GUEST POST: This post is written by David McGiverin, Sustainability & Productivity Manager at Northwest Food Processors Association (NWFPA). 
During the economic downturn, a common but dangerous business myth emerged: it’s an employer’s marketplace. With so many downsized employees desperate to work, any job is a good job — why not enhance your company’s bottom line by demanding more, and offering less?
In an effort to help close workforce talent gaps and reduce turnover in the Tri-Cities food processing industry, we teamed up with the Northwest Food Processors Association (NWFPA) to create a roundtable discussion among area food processors at the Port of Pasco that led to the development of some great new ideas for attracting skilled talent to the industry and area.
Building off of some alarming statistics from a NWFPA survey of food processors last year—indicating 40% of the food processing management workforce is eligible for retirement within the next five years, and that food processors in rural areas are actually experiencing this management retirement issue currently—we wanted to encourage a conversation among key industry leaders to present some solutions and best practices to address this workforce pipeline issue.
Here were some of the findings:
• Military veterans, across several different skill-levels, are a great fit for jobs in food processing—but many veterans don’t know the wide array of positions available, or how those positions connect with the jobs they had while in the military. Attracting them to the industry by directly correlating their Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) code to specific job opportunities is a great practice to consider.
• Food processors adopting the National Career Readiness Certificate (NCRC) as a preferred method to measure and certify skill levels in the industry is a way to standardize the hierarchy of skills, and a good way to easily recognize skilled seasonal candidates.
• Pre-employment training programs, such as our own DePaul Industries’ Heart of the Workforce (HOW) program and Mechatronics, preparing employees for industry-based skills before they step in the door, are proven ways to build skills and increase the likelihood of candidates beginning to build careers in food processing.
Attendees represented operations managers and HR managers from the industry. “I found the session highly meaningful, with several actionable takeaways,” said Selina Hoflund, Manager & Plant HR at McCain Foods USA, Inc. in Othello, WA. “I’d love to see more food processors involved to share ideas about how to expand our talent pool.”
NWFPA, known for its extensive research within the food processing industry throughout Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, is on the lookout for food processors in the Tri-Cities area to get in touch with the organization in order to contribute to the conversation, provide best hiring practices from their respective plants and seasons, and benefit from the shared resources offered by other processors.
“As an association, we’re interested in obtaining a broader idea of the workforce pipeline issues and hard-to-fill skilled positions within the industry,” says David McGiverin, Sustainability and Productivity Manager at NWFPA. “There’s a huge benefit to food processors working together to solve these issues, and it’s imperative—given the alarming pending retirement rate—to begin now.”
Do you have any best practice ideas to share about attracting talent to the food processing industry?
DePaul Industries is excited to announce its expansion of services to Baltimore, Maryland—another step in our demand-driven geographic expansion as outlined in our five-year Strategic Plan.
As always, we’re pulled by customer demand: We’ll be providing contracting support services for the United States Coast Guard in and around the Baltimore area, starting with Fire Watch services (a subset of our Security division) for Coast Guard shipyards and dry docks. This opportunity, slated to begin this summer, will include the opening of a local branch office in Baltimore and growing our connections with Vocational Rehabilitation Baltimore, the Regional Office of Veterans in Baltimore, and other related organizations and Community Rehabilitation Programs (CRPs) that connect people with disabilities and veterans to employment. Similar to our administrative services contract on the Fort Huachuca Army Base in Sierra Vista, AZ, we’ll be looking to fill the majority of Fire Watch positions with disabled veterans.
It’s our intention that this contract will serve as our ‘anchor’ in the area, in order for us to develop additional local business in our Staffing, Security, & Packaging business units—a single opportunity is just the first step. With firmly established connections to the area, we’ll be able to partner with other CRPs and drive additional business opportunities in order to employ more individuals with disabilities. This demand-driven expansion is in right in line with our Strategic Plan, as we carefully vet strategic opportunities like this one as they relate to our scalable business model and our mission. In this case, both our revenue and employment of people with disabilities will grow—and so we’re off to the East Coast.
We’re very pleased to work with the U.S. Coast Guard, particularly as we already serve several branches of the U.S.military through various contracts in Oregon, Washington, & Arizona.
Stay tuned for more information as we roll out our new location and services!
Moving is one of the top five stressors in people’s lives. Lile North American Moving, the largest moving company in the Northwest, has built its reputation on flexibility, customer service, and reliability in order to help families and businesses relocate as stress-free as possible. In the summer months, Lile’s business increases at least two-fold, and often three-fold. That business boost presents the interesting challenge of finding the right summer employees—and the right staffing agency to source them.
The Challenge
Lile was in need of a temporary labor force for the busy summer season that would maintain the safety, professionalism, and high standards for customer service that Lile has established during its 50 years of service to the community. Effectively training new employees during the time of year when experienced employees are at their busiest, however, is a major challenge for an industry with a small profit margin. Lile needed a solution that would free up their leads and managers from time-consuming training and provide the large influx of new workers with the skills needed to be productive from day one.
The Solution
DePaul Staffing teamed up with Lile to create the Mover Training Program, designed to give new employees an overview of professional moving methods and skills in order to bring down their learning curve. DePaul Staffing trains each new batch of temporary employees on everything from wrapping glassware to dust-sealing boxes to which way dresser drawers should face. Lile management is free to focus on the doubling of their business and be assured that their new employees are being consistently trained and equipped to perform the job to Lile standards. “You get the business, you have to make sure you effectively service it,” says Rich McDermid, Portland Branch Manager at Lile. “Our partnership with DePaul provides a great win-win situation for both parties.”
The Benefits
Effectively training new employees on industry-specific practices saves time, of course, but also money. For Lile, outsourced summer training brings down the instances of damage and claims, and preserves their reputation for great customer service. For DePaul Industries’ employees, the Mover Training Program and its curriculum in both hard and soft skills can be a gateway to a new career.
The Mover Training Program obviously is able to translate to other moving companies, designed around their company’s specific specialty—but specialized training programs are beneficial to any industry looking to provide their temporary workers with company knowledge and actionable skills from day one.
Interested in chatting about the possibilities? Get in touch with DePaul Staffing today & design a training program for your industry.
We’re excited to be featured in the April 2012 issue of NISH Workplace magazine for our Administrative Services AbilityOne™ contract at Fort Huachuca Army Base, staffed with 100% U.S. Veterans.
The contract, based in our newest location in Sierra Vista, Arizona, has been thriving since last fall and is especially unique to AbilityOne, as it requires workers with higher-functioning skills for jobs such as administrative assistants, supply and warehouse technicians, and mail couriers—not to mention its 100% U.S. Veteran staff.
AbilityOne is a Federal initiative to create employment opportunities for people with disabilities, and as such the majority of employees employed under the Administrative Services contract at Fort Huachuca have a documented disability. Of the disabled veterans, DePaul Industries Branch Manager Lenore Derrick says, “They’ve had to change their career path due to a disability, but they come pre-equipped with all of this specialized knowledge, skills, and discipline. In addition, they’re motivated and want to work. Who wouldn’t want a worker like that?”
Government knowledge and specialized military skills are rare and extremely helpful to possess when seeking quality employees to work on a military base, and the transition from active-duty service veterans to administrative work on site makes perfect sense. We’re committed to making hiring veterans as clear of a case across the entire employment spectrum: Through our ‘Vets First’ initiative, DePaul Industries will continue to leverage disabled veterans’ knowledge base for employment efforts across the board—public or private, government or non-governmental.
Click here to read the article, or visit DePaul Staffing to learn more about what we do. Many thanks to NISH, Sarah Patton, and the AbilityOne employees at Fort Huachuca for the great work on the article.
