Brady: I feel like a lot of folks in the industry, except within bigger firms, don’t quite understand what the supply chain really encompasses. Some people just think there’s logistics, inventory management, procurement, and materials in different departments. They mentally separate all those little pieces rather than bring them all together.
Gallant: Many people are not technologically sophisticated, and yet, they’re good produce people and have been doing it for 25 to 30 years. They’re good buyers. They’re good people who do quality and all those types of things, but they’re not tech savvy. A lot of those folks are going to be retiring, so now you’re looking for the next generation to come in and be innovative and tech savvy.
Grant: The biggest challenge is your really good people become targets for competitors. It’s a relatively small industry in terms of the real experts, and your competitors are looking for qualified people. They don’t want to go through three to five years of talent development efforts, and you can lose key people who are pretty hard to replace. We have to bring people up faster and bring in new recruits all the time.
How do you overcome these challenges to build a competitive team?
Brady: Our company culture means everything to us in terms of recruiting and retention abilities. We have to build a culture that people enjoy because nobody here works 9-to-5. It’s a family type of organization: we celebrate birthdays, weddings, and births—you feel like you’re part of a family. We believe this culture helps retain folks who aren’t interested in grabbing a few years of experience and then jumping ship.
Grant: We’re keeping Baby Boomers on as long as possible, that’s for sure. And we look for young people who are willing to learn and stick with us—the key is showing them progressive advancement in the company, cross-training them in other departments, and building their technical skills. Make the culture and working environment really desirable; that’s the only way as I see it.
Gallant: We’re doing the same thing; we look internally for promotable people who might start out on the manufacturing floor, then go into inspection, and on to a management role. There’s a progression and our people go through a lot of training by the time they get to upper management.
Brady: For folks to have full supply chain knowledge, you have to build them inside your organization or you need to source them from a bigger company so their knowledge is not concentrated in one particular area. Expose them to a variety of supply chain functions and goals so they get the bigger picture and truly understand how things are interrelated.
