From the press-room roster to the compensation committee

Mandate

Prepare the workforce for retirements in the skilled trades and for growth by acquisition, without lowering standards on any shift.

Outcomes

• Seventeen maintenance apprentices completed a four-year registered programme by mid-2025
• Mansfield third-shift first-year turnover reduced from 61 to 33 percent between 2021 and 2024
• First contract at the acquired Bowling Green plant ratified in December 2024 with no unfair labour practice charge against the company
• Contract maintenance spending reduced from US$2.6 million to US$1.1 million

Decisions in context

Corrinwood's family owners recruited me to prepare the workforce for retirements and acquisitions at the same time. I lead plant HR, payroll, benefits and training through four plant HR managers and a small corporate team, and I am chief negotiator for the company's three collective agreements. Each quarter I ask three questions. Who will maintain and set up our machines in five years? Is every shift staffed and supervised to the same standard? What will an acquired plant's employees experience in their first year with us? The cases on this site answer those questions imperfectly, and I say where. I present workforce reports and executive pay recommendations to the board's compensation committee, but I am not a director. The chief executive and I sometimes disagree in front of the committee about a workforce risk, which its chair has told us she prefers to a rehearsed consensus.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking one compatible independent board role.

Mandate

Stabilise supervision and turnover across five plants while customers moved programmes between suppliers.

Outcomes

• Closed the Indiana door-panel plant with sixty days' WARN Act notice and placed 140 of 260 employees with nearby employers
• Introduced a twelve-week development course completed by 118 first-line supervisors
• Reduced divisional hourly turnover from 38 to 26 percent between 2014 and 2018

Decisions in context

As divisional director I moved from negotiating agreements to answering for the whole people record of five plants. Customers placed and withdrew vehicle programmes at short notice, so we hired for launches and planned reductions within the same year. The hardest decision was closing our Indiana door-panel plant in 2016. We gave the legal notice, held a hiring fair with nearby employers and kept HR staff on site until the last shift. A review that year showed most first-line supervisors had been promoted from the line with a handbook and no further preparation, and that their plants had the highest turnover. I built a twelve-week course with the plant managers and taught part of it myself. The experience persuaded me that supervisors decide whether a company's people policies are real. By 2019 I wanted a role where I could set those policies, not only apply them.

Reason for the move

Recruited to a chief human resources role covering the whole of a manufacturing company's people agenda.

Mandate

Manage layoffs, recalls and contract negotiations at three unionised plants through the vehicle downturn and recovery.

Outcomes

• Negotiated four collective agreements without a strike
• Administered layoffs and recalls of about 900 hourly employees under seniority provisions
• Reduced open grievances at the Toledo-area plant from 74 to 19

Decisions in context

I joined in the worst months of the vehicle downturn. My first year consisted of layoffs, recalls by seniority, grievance meetings and an arbitration about pay for temporary transfers, which we lost because our supervisors had applied the rule three different ways. That loss taught me to read a collective agreement as a set of promises both sides once thought fair and to make sure our own managers knew what we had promised. I negotiated four agreements over five years, with the plant managers at my side and counsel for drafting. As volumes recovered, recall order and overtime distribution became the main disputes. I met each local's officers monthly, not only when a contract was due. Grievances fell at the plant where trust was lowest, mostly because we began answering them within the time limits the agreement set.

Reason for the move

Promoted to divisional human resources director.

Mandate

Run the plant's people function and keep standards consistent across three shifts as production work began to move abroad.

Outcomes

• Brought night-shift induction and refresher training to day-shift standard
• Reduced first-year hourly turnover from 41 to 29 percent between 2003 and 2006
• Handled the first harness-assembly reductions with written selection criteria and outplacement for 85 employees

Decisions in context

Brindleford gave me my first plant to answer for. Its 650 employees were not represented, and the owners valued the informality of a family company. I kept some of that informality while writing down the rules people relied on: how shifts were bid, how overtime was offered and how a complaint was escalated. Night-shift induction had been a video and a walk to the workstation, so I made it equal to the day programme. From 2007 the owners began moving harness assembly to Mexico after their largest customer pressed for lower prices. I drafted selection criteria for the first reductions and arranged outplacement for those affected. The decision itself had been made before I was asked, which taught me how little influence a plant HR role carries at that stage. I left at the end of 2008 to learn bargaining in unionised plants.

Reason for the move

Left as the transfer of assembly accelerated, to gain unionised labour relations experience.

Mandate

Support hiring and employee relations, then build structured safety and skills training for all three shifts.

Outcomes

• Wrote the plant's first structured induction for evening and night hires
• Trained 410 employees in lockout and hearing-conservation procedures
• Recruited a panel of twelve shift trainers from experienced operators

Decisions in context

I joined after evening courses in human resources, which I took while still scheduling presses. As a generalist I handled hiring, attendance cases and the first stage of employee complaints. In 2000 I became training and safety coordinator and spent most nights of my first month on the second and third shifts, where new hires had been learning from whoever stood next to them. I wrote a structured induction and recruited twelve experienced operators as part-time trainers, paid a premium for the hours they taught. I also ran the lockout and hearing-conservation training that OSHA standards require, and I learnt that a signed attendance sheet proved very little about what an operator did at the machine. During these years I began a part-time master's degree in labour and employment relations, finishing it shortly before my promotion.

Reason for the move

Promoted to plant human resources manager.

Mandate

Sequence print and bindery jobs on second shift and allocate crews to meet delivery dates.

Outcomes

• Cut average make-ready waiting time on second shift by about a fifth through job sequencing
• Introduced a shift handover sheet later adopted on all three shifts
• Recorded unplanned stoppages by shift, the first comparison the plant had kept

Decisions in context

I joined Hassingdale a month after graduating, expecting a career in production planning. The work involved sequencing jobs on two web presses and a bindery line so that circulars left on time. What I noticed was the roster. Seniority sent the newest press helpers to the evening and night shifts, while most of the mechanics worked days. When a web broke after midnight, the crew waited. I began recording stoppages by shift, and the production manager used my notes to argue for a night mechanic, which the owners approved in 1996. I also introduced a handover sheet so that problems did not disappear between crews. The job taught me that staffing patterns are decisions, even when nobody remembers making them. It sent me to evening classes in human resources and then into my first HR role.

Reason for the move

Moved into human resources after completing evening courses, drawn by the staffing patterns scheduling had revealed.