Future of our Finest Like many industries in the US, our fastener industry suffers from a declining talent pool. Our industry leaders are aging and our attention to recruiting, hiring, and training has been less than adequate for many years. Lack of attention to investing in our personnel has left us scrambling to hold onto the best employees and caused us to lower our industry standards for hiring and business conduct. A declining talent pool is certainly not our only pressure. Distributors are suffering from consolidation woes and attacking each other by stealing people in order to steal accounts. Manufacturers are fighting against low-priced imports, trade constraints and process efficiencies. Recruiters do not understand the industry or have become stale in their approach to finding the best talent. Nearly all businesses are suffering from declining gross profits. Notwithstanding these stresses, we need to refocus on recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining great people, while building accountability at all levels. Responsibilities for this refocus need to reside with upper management. Primary focus on cultivating great employees needs to be written into directives and policies. Most importantly, the focus on hiring practices needs to be communicated and acted upon by our industry leaders each and every day. We need to deploy better programs for training employees and make sure we are introducing incentives that focus on a financially strong workplace. We cannot just make statements about change; we need to show great recruiting practices in action. The benefits of solid recruiting are countless. While filling open positions with dynamic individuals, we will delight our customers, create positive workplace change, and groom future leadership. The result is our people will enjoy their jobs more, customers will be happier and management will be challenged to excel. Instead of lowering our standards to expedite filling positions, we should be taking our time and reviewing our processes and expectations in the hiring process. Anyone who is hired will have an impact on customers and the hiring managers need to remember this fact in the hiring process. Dynamic professionals impress and retain customers and become leaders in our companies. Anything less is costly. Dynamic people also impact all other associates positively. They heighten expectations of the whole organization and show that there are great benefits in being better than average. They show that complacency in the workplace is unacceptable. Again, this impacts customers and profits directly. Recruiting and hiring the best people are only a part of the personnel system. Creating empathy and personal pride of work in your organization begins with educating employees on the nature, processes and goals of your business. Exposing employees to company metrics – including profit and loss information – gives them greater pride and communicates and demonstrates how everyone’s actions result in outcomes. Exposing
associates to company-wide functions and disciplines provides them an understanding of how everyone impacts the business. Distributors, manufacturers, and recruiters all need to share in the movement of changing our industry practices. Change is not left to one sector of our industry, and it starts with changing our current industry standards and business conduct. As the whole industry evolves, those who do not change will be left behind with inferior structures and practices. Distributors may have the most complex changes to endure, but they also may, in turn, have the most to gain. Distribution is a very people-intensive business. Distribution deeply relies on people to move inventory. Providing information up and down the supply chain in order to keep efficient and effective supply levels is the backbone of a distribution business and determines whether distribution delivers on their value propositions to their customers. Once hubs of creativity in our industry, many distributors have resorted to short cuts in hiring and value propositions that have become everyday offerings. Consolidations have hugely impacted fastener distribution. Many former leading distribution companies have watched as their creative teams fragment, and thus, their best people find homes at other distributors. As these teams fragment, many distributors have resorted to taking short cuts by finding experienced people and stealing them from the competition. There are many cases where an employee goes to a competitor and then returns to the original company after a few short months. Some employers seek candidates that can bring accounts with them. This short-term approach of stealing employees may result in a top account moving, but, more often than not, the two feuding distributors ultimately lose the account to a third distributor or even a manufacturer. Even more likely is that the newly-hired employee who claims to be able to “bring” an account with them has no impact on the customer’s decision. In the end, the distributor ends up with the same, or fewer, accounts and a new employee that will move to another distributor at the drop of a hat. This disloyal approach can also break down your company’s current culture. Longstanding, loyal employees feel new employees receive better incentives, and the loyal employee then becomes jaded. The cycle continues, with companies exchanging employees with little to no gain, until someone changes the standards. There are many ways to change the standards. 1. Hire salespeople based on the merits of their ability to promote your company, services and products. 2. Implement practices that back up your actions with solid training programs for employees. 3. Offer raises or financial incentives to employees based on successful training or their impact to increased profits.
4. Pay your people well. Keeping your pay levels, benefits, and incentives above average is likely the best investment you can make. It is an action that shows that you care and will attract and retain the best people. Changing the standards must start with each individual manager seeking a better way of hiring, training and motivating all associates. Manufacturers are experiencing many of the same ills, but they also have their own unique challenges. Many have to commit to a more precise balance of technical knowledge and the ability to service customers. Manufacturing mentality traditionally focuses on capital use and machine efficiencies. This traditional approach, while important to the profitable use of capital, often becomes a sole guide for manufacturers and can prevent the additional people-oriented approach to profit. The challenge is complex. Machine runtime and general utilization are primary and promoting sales becomes secondary. The communication between sales, quality, and manufacturing becomes disjointed at best as a result. Without solid communication inside and outside of the manufacturing company, customers are more apt to feel they can effectively source better products from other countries. Technical training at the manufacturing level also becomes essential. The ability to read prints and understand basic engineering theories and practices are a minimum to understanding the greater complexities of the manufactured product. This expertise can also be an engaging topic with customers and provide a connection with them. Many manufacturers overemphasize technical training and minimize sales training or do just the reverse. Precise balance of technical knowledge and sales training is essential and continual communication between all disciplines is essential. Technical training is readily available. Local schools are a great outlet for continuing education, but your own technical employees can be a great asset. Internal employees need to understand that training is often a secondary role for them that can have great impact on the organization. Making sure that the time spent on training is effective and concise must be a concern for the manager. Internal training also spawns usable tools for all employees and it engages everyone in communication, but all training needs to be updated often to be kept fresh. The decision of hiring direct employees versus independent representation is difficult, but important to many small manufacturers. If reps are enlisted, they must function as an extension of the business and the manufacturer must fight for positioning amongst their lines. Reps must be held to the same standards and be forced into participating in your employee programs. On the other hand, manufacturers must commit to constant and detailed communications with the rep. Direct sales employees are often seen as too expensive. All situations are different, but understanding all costs, including the cost of inattention to your products, must be considered. Whichever route is taken, your customer-facing employees must function as a cohesive group, and the customer must feel that anyone communicating with them is a direct employee, even when they are
independent. This begins and ends with training and continues with constant communication. Sales automation software is a great option for both distributors and manufacturers. It can help manage internal processes and create accountability, but sales processes need to be in place before implementing the software and it needs to work well with your current operating system. If you choose to use sales software, it must be a mandatory daily activity. Reps and direct employees must be required to use the sales accountability tools provided, and frequent, face-to-face interaction with inside sales, warehouse, quality and engineering disciplines must be required. Recruiters also share in the responsibility of bringing dynamic employees to our industry. They need to provide improved methods of seeking and qualifying candidates and pay precise attention to unifying employers and candidates. A good unity can only happen when cultures are analyzed and work characteristics match that culture. Simply passing along the same tired, poorly presented resumes is useless to a manufacturer or distributor and does not result in continued business for the recruiter. The recruiter needs to be engaged in the creation of the job description. Even if the description is already written, the recruiter needs to have an intimate understanding of the characteristics that will make up a successful candidate profile. They must learn the company’s culture and nurture the new relationship from the initial contact all the way through the candidate’s resignation from their current employer. A recruiter must filter out candidates that do not meet the need or the culture of the hiring company. Recruiters need to be realistic and have open communications with the hiring company when they see signs that the relationship might not be perfect. Without this filter, the employer can deploy one of many other less expensive methods of garnering resumes that do not meet the need. With this filter and successful communication leading up to the hire date, the employer will be united with a great employee and will not only pay for the services, but they will also commit to the process in future searches. Recruiters are also guilty of taking shortcuts. They often steal employees from the clients they serve. Some will even engage a candidate while having an open position with the client. Obviously, this is a tactic that causes no long-term loyalty from the employer, but it happens more often than many employers are aware. Recruiters are invaluable when engaged from the onset. Working hard to seek great candidates from complementary markets and communicating openly and professionally benefits the recruiter, the client and the candidate. They can even help bolster your internal training when they know it is a need. Recruiters can be a prime outlet for finding new talent for our industry. They can help the client by saving them time and money and, more importantly, they can connect clients with great people. Changing our industry standards and business conduct in order to energize our talent pool represents an opportunity for distributors, manufacturers and recruiters who are willing to
aggressively make change in their approach to employment practices. There are practices that need to cease and there are many that need to be emphasized, but creating the best teams requires hard work and creative thinking. Securing, training, and retaining the best talent can provide a structure from which any company can prosper, and brings a fresh perspective to the distributors, manufacturers, recruiters and customers in our industry.