MANSFIELD — There are a number of unique solutions beyond salary increases that local businesses have reported success with in retaining valued employees.
Catholic Charities visits help employees with transportation or mental-health issues. Second-chance employment programs for formerly incarcerated people have also received state support and lowered turnover rates in some companies.
Organizations like the Ohio Business Roundtable and Governor’s Executive Workforce Board are thinking differently, too: They’re taking a long-term approach by gathering workforce leaders in the same rooms as educators and policymakers.
According to the Ohio Office of Workforce Transformation’s website, its mission is to “connect Ohio’s business, training and education communities to build a dynamically skilled, productive and purposeful workforce.”
Board members from different sectors meet regularly to make recommendations on aligning workforce needs with education and career-tech opportunities. In-Demand Jobs Week highlights Ohio’s growing workforce sectors and the industries that will need skilled workers in the future.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a Mansfield native, has encouraged a skilled future workforce by organizing manufacturing camps that grow students’ awareness of their opportunities.
The camps were first organized by Brown’s office in the summer of 2013. By the end of 2024, more than 200 camps will be supported throughout Ohio.
“The goal with the summer manufacturing camps was giving young people the opportunity to make things,” the senator said. “It requires your brain and physical activity.”
Brown said he created the camps after hearing from parents that they didn’t know all the local opportunities available in manufacturing.
Also, business owners were telling him not enough students were interested in manufacturing careers.
“The camps show students how they can put STEM skills to use in good-paying, long-term careers,” he said. “Working in trades is a path to the middle class for a lot of young people … They don’t have college debt but they can work hard to earn skills and make a living.
“Unfortunately, presidents of both parties have sold workers out. But if you center what we do in the dignity of work, then we can do better.”
Pathways to higher degrees, wages
Brian McPeek, business manager for the IBEW 688, said he highlights pay and benefits when he’s trying to recruit students into the electrician field.
He said a number of Pioneer and career-tech students have some training and a “head start” already.
“The biggest thing they need coming in is a good attitude and good work ethic. We can teach you everything else,” he said.
“Our wage is the prevailing wage and I think, with the benefit packages too, it brings everyone into the middle class. The toughest thing to explain to a 16- or 17-year-old kid is how good the retirement benefits are because most of them aren’t thinking about that quite yet.”
McPeek, who also serves on the Area 10 Richland-Crawford Workforce Development Board, said he has noticed younger workers prioritizing work-life balance over wages and scheduling.
“(Every workplace) has their attendance issues, and I think that’s part of just learning to work,” he said. “Younger people probably miss more shifts, but the older guys missed more when they were younger, too.
“You get better with that as you get more responsible.”
Tory Gorka, co-director of the Mansfield Area Electrical Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee for the IBEW local 688 union, said the JATC has around 40 apprentices currently. He expects slow growth going forward.
“Statistically, in the first year, 20% to 50% of first-year apprenticeships don’t complete the program for academic or different reasons,” Gorka said.
“When they finish the classroom instruction part of it, you’re only a few credit hours away from an associate’s degree in electrical maintenance or electrical supervision if you want.”
Apprentices currently start at a $17.65 hourly rate with no experience. The program is a five-year training period that includes on-the-job training and classroom instruction.
After an apprentice gains 1,000 hours of on-the-job training — about six months — they earn a pay raise. Between 6,500 training hours and the 8,000 completed hours, they’ll earn a $31 hourly rate.
According to the IBEW contract, Journeyman pay is $35 and will be $36.80 starting in December 2024. Gorka said the Mansfield program currently has 48 apprentices.
Competency versus longevity bonuses
Many local companies have leveled the playing field in their workforce by reworking their pay scales to reflect an employee’s knowledge rather than their length of service.
Jason Spoon, senior human resources representative for Stoneridge, Inc. in Lexington, described four different pay scale windows at the control devices manufacturer.
“You can come in at the base level of an assembly operator, but once you learn 30% of the machines in your area, you move up to a Machine Operator Level One,” Spoon said.
A Machine Operator Level Two knows 50% to 79% of the jobs in their sphere and a senior machine operator would know more than 80% of the jobs.
“We don’t have the highest starting pay, but you can work your way up in a few months,” Spoon said. “When you have increasing value to the company, we want to give an increased wage to reflect that.”
Spoon said most of Stoneridge’s 500 Lexington assembly employees are machine operator II or senior machine operators.
He said there are some cases where employees have come in as an assembly operator and advanced to senior machine operator within three months.
“There used to be additional criteria on this — you had to be here for six months and know 50% of the jobs to be a machine operator II,” Spoon said. “Or you had to be here a year and know 80% of the jobs to be a senior machine operator. But we thought about that and we realized we’re holding good people back.
“If someone is good enough to learn 80% of the jobs within three or four months, we’re benefitting from that, and they should too.”
Did you miss our story on retention efforts and leadership development in the manufacturing and trades sector? Read the story here.