BIC Magazine recently joined other industry leaders at the 2023 Skills Gap Summit featuring senior leaders from top manufacturing facilities, including:
Dani Grant, human resources manager, Mitsubishi Chemical America
Abbe Barr, learning and development manager, Chevron
Rhodesia Lindsey, director of human resources, Kaneka North America
David Gosnay, training manager, LyondellBasell
- Abbe Barr, learning and development manager, Chevron
- David Gosnay, training manager, LyondellBasell
- Dani Grant, human resources manager, Mitsubishi Chemical America
- Rhodesia Lindsey, director of human resources, Kaneka North America
- Skills Gap Summit Moderator Stacy Putman, manager of advocacy, leadership, workforce development, and strategic projects at INEOS
The second-annual event was sponsored by Voovio, a knowledge automation company providing simulation and productivity tools for industrial field operations, and held at San Jacinto College’s Lyondell-Basell Center for Petrochemical, Energy & Technology in Pasadena, Texas. Stacy Putman, manager of Advocacy, Leadership & Workforce Development, Strategic Projects at INEOS Olefins & Polymers USA, served as moderator.
Q: What have you seen that works or doesn’t work in the interview process?
A: GRANT: We’re getting applications and candidates from all over the U.S., so we have a much wider talent pool which has really been beneficial for us. But we realized we had to do timely interviews. By the time of that completion, we know whether we’re hiring that person or not. So why take all that time of having someone come back multiple times to see the same people when I can put them in front of me in one interview?
A: BARR: We were losing candidates to other companies that already implemented those processes and would hire them after the first, maybe second, interview. We would call them back and say, ‘we’d love to have you come back in and do a tour,’ and they would say, ‘I’m sorry, last week I took a position with so-and-so.’ We realized we were losing talent to other people, and we had to change that process.
A: LINDSEY: We’ve changed to do a lot of social media recruiting. And it has proved us well, it’s working, especially the LinkedIn portion. I was able to get four positions, key positions, filled with candidates that I found on LinkedIn. And then of course, we’ve been successful with our employee referral program. Before going outside, I always want to make sure that I’m looking within the house first to identify those candidates that are ready to be promoted. If I see great potential, we definitely want to make sure that, with the workforce that we have, they’re basically developing. But not only that — our leadership as well, to be able to engage those employees to get the best return on investment and help them throughout their career.
Q: What are some of the best practices for employee retention?
A: GRANT: We already had a very generous vacation policy, which was another reason we’ve implemented it was the competition to draw employees in. At our location, your start of exempt work or college graduation date is the start of your vacation. It’s a huge thing for an employee to go from one company to another and someone say ‘oh, we’re going to start you out with two weeks.’ But we don’t do that here. It is a huge recruiting tool — between the schedule and that vacation — it has been a great asset for us.
A: LINDSEY: We couldn’t run our business without people. So, we want to make sure that we are keeping our people engaged, that management is engaged, that we’re having effective communication. In addition to that — from a career development standpoint — I have a high percentage of workforce that’s eligible to retire right now. And I’m trying to do everything I can not to let that talent walk out the door. But at the same time, share that knowledge so we can get people ready from a succession standpoint.
Q: What are some of the best practices for skill gap issues?
BARR: I can speak for what Chevron’s doing with an operations and leadership development program, which is a combination of soft skills, but also with HR and a lot of scenario-based training to really provide those frontline workers with the tools that they need to really be successful leaders. We’re expanding that and we’re looking into doing all functions, whether it is operations or HSE or procurement, they all get that same type of training. The journey that we’re looking at is about an 18-month program that takes them through training activities and allows them to do different scenarios and work with a mentor.
Industry recruiting leaders discuss countermeasures to skill gap challenges
Moderator, Stacy Putman with INEOS
A: GOSNAY: I mean, I think everybody’s suffering from the same thing, right? We’ve got a lot of people that are retiring, and I think one of the first questions for me is how do you retain some of that? We do something called knowledge harvest. Basically, when we identify people that are going to be leaving — long tenured people — a year or so ahead of that, we start the process to document and process to try to collect some of their knowledge.
A: GRANT: A few years ago, we partnered with San Jac and did an entire year-long course of DDI training with books that we would read. We would sit down as a group and read a chapter of the book. This was for every potential supervisor, every supervisor, manager or director within our location of the Soranol division. But it’s also not just that— we improved our interview process, because everyone who is an amazing IE tech might not be an amazing IE supervisor or lead. So going through a round of interviews again, in a real in-depth look at that person, and not just in their job or career knowledge but how they are as a person. It has helped, but we still need to give them the tools after we’ve identified those people and give them the knowledge they need to be successful.
