With the skilled worker shortage, and the fact that it’s really difficult to onboard a lot of those positions, we have really been focusing on retention more than anything these days.

Planning long-term is more difficult. That’s probably our biggest heartburn. I think part of it for us is industry change and employee changes. And regulatory issues have been a big, big heartburn for us with our business in plastics. So yeah, it’s planning. That’s going to be the most difficult. We can get numbers from customers, we can do a budget for an entire year, and we were dangerously close in the past. That’s not so true the last couple of years.

Our biggest issue now is what should we be paying in people. We’ve been finding good employees, but the way inflation has been, it’s hard. We had operators who are lower paid. Well, now they can go to Walmart and get that. It’s trying to juggle that and still keep your good operators. So, that’s probably our biggest challenge right now.

For me, it’s what our legislature, specifically state, is going to dream up next — new regulations or requirements that we have to do. Right now, it’s obviously paid family and medical leave. I’m just very concerned about the impact that’s going to have on the workforce. We already have people figuring out how to get out of working, and now they’re going to be able to get out of working and be paid at least some percentage of their normal salary to do it.

Does your outlook influence or inhibit your ability to plan? How does uncertainty affect your plan?

We’re probably going to spend less on capital, but we’re going to take the money and invest it in people — putting more training programs in place, putting more leadership development programs in place.

Let’s talk about the economy. How optimistic are you about the next 12 months? Are you pessimistic? Is it too early to predict?

There are so many conflicting indicators out there that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. So, you really don’t know what the most critical factor is. We’re a small enough company and hopefully in enough different industries that it’s going to come down to our effort and our focus versus the macro factors. That’s how we’re approaching it right now.

Let’s talk about some of the legislative laws passed this past July.  What are your thoughts on the new sick and safe laws, cannabis, and others? 

I’m worried to varying degrees for each new law. There are already people gone or just calling in sick because they don’t want to come into work. As far as the sick and safe time, we already have enough PTO given for that, but I don’t know if some employees will think that they deserve more as a separate thing. Cannabis we’re somewhat concerned about but not too worried.

Let’s talk about some of the legislative laws passed this past July.  What are your thoughts on the new sick and safe laws, cannabis, and others? 

I work in HR, so the safe and sick time, there is a concern that is going to be demanded in addition to what we’ve already negotiated in our contract earlier this year. And then with cannabis, how do we monitor it? We’ve changed our pre-hire drug policy, and we’re doing a reasonable suspicion training for our supervisors in November. But it’s not clear what we can call out, what we cannot call out. We are very concerned.

Keith handled our project very well. He was able to walk us through the process and come up with a simple system that maps everything we do. We passed the certification and recertification with no issues at all. He covered ISO well and trained us very well. Everything went very smoothly.

How has forecasting changed?

Look at how things have progressed the last two years, we can have anywhere from 10% to 50% growth at any period of time. How do you predict what it’s going to be like in 2023? Is the economy going to stay the same? That one commodity you buy or that one part you buy could disrupt the whole chain. How much risk do we take to pre-buy that material? How much should we put on our shelves, both raw materials and finished goods? It’s a guessing game — month to month, week to week.

We talked a lot about people, we talked about supply chain, we talked about how business is. What’s your heartburn issue as you think about the next year?

Retaining [people] is on our mind, but also just wondering if we can sustain this growth with inflation and all these rising prices. Some people say yes, some people say no. The failure rate in large industries is high. So, it’s making sure that we’re doing the right things to stay in the business.

How have you changed your hiring or onboarding process to try and have a higher retention rate?

One of the things we’ve spent a lot of time on is retention. And what we found is to constantly touch base with new employees, even existing employees. That communication, that feedback, it can be really successful with seeing improvements, retention, etc.

Ten years ago, people thought some kinds of automation were sometimes a threat. Are your employees embracing it differently today?

When we brought the cobot in, it was amazing how many people wanted to come over and see it, watch it. There was no threat whatsoever.

How do you plan for two or three years out in this kind of a world?

We might be adding some square footage, but on a smaller scale than we would’ve a year ago when some bigger plans were made. Some of those plans have definitely been put on hold. It’s also important to stay close to your customers right now because things are changing so quickly. It might not always be a low demand like it is right now so staying on the same page is important for when that demand picks up.

How do you see the next 12 to 18 months compared to the last year or so?

The last couple years for us were very strong. We had a hard time keeping up with demand. Now this year and going forward, we’ve had to work a lot harder to maintain our sales and volume going out the door to our customers. We are doing more promotions, as people are looking for sales and discounts with inflation dollars being tight.