Rubber industry must adapt to attract new talent

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio—The silicone industry needs to manage its image and rethink its workplace to attract young talent, according to Joe Walker, global technology director for materials and laboratories for Freudenberg Sealing Technologies and Freudenberg-NOK Sealing Technologies.

Walker talked about ways to make the silicone industry—as well as the rubber industry in general—more friendly to younger professionals in his keynote address "Improving Competitiveness: Understanding the Generation Gap" at the 2018 International Silicone Conference, held recently in Cuyahoga Falls.

Faced with a loss of customers and competing emerging technologies, Walker said the question that every industry executive and professional needs to answer at the end of the day is "What are you doing to invest in your competitiveness?"

In a 2018 Association of Rubber Products Manufacturers state of the industry survey, 18 percent of executives said they would be adding new machines and equipment as the top result. Another 17 percent named plans for continuous improvement efforts, and building expansion and acquisition came in at 15 percent to round out the top three.

"Will just investing be enough?" Walker said. "Just adding more machines, making the machines smarter? Improving your processes. Will that be enough?"

Of all of the plans to improve competitiveness in the survey, "one on here is a linchpin," Walker said. "The linchpin to competitiveness is in work force development. It's at 9 percent. All these other plans to improve competitiveness are contingent on having the right people in place in order to do the job."

In ARPM's state of the industry survey, 86 percent of the executives polled said work force development concerns made up the top challenge of the industry in 2018, Walker said. In second place was sales strategy and diversification at 23 percent. Over the past three years, the number of executives listing work force development as the top concern has nearly tripled, from 30 percent in 2016, to 73 percent in 2017, up to 2018's result.

Walker said the average age of the rubber industry professional is 59 in the U.S.

"To put things in perspective, we are the oldest professionals," Walker said. "The average age of a truck driver is 49. … The average age of commercial welders are closest to us at 55."

The projected manufacturing job gap by 2025 is 3.4 million jobs over the next decade, with another 2.7 million jobs created by the retirement of older professionals, Walker said in reference to a 2016 Chemical & Engineer News report. Another 700,000 jobs will be created by economic expansion. But 1.4 million jobs are likely to be filled, and 2 million jobs are expected to remain unfilled in 2025.

"The influx of new talent is crucial for this industry to continue in America," Walker said. "Since what we do and how we do it is not taught in our schools and universities, but learned and acquired, it's critical that the incoming freshmen into our community are obtained while we still have senior members in our work community to teach them."

Without relationships with those seniors, a lot of wheels will be reinvented and a lot of rookie mistakes will be made, he said. As the older rubber industry professionals leave the business, history is lost. But bringing in new professionals means understanding what motivates them.

"The population from which we draw our new community is made up of a new and different generation of people who do not have the same motivations and expectations that we had when we started in the industry," Walker said.

Not only is it important that executives understand these motivations to bring in new professionals in the rubber industry, younger professionals have the same priorities of those entering the work force for customers and clients, Walker said. Understanding characteristics of younger workers will help in their management, satisfaction and retention. That leads to reduced turnover and greater return on investment.

Reducing turnover with new employees cuts back on lost intellectual property, and improves the overall company image as they aren't "dragging people in and out in front of your customers every three or four weeks and having your customers reacquaint them to their business," Walker said. It improves in-depth product knowledge and results in an experienced work force, which has no substitute, he said.

A key to understanding younger professionals is to look at characteristics of that group, including social, geopolitical and financial inputs.

Walker said the rubber industry was built and developed through the time of several cohorts referred to as the Lost Generation, the GI Generation, the Silent Generation, the Baby Boomers, Generation Jones, Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z.

"Attracting new members into our industry is a significant concern," Walker said. "Image, manufacturing technology, compensation, management style, work environment are all detractors to recruitment. If the industry is going to attract new professionals, we have to understand them and manage them correctly, or they're going to leave."

When bringing in college recruitment candidates, plan as though bringing in the board or a group of investors, he said.

"You're competing with the likes in the rubber industry of Pfizer, of Merck, and the others that are going after these chemists and chemical engineers that are leaving," he said. In a 2017 survey from Chemical Processing, 39 percent of industry respondents plan to stay with their current employer for 1-5 years. Another 17 percent plan for between 6-10 years, and 8 percent will leave in less than a year.

About 70 percent of industry professionals name "challenging and interesting" as the most important perk of the job, Walker said, while 55 percent cite salary and benefits and 52 percent said a relationship with co-workers. About 40 percent prize their work environment, and 35 percent want to know that they're working on products that help people.

"Certainly this group can lay claim to that, with a focus on medical devices," Walker the Silicone Conference audience. "And in fact I would tell you that a great deal of what the rubber industry does, let alone silicone, helps people. Your life, at 70 miles an hour, lies on four patches of rubber on the road that is smaller than the area of this piece of paper."

The rankings of job perks lines up with characteristics ascribed to younger professionals, Walker said.

A lack of recognition tops the list of causes of job dissatisfaction, Walker said. And a feeling of uncertainty about job security has led to a fundamental distrust of industry, hurting the U.S. manufacturing image.

The manufacturing industry has to choose what kind of image to portray, he said. Should it be the image of a dirty environment with low technology integration, with professionals that are just following a formula without really knowing what they're doing?

"Or do we want this image to be projected: Clean, modern, environmentally conscious factories?" Walker said.

Compensation is another point of contention for attracting and retaining younger professionals, Walker said. According to a Rubber Division survey, rubber industry wages have been declining since 2015, and are lower than wages in both plastics and automotive positions.

"We should kind of be ashamed of that," Walker said. "If you're making $27 an hour, and you came out of school and you've got $100,000 in student loans, really?"

Bringing in a new employee and training them to the point they can work independently, work with customers, develop new ideas and processes, and know trade secrets is not free, Walker said.

"The only asset that a corporation has that appreciates in value is the people," he said. "How do they appreciate in value? They appreciate in value because they gain experience that you give them."

Hiring new employees is taking on risk, training them is investing, and gaining from their experience and knowledge is the return on investment. If rubber industry executives believe their greatest asset is people, then they need to change the way they protect those investments, he said.

"They want a flat organization and they want a strong relationship with their management," Walker said. "They want immediate feedback, and they want to feel that what they're doing matters."

Corporate citizenship is a big deal to candidates. Opening up the company to the community for event days either to take hazardous waste or do community service can culture career involvement, Walker said.

Working with employees to develop flexibility in working from home can also go a long way. Try to make a deal with a younger employee to allow work from home for a few days during the week in exchange for active participation in a local rubber industry group or society, he said.

Integrate apprenticeships into training, and leverage the company's footprint for opportunities if it has a global presence, Walker said citing Plastics News, a sister publication of Rubber & Plastics News. Use Facebook to advertise job openings, and recruit military veterans.

"And to keep talent, employees have to have a good salary, good benefits and flexibility, possibly working from home," Walker said.

Moving forward, as more younger professionals enter the work force and management positions, changes will be coming to the office, he said. Email or telephone calls will be left behind as the primary form of office communication in favor of instant messaging. Traditional office space designs will shift to bullpen-style office space, allowing for open meeting spaces.

More than 20 million Americans choose part-time work to deliberately secure work-life balance and gain more flexible work hours, Walker said. Technology makes it easier to eliminate a 9-5 schedule in favor of more outcome-based management.

"You don't have to be there. Give them the measure, let them hit the measure," he said. "Give them the flexibility."

Marketing personal satisfaction in the job is another key point, as the rubber industry has one of the fastest times from concept to reality, making it easy to see the impact of the work, he said.

"And after all, we've got to improve that work environment," Walker said. "You've got to invest in your image, and you've got to invest in your technology."

At Freudenberg, Walker said the firm's goal was to develop a work force that can act independently and innovatively to be successful both at work and at home by opening a new $10 million training center at its headquarters in Weinheim, Germany, he said. The training system gives employees a fundamental understanding of the machines and interacting in a digital workplace, using production software to address the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0.

"They learn together in an interactive team, create independent learning maps and solve problems in teams," Walker said. "This is an example of taking characteristics of an incoming work force and adapting the work environment to get the outcomes that you need to be competitive."