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Host Sean Frost is joined by experts in the manufacturing industry to discuss bringing big ideas to life. Join us every episode for a deep dive into manufacturing trends, processes, innovation, and how to be successful in the ever-changing world of manufacturing.
Ep07_AlFrost_full
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Sean Frost: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Inspiring Innovation. It comes out every second Tuesday of the month, so make sure to like and subscribe, comment what you're liking on these episodes, comment what you'd like to see more of. We want to make it better for you and the only way we can do that is when you engage with us on, on whatever platform you enjoy listening to your podcasts or viewing your podcasts on.
As you'll notice, we've got some different backgrounds [00:01:00] here. We are, again, at Omni Circle in Topeka, Kansas, and I'd encourage anyone locally to check out the space. It's a really great space that we get to use here. And today's a really unique episode. We've got this military background going on logistically, and why I think that's funny and relevant is because growing up, we moved around a lot, so people asked if I'd come from a military family. Well, I did not, but the person that was responsible for moving me so much across this country is here with us today, so I have the unique opportunity to do something that I never thought I'd say, which is interview my father for a podcast.
So, my dad works at Polo custom products. And the reason that we moved around so much is that he was at Motorola when I was young, he went to Payless. we were in Kansas again at that point. Anheuser Busch, Delta, [00:02:00] Home Depot. But then he went to HD Supply and Darden Restaurants in Florida.
So we moved around a lot growing up. And then he went back to Payless. Then he went to Polo Custom Products. Then he went to the banking industry for a short stint and came back to Polo Custom Products. So, I'm not sure if I missed anything on that. But this is the man that I've gotten career advice from my whole life.
Let him share some of his experience with you and talk about how it relates to manufacturing and your career development. I think we've got a fun episode today and I'll try not to give him too much of a hard time, but, he'll just tell me to report to HR, which I've been doing my entire life.
So anyways really excited to have him on the podcast. And so we like to sometimes throw a curve ball question at our guests. And so in relation to all that experience he's had, I wanted him to share his 15 minutes of fame that he had when he was at Home Depot.
So can you tell us a little bit about that [00:03:00] project and how that was highlighted?
Al Frost: Sure. Thanks for the interesting intro, Sean. So my 15 minutes of fame, I was at Home Depot. They were undergoing a class action gender discrimination lawsuit. And in the meantime, I had been putting in a new hiring process that was on kiosks, and there was testing, it was computerized, people could apply online.
And it was way advanced compared to what everybody else was doing. So, I got published in New York Times and business magazines and all kinds of publications and things like thatfor my work in that. And it really came out to help with gender discrimination in a big, positive way for females.
And so, it got the lawyers attention, they loved it, it got a lot of press, so that was my 15 minutes of fame.
Sean Frost: Awesome, awesome. Spoken like a true HR professional there. And the kind of part that you developed of it was the adaptive testing, right? Wasn't it? [00:04:00] If you answer the question one way, you get a different question type of...
Al Frost: It actually was not so much that, but what it was, was very Home Depot like questions.How you got a yard with this size, how much fertilizer do you need to put down? And so you got to the math skills in a really Home Depot job like way. And then there was what's called conscientiousness on there.
Which, surprisingly, not surprisingly, females do better on than males. So when the lawyers got a hold of that, it became a real positive.
Sean Frost: Can you speak to the evolving role of HR especially in today's environment where there's been so many disruptions in supply chain and manufacturing and personnel where a lot of people are having a hard time. Securing a workforce, low unemployment. Can you speak to how HR has evolved in the last few years?
Al Frost: Absolutely. And you'll notice I have gray hair and the reason why is because I've got [00:05:00] like 35 years of dealing with HR issues and events. And I will say that this is the single most challenging time of any of those 35 years. And the reason why is what you just said, which is Unemployment rate in Iowa, where we have a plant, is like 2.7 percent unemployment. National average about 3.8 percent unemployment. And basically what that means is everybody that could be working is working. And so imagine trying to hire production technicians, manufacturing folks under those conditions. Furthermore the pay rates that companies are paying people like on their merit increases is going way up.
And in fact, it's at a two decade high as of today. Last year, it was about a 4.1 percent increase on average. This year, they're talking 4.4 percent average increase. So the wages that people are paying are much higher. [00:06:00] Unemployment rate much lower. It's getting very, very challenging to hire people. It's incumbent on HR to find new and creative ways. Number one, to hire new people and number two, to keep the people we hire. So retention becomes strategically very important under these conditions as well. And so for retention, we do things like engagement surveys. We're reviewing our benefits.
We actually did a survey on our benefits offerings and what people want and don't want. We're going to like shift our spending to more to what people want. But on the, hiring side, we have to be really creative. So we're looking at everything, job boards, we put signs up outside. Our number two source of employees is the employee referral program that we have.
We pay a bonus of 1,200 dollars actually if you refer somebody that gets hired and they stay. So we have to be very creative in attracting people. We've been looking at immigrants that might want to come into the [00:07:00] country for manufacturing jobs in particular. So we have to be creative and on that cutting edge of finding people in a big way right now.
Sean Frost: What are some of the strategies that you have been using to recruit top talent? And then how has that impacted the company in manufacturing processes along the way?
Al Frost: Sure. Good question. I think it's incumbent on HR people to really understand what they're doing, how they're doing it, and what's most impactful.
So for instance, there's a process called yield analysis, and it's basically looking at all your recruiting sources and what gives you the most yield. And so we look at those numbers on a regular basis, and we typically find job boards number one. And through our HR system, we get a lot of that for no cost, so that's really effective and low cost.
Number two I mentioned is Employee Referral Program. Our president and CEO and myself, we talk to every single new associate that enters the [00:08:00] company. On a personal basis, we remind them about this referral process, and I believe that's why it's number two. We keep it front of mind to our associates to refer people that they know are going to be good, and it tends to work really well on both sides.
So, I think it's incumbent on HR to know how they're spending their money and how effective it is. We do things like sign on bonuses and job fairs and all kinds of creative things. We even have one coming up at our plant in Iowa where we're going to have the plant manager there in a booth explaining to candidates, Hey, you come join us. This is what it would be like. So I think today that's what's really critical is, creative new ways to attract candidates and then really focusing on retention as well.
Sean Frost: I think I heard a new one which is some of our employees were wearing polo shirts at some type of community festival and they were serving beer.
Al Frost: That's correct.
Sean Frost: So, I, I mean, I think that's a, that's a hell of a way to recruit.
Al Frost: Well, [00:09:00] and they got some candidates out of that too, so it worked.
Sean Frost: Yeah, yeah. Effective out of the box thinking, So obviously we're in a different era of working and there's a lot more remote work. We've got kind of a national landscape, if you will, for recruiting especially when it comes to the corporate office. And so, how have you all adapted HR policies and work from home policies and across the manufacturing spectrum?
There's a lot of jobs that you have to do in person. And so how'd you delineate, who can work from home and what that looks like? And so how did you go about designing that program and those policies?
Al Frost: Yeah, that's a really relevant topic in today's world. So, first of all, we talked it over as an executive team quite a bit.
And we basically wrote a policy that goes something like this, which is number one, there are some jobs that simply you [00:10:00] have to be there in person. And sometimes it's even professional jobs. But in manufacturing, you can just picture, our production techs, for instance, they have to be on site.
We have expensive machinery. They can't exactly take that home. It's more in the gray space where it gets tougher. We often have professional jobs where we really need the person to be on site every day because they're talking with and collaborating with their coworkers, or there's some job related thing that requires them to be there.
It's hard in manufacturing to allow some to go home and work from home and some not. So we dealt with that conflict internally with our executive team and we talked it through. And so we came up with this policy that starts with, does the job allow it? And we have some with just outright, say right up front to applicants, for instance, this is a full time work at the office kind of job, or this is one, the farthest we go is, a couple of days [00:11:00] up to the manager's discretion, a couple days work from home and then the rest of the day is in the office and the manager can make that call and that decision they can say, Hey, we have our team meetings on such and such a day. So we want everybody in the office on that day, maybe Monday and Friday you can work from home. Now even within that though, we have various policies. So for instance that person that's working from home has to maintain their performance standards or we'll revoke it. They have to be very responsive. You have to know, the boss has to know that they're at their computer and they're working during the day.
We had to put in some statements about what the company would reimburse for and what they wouldn't. For instance, do you allow the person to have an extra monitor or a printer at home and those kind of things? So we delineate all those things, presented it back to the executive team, got some feedback and so on and so forth, got it published and it's in play.
And I think it's been really effective. And then taking it back to your earlier [00:12:00] questions, it's almost critical from a recruiting standpoint this point in time. Because so many companies are doing it that if you don't, you're at a major disadvantage for hiring in professional jobs at least, if not more.
So very critical policy I would say from a hiring perspective and helping with the labor situation that we're in.
Sean Frost: Old school. And I just like to be in the office when COVID hit and we were out for a couple of months. It was like a religious experience getting back to my monitors and my mouse.
And I just felt like so in control again. But on my team, at least I know we're set up very well to be able to work from home. We've got great systems in place. Our IT team has done a lot to replicate what we have in the office at home. And I know my team has definitely appreciated it when they can take advantage of it.
And I also feel like it was important, especially for my team, for us to be flexible with all the things [00:13:00] going on in COVID where it was like, you test positive, who were you with for more than 10 minutes in six feet. Who do you report that to? And all this kind of stuff. And daycares were shutting down left and right.
We have a lot of young parents on our team. So it was just a wild time. Flexibility for that work from home was key throughout that. And so I think those were very well received something that our team values quite a bit.
Al Frost: And it's a good example where it's really effective because Your folks are on the phone a lot with customers. They don't have to be in the office to do that. In fact, it might be quieter at home than in the office. I think that's a good example, is the sales team.
Sean Frost: We do love being in the office together too, and the camaraderie and the buzz that is created when we're all together. It's definitely a great balance.
I know what's interesting about that dynamic, was that when we go out and talk with customers in these big companies, some of them feel like the older people like [00:14:00] to work from home more and that the junior people feel pretty disconnected and they don't feel like they can get in front of, the people that they want to and have rub elbows with and like, find development opportunities and things like that.
So, that was a newer perspective that I'd heard where, it seems like the common theme is that most younger people just want to work from home all the time. I think there's a lot of give and take, and it's just been a fascinating time for policies like those.
And I think you and the executive team did a good job developing those, and it's gone well.
This podcast is geared towards supply chain professionals and project engineers, R& D people, people that are developing products. And so I wanted to know what you thought HR could play a role in their development of their careers. And if you had any advice for some of these professionals as they look to, grow in their career, get new experiences and [00:15:00] gain more responsibility ultimately.
Al Frost: Sure. Well, you know first what I would say is Engineers and project manager types are very valued in the workforce. they're hard to find They need to be paid fairly substantially or you won't get them because their skill sets are so valuable, like manufacturing and engineering project management, those things are so valuable.
So number one, I think they could feel very confident coming out of school and working with their HR departments that they're going to be seen as having, adding quite a bit of value. The thing I would add, and this goes for HR professionals too, and really any professional is to consider, while they're still in school, and to advance their career, really working hard at adding some skill sets, if they don't have them already, and they may have. Especially around leadership skills managing others, conflict management. The more soft skills that they [00:16:00] have, the better. Now you can picture and this could be true of HR as well, but you can picture like an engineer solving a problem.
And having a pretty clear answer on what has to happen, but not considering the people that that impacts and how it impacts them. And so how you deliver that message might be critical for an engineer. Project manager, the same thing, because... Project managers are often in this mode where they have a plan, but people have to do things to make that plan happen and they have to follow up with them.
And it's kind of like a hard combination of being firm about what you know is right. And at the same time being diplomatic about it and caring about the people you're working with. So I would say those are two big things to consider. And while they're still in school, they could take leadership courses, psychology classes, just a few, HR classes and things like that to round out their perspective.
I would strongly [00:17:00] suggest that. I do also think, though, that their value that they bring to an organization is so extensive. In both cases, I'm talking, engineering and project management, that they stand a very good chance to go up the ladder. Another thing that often happens, not just with, folks of that background, but others too, is that when you advance a lot of people want to hold on to the skill sets that they had at the lower job.
And so they don't delegate well, they don't they don't develop people. They don't grow the people that report to them. So I would say, really keep a very close attention to your own skill sets as a leader, as you advance in the organization and work to improve them. We have things like we do 360 process. It's like an anonymous developmental questionnaire. And, we'll get feedback. HR will try to help coach the folks. And get them training or development for whatever they need, but I guess what I'd say is be really open to your own [00:18:00] development and your own skill set advancement, especially in those arenas.
Sean Frost: Those are great points, and I think, a lot of people get promoted to a managerial position because they're so good at the work. Exactly.
But that's a totally different skill set than a managerial role. What advice do you have to new managers?
Al Frost: New managers I would say there's a whole host of really pretty easy tasks that they can do to be really good at their jobs. Number one. Have team meetings. Some folks don't do that. Have team meetings. Two. Interview your direct reports personally and ask them about their careers, their hopes, their desires, what they want.
You can't really develop people if you don't know what they want and what they want out of their careers. So know your people well focus your communication style on what that individual needs. Often I think new managers try to whitewash the communication across everybody in the [00:19:00] easiest way possible, but different people want to hear the message in different ways.
So you have to flex your style to your direct reports and not vice versa. Spend time with them, coach them, teach them. new managers, coaching and teaching, they sometimes forget how important that is. Surveys always show that the new associates join in the workforce. They want feedback.
You think they don't want it because, people a lot of times react negatively to it, but they really want it. And so you're in a position, as a manager to know what they can do to get better, by all means, coach them, teach them, spend time with them. So, those would be my short tips.
Sean Frost: Awesome.
Those are great. I think they transcend manufacturing as well and apply to business.
Okay, so we address what younger professionals can work on in their career. What about more senior people who are who do have teams and what advice would you have for them for [00:20:00] succession planning, for developing their workforce, as a Sergeant Major that we work with says building the bench for the future.
Al Frost: Yeah. First of all, a great concept and totally support any manager doing that and thinking in those ways, because it's really critical. And there's so many advantages to that senior leader. I mean, for instance, it can free him or her up to go advance and go into a different position if they've got a backup ready for themselves.
So it serves a lot of purposes and it's really good for the company because you want somebody ready to stand in if you're not there. So first of all, totally support that. Secondly, there's some conceptual stuff that really came out of General Electric under the Jack Welch days that I still use and I think a lot of people in my field still use, which is, it's called the nine box and it's looking at what's the potential that that person has and then what's the performance and they create like nine boxes.
So you can imagine high performer, [00:21:00] high potential. So that's a person who is going to go places, right? You want to have developmental and think about and plan for that person developmental activities in a different way than somebody who's in a low box.
Let's take a high performer low potential. And I knew folks like this, and they're solid citizens. You want to retain them. You want to do everything to keep them. I once worked with a manager that was in a finance arena, and he had advanced up to a director level in a large company. But he wasn't going anywhere else.
That was his life and his career, and he had reached his potential and everybody saw it, but top performers. So, we often call them solid citizens because the company needs them and wants them. This gentleman had been there like 20 years and he, so he knew everything about his field.
That kind of development would be different than that high potential person. Mm-hmm. Back to your question, if you can look at your [00:22:00] folks in that nine box kind of approach, you should very much consider always having a plan for every individual and how to develop and how to grow them.
What their career interests are. How does that match? How do you motivate them and give them different developmental experiences. You mentioned Darden Restaurants and Idid have an experience where ACEO was being developed way before he got into the position.
It was like 10 years before he was even in the position. Everybody knew he had the potential. He was a very smart guy. And so what we did is we built a plan. So high potential, high performance kind of guy. And every single restaurant. So there was, Bahama Breeze at the time, there was Olive Garden, there was Red Lobster at the time.
We had him work even in the kitchens. So he understood what it was like to cook what it was like to be a waiter and then actually run a restaurant. And he did that in all different chains. And when he got into that position, he was extremely ready and extremely successful. So,
This is a great [00:23:00] exercise for any manager, senior manager to be ready to have a succession plan. It's a really good thing for the company.
Sean Frost: Yeah. I was told something recently of like, you need to plan that whoever you have in your spots are not going to be there in five years. And I,naively... didn't want to think that way. I love my team. I've got great people in the right spots. And so, I didn't even want to think about that, but it is so much better to be prepared, for the worst. And, not to make light of how important that the team is and the way, that you talked about developing those people. So,When you talk about the good citizens, the people that are valuable and they're at where they're at. What were some techniques that you guys had to make those people feel valued and to retain them in those roles?
Al Frost: First of all their development plan should also be created just like everybody else. So you're paying attention to their development and their growth. [00:24:00] More likely it's going to be focused on things in their current role instead of advancing. It's going to be gaining them technical knowledge often because they love that.
And that's what got them to be so good. And the company needs that. win win. Lot of times it would be focused on more job kind of skill sets that the person requires. But, definitely supported, financed career discussions with the person. All those kinds of things that still would happen to others too.
Sean Frost: Great.
Okay, so what has the role of strategy played at Polo Custom Products and how have you approached that? How have you developed strategy for the company? And how has that evolved over the years?
Al Frost: Great question. I think a really, really important one for most companies, it's not all companies.
I feel very fortunate that when our president CEO, Ken Lammers brought me back after I had left for a little bit, he added that piece to my role. So I get to sort of run [00:25:00] and coordinate company strategy for Polo custom products. And I'mI feel very fortunate. That's a rare thing.
Al Frost: We have done a lot of things in the past with strategy. We've done things like SWOT analysis. We've talked about our business capabilities and what capabilities do we want to add? Where do we want to be in one, three and five years and so on and so forth. I would say that more recently you joined a company and brought some new thinking.
And that spurred additional thinking, and since then, I think we've done some really neat, neat, interesting stuff. One of the things that we learned is that for strategy, you really want to make it about what's going to differentiate you and what's going to make you win in the marketplace. it doesn't mean you're not doing all the other things you're doing, but you've got to focus on what's going to make you win.
Sean Frost: Can I interrupt
you for a minute? please.
I loved we had a board member share a video. That really nailed strategy down to a concise statement. It's where do you want to play and how do you want to win? And I [00:26:00] think those two questions are pretty complex to answer, but really nail what strategy is.
Al Frost: Yeah, that, you're right.
That was very impactful, that video for myself too. And it spurred a lot of action and a lot of discussion. And some of the things that came out of that were... If you can't say what your strategy is in 35 words, then you don't really have one. And we struggled mightily to be able to do that in 35 words.
But we did it, and we now have a statement that's in 35 words, and it's quite impactful. I, I really like it. So we've done that. We as you know, you brought in Brenneman. He's got a really neat one page kind of four themed approach to strategy. Again, him saying, in this case, if you can't put it on one piece of paper, then you don't really have a strategy.
So we've done that and it's, it's a little bit more explicit and detail oriented than a 35 word statement. So it's like a step further in the right [00:27:00] direction. Since we had those discussions, we've added an analysis of Porter's five forces, which I think is really neat and I really enjoyed doing that with youwe placed that out there and we looked at Porter's five forces and it really makes you nail down what your competitors how they're interacting with you and you interact with them and how, severe that hurts you or helps you.
I think finally we did a customer value stream map, which also in my mind was very helpful. Cause it really made you think from the customer's point of view about what Polo value adds to So, I'm, very glad I've been able to work on a company strategy.
Sean Frost: I'll just expand on a few of those things for the audience. So, we were discussing Greg Brenneman, who has a book called Right Away and All at Once, who I got to know through Washburn when I was working there before I came to Polo Custom Products. So, he spoke to our executive team and we developed [00:28:00] that one page plan and those, I'll probably butcher this, but I think that it was about the market, about the people, about finance, and, I think kind of capabilities or something along those lines.
Yeah. For, so it just categorizes your strategy into those four important buckets and should be memorable. It should be something that people know what their role contributes to that plan and it should be reviewed and measured against often.
But. What I think is powerful about that approach too is that it's not a big strategic plan that goes in this binder that sits on a shelf, for a year until you go back and look at it and say, Oh, what progress did we make on, these 18 pages with tons of bullets? I feel like it's something that, people can visit often, It can go on a screen and in your manufacturing plants, it can be easily [00:29:00] remembered and communicated and visited often. So, it's definitely, helpful in that way. And then I just add with the Porter's analysis that it, to me, that's a really great way of evaluating the business landscape that you're operating within.
So that could be. Things like your competitors, it could be your suppliers, your buyers, all sorts of aspects of how you interact as a business within the landscape and what your risks are so that has been a lot of fun to work with you on and I just wanted to add a little bit of context for the audience.
So, we talked about a lot of resources and strategy resources there.
We'll just put some of those in the show notes so our audience can do a deeper dive if that's of interest to them. Sure.
Okay, can you talk about some successful initiatives that Human Resources has implemented at Polo Custom Products that has bridged the gap between HR and manufacturing and has led to some process [00:30:00] improvements and some efficiencies and some cost savings.
Al Frost: Absolutely.
I think the best example of that is our tiers program for our production techs. So, what happened is we really had very little to no training for our production techs when we hired them in our plants. So they would go out They would get maybe, I think, one day of, training, not from a professional trainer and then they would go out and they'd be on machines and they were supposed to have people coaching them too, but, then those people got busy and they got pulled away and so very, very little training, which, there's a lot of ramifications to that, as you can guess, like quality of products and so on and so forth.
So, several years ago, our president, CEO, Kent Lammers, and our chief operating officer, Brian Weber, in particular, they really wanted to, to change that and bring in some kind of effective training program. And so we built it from the ground up, and we added training rooms. We got [00:31:00] sewing machines in there, in our case.
we hired full time trainers for our plants. And they were tasked with putting together a tiers program kind of this is how it was before they got here and Implemented this tiers program. It was like an associate would get on a machine that after their first day of training they had no idea what product they were working on. They only knew their part and what they were supposed to do not a lot of checks on quality and training and giving them a chance to practice.
They didn't know the big picture of, what they were working on, who the customer even was in many cases. So, then bring in these trainers and they actually went out and in a really cool way and they worked the jobs and they learned how to be production techs. And so then they started building a program marrying manufacturing and HR, just as you said And they started to realize that they were missing this big picture, they weren't trained [00:32:00] enough, they didn't practice, they didn't know what even quality mistakes look like. So, What these trainers did is they got really well educated on the different machines that are in like A Line. We make several products, obviously you've talked about that in other podcasts.
The machines that are in A Line and they built certification tests for each of those machines. So now we can say to folks, listen, we want you to be able to rotate and be on different machines. Like if somebody's absent that day, we might need you over here. Well, now they can be certified on all these different machines and thus understand the whole process a little bit more.
Secondly, once they get enough machine certifications, we created a performance index. So it's like attendance are they producing up to labor standard? Are they not making quality errors? And, each associate on the line has sort of a score on this performance index. And if they do well enough, they can be nominated by a manager [00:33:00] to go into the TIERS program.
The TIERS program is going to require them to study. Understand the big picture, who the customer is, what are all the different parts of the product, what is it that I'm tasked to do on that line, why is it important that I have no quality mistakes. And then they actually go through live performance testing for about a week.
And they're watched and monitored. Quality folks come in, assess their products, they have to stay with the labor standards and so on and so forth. But if they pass all that, then they get certified, for instance, at a tier one level and they get a pay increase and so on and so forth. Then they can go on to tier two and get another pay increase and tier three and get another pay increase.
So the more valuable they are to the company, the more knowledge they have, the more they can do for us. We want them to earn more money and have a career path. So, I think that was a great example of marrying HR and manufacturing because, the trainers almost had to do those jobs[00:34:00] and learn them in such a way that, you can't create training if you don't really understand them.
Sean Frost: For companies that like that idea and would like to implement it, after going through it yourself and what you've learned along the way, how would you suggest they go about implementing a program like that.
Al Frost: Yeah, great question. And I feel like it's appropriate for all different kinds of jobs, like even professional jobs. Our quality department has been working on one. So, how would I go about it? First of all, you have to have somebody in your company That is trained. in training.You really need that skill set because there are different ways to teach people.
People learn in different modes and you have to have an effective way to teach those people. It's going to hit home for them personally. So you want to involve a trainer number one. And number two a lot of employee involvement. If you don't have a lot of employee involvement and you just bring this tiers program on them, they're unlikely to be very [00:35:00] happy about it at first. And I think some interpersonal skills and diplomacy and collaboration, all those things are really important in introducing a new program. We've had failures in some of those arenas, and program gets a black eye, so you want to have very good change management tactics, and involvement, collaboration, and, even the associates really are developing it themselves, so those would be my, points of suggestions.
So this is one that hits home and has been relevant in times of crisis like the pandemic. How has HR partnered with the rest of the company to ensure a business continuity, but also employee well being?
Oh, that's a great question. Ah boy that was a trying time. It was very amazing, I think, how we shifted on a dime, and had to shift on a dime. So, I was fortunate in the sense that our president and CEO called daily [00:36:00] meetings. We literally had daily meetings. All of us, almost every day, we were talking through the pandemic.
For instance, a lot of, difficult decisions had to be made and, you needed everybody's buy in. Mandating masks, for instance, there's so much resistance to that. But in the meantime, You could have one person come in and not wear a mask and wipe out your entire workforce.
I mean, literally could have happened during that pandemic. If they just walked around and breathed on everybody, that's all it would have taken. Super spreader. Yes. I mean, it was that serious. And so, having everybody collaborate at the same time was, critical. And tough decisions were made.
And then the CDC was changing their guidelines very often and appropriately. But then we'd have to change our, principles trying to get consistency across the plants was, difficult. People would be trying to make different calls because there's a lot of judgment, gray area. So, we would be writing policies.
we have a very thick manual now. We kept all this [00:37:00] stuff for future pandemics and put it into a, pandemic emergency guide, you might call it. Constantly rewriting policy involving everybody on the calls. We also got the P loan through the government and what was so critical about that, and I still, to this day,I thank the government for that program is that we were able to, close plants from time to time. We had one plant closed for a whole week. We had another plant just closed for two days because there were so many people out with COVID and that sort of thing. What we could do though, because of that loan, is we could pay them.
And that whole week it was closed, we paid them the entire time. And so, we got better, everybody got better and then came back re energized and, that's because of that, loan that really helped us out a lot. So, very trying times, again, a lot of collaboration is required.
I think having to your point, HR and manufacturing on the line together, making decisions [00:38:00] together, following the CDC's suggestions it, it was a tough time, but we came out of it with flying colors.
Sean Frost: Well, yeah, thanks for sharing that and I'm glad I wasn't with the company. No, I'm just kidding. No, so since I've got family on the podcast and we're talking about, different things in history, I want to, share my wife is she does corporate wellness.
One of the things that I think is unique about Polo is that we can be agile. We have a great culture and we care about our people. And one of the ways that we care about our people is our wellness program. And I think that Polo for the size of the company that we are, we do an incredible program that I think is pretty rare amongst any company. So, I know Kyleen's given us advice, my wife, and I know that we've implemented a lot of different things over the years. So could you talk a little bit about our corporate wellness initiatives?
Al Frost: Absolutely. We are self insured and I know that's maybe different [00:39:00] than several of your listeners, but what that means is we know not who, because it's all HIPAA protected, but in an aggregated sort of way.
We know the health conditions of our workforce. Now, why should we know that? Well, number one, more healthy individuals, they have better attendance, they have better performance. I mean, There's a whole host of positive things, less quality errors. It goes on and on. So, essentially every year we look at this and we know in an aggregated sort of way where our folks need some help and so in the beginning of the year, we involve experts like, Kyleen, your wife is a dietician and we need that advice and we have others that we get feedback from, but we have biometric aggregated results. And so we look at things like where are their weaknesses?
What, is it waist size? Is it cholesterol? Whatever it may be. And then we design our program every year to match, what our workforce needs. And so, point being, you can know what [00:40:00] your workforce needs, and you can attack that in a well being program in a real positive way. It might be education sessions.
Where you have a dietician come out and talk to your plant associates about cooking in a healthy way. It might be exercise programs, and we run the full gamut on that. We've had for our associates in a plant. We've had Pickleball, we've had Spin classes, we do walks, all kinds of creative fun ways for people to get points and win things.
We always try to make it a positive win event. And I will tell you, it's very motivational. We also subsidize payments more our health insurance payments if you're more healthy. And so people work really hard at getting good biometrics, and believe it's quite motivational. I know it was for myself.
I several times have lost weight when it comes to time to do biometrics. And I know others do too. So, all in all. It's well being is so [00:41:00] important to the culture even, I would say, to having it be a positive place to work, to know that your company cares about you, and we do fun events, and you can learn, pickleball, or spin class, or whatever, you want to learn.
It's a big piece to engagement, associate engagement.
Sean Frost: Absolutely. I personally thought that I was super healthy and then I got that biometric this last one and I got some things to work on. So.
Al Frost: It really does drive behavior.
Sean Frost: Yeah. It's a, it's a really great program.
I think it's something we should be proud of. I think we have a really great culture that really does care about our people. so, happy to be a part of this company. Can't believe. That I work with you.
it's kind of crazy and it's been fun having you on the podcast. So I'll check off having the old man on the Polo custom products podcast, inspiring innovation. So thank you for tuning in, especially if you've listened this far to the end, we really appreciate you want to hear from you. We have a new episode every second [00:42:00] Tuesday of the month, and we can't thank you enough for listening.
So enjoy.