May 30, 2014

Goal of the Exchange Process 1. Help each Member professional to expand their business networks in order for you to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of how you tackle you job functions. 2. Provide Members with a dynamic and reliable resource to help you solve problems and find new implementable ideas

Rules of Engagement 1. Do not use your HOLD button on your telephone – hearing elevator music in the next 60 minutes is not good! 2. No body language signs – please be aggressive and speak your mind and thoughts. 3. Please identify yourself with name and company before speaking. 4. Take Notes about who is saying what… 5. Warning: My goal is to facilitate aggressively so we can cover as many topics as possible. 6. Last but not least, I need your feedback on how to make this process better for you and the participants.

Question: What is the most effective way of getting your managers to complete yearly performance reviews? (Carol Donahey)  Riverbend: We don’t do all review at one time. We do reviews on the anniversary dates of the employee. We provide coaching training to enable our managers to understand how to engage with their people.  Ice Miller: Provide incentives with completion of the evaluations and have also seen employers mandate that their management teams complete reviews as part of the job duties. If you have a policy that stipulates reviews, you must stick to the timelines.  Dymotek: Focus on moving to anniversary dates  Does everyone do performance reviews? Goldkey: We do hourly at one time of the year and then do salary. Same at Custom Rubber. Worldclass: Do them on a quarterly basis. We have a checklist that they go through and it seems to turn into mark the box. This is a mandate we place on the management team. We are trying to turn this into a true interactions with these engagements. We use the 6 discipline approach to management.

Question:. Does anyone use any type of software to administer and document training? If so what kind? (Kyle Godhard)  Goldkey: Created some testing profiles of machine operators of what they need to know: JJ Keller (On-Line) offers a host of different training for online or class room.  Ice Miller: Just involved in litigation on training records. Automatic systems, although great in management, there could be an opportunity to delete the employee training records after they have left. Ensure you have the capability of keeping record of training after an employee leaves.  Thogus: We have a training board with all of the operators names with all of the skill sets. Color associated training board. If they understand the skill, green, need help, yellow….a visual reminder of what they need to learn. We are moving toward electronic documentation with SiteHawk (GHS). JJ Keller has an electronic way to ensure tracking of training.  Riverbend: Keep paper copies of training and do a great deal of group training. We schedule and batch training at specific times of the year.  PMC: Many different cloud products with very large packages from 25K-50K per year.  Zeon Chemicals:  Kyle: Been look at the color training boards.  Any issues with people knowing what everyone else is trained on: Puts the burden on the employee to be up to speed in training Blair: Employees where selecting to color in their own capabilities; now we use a printout 11 X 17.

Question: What’s the best way to track employee engagement? (How do you track employees being invested in the company (Terra Lovelace)  Blair: We do an on-line survey every two years to gauge employee satisfaction. Use survey monkey. (We use the suggestion box which tends to be more productive then the annual survey process.)  Gros: We use an anonymous system.  GoldKey: Maybe not specific levels of engagement. We provide a great number of opportunities for our employees; they can select to become engaged or not. We have a great open door policy which enables our culture. (We have a suggestion box; our top leader demands interaction at a very personal level; must talk to 3 hourly associates on a weekly basis. Key is responding to what you hear!!! If not, you WILL lose credibility.  Tech: From an HR perspective, we were able to provide both good and bad input to the management teams in order to improve the culture overall. Once per year we did a survey in my last organization. We tried to stay with the same questions in order to track trends. The goal was to take the information and drive a more positive culture. Just getting ready to roll out a suggestion program.  Dymotek: weekly we address questions that are put on the suggestion board where the employee uses their employee number.  PMC: Measure weekly, monthly, annually. We track suggestions, savings dollars, etc… so we don’t just have ideas of “we should be paid more.” this is a true CI program. We train them on how to ID issues and solved. We keep a track record of what is getting done…a progress chart. We have done surveys with mixed results. We are looking at doing a “state” interviews with employees we currently have. Interviewing from the top up…leadership down. What makes us tick…what do we stay…what do we like about the company…what don’t we like about the company.

Issue: Ideas on how to recruit Process Engineers and Process Technicians. (Laura Gayton)  Dymotek: We are doing well with finding machine operators and have advertised in PN with no luck. Looking at going the recruiter root.  Thogus: We have great luck with hitting the colleges and Penn State Baron. Many other schools have plastics programs including Ferris State in MI. We started with building a co-op program. Umass Lowell;  Custom Rubber: We hit the colleges also and have had great success with internships. We are also growing talent from within. Hard to find veteran process engineers. We have a mechanical aptitude test which helps us ID which employees are right for promoting into high tech level positions.  Goldkey: Also using co-op programs. Also promoting operators from within. We take comments from managers on the floor and offer good employees opportunities to go to local colleges or training facilities.

Question/Issues: We are looking at bringing our payroll in house and trying to get a handle on it as much as possible. (Diane Hoffman)

Question: Has anyone tried to develop a 4 day/10 hours per day week? (Lori Smith)

Question/Issues: Best practices to increase/sustain communication in all directions of the organization. (Erin Hlavin)

Issues: Social Media policies and failed drug testing/rehire policies. (Christy Jester)

Question/Issues: Where can I get training to perform background checks? (Alice Desimone)

Question: Any strategies to recruit Engineers with strong rubber background in the Wisconsin area? (Gabrielle Cervera)

Question/Issues: What recruitment tools have been most successful? Do you offer a bonus program and if so, what positions qualify for the program? (Teri Woodward)

Question/Issues:. General FMLA q & a. (Lisa French)

Additional Questions?

The next scheduled Peer Networking Webinar will be in 6 weeks – July 11 Also, be sure to check the Events Calendar for the next Plant Tour Events! MAPP: July 24 at Nicolet Plastics ARPM: August 7 at Veyance THANK YOU!