After four decades of providing managed labor for Fortune 500 manufacturers, we’ve learned a few things about keeping employees happy in your plant. After all, our employees serve as your employees, and achieving KPIs across the board is far easier with happy and engaged people.
Culture: A Career vs. Day Labor
Keeping morale high and turnover rates low in manufacturing plants starts with company culture.
At LACOSTA, creating a positive, supportive culture—that includes accountability—is our purpose and why we’re in business. We feel it’s our responsibility to inspire our employees to be the best they can be, realize their potential and work together to provide an excellent customer experience. Only together do we make a difference.
We believe in the power of people. Everyone can contribute to something bigger than themselves and, by doing so, they are proud and want to come to work. They see LACOSTA as a place they can have a career and where they are not seen just as “day labor.”
We want to help our customers meet their goals by working as an extension of their team, which makes our onsite managers feel valued. We have similar values as our customers, we understand metrics and measure ourselves by KPIs and know how to affect the desired outcome.
LACOSTA Management & Teamwork
LACOSTA onsite managers work closely with the management team of our customers to solve problems and improve processes, including production managers and plant managers. Ongoing communication is always open. LACOSTA ownership, executive management and our administrative staff also jump in to assist, coach and mentor to achieve even more customer goals.
Our onsite management team also flexes to the schedule of our customers by coming in on all shifts and ensuring proper oversight and supervision.
More Than Just an Hourly Wage
While paying an hourly wage that is higher than temps is important, there is so much more that is important for our employees to do their best work and to minimize turnover.
To begin with, we go above and beyond to attract and place qualified candidates, including using referral incentives and signing bonuses.
Before anyone is hired, they go through a thorough vetting process, which includes using E-Verify Level 2, drug tests, background checks, training, and coaching. Once hired, we provide full benefits, including medical, dental and 401(k) matching. New employees receive both pay increases and bonuses after 90 days.
To ensure our employees do their best work, we provide training that is standardized to ensure consistency, complete with work instructions, safety standards, shift start meetings and LACOSTA standards.
LACOSTA onsite managers have routine check-ins with our employees to coach, mentor and listen. They also adhere to our 5P management philosophy: proactive planning prevents poor performance. We also work with our employees to reduce transportation costs and being late by pairing them up with other employees and having managers pick-ups.
As an added benefit, we recognize employees with our Helping Hands Award as well as for good attendance, great safety stats, and work that is above and beyond.
Over time, we offer pay increases by cross-training employees can so they have more skills to offer when promotion opportunities arise.
Put Our Managed Labor System & Culture to Work for You
Having a happy and engaged workforce is but one of the advantage of our managed labor model vs. temps – you can learn more advantages in our Managed Labor vs. Temp Staffing guide here. Find out how we can work for you by requesting a managed labor audit today.