[TRANSCRIPT]
0:00:00 - (Doug Jenkins): Coming up next on Chamber Amplified, we've.
0:00:02 - (Jake Warrington): Made an extensive inroads on culture, and that's from the top down. So when you hear our CEO talk, our COO, CBO, anyone in the upper management, they're talking about working safe.
0:00:19 - (Doug Jenkins): Welcome to the show. I'm Doug Jenkins from the Finley Hancock County Chamber of Commerce. On each episode of Chamber Amplified, we're examining issues impacting the local business community from employee recruitment, retention, marketing.
0:00:30 - (C): It issues can really be anything impacting your business.
0:00:33 - (Doug Jenkins): Our goal is to give our members tips each week on at least one way they can improve operations and thrive in the current business environment. And we also like to take a.
0:00:40 - (C): Look at the history of the Findlay.
0:00:42 - (Doug Jenkins): Business community by talking to some of our longer tenured Chamber of Commerce members or small business of the Year award winners, as the case will be today. So this week's show, we are continuing.
0:00:51 - (C): To catch up with the Small Business award winners. We held the awards back in October, but we had 18 winners, so we.
0:00:56 - (Doug Jenkins): Still have a few more to talk to.
0:00:58 - (C): Today.
0:00:58 - (Doug Jenkins): I'm joined by Jake Warrington with American Plastics. Jake won the manufacturing and distribution impact award, and we'll talk a little bit about what that meant to him. Plus, we kind of get a state of manufacturing in the area and what successful companies are doing to increase employee satisfaction, retention, as well as safety. Thanks again for tuning in. Remember, if you're listening on Apple podcasts or on Spotify, you can rate and review the show. It really does help spread the word.
0:01:22 - (Doug Jenkins): Now, let's get into it.
0:01:25 - (C): So let's go back to that October afternoon and your thoughts going through your head when you were named the small business award winner.
0:01:33 - (Jake Warrington): Yeah, I'll tell you, that was really surprising because I knew we were nominated as a company, and I didn't know anything else. So I got there and I saw my name on it, but I was like, I don't know what this means. So I was a little caught off guard. Now, my wife had gone out of town that weekend. It was kind of interesting because Dionne reached out to her and asked if she was planning on attending the award.
0:01:59 - (Jake Warrington): And I thought, oh, spouses are invited. That's great. So I got a hold of our plan manager, and I got a hold of our HR manager, and I said, hey, apparently spouses can know. I wasn't really thinking about that. But then after I got there and I saw my name and I thought about the conversation that happened with my wife and Dion, I'm like, okay, got it. So it's kind of funny when they announced my name.
0:02:27 - (Jake Warrington): Obviously, it's an honor, but you get up there and I didn't know all my stuff was behind me on the slide, like my education, my bachelor's degree, my master's degree, my experience. But, yeah, I mean, definitely an honor. I've been part of the community for a long time. I worked at Whirlpool, worked around the area, lived here in Finley, Ohio, actually 14 years now, going on 15. So before that, we grew up in the area, and I love our community, love working for american plastics. It was just a great honor to have me be named that we have.
0:03:05 - (C): A lot of strong manufacturers in the area, too. So for american plastics to be mentioned in the same breath as a lot of the other manufacturers here, I have to imagine that means a lot to you. It means a lot to the company.
0:03:18 - (Jake Warrington): Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Even to be nominated as a company this year meant a lot to us. I know everyone is very excited about that. It came up on multiple calls that we've had throughout our organization how the Finley location was nominated. Great honor, for sure. A lot of great representation in the community.
0:03:36 - (C): That's awesome to hear, and we love that part. I also want to talk about just the industry as a whole. Certainly when it comes to manufacturing and distribution, we know there have been challenges over the last three going on four years. Now in terms of meeting those challenges, where is american plastics and where do you come in and sort of the guidance through all of that?
0:03:57 - (Jake Warrington): Well, I'm on the risk management in the environmental, health and safety side, so that's my primary role. I've had experience in manufacturing human resources over the years, but my role right now is vice president of risk management. So I'm really focused on the bringing people inside the orientation side, the core training side when it comes to employee risk and reduction. And that's my primary role and responsibility within the company.
0:04:26 - (Jake Warrington): Insurance, risk renewals, all those sort of things. Now, from an employee side, when we bring in team members, we go through an extensive orientation process. I help develop that process along with the plants and the HR managers and the EHS managers. In addition to that, we have specialized training through for our skilled trades, our process technicians that they have to follow and that we ensure that they're trained on to make sure that they're safe in our manufacturing environment when they come to work for us. Because when you talk about challenges, we want to provide safe and health work environment for our folks. And everyone is struggling right now to get good, qualified people.
0:05:10 - (Jake Warrington): And when you look at wages, everyone's raising wages. So what's the next step and how do you get people to want to be a member of your team in your organization? I think that's where the focus is.
0:05:23 - (C): I had a chance to take a tour of the american plastic facility out on the west side of town, I think within the last year, and I was really impressed with one, the commitment to safety. I mean, it's apparent from the time you set foot on the floor like, hey, here are our safety initiatives and here's how we're encouraging you to follow those. Here's how we're keeping you up to date. And everything, everything is clearly delineated to make sure that I don't get trucked by a forklift or anything like that, which I appreciate, that's for sure. But you can tell there's a lot of dedication to that. But I have to imagine that's not something that just happens overnight. That's something that is a complete team effort.
0:05:59 - (Jake Warrington): It is. It for sure is. We have regional EHS manager that covers the Finley, Tiffan and Sycamore location. We have a regional manager that covers the Jefferson City, Missouri and Kingman, Arizona location. And then we have help in. So it's not, it requires a lot. There's a lot of partnership between operations, human resources, eh and esque. And those are things that we really focus on.
0:06:25 - (Doug Jenkins): How do you get the buy in.
0:06:26 - (C): When it comes to company efforts? Whether it's safety, whether it's getting on the insurance, whatever the initiative is. What are some of the ways you go about motivating employees and working with employees to make sure you're even offering the right incentives?
0:06:42 - (Jake Warrington): Yeah, I mean, it starts from the beginning. We have an extensive orientation process that talks about what it means to be a member of the american plastics team. A large portion of that is the safety risk aspect of it and how they fit into our organization. We talk about our history. We talk about our improvement. We've had since 2018 when American Plastics purchased Centrex, we have gone from a 4.26 incident rate to a 1.47. That's a 65 and a half percent improvement.
0:07:10 - (Jake Warrington): So we've made an extensive inroads on culture and that's from the top down. So when you hear our CEO talk, our COO, CBO, anyone in the upper management, they're talking about working safe. It doesn't matter if we get out one more tote. If someone gets hurt, that's not the important thing to us. We want people to come to work and leave as they arrive for their families.
0:07:34 - (C): It's interesting you mentioned american plastics buying out Centrex. And a lot of know there's apprehension when a new company takes over an existing company in town here, things like that. But a lot of times we don't hear the positive stories like that where this company came in and things improved. And I have to imagine there was a lot of conversation from american plastics from day one once they took over.
0:07:59 - (Jake Warrington): Yeah, you just don't know how it's going to be when a new company, when a new set of buyers come in and acquire a company. But I can tell you from the very start, they got the leadership around, they got management. They established a key cadence on meetings, operational performance, safety has been number one from the start. And when you look at the investment they've made in the community, we've invested millions of dollars at the Centrex location. I mean, up in the range of $30 million on new capital improvements, investments, including wages, trying to raise our wages. We have billboards around town.
0:08:34 - (Jake Warrington): We pay up to $22 an hour starting for press operators.
0:08:38 - (C): Now if you had to give advice to someone getting started in that managerial role when it comes to either manufacturing, distribution, what have you in the industry, what's some of the advice that maybe you wish you had when you first got started?
0:08:55 - (Jake Warrington): That's a good question.
0:08:56 - (C): I aim for a good question and interview. So we got there. Took us eight minutes.
0:09:01 - (Jake Warrington): Doug, you've been doing good. I think it's just constantly being willing to learn. Don't think just because you're in a certain position or you've reached a certain level in the company that you don't have more to learn. Learn from the folks on the shop floor, learn from people on your team. No one knows as much as everyone else and just take that opportunity. Be humble, be teachable, and just learn from folks and try to glean something every single day to get better.
0:09:31 - (C): One last question for you. Maybe I always say last question and then I think of another one. So generally I end up being a liar here. But I hear a lot about making sure that we train the trainers because especially when you're talking about people on a manufacturing floor, things like that, you may have people who are great at getting production and they're wildly efficient and you promote them into that managerial or that supervisor role.
0:09:54 - (C): And sometimes it takes a bit. How are you able to, at american plastics, make sure that you're training the trainer to one and keep that employee satisfaction up, but also make sure that they kind of know what they're doing when they move into that role.
0:10:08 - (Jake Warrington): Yeah, honestly, we have a real strong focus on promoting from within. And we do have trainers. So when we hire new folks and they're working in the plant, they're going to spend their first couple of shifts with trainers and that they walk them through the process, how to trim parts, how to work with their elements of their job. And then from that, what we have, we have a very high promotion rate. When you look at process technicians, 78% of our process technicians had worked on the shop floor at one point. Oh, wow.
0:10:41 - (Jake Warrington): Yeah. And we promote from within. And that's a big part of what we want to do because it's not just about hiring folks just to run the press. We want people to come in. We wanted to learn how to do the jobs, improve as people from their knowledge and experience. And then if they can get promoted, we want to do that. We want to encourage that. And I think when you look at train the trainers, those folks a lot of times will get promoted into supervisory roles because they do care about the people coming in.
0:11:12 - (Jake Warrington): They are experienced in the job and then they kind of pass that along to the folks that they're training and they understand the process and how important that onboarding aspect is.
0:11:22 - (C): Jake, we certainly appreciate your time today. We've had you speak at other events too, like safety council. If people would be interested in talking to you, maybe just picking your brain about how you do things in american plastics, or they may be interested in some different safety process you're doing, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
0:11:37 - (Jake Warrington): Yeah, they can email me at jwarrington@amplastics.com I'd be happy to answer questions.
0:11:43 - (C): Thank you very, thank you very much for that. And again, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
0:11:48 - (Jake Warrington): Yeah, thanks, Doug.
0:11:52 - (Doug Jenkins): Thanks again to Jake for joining us today. And I look forward to highlighting more of the small business award winners on upcoming editions of chamber amplified. We do still have a few left.
0:12:01 - (C): To talk to, as hard as that is to believe.
0:12:03 - (Doug Jenkins): Also in upcoming episodes, we're going to be talking about Hancock leadership and their community project this year, making workplaces more accessible for those with disabilities, how you can go about doing that, and even some baseball.
0:12:14 - (C): We're going to tie it back into the local community. I'm looking forward to that one.
0:12:17 - (Doug Jenkins): That will do it. For this week's episode, though, I hope you learned a little something about the Findlay business community that you didn't know before. If you have any ideas on topics.
0:12:25 - (C): That we should cover in the future.
0:12:26 - (Doug Jenkins): Just send me an email. Djenkins@chamber.com remember, if you're listening on the website@finleyhankockchamber.com, you can always just have every episode of Chamber Amplified delivered straight to your phone. Just search for the podcast in your favorite podcast player. Don't have a favorite podcast player? Let me know. I'll recommend a couple to you. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time on Chamber amplified from the Finley Hancock County Chamber of Commerce.