Key notes: 3 takeaways from the Rubber Roller Group Conference

TAMPA, Fla.—Together again, the Rubber Roller Group met in-person for the first time since the start of the pandemic in 2020.

"I would be remiss to not say welcome back," Group President Vail Harding said in the meeting's opening remarks May 2. "It's a wonderful phenomenon to see such good friends gather again after two years of uncertainty and just really difficult times."

The meeting, which took place May 1-3 at the Westshore Grand Hotel in Tampa, Fla., comprised 24 attending manufacturers and 27 suppliers. The event featured 19 exhibitors and nine presentations on topics like recruitment and retention, proper workplace etiquette as companies return to the office, automation, innovation and more.

Here are three highlights from this year's conference.

Steve Chase, vice president and co-founder of NextGen Compounding and treasurer of the Rubber Roller Group, gave attendees some insight on the state of the industry's supply chain.

Like everyone else, the roller industry is dealing with capacity restraints, high demand, a tight labor pool, rising costs and logistical headaches. On top of this, Chase said, rubber rollers must compete with much larger industries for the same materials.

"We live in a big squeeze," Chase said.

In the rubber roller industry, he said, even the biggest company is still "so small" compared to other rubber manufacturing companies, and because of this, companies often face steep competition to get the materials they need.

"Just like we all should be looking at what companies fit in our sweet spot, our suppliers are doing the same thing," he said. "I don't want to say they want to make a quick buck, but they want to make a good business decision and support the right kind of business."

When competition against larger companies isn't the main problem, it's the logistics that create problems, as many materials for the industry, like nitrile or silica, are imported.

In the last 10 years, global fleet utilization got "extremely depressed," Chase said. And earlier this year, there were so few containers available for shipping that waiting days for those containers got as bad as 100 days.

Suppliers aren't lying to you when they promise shipment times and your materials are late, he said. "It's usually because they've been let down."

Chase anticipates these wait times will level off as companies reduce volumes of their shipments to damper wait time at the ports. But high shipping and material costs linger.

Containers cost upward of $20,000 compared to be between $3,000 and $4,000 prior to the pandemic, he said.

And with tariffs on imports, material costs—already on the rise due to their increased demand and tight supply—are increasing even more, he noted. Tariffs on nitrile that are impacting the material range anywhere from 20 percent to 160 percent.

So how do you win?

Have a definition of what success is, Chase said, adding that reliability may be more important than cost. He added that businesses should be open to raw material evaluations and work to eliminate complexities in their supply chains and sales.

And, he said, answer the phone. Even if you don't have a full answer for your customers, "some answer is better than no answer."

Joey Leonard, HR consulting and recruitment director at KerberRose, a certified public accounting firm, said that to attract long-term and reliable employees, a company needs to shape its employee branding.

"Whether you know it or not, you've got a brand," Leonard said, "so you might as well control it."

By establishing a brand, employers establish an employee value proposition, or EVP, which answers why employees should work for your company and what's in it for them. Culture, recognition and rewards, professional development, compensation and benefits, and a work-life balance are all part of your EVP.

This helps with recruitment, but it also strengthens retention. And if a company is going to spend time on one, Leonard argued retention is more important.

"If you forget about the people already working for you, you're dead in the water," he said.

But the greatest retention plans start with the right hires. Hire for skill, but also hire for fit.

Leonard advised implementing effective, continuous onboarding; investing in employee recognition; maintaining dialogue with the people who continue to work with you to understand why they stay—or what you're doing right; then looking at the metrics and seeing what you can do to establish employee engagement.

If employees are engaged with their careers and workplace, he continued, they are committed to their roles, feel satisfaction and pride in their work, and advocate for the company. This all, in turn, leads to higher community engagement, where the company is recognized and supported by its surrounding residents.

"It doesn't matter if you're in a town of 5,000 people or 60,000 or 200,000, you're going to have that brand in your area," he said.

Michael Cohen, attorney for Duane Morris L.L.P., in his keynote, "Harassment, Prevention, and Correction in 2022 and Beyond," engaged attendees in a two-hour presentation at the Rubber Roller Group conference where he reviewed appropriate and inappropriate workplace behavior.

He specifically avoided the over usage of terms like "harassment" and "discrimination," noting that the definitions of such are ever-changing—like the laws on which they are based.

By instead focusing on appropriate and inappropriate, he said, "you can get your arms around" the concepts and it can go a "long, long way toward avoiding things like harassment and discrimination."

Looking at several workplace scenarios, Cohen had participants rate them on a scale from 1 to 5, from least to most inappropriate.

While some scenarios were no-brainers when it came to egregious office behavior, others depended on missing context like tone of voice, patterns and whether an individual belonged to a protected class—like age, race, gender or gender identity, and socioeconomic status.

The gist, he said, is you never know how someone will respond to scenarios, so it's best to maintain a level of respect toward your employees or coworkers—even if you may not agree with them or their lifestyle.

"Just because you perceive something to be OK, that doesn't mean it is," he said.

If behaving appropriately at work for the sake of creating a comfortable and respectful work environment for your employees and coworkers isn't convincing enough, Cohen said the weight of legal fees might do the trick.

"I'll let you in on a little secret," he said. "Lawyers cost way too much money."

In "Tampa dollars," the cost of a simple, single-plaintiff case—assuming the litigators "get along well" and there's no appeal—could be upward of $500,000, "easy," he said.

"Most people don't have half a million bucks lying around to act like a jackass at work," he added.

People who feel respected won't bring claims against you, Cohen said. But people who feel wronged, humiliated or uncomfortable just might.

But as laws change and societal expectations and perceptions shift over the years, how can businesses be expected to keep up?

"Adapt or die," Cohen said. "If you don't get on board and continue to learn and evolve and consume the content as much as you can, you will render yourself a relic."