG’s Human Resource Business Partners (HRBPs), an overall assessment of key positions in the organization was conducted. In doing so, the HRBP identified that clearer job descriptions across the company’s roles & positions were needed to attract the right candidates to help ensure recruitment efforts were more effective leading up to the ultimate hire. This was also paramount in developing a growth plan for new hires to manage performance and drive better results over time.
After refining the job description, the HRBP worked with the client’s executive team to further define expectations and goals for each position. This is a key step to help the front-line managers meet expectations more effectively and provide a mechanism for the ongoing tracking and management of performance across the team.
By providing hands-on training sessions to the front-line managers who had never been formally trained in performance management or managing employees they now feel empowered to have more frequent check-ins and provide real-time feedback to team members. This effort was critical for building a performance-oriented culture.
Finally, HRCG developed a customized apprenticeship program for the company to train individual workers as mold-making technicians to address the talent shortage for that role. The program entails a thorough needs analysis, engaging key stakeholders, and designing a structured curriculum aligned with the manufacturing industry standards and best practices.
Challenge #3: Adjusting the Recruitment Strategy & Hiring Skilled Workers Faster
Like many manufacturers, this company was challenged with retaining and hiring skilled workers. In the manufacturing industry, the operation of older machines and equipment requires specific knowledge and skills, which are not easy to find in the current talent market. With the impact of the current economy and disruptions in today’s supply chains, the company needed to be more flexible with their workforce and keep a proactive eye out for finding new talent.
With the company’s most experienced workers entering the retirement stage, this became an urgent need to find and recruit skilled workers to fill the gap. Upskilling their remaining workforce to be able to become machine operators was just as important and proved to be just as much of a challenge.
HRCG addressed this challenge by adjusting their recruitment strategy to target candidates that are interested in pursuing a career as mold-making technicians in the manufacturing industry. There were also forged partnerships with local Connecticut trade schools and industry associations to develop a long-term sustainability plan to find and develop these skills among the existing workforce.
Conclusion
As a result of these efforts, this will be the first year the client has completed annual performance-based reviews that are tied directly to merit-based increases.
New skilled technicians have also been added to the team and have been surrounded by colleagues that have a genuine interest in helping them further develop their skills, while others continue to drive high individual production results.
Even though the uneven economic recovery will continue to pose inevitable challenges for this client, they now feel more prepared than ever to manage each situation and build a plan to overcome any challenges, so that they achieve their growth objectives for their mission of becoming a best-in-class aerospace manufacturer.
