Staffing is a leading indicator of doom and turnaround.  As I’ve written here before, our people were the first to be laid off in late 2007 and early 2008.  After all, if your orders are drying up, the quickest way to cut costs is to let the temps go and ask your base workforce to be more productive.  This just makes good sense.

Now that inventories are depleted and new orders for products are on the upswing, you need the people to get the product out the door.  A recent Business Week column indicates that temporary staffing has added 44,000 jobs since July.  This is similar to past recessions and is a clear indicator that manufacturing is turning around.

Staffing makes great sense for the manufacturing industry on a number of levels.  Answering customer demand and allowing workforces to ebb and flow with business needs are just two of the more important ones.  If your business can benefit from a more flexible workforce or if you need the expertise that a full service staffing company can offer, don’t hesitate to contact us.

• There are some brilliant people out there willing to take chances
• The most successful ideas were a collaboration of thought from different disciplines
• We all need to encourage innovation

I was impressed with practical, useful, outlandish and fun nature of the products entered.  There are too many to list here but the students recognized the need in the marketplace and responded to it well.  Some ideas were very early in the stage of development but others were ready for market and just needing an investor or the confirmation from some professionals that it had a prayer in being successful.

Invariably the best ideas had multiple team members from multiple disciplines of thought.  When business students teamed up with engineering students and included thoughts from law students as well as a sprinkling of professors, the ideas were well-rounded, believable and you could see a short path to market readiness.  There were a few ideas that came only from one discipline or another and you could tell they were pretty raw.  I believe this teaches all of us a lesson in collaboration and cooperation.  Seeking the counsel of others is certainly advisable.

As business leaders, we need to encourage all those with ideas to pursue innovation.  The cash prizes awarded in this competition were meaningful, but hardly worthy of the time spent.  Innovation is important for the good of the economy as a whole, not just the personal, monetary rewards that come with success.  Too often good ideas are laughed at or brushed off as fanciful.  Opportunity lies in the minds of great thinkers.  Everyone can dream big dreams and you never know where the next best mousetrap will come from.

Check out our Employers page for more details or click here to learn more about St. Louis Staffing.

Check out our Employers page for more details or click here to learn more about St. Louis Staffing.

Check out our Employers page for more details or click here to learn more about St. Louis Staffing.

Our conversation moved naturally towards staffing levels.  I heard from him and many others like him, a similar theme: when positions had to be eliminated and headcount reduced, the weakest performers were the first to go and are not likely to be rehired.  Does this seem alarming?  I’m sure it does to those underperformers who are still searching for a position and/or hoping their old employer will hire them back.  I believe most employers have found that they were overstaffed and used the recession and lack of business as an excellent opportunity to not just “trim the fat” but to do so in a precise manner that kept the best talent.

All of this makes great sense for companies.  The best talent always produces the best results for its customers.  Unless a company must perform according to bargaining unit rules, keeping the best and getting rid of the rest is a great first step towards higher customer satisfaction and more profits.  These two things help ensure the long-term viability of the company and everyone is a winner.

“Everyone”, you say?  What about those that have been let go and through my insinuations here, were underperforming?  These people win as well.  Long term, no matter how great the job was, if you are underperforming you will not be satisfied in your position.  This lack of satisfaction will almost certainly translate into some other form of dissatisfaction in other areas in your life.  The sooner someone is “set free” from a bad working situation the sooner they are able to find the right situation.  Standing in the unemployment line gives the person a pretty difficult perspective with which to appreciate this situation.  I have spoken with many who have successfully made it through a career transition and have echoed these sentiments.

I can’t help but think about the difficulties we’ve been through over the past 12 – 18 months as a period of pruning for business.  The branches, and therefore the whole plant, will become stronger in the long run.  However, we didn’t just bundle up the pruned limbs and through them in the fire, they have been or will be replanted and nurtured in a different manner for the benefit of the entire garden as well.

Then yesterday evening, I attended a panel discussion hosted by Cross Collaboration discussing how we can provide more job and career opportunities for the unemployed in St. Charles County.  There was a great representation from panelists that help provide resources for the unemployed along with audience members, like myself, who have a vested interest in growing the job opportunities in St. Charles County.  The discussion after the discussion led me to a group of local pastors working with convicted felons from St. Charles County and providing direction and guidance for them to find work and support themselves and their families.  One ministry in particular, Connections to Success, and one of its representatives, Jason Cleaveland, and I discussed how we can work together to not only provide the counseling necessary, but how we can educate more hiring managers as to the skilled workforce that is available and somewhat untapped in ex-convicts.

I admit this is not a new phenomena but one that grows worse each year.  Business and social leaders must come together to solve this problem.  Simply shutting out ex-convicts will not make the problem go away.

What an inspiration – content and technique all in the same evening.  So here you have the first installment of the St. Louis Staffing “VLOG”.  Please let me know your thoughts and thanks for reading and watching.