Transforming HR in Packaging with Monica Anderton, DS Smith

Unlock the secrets to transforming HR in the manufacturing sector with Monica Anderton, the Chief Human Resources Officer at DS Smith. Monica takes us through her remarkable journey of revolutionizing HR across various industries, shedding light on the innovative strategies implemented at their Lebanon, Indiana facility. With severe hiring challenges and an intense competition for talent, discover how DS Smith's unique Spanish language interpreter program is breaking barriers and expanding their talent pool. Monica’s insights offer a vivid picture of the current workforce trends and the strategic decisions that have shaped DS Smith's success in a competitive market.

Transitioning to retention strategies, Monica emphasizes the foundational elements of competitive wages, premium benefits, and a strong company culture as pillars to employee satisfaction and growth. Learn about the tangible career development opportunities at DS Smith that not only retain talent but also inspire the future workforce amidst an aging demographic and a vibrant Hispanic labor force. As we navigate future HR trends, Monica shares valuable perspectives on fostering inclusive environments and the necessity of embracing innovative ideas to address the talent gap in manufacturing. Don’t miss this chance to gain invaluable knowledge from a leader at the forefront of HR transformation. Connect with us on LinkedIn to continue this captivating conversation.

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Innovative HR Strategy in Manufacturing

Speaker 1 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show , one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros , talent execs , tech enthusiasts and business leaders . For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work , subscribe to the show , follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom . And visit hrgazettecom .

Speaker 2 0:26

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show . Hello listeners , this is your host today , bill Bannam , and joining me on this episode is Monica Anderton , chro at DS Smith . Today's episode is a bit of a special one , as we consider an HR use case from DS Smith , a leader in sustainable packaging and its unique interpreter program . Faced with severe hiring challenges back in 2022 and struggling to fill critical roles leading to overtime demands on existing staff and a risk to operational efficiency , ds Smith pioneered and piloted a novel solution hiring full-time Spanish interpreters at his Lebanon , indiana facility to expand its reach . Monica , it's my pleasure to welcome you to the show today .

Speaker 3 1:11

Same . I'm very excited to be here .

Speaker 2 1:14

So , monica , beyond my reintroduction there , why don't you take a couple of minutes , if you don't mind , and tell our listeners a bit about you , your career background , your role over at DS Smith and , of course , a bit more about what the company does ?

Speaker 3 1:26

Perfect , Excited to be here , Bill . So a little bit about me . Throughout my career I've found myself landing in organizations that either don't have a strong HR presence or need some creative rebuilding . So I guess you could say I tend to be a good fixer and come in to help rebuild situations that need some help . A little interesting fact about me that I don't talk about very much is I'm a first generation American , as both my parents were immigrants into the US from Germany and I really think a lot of my very strong work ethic and drive comes from both of them , as they both settled into the US with nothing and built a life here .

Speaker 3 2:09

I've been in the people business my entire career and have a very diverse background in a bunch of different industries that spans retail , telecommunications , banking and manufacturing in the last couple stints , and to me HR is just always evolving and touches really the heartbeat of the business , which are its people , and I love the opportunity to collaborate and partner across the entire organization and that's really what I like working about HR , and I think in any day or any moment you have , you know , in an hour span I could be having a conversation with a CEO and the next minute I can be talking to one of our hourly employees on the floor and it just brings a level of variety that's unmatched opportunity to be mentored by some incredible leaders in my career and I really feel like they've imparted style and nuggets of golden knowledge that I find myself using every day and these folks have really shaped who I am and led me on my progressive career journey . I'm also really active Bill , in the Atlanta market and I have been a past president of the Sherm Atlanta mega chapter many years ago and I'm very active on the HRLF Human Resources Leadership Forum , which is the senior HR group in Atlanta . I'm on the board of directors . I do board development for them . It's a non-for-profit . I'm a past president of that organization .

Speaker 3 3:46

If you'd like , I'll give you a little bit about Dia Smith . Dia Smith is headquartered in London . It operates in 34 countries . We have 30,000 employees , we have 16 sites in North America and Atlanta is our headquarters for the North America business .

Speaker 2 4:08

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast . If you enjoy the audio content we produce , you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette . Learn more at hrgazettecom . And now back to the show . Okay , wunderbar , danke schön , monika . Let's focus a little bit on the manufacturing sector before we then get into the DS Smith use case . Today , can you share some key workforce trends that you're seeing within the manufacturing sector ?

Speaker 3 4:41

Yeah , we believe that the US labor market really remains very , very tight , particularly in the manufacturing space which we are in , and we have really had to be ahead of the curve when it comes to staffing in these extremely tight labor markets , especially following the pandemic , the ongoing competition for these workers , especially manufacturing , has become really intense . The plant I think that we're going to talk about today , just to give you a for instance , Bill , is located in Lebanon , Indiana , and the US Chamber of Commerce tells us that in Lebanon , where we're trying to hire folks for our plant , there is a severe worker shortage and there are only 72 available workers for every 100 jobs . So we've really been focused on across North America with this challenge how do we implement and maintain our staffing levels and some creative , innovative programs to bring in and recruit the right talent in this very , very tight labor market ? Excellent .

Speaker 2 5:49

Thank you very much . So I understand that the manufacturing labor market is quite tight at the moment , of course , and you are implementing some unique HR tactics at your facility in Lebanon , Indiana . Can you talk a little bit about what's happening there and why DS Smith has chosen that site in particular ?

Speaker 3 6:10

Yeah , our Lebanon site is our first greenfield site in North America and it's a strategic location in the Midwest and can serve us a very great geographic footprint . And we focused there because it was a greenfield site and it was opening up in 2019 and we were having major issues trying to find talent , and so it became our focal point as we were trying to staff up a three-shift operation and we're having just massive issues finding the right people or getting people to stay , because it is very competitive and what we found is you could hire somebody and they would leave the next day because they were going to the facility across the street for a 25 cent pay increase . So really , really had to focus on what are some unique ideas that we could do to get talent in the door .

Speaker 2 7:07

I read that one of the ways , Monica , you were trying to address the shortage is by establishing a Spanish language interpreter program in Lebanon . Tell us more about that .

Speaker 3 7:17

Yeah , this is a great one . So we have bilingual resources across our entire network in North America . But again back to that labor market shortage and the highly competitive headwinds that we were facing in Lebanon . We really challenged the local HR team . What are some innovative solutions we can do to attract additional talent ? And we did all kinds of things . We had job fairs , we had radio DJs , we had billboards , we had all kinds of stuff .

Speaker 3 7:46

What we finally figured out is that we needed to cast a wider net in recruiting and find an underutilized workforce that we weren't hitting , and we needed to get three shifts fully staffed .

Speaker 3 8:01

And so what we ended up doing is tapping the Hispanic labor market in the Lebanon area , and in doing that , because their English skills were very limited , if not non-existent , we hired three interpreters that we put on each shift because we run a three shift operation so that we could have the interpreters help us translate for the candidates from the very beginning , from the candidate application to the interviewing process , to onboarding , to ongoing training . And what this ended up doing for us , bill , was it allowed us to garner just an entirely new population of employees that we hadn't tapped , and the net result of it was our applications increased . They started referring their friends . We started this in about 2022 . And our plan at that time just to give you a sense , the demographic for Hispanic workforce was 6% and today we're at 42% Hispanic . So it's had a huge impact on our hiring ability and one of the gaps that we were really struggling with is we couldn't fully staff a third shift and with implementing this program with the Spanish interpreters , we were able to fully staff the third shift .

Speaker 4 9:32

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Speaker 2 10:07

Okay , thank you very much . So you've highlighted some of the benefits in terms of the recruitment process . What about the retention side of things ? Are you guys now finding it easier to retain workers on the back of this initiative ?

Speaker 3 10:22

We've seen the retention get better but , to be honest with you sorry , easier to retain workers on the back of this initiative . We've seen the retention get better but to be honest with you , bill , we're still competing in a very dense market for talent . What we find is the Hispanic population is not having as much turnover as the non-Hispanic population and they also are very keen to refer co-workers , friends and other people they've worked with , because they find the culture in DS Smith and the environment very welcoming . So it's become a real niche for us because we're doing employee referrals and these folks are so happy . I think it's really had an impact on why you see the worker population shift from 6% to 42% , so it's a positive impact .

Speaker 2 11:07

Okay , so you mentioned just a moment ago that you've got a pretty strong company culture Congratulations . Can you tell us a bit more about that ? What makes you guys stand out as a company culture ?

Speaker 3 11:20

Great question , I know we are . I'll talk to it maybe from a diversity perspective , because we're . Our approach to diversity comes from the understanding that we really believe people from diverse backgrounds come , that come together , bring a wider range of perspectives and experiences . And we really feel like this program has created just not only between Dia outreach , our brand in the community and just really driven an overall sense of who is DS Smith and why do you want to come work here . And we are very , very active in community engagement .

Speaker 3 12:17

We do stuff with Boone County , we do stuff with Boone County , we do stuff with local charities . So we're really , really committed to making sure that we embed inclusion sort of in everything we do and we want to make sure that people feel like they belong and they have a voice and they can meaningfully contribute . And we feel like this interpreter program has really just created a natural bridge for us to , you know , share not only our culture but each other's culture with one another , and so I think it's just had a huge impact . But it really goes to the root of our value system of caring and it's demonstrated in this bond that we've created with the teams that we've hired .

Manufacturing HR Retention Strategies

Speaker 2 13:02

Okay , so let's go into that a bit more if you don't mind . You mentioned earlier on it remains a pretty competitive landscape within manufacturing . Beyond that company culture piece , how do you guys compete with your competitors to retain as many employees as possible ? Is that through higher wages , flexible hours , more employee benefits ? Can you give us an idea of that ? Can ?

Speaker 3 13:24

you give us an idea of that . So I think our pay is really competitive , Bill , with the marketplace . We are located in a very dense manufacturing park so we can't get into wage wars , but we're very fair and we're very competitive . Our benefits are premium it's in the upper quartile and our benefits are available day one , which is a real draw for a candidate to come in . And so I think we're competitive in the marketplace and we keep pace with what's around us in this manufacturing park and in Boone County , Indiana .

Speaker 3 13:57

But I think at the end of the day , it's how we treat people and the culture that we create . That really is what I always call the sticky factor of why people want to join us and then why they want to stay . And I think one more other niche that's been really neat is we're really big on career development and growth , and so we have a lot of stories of the facility because it's brand new and it'll be about 250 people when it's fully staffed . There's lots of opportunities to start as an operator and progress through career development . And we have lots of stories that we can show where we've had an operator that's now a supervisor or an operator that's a lead . We had a supervisor that we just promoted to a continuous improvement manager , so we're also really good about career growth and development and are very proud of sort of the opportunities we afford at the plant .

Speaker 2 14:50

OK , very good , Thank you very much . We are already coming towards the end of this particular conversation , monica . Just a couple more questions for you before we wrap up . You are a seasoned senior HR pro , so it would be remiss of me not to ask you what do you see as the future of HR , what are some of the trends that you see occurring over the next , say , three to five years within HR leadership ? And I'm going to challenge you to answer that in 90 seconds or less .

Speaker 3 15:20

Tough one , okay , so I'm going to focus more on the manufacturing side , because I think we could go for hours on AI , but I think over the next decade in the manufacturing space in North America , there's about 3.8 million jobs that are going to be needed in the US and there is a statistic that says that only 1.9 million are expected to be unfilled if we don't inspire more people to pursue manufacturing careers .

Speaker 3 15:48

And we've got an aging population that's leaving the manufacturing as they go to retire .

Speaker 3 15:55

And we really got to innovate and be the leader that challenge and create programs that embrace the shift in skilled labor and the growing Hispanic workforce and the need for inclusive environments that celebrates diversity .

Speaker 3 16:09

I think innovative programs that we invoked in Lebanon , as DS Smith , are really going to be the kind of critical thinking and ideas that we have to come up with to figure out how we're going to create and shorten this gap in manufacturing talent . And I think we've got to create new and innovative ways to keep developing , retaining and attracting the talent so that we can be successful . And I think that , as a leadership group and as senior HR person , I've got to be open to new things that my team brings to me and that's how we got this interpreter program . My HR manager there came up with this creative idea and we've got to keep pushing our teams that there are new and different things we can try , and we need to be able to do that to be able to work on this gap in in manufacturing openings that we need to fill okay , thank you , and just finally for today , monica .

Speaker 2 17:03

How can folks connect with you ? Is that through LinkedIn ? Do you want to share your email address ? Are you super cool and all over Instagram and TikTok and places ? Tell us more .

Speaker 3 17:12

I am not all over Instagram and TikTok and you're probably glad of that , but I am on LinkedIn . It's Monica Z Anderton and go check me out , and it's been a real pleasure to be here today , bill .

Speaker 2 17:23

Awesome . Well , that just leaves me to say for today Monica , you superstar , Thank you very much for being my guest .

Speaker 3 17:29

Awesome . Thank you so much , bill , it's been a pleasure .

Speaker 2 17:32

And listeners as always . Until next time , happy working .

Speaker 1 17:39

Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show . If you enjoyed this episode , why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work ? Subscribe to the show , follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom .