TBT – Throwback Thursday – PlastiCert President & Owner presents at 7 Rivers Alliance Winter Conference

Two years ago, PlastiCert President and Owner Craig Porter gave an address at the 7 Rivers Alliance winter conference on Recruiting and Retaining High Skilled Talent.

Porter presented on Achieving a Great Workplace Culture, reflecting on steps PlastiCert took to expand its ability to add to and retain their workforce which set-up their ability to win the 2103 Sloan Award from the Families and Work Institute. His talk included experiences with work place flexibility over his career, how creating a positive workplace culture trumps just motivating employees, and the circumstances around PlastiCert applying for and subsequently winning the Sloan Award as a manufacturing company. He presented a number of the questions from the Sloan Award application to emphasize the levels of flexibility manufacturing companies need to consider. Ultimately, the flexibility provided by traditional 8-5 office environments will be the standard of flexibility manufacturers will need to rise to and exceed. He concluded with predicting increased future competition for employees at all levels. He stressed organizations can use a desirable company culture to battle the increasing wages and benefits offered by larger institutions.

Since that time, PlastiCert has earned a second When Work Works Award in 2016 after implementing additional programs and efforts learned from their initial submission efforts.

The conference was hosted by the 7 Rivers Alliance, a regional leadership group that boosts economic growth by fostering collaboration in western Wisconsin, southeast Minnesota, and northeast Iowa. The conference brought together business leaders, entrepreneurs and economic development professionals from those three regions. Attendees heard presentations about strategies and activities related to employee recruitment and retention through culture optimization, talent pipeline management, best practices in recruitment and in particular how to manage the Millennial workforce