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Attracting and retaining a quality workforce has long been a top business challenge for manufacturers. The Parts Life Inc. family of companies is no different—but its variety of workforce strategies have led to considerable hiring success.

The Moorestown, New Jersey–based manufacturing group—which consists of engineering firm Parts Life, armament support manufacturer DeVal Lifecycle Support and electrical manufacturer LC Engineers—offers a number of inducements for new and existing workers, President and CEO Sam Thevanayagam explained. Together, they are helping the companies, and their workers, thrive.

The plan: “We create an environment where [people] can achieve their God-given potential,” Thevanayagam told us.

• After being inspired by several books—David Docusen’s “Neighborliness” and Hernando De Soto’s “The Mystery of Capital” among them— Thevanayagam sought to provide workers with a range of benefits, some of them unusual for an employer to offer.
• “In ‘Neighborliness,’ [Docusen] realized people need education, a job, health care and housing to be successful and build community,” Thevanayagam said. “So we are making sure we are offering these things to our people.”
• For example, Parts Life recently devised a financial program called Help U Buy, which helps workers buy their first homes.

Helping the whole employee: Parts Life offers its employees a variety of educational opportunities to help them advance at the company and better their lives.

• Approximately 40% of the workforce at DeVal Lifecycle Support is made of immigrants to the U.S., according to Thevanayagam.
• To help employees learn the language, the Parts Life companies offer no-cost formal English courses with a trained Teaching English as a Second Language instructor. “It’s helped them not just at work, but in being better neighbors, parents and citizens, too,” Thevanayagam continued. 

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