Workforce and Education

The Manufacturing Institute, the NAM’s nonprofit workforce development and education partner, has been named an inaugural recipient of Stanley Black & Decker grant funding for its “leadership and expansion” of the Toyota-founded Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education (FAME) program.

The details: The MI, which currently operates FAME, a workforce development and training program, is one of 86 organizations chosen to receive funds from Stanley Black & Decker’s first-ever Empower Makers Global Impact Challenge grant.

• This year’s grants will help skill and reskill approximately 180,000 people in manufacturing through 2022.
• The program will give up to $25 million over the next five years to nonprofits “supporting trade workforce development initiatives in the construction and manufacturing sectors,” according to the MI.

Empowering makers: “Stanley Black & Decker is immensely proud to support the MI through their FAME programming as they work to skill and reskill the next generation of trade professionals,” said Stanley Black & Decker Vice President of Social Impact Diane Cantello.

• “Currently in the U.S., there are an estimated 650,000 open construction jobs and 10 million unfilled manufacturing jobs globally. Our purpose is to support ‘Those Who Make the World,’ and being able to fund educational programs and nonprofits that are revitalizing trade careers directly connects to our core mission. Thanks to this year’s Makers Grant Recipients, together we will be one step closer to closing the trade skills gap.”

The MI says: “Stanley Black & Decker’s commitment to FAME demonstrates how business can lead as they answer the call to grow the workforce of today and tomorrow,” said MI President Carolyn Lee.

• “We are grateful for their partnership in this effort to empower students with pathways to exciting, rewarding careers in modern manufacturing.”

About FAME: Founded in 2010 by Toyota, FAME aims to help students become highly skilled, sought-after makers capable of meeting the unique needs and challenges of the modern manufacturing sector.

Learn more about Stanley Black & Decker’s Empower Makers Global Impact Challenge at EmpowerMakers.com.

CORE Molding Technologies has taken an uncommon approach to fixing its workforce shortage: educating and working with U.S. legislators to change national immigration policy, while using all available immigration tools to bring in skilled workers.

Got labor challenges? The Columbus, Ohio–based large-format compression-molding maker has increased its entry-level production wages by up to 30% and offered additional incentives, such as sign-on, attendance and referral bonuses. Yet, even with these efforts, CORE saw only a marginal improvement, according to Executive Vice President of Operations Eric Palomaki.

A willing population: Thanks to its presence across North America, CORE has a unique perspective on immigration and workforce availability. The company employs nearly 1,800 people in the U.S., Canada and Mexico and says it is far easier to find people in Canada and Mexico who are not only willing but excited to work in manufacturing.

• “Our country’s population is shrinking,” Palomaki said. “Immigration is one way to fix [the labor shortage]. We follow the NAM’s policy … there’s no reason for it to be this difficult for good people—who are not looking to come and be a drain on government resources, but rather are looking for good, stable employment and to become citizens.”

But there’s a problem: The U.S. immigration system lacks a comprehensive, easily navigable process for getting hourly wage earners to the states for approved employment.

• “There are no options available for the hourly manufacturing workforce from an immigration perspective,” said Human Resources Executive Vice President Renee Anderson.

Success stories: For several years, CORE has sponsored non-U.S.-born salaried employees in applying for and obtaining working visas (and ultimately permanent residency)—and the company has been hugely successful in these efforts.

• “It creates an incredibly loyal workforce. When you go down this path, it changes the lives of individuals and families,” Anderson said.
• The tales of triumph are many: One employee, currently an engineering and materials manager in Ohio, began on the shop floor in Mexico, and after several promotions through the years, came to the U.S. on an L visa. Another individual, a senior engineer in Ohio, was trained and mentored in Mexico and also came to the U.S. on an L visa.
• Both now have green cards and have established their homes in the U.S. with their families, thanks to sponsorship by CORE Molding Technologies.

Pushing for policy: The company’s leadership is actively educating and engaging congressional members in Ohio and Minnesota, two states where it has facilities, to advocate for immigration-policy changes.

• Ideally, the company says, the system that is in place for salaried employees would be expanded to hourly production workers to provide them with a better path to citizenship.

The last word: “We want to invest in people,” said Palomaki. “We have a great place to work.”

In 2012, Vermeer management realized it had been hearing the same refrain from team members for some time: There was a shortage of available, high-quality child care in the Pella, Iowa, area, and it was complicating parents’ work schedules.

Workers’ challenges are the company’s challenges: Rather than respond with a collective shrug, the company recognized there was a problem—and it vowed to find a solution.

• “Especially with early morning shifts, you heard a lot about people leaving their children at a neighbor because parents had to be at work before the bus came or school started,” Vice President of Operations Mindi Vanden Bosch, a third-generation Vermeer family member, recalled.
• “We put a task force together and brainstormed. Over the next year and a half, we built the Yellow Iron Academy, Vermeer’s early childhood education center. Every answer from employees since has been, ‘It’s been a game-changer.’”

Not just care, but education, too: The Yellow Iron Academy, which gets its name from the company’s yellow products, isn’t just a nod at child care. With day-to-day operations run by award-winning third-party child care services provider Bright Horizons, it is a full-fledged center led by qualified professionals, and it aims to ready children for academia—and eventually, careers.

• “We’ve had teachers say, ‘Wow, these Yellow Iron kids are coming in with a strong readiness to learn,” said Vermeer Vice President of Human Resources Kate Guess, whose own children attended the center. “Yellow Iron Academy is taking the first steps to encourage kids to consider STEM careers like those in manufacturing,” Guess said.
• During Engineering Week, Vermeer professionals come in and talk to the center’s older kids about their jobs as engineers. The kids take regular field trips “across the road” to Vermeer’s facilities to see its museum, equipment and Global Pavilion. “It’s a place where they get excited about all the disciplines of STEM,” Guess said.

Meeting a community’s need: The center, which remained open throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, has achieved its intended goal of providing parents with top-of-the-line supervision and education while alleviating worry about having to cobble together care solutions for the next shift.

• Yellow Iron Academy isn’t just for Vermeer kids, though. While Vermeer team members and others with a connection to the company (grandparents, for example) receive discounted care rates, the center “is for the whole community,” Vanden Bosch said. “There is a need for child care in the area and across the entire state.”
• Out of the approximately 130 kids at Yellow Iron Academy, about 75 have Vermeer connections, Guess added.

Filling in school gaps: One of the most appreciated aspects of Yellow Iron Academy is its offering of before and after care, or programs prior to and following the school day.

• The center opens at 5:30 a.m. and is a pick-up and drop-off point on local school bus routes, so Vermeer team members don’t have to worry about school transportation for their children.

Other Vermeer team member benefits: Vermeer offers its team members several other differentiated, highly sought-after benefits. These include an onsite health care clinic and pharmacy, where both doctor visits and prescriptions are more cost effective than they are elsewhere, and a chaplaincy program.

• Both team members and their dependents are eligible to use the clinic and the pharmacy (features Vermeer has offered for 25 years) and many do.
• Vermeer has multiple chaplains across the company’s locations. These chaplains are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to “support the emotional needs of the team,” Vanden Bosch said. “It is without question one of the things our team members most value.”

Child care advice for other manufacturers: “Child care is hard right now,” Vanden Bosch said. “Businesses have to go into it with the belief that it’s an investment in the workforce of today and tomorrow, knowing that there will likely be some costs they won’t recoup. But it’s one of the most viable ways to create a workforce.”

A record number of people quit their jobs in 2021, and companies are scrambling to find ways to attract new workers, according to CNN.

What’s happening: With almost 11 million open positions at the end of 2021, employers have begun “to sweeten their offerings in terms of benefits, pay and flexibility.”

Greater work flexibility: One of the perks that seems to be helping retain some workers is increased flexibility in work schedule, a finding in line with the results of a recent Manufacturing Institute–BKD study:

• Fifty-six percent of respondents “noted a need for increased worker flexibility, and roughly half had reevaluated what work could be done remotely where possible. With that, 41% said that their business was working to reengineer the production process with social distancing in mind.”
• The MI recently held a roundtable discussion on this very topic. Get a free recording of the webinar here.

Pre-job paid vacation: Workers are also responding favorably to paid time off—before they start a job.

• One “company started offering ‘pre-PTO’ that offers new hires a week of paid time off before their first day of work. … [It] created a task force that spoke with recruiters, current employees and candidates who had turned down offers at the firm, to come up with innovative ways to solve the hiring challenges. ‘Without a doubt, PTO-related new benefits were the most popular,’” the firm’s chief people officer said.

Quick offers, more cash: A health care provider has begun offering sign-on bonuses of up to $17,500 for particularly hard-to-fill remote jobs, and it gave every employee a 4% raise in 2021.   

• Said the company’s executive vice president: “For many of our roles that don’t require licensure or certification … you show up, get a same-day offer and begin work the following Monday, if possible.”

The gender gap in the Great Resignation is widest in states with the most child care disruptions, according to Axios and a report from payroll company Gusto.

What’s happening: “Nationally, 4.1% of women quit their jobs in January compared with 3.4% of men—a 0.7 percentage point difference. But in Maine and Rhode Island—where around 45% of families reported COVID-related child care disruptions in the Census Household Pulse Survey—the gender gap swelled to 1.7 percentage points, Gusto found.”

• “At the same time, in Missouri and Arizona—where less than 25% of households said child care was disrupted—the gender gap was close to zero.”

Why: Women still disproportionately shoulder responsibilities for child care and are also likelier than men to take on child care duties while working from home, according to Axios.

• In addition, “as omicron cases fall, schools are reopening. But many child care centers have closed down due to COVID pressures, like staff shortages and lockdowns. And the availability of affordable, high-quality child care remains a growing problem.”

A related, worrisome work trend: Nationwide, parents (particularly mothers) are turning down job opportunities and missing work because of a severe shortage of school bus drivers.

• The lack of available operators has schools from Indiana to Texas canceling bus routes, leaving parents to scramble for transportation.

The NAM says: “Women are an integral part of the workforce, and while they’ve begun to return, more must be done to attract them,” said Manufacturing Institute President Carolyn Lee. “Unfortunately, finding high-quality child care is still a difficulty for many parents.”

“Manufacturing is an industry that continues to outperform others when it comes to pay and benefits—including child care. We’re seeing members such as Vermeer Corp. and Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry Company provide or subsidize quality care. That’s the sort of benefit that’s going to bring parents into manufacturing.”

The future workforce will continue to ‘favor’ workers over employers, with the labor pool set to grow just 0.2% a year from 2024 to 2031, according to the Congressional Budget Office and Axios.

What’s happening: “In the 2010s, the massive millennial generation was entering the workforce, the massive baby boom generation was still hard at work, and there was a multi-year hangover from the deep recession caused by the global financial crisis. But now, boomers are retiring, millennials are approaching middle age, and the Gen Z that follows them is comparatively small.”

• Unlike in the recent past, organizations now and in the future won’t be able to count on “a flood” of job applicants for all advertised positions.

What it means for manufacturers: “On the one hand, manufacturers added 349,000 manufacturing workers in 2021, the most since 1994, and on the other, the sector has 219,000 fewer workers today than it did before the pandemic began,” said NAM Chief Economist Chad Moutray.

• “In addition, job openings remain near record highs, and firms continue to note difficulties in finding and retaining workers. In 2022, we would expect to add around 150,000 to 180,000 employees, building on last year’s strong gains.”

What it also means: “The reality of the labor shortage makes clear that we need an all-of-the-above solution to our workforce crisis,” said Manufacturing Institute President Carolyn Lee. “We need to attract new workers and provide them with the needed skills. That’s why the NAM and the MI’s Creators Wanted campaign is so critical and so timely. Research shows the next generation is looking for careers that matter. They want to have an impact, and they want the potential for family-supporting jobs with upward mobility, all of which are characteristics of modern manufacturing.”

“This data also underscores why we also need comprehensive immigration reform to ensure that we are bringing the best and brightest to the U.S. to help strengthen manufacturing in America.”