Kickstart: One way to attract workers? Be a Best Places to Work finalist

I once worked at a place with an awful boss. No matter how much I liked working for other company leaders, a lot of people grew frustrated and left (that includes me, which is how I ended up at PN). Time after time, this boss would say the problem was obviously the person who left, not him or his corporate culture.

So I suppose that experience colors part of my frustration with people who blame pandemic stipends or the Great Resignation for when people leave. Sure some employees are chasing their dreams when they resign, but I suspect a lot of people leave existing jobs because they're tired of some situation (or person) at their current work and see more opportunities elsewhere.

Which brings me to this year's finalists in the Best Places to Work in the plastics industry. You can find the alphabetical list of finalists here. Ranking of those top companies — with separate lists for processors and suppliers — will be announced March 23 at the Plastics News Executive Forum in Naples, Fla.

Last year, Independence, Mo.-based PolySource and Germantown, Wis.-based Plastic Components Inc. took the top spots in the suppliers and processors categories, respectively.

It's worth paying attention to what these companies do and seeing if it makes sense to apply those opportunities at your shop. Of course people still leave jobs they love and bosses they respect, but you don't want to give them extra reasons to quit.

Plastics have always had a spot in athletic competition. For competitors at the 2022 Paralympic Games in Beijing taking place now, composites are used in multiple events. Automaker Toyota Motor Corp. has added its engineering and materials expertise to develop a better monoski for athletes in the Alpine events.

The sit-ski, with a carbon-fiber shell and other highly engineered parts being used at Beijing, was developed by engineers from Toyota's motor racing team and international paralympic skiing champions. It replaces systems that racers adapted and used, although that were not specifically designed for monoski competitions.

"These guys are strapping themselves with ratchet straps into a rig and throwing themselves down the mountain at 70 mph," said Trisha Wall, a Toyota engineer and ski racer brought in to the project. "They deserve better."

You can find out more about the program, including videos of the project development, here.

The pivot to electric vehicles is making for some unexpected partnerships in the auto industry. The latest? Honda and Sony announced March 4 that they have a memorandum of understanding to form a new company to create and commercialize "high value-added" EVs.

Honda and Sony want the new company, yet to be named, to start sales in 2025, Hans Greimel from our sister paper Automotive News reports. A Honda spokeswoman said the new company would sell its vehicles in the U.S., Japan and Europe but added that production sites are still under consideration.

Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida compared the coming transition to EVs to the technological shift created by smartphones.

I don't think that means we'll be using a Sony PlayStation controller to operate our cars, but it should be interesting to watch.