Finding employees is tough. If you have not added any or experienced it, read the trade magazines, it is a top three topic. Even more integral to success besides finding employees is retaining employees.
Last year I spoke a number of times to groups of business professionals on using a designed positive workplace culture as a means of attracting new talent, and retaining the employee talent you have. In 2013 and again in 2016, PlastiCert won an award for Workplace Effectiveness and Flexibility from the Families and Work Institute in Washington D.C., and their When Work Works Program. It is the cornerstone of our keeping all of our workplace talent in place AND attracts the new talent we need. We feel having an award winning culture will augment our search for talent by bring people to us as they look to make their work and home lives as rewarding as possible. One of the most telling (and gratifying) statistics I received from this year’s results was my coworkers’ answer to:
Knowing what you know now, if you had to decide all over again, would you decide to take your current job again?
| PlastiCert Percent | Employees at Finalist Orgs. | Employees at Winning Orgs | Employees in the Nation | |
| Yes | 100.0% | 75.7% | 81.3% | 67.3% |
| Maybe | 0.0% | 16.7% | 13.8% | 27.2% |
| No | 0.0% | 5.8% | 3.3% | 5.3% |
| Don’t know | 0.0% | 1.8% | 1.6% | 0.6% |
Seeing a number like 100% lets us sleep a little easier. Not only are we getting it right internally, but we’re getting some assistance recruiting wise. Being a unique manufacturing entity for the area (one of a handful that perform plastic injection molding and its ancillary mold technologies), we have always needed to train and update our people. Doing orientation and training once and then building on it is way more preferable to having to train a revolving door of new hires replacing exiting people.