Companies find new places to hang their ‘help wanted' signs

Indianapolis — The search for workers continues in the U.S. plastics market, with employers getting creative to find them.

"Finding employees is our largest challenge," Kenton Williams said Oct. 3 at the 2019 MAPP Benchmarking & Best Practices Conference in Indianapolis. Williams is general manager of Royer Corp., a maker of plastic promotional items such as swizzle sticks and stirrers in Madison, Ind.

Indiana's low unemployment rate made it hard for Royer to find employees. For answers, it turned to an unlikely partner: its county department of corrections.

Since the late 2000s, Royer has hired more than 400 workers who were detained at a nearby correctional facility. The firm has hired 73 prisoners in the last 25 months alone. Prisoners now make up 25 percent of Royer's 85 direct labor employees.

The prisoners are paid through a work release program, although the government takes some of their earnings. Most of the prisoners who work for Royer stay from six months to a year.

Williams said during the event sponsored by the Indianapolis-based Manufacturers Association for Plastics Processors that the workers Royer sources from the correctional facility "are reliable and hardworking." He said they've had very few problems with prisoner employees.

Workers sourced through the program are serving time for a range of offenses, including DUI and drug dealing. Before being hired, they're interviewed, trained and given a drug test. They're also shadowed after starting on the job.

Some of the workers have remained with Royer after their sentences are completed. One former prisoner now is a member of the firm's sales team, while one works in customer service and another works in quality control.

Prisoner workers are transported to and from Royer by the corrections department. They work all three shifts at the plant and also can work overtime and weekends.

The prisoner workers "have been a godsend for our company," Williams said. "These are people who've made mistakes, but we all make mistakes."

James Brown is seeing similar employee shortages at Augustine Plastics Inc., a custom injection molder in Somerset, Pa. Brown is president and CEO of the 78-employee firm, which makes parts for the aerospace, defense and health care industries.

Before joining Augustine, Brown worked for private equity firms that sometimes invested in plastics.

"I wanted to walk a mile in their shoes," he said Oct. 3 at the MAPP event.

Augustine "is dealing with the same people challenges that other firms are," Brown said. "We realized we needed to invest in people costs."

To do so, Brown said the firm needed to understand that it was looking at people with no previous experience.

"With a below 5 percent employment rate, those who are employable are employed," he added. "So we're left with some challenges."

Twenty years ago, the Somerset area — between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg — had a large manufacturing base with as many as 15,000 jobs. But many of those jobs were outsourced in the 1980s and 1990s.

"It's like an entire generation of workers is gone," Brown said. "Now, we have to compete with McDonald's and Starbucks. These are people who are convinced they have no skills and no value and are starting to believe it."

Now Augustine is developing its strategy around people.

"This is fundamental stuff, but we weren't doing it," Brown said. "So we have to think outside of the box."

Brown worked two weeks at the firm's injection molding plant to learn the job. Doing so gave him a better understanding of the work involved. "I realized I could ever be a machine operator," he said.

Some of the attributes that Augustine now tries to instill in workers are positive attitudes, making eye contact, being comfortable with repetitive tasks and good attendance. "You have to know what your backup plan is when your car doesn't work," Brown said.

Identifying what makes workers work led Brown to identify his favorite type of worker.

"I would take a female between the ages of 32 and 57 over any man in the country," he said. "These women are motivated and hardworking. A lot of them are working to put their put kids through school or to care for a sick parent and that gives them motivation."