5 | Workforce
Coalition Developed to Train U.S. Veterans for Jobs in Advanced Manufacturing
In the 2011 Skills Gap Report produced by The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte, over 80% of manufacturers report they cannot find people to fill their skilled production jobs. As a result, there are approximately 600,000 manufacturing jobs open right now in the United States. Manufacturers need a talented pipeline, but they also need the Right Skills Now.
The Manufacturing Institute, in response to this issue, has teamed up with General Electric, Boeing (Baldrige Award recipients in 1998 and 2003), Lockheed Martin, Alcoa, and other business, digital, academic, and not-for-profit partners to launch an endeavor to train military veterans for specific jobs in advanced manufacturing, in essence augmenting America’s competitiveness. This is a skills-match program that will combine the efforts of a company called Futures, Inc., which has created a digital “badge” system that easily translates the Military Occupational Specialty codes (MOS) to identify best-fit civilian positions in advanced manufacturing. In the past, most companies did not have an easy way of understanding the equivalence of an MOS to the skills and abilities needed in civilian jobs. For example, veterans that have advanced training in welding and machining can now be easily identified by their MOS using the system designed by Futures. This is a great step forward for the hundreds of thousands of veterans looking for work in this country, even if they do not quite possess the right …
17Oct2012 | Joseph A. De Feo | 0 comments | Continued
Acknowledging Innovative Excellence – K&N Management
Can you imagine every fast food chain winning the Baldrige Award because of food quality, customer service, or innovative menus? Probably not. Why? Because most of them demonstrate it’s all about low price and average service. Well, here is an exception.
K&N Management was a 2010 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and 2010 Texas Award for Performance Excellence. Their vision is “to become world famous by delighting one guest at a time.” As a restaurant management group, they were only the second of their kind to be recognized with a Baldrige Award. K&N operates out of Austin, Texas, and is the owner of Mighty Fine Burgers, Fries and Shakes, as well as Rudy’s Country Store and Bar-B-Q, with eight locations and approximately 500 staff members in total. With a dedication to concept design, operational excellence, and meeting or exceeding key guest requirements, K&N Management is certainly worth taking a second look at.
K&N was started by Ken Schiller and Brian Nolen in Austin back in 1993, with the goal of delighting every guest that walked through their doors. By the next year, they had purchased the rights to the Austin-area Rudy’s Country Store & Bar-B-Q franchise, and opened the first store: a combination gas station, convenience store, and restaurant that specializes in smoked meats. By 2005, three more franchise locations had been opened. In 2007, Schiller and …
10Oct2012 | Joseph A. De Feo | 1 comment | ContinuedWork System Implementation – Cargill, Inc.
Work system implementation is a significant topic that is covered in the Baldrige Criteria. In section 6.1, this question is presented, “How do you manage and improve your work systems to deliver customer value and achieve organizational success and sustainability?” As a recipient of the 2008 Baldrige award, Cargill Corn Milling (CCM), does an excellent job of demonstrating their ability to answer this question.
Cargill Corn Milling was originally a small corn milling company that began with a single grain storage warehouse, producing a mere 10,000 bushels of corn each day. Today, they produce up to 1 million bushels of corn each day that is no longer traded but instead is processed into ethanol, fructose, and renewable plastics, evolved from trading soybeans to processing them into meal and oil, and have acquired an industrial European chocolatier.
The customer demand for high quality cocoa powder is rising. In order to increase productivity, Cargill had to go through what is called a process breakthrough. The purpose of this breakthrough is change, beneficial change. The strategy Cargill undertook to bring beneficial change was to upgrade to a new Center of Expertise facility in the Netherlands, with a goal improving customer value and achieving organizational success and sustainability. “This investment is another demonstration of Cargill’s commitment to providing our customers with a broader and more bespoke service to meet their individual needs,” said …
23May2012 | Joseph A. De Feo | 0 comments | ContinuedAcknowledging Innovative Excellence – Iredell-Statesville Schools
As a school system, Iredell-Statesville K-12 Schools (I-SS) are committed to igniting a passion for learning and are rigorously challenging all students to achieve their academic potential. Regardless of the fact that I-SS has per-pupil operations expenditures ranked among the lowest in North Carolina, the 2008 Baldrige Award winner’s average SAT scores have drastically increased in the last 10 years. They have a strategic plan to keep moving forward, realizing high student performance, and long-term student success.
I-SS isn’t succeeding by motivating faculty and staff alone, but instead have implemented a number of research-based best practices to raise achievement and close gaps. By implementing formative assessments, essential curriculum, and collaborative teams, a learning-centered atmosphere has developed. I-SS asked themselves questions such as, What do students need to know?, How will they learn it?, and What will we do if they already know it? Quarterly performance measures are generated based on “customer” requirements and satisfaction, stakeholder requirements, how services will be provided, and how I-SS will know if the services are operating efficiently and effectively. When student performance does not meet targets, the gap is addressed through the systematic use of a Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycle to identify and implement improvements.
Iredell-Statesville Schools has a drop-out rate of 2.36%, ranking it the 7th lowest in North Carolina. However, back in 2002, before implementing the Baldrige Criteria, I-SS …
24Apr2012 | Tom Huizenga | 0 comments | ContinuedKey Elements of Employee Engagement
We’ve written frequently about the value of employee engagement on bottom results (here and here, for example) and how to engage employees (here and here). The second part of the fifth category of the Baldrige model is titled “Workforce Engagement.” It asks about key dimensions of employee engagement including culture, performance management, learning and development, and career progression. It also asks “how you determine the key elements that affect workforce engagement?”
Lonnie Wilson has been teaching and implementing lean and other culture-changing techniques for more than 40 years. His recent article in IndustryWeek, “Find the Missing Pieces in Your Employee Engagement Effort,” provides some context for that Baldrige question by listing five key elements necessary to engage employees—and keep them engaged:
- A sense of meaningfulness. Wilson poses a Baldrige-esque question: “Do [employees] understand the company mission and vision to represent a company that seeks to be competitive, thriving, growing, a company that not only makes money but gives back to the employees and it a good corporate citizen?” And do they believe their jobs serve that mission and vision?
- A sense of control. Do employees have ways to control what and how they do things or do they check their brains at the door every day?
- A sense of accomplishment. Can employees codify and quantify their contribution? Can they answer the question: “How did I (we)
…
Valuing Employees at Google
Fortune recently named Google number one among the 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2012. Explaining its decision, Fortune wrote: “Everything was up at Google last year—revenues, profits, share price, paid search click, hiring—and so, too was employee love…Employees rave about their mission, the culture, and the famous perks.”
Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and CEO, explained what he thinks draws people to Google: “You want to be working on meaningful, impactful projects, and that’s the thing there is really a shortage of in the world. I think at Google we still have that. We’ve always had that in spades.”
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information. “I don’t think we’re going to run out of important things to do,” Page observes. He sees his role as a leader “to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society.”
Google is a great place to work because it values its people. It engages them in the mission of the company. It encourages high performance. It provides compensation, rewards, recognition, and benefits that demonstrate the value it places on its employees. As a result, Googlers, as they are called, give their company a powerful competitive advantage.
Commenting on the Larry Page interview, Thomas Hawk wrote, “I have never met employees at any company …
15Mar2012 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedValuing Workforce Members and Partners
An organization’s success depends increasingly on an engaged workforce that benefits from meaningful work, clear organizational direction, and performance accountability that has a safe, trusting, and cooperative environment. Nestle Purina PetCare, one of the 2010 Baldrige Award winners, are well aware of how an organization does exactly that. A successful organization can capitalize on the diverse backgrounds, knowledge, skills, creativity, and motivation of its workforce and partners. Valuing the people in your workforce means being committed to their engagement, satisfaction, development, and well-being. Increasingly, this involves more flexible, high-performance work practices tailored to varying workplace and home life needs. Major challenges in the area of valuing members of your workforce include the following:
- Demonstrating a leader’s commitment to their success. At Purina, senior leaders communicate the ideals of the company’s founder: the “4 Talls” (Stand Tall, Think Tall, Smile Tall, and Live Tall,) to which they have added a 5th, “We create Tall innovation.”
- Providing recognition that goes beyond the regular compensation system.
- Offering development and progression within your organization.
- Sharing your organization’s knowledge so your workforce can better serve your customers and contribute to achieving your strategic objectives.
- Creating an environment that encourages risk taking and innovation.
- Creating a supportive environment for a diverse workforce. Organizations need to build internal and external partnerships to better accomplish overall goals.
Partnerships with members of your workforce might entail developmental …
27Feb2012 | Joseph A. De Feo | 0 comments | Continued
