The Wisconsin manufacturing industry has weathered the economic storm very well, but if the industry is going to reach its full potential, more people have to shed their outdated image of companies that “make things.” In the first installment of our CEO Leadership series, Mary Isbister, president of GenMet, a Mequon-based metal fabricator, said the cause of workforce development would be better served if businesses, not job seekers, were in the driver’s seat.
IB: You’ve met with state officials like Department of Workforce Development Secretary Reggie Newson and Buckley Brinkman, executive director of the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership, on the subject of helping employers find the people with the skills they need. What workforce issues is GenMet dealing with?
Isbister: There are a couple of different aspects to this. The first and probably one of the biggest problems we need to tackle is the fact that manufacturing is not well understood by most people in terms of the variety, complexity, and length of career options. So you have both young people and people who have been in the workforce for awhile and who might be looking to make a career change for one reason or another, and they don’t always think about manufacturing because it’s just not well understood.
When you talk to somebody about what it means to be an accountant, lawyer, or nurse, they can picture in their minds what those activities are because they have probably run into those people. When you say, “I’m going to have a career in manufacturing,” there are a few things that might pop into people’s minds, but even if they know there are welders or machinists or people that operate sophisticated equipment, they have a hard time picturing what that is. So people tend not to gravitate toward manufacturing careers because they don’t know what kinds of skills are required, they don’t know much about it, and they have a hard time picturing themselves in those activities.
The second problem is that our education system has, at some point, swung over to thinking that the way a high school should grade itself is on college admission. That’s not a bad thing, but it leaves out a whole segment of students who might not be interested in careers where they need to go to college, or they might not be aware there are other options, whether it be a technical degree or a trade or something else that might actually appeal to them. What happens is those kids who don’t necessarily want to fulfill a college prep program will either (1) drop out of high school or (2) they may complete high school, but they haven’t learned enough about the other career options, so maybe they will go to college and enter a general-studies program.
We need to do a better job at providing a robust variety of career pathways to students, both in middle school and high school, to let them know they can earn a very good living in a variety of careers that don’t necessarily require a four-year degree. I’m not suggesting these other pathways are less rigorous than a college prep. As a matter of fact, I often make the argument that some of the technical understanding and skills required to perform the work in my organization are much more difficult because they need to understand and apply the math concept, and how to apply complex problem-solving and computer concepts in order to operate in our organization.
We haven’t created this pipeline that will support the needs that manufacturers have, and then we don’t articulate very well what manufacturing careers look like. There are probably a number of people who have been out in the workforce for a while and unfortunately due to the economy have been laid off or perhaps are looking for a career change, but they just don’t understand that this is a real option for them.
IB: What about younger workers?
Isbister: I don’t think we’ve done a good job with the younger generation in terms of helping them be real problem solvers and understand the responsibility that one has to accept when you have a job. I’ll be the first to say that I probably spoil my son, too. We work so hard to make our children’s lives easy that one of the things we forget, one of the things that is most important to an employer, is to have somebody who is committed, who understands that they have a responsibility to come to work every day, on time, and that they have a whole group of people who depend on them. Most sophisticated organizations are getting to a point where there isn’t a whole lot of top-down hierarchical management anymore telling people what to do every day when they arrive.
Basically, you are expected to be able to figure out what you’re responsible for and get the job done, maybe with some training but with relatively minimal supervision. Our biggest challenge is that we might have people who come here and want to be told what to do every step of the way, and frankly we don’t have anybody called “supervisor.” We have some people called mentors, and we certainly invest in training for their first three to six months, depending on the activity, but once that happens they are pretty much expected to manage themselves and to identify when they need help, but not to be told every step of the way what to do. And so we’re missing that component in this current generation.”
IB: What specific positions are hard to fill?
Isbister: The most difficult positions to fill are the ones for which there are unique capabilities that you’d like somebody to have when they walk in the door, so industrial maintenance. It’s difficult to train somebody into that role if you don’t already have somebody here already to do the training with them. We were, for quite a long time, without a head maintenance technician. We now have one, and he’s very good, and now we can hire somebody to be his assistant who will eventually learn all the capabilities he’ll need. But until we found somebody with a certain level of capability who could come in and be knowledgeable about pretty complex manufacturing equipment, or at least knowledgeable about hydraulics and electronics and mechanical things, that was difficult. Frankly, any manufacturer is going to need that.
We hire a lot of students directly out of the technical colleges, and some of them directly out of high school, and train them to be welders or press break operators or laser operators or any number of other skill sets we use here. We don’t have a problem training, but you must have people who have a basic level of understanding and certainly desire and trust.
IB: What can the state realistically do with workforce development, given that every manufacturer needs a little something different, and that most manufacturers are not going to be doing the same things in the same way in 10 years?
Isbister: Every business has a responsibility, and businesses understand this and accept that we have a responsibility to provide the training and the mentoring that our employees need for the specialized skills that are unique to our business. To be honest, it’s a competitive advantage. Businesses that do it better than others, that train their employees better and bring them up the learning curve faster, will have a competitive advantage over other businesses. Businesses also hopefully understand that they need to pay these employees well. Let’s put it this way: It’s not just pay; you need to satisfy these employees. You need to continue to give them responsibility, you need to continue to challenge them to have a long career path and, obviously, you have to compensate them. If you do that, you have a good workforce.
What the state needs to assist with is making sure that we are helping our educational system, both the K-12 and the technical colleges, understand there are other options, and make sure young people and parents and guidance counselors realize that it’s just as honorable, just as exciting, and just as challenging to have a career in manufacturing. I was lucky enough to tour one of our customers, and this customer makes lead-shielded equipment for both the medical industry and security systems. It was fascinating. It’s just amazing the stuff we make here. To get young people to see that they could be making things, and that they could be involved in innovation for these things – that’s what we have to do.
There is a Senate bill to allow high schools to offer vocational diplomas as well as academic diplomas. I think that’s very important. Again, the public needs to understand these vocational diplomas are just as technically rigorous, if not more so, than a straight academic one. Rather than taking an extra year of language, you might take an extra year of math or you might take a drafting class, but there does need to be a focus on the fact there are other career pathways.
The interesting thing is that it’s not just the skilled trade side. We struggled finding people who would be in our purchasing or customer service areas. In my business, we feel very strongly that in order to work here, you have to have an appreciation for manufacturing, and you have to understand what we make and how we make it, and you have to like it in order to be in any role here. Our purchasing people understand what they are buying; same thing with our accounting people and our customer service people, and obviously with our engineers. There is a group of people who probably are not as likely to apply to a manufacturing facility for a job in purchasing because they don’t have that introduction to manufacturing.
The role of the state government and federal government is to make sure we have a very strong system within our education system to support technical education. Frankly, it exists in pockets, but it’s certainly not broad-based. There are a lot of unemployed people, so that’s our supply side, and then there is the demand side where employers, especially manufacturers, can’t find enough people. They can’t grow their business unless they add x-number of people. There are businesses that won’t relocate to this area or who move away because there isn’t sufficient workforce.
IB: What do you make of what the state is doing so far with Wisconsin Working?
Isbister: It’s a start. It’s absolutely a start, but I strongly believe that successful programs are driven by business, by the industry sector. When we stop thinking of the job seeker as the customer, and think of business as the customer, we will have much better outcomes. The way our programs are set up today, they center on serving the job seeker. What ends up happening is you don’t put the demand side in that equation, and therefore you’re not necessarily going to have positive outcomes. We must look at the demand side and say, “Okay, where are the businesses in that area that need people? What kind of people are they looking for? How can we do a better job filling open positions in our businesses first?”
You’d be amazed at how many people will have jobs, and how quickly that could happen, but we never look at it that way. We always look at it from the job seekers’ side, and then we say, “Okay, send out your resumes to these 75 different positions, and see which one sticks.” That doesn’t work well. A business will say, “If you want to partner with me, I’ve got these needs. If you can help me fill these needs, I’m going to come back to you the next time I have a need. You’ll be my first call when I have a need,” and that’s how you put people into a job.
IB: One more thing – how’s business?
Isbister: Business is good, really good. I’m always knocking on wood, but we have a diversified customer base, and we’re seeing a lot of new activity with a variety of new customers. I think folks are beginning to feel it’s time to move forward again. The biggest challenge for us is that we used to have a lot of visibility four and six months out in terms of our planning horizons, because typically our customers would give us longer lead times and they were placing blanket orders and things like that. Now, lead times have shrunk so much that it’s very difficult to see more than four to six weeks out. It’s hard to plan for the long term, and that affects how quickly you bring on new people, how quickly you invest, and other things. But generally, we’re seeing a definite increase in demand. Last year, we were up 11% over the year before.
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