Building the Future-Ready Workforce

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Maintenance Hero Summit. I'm Sarah Patterson, chief people officer at Limble, and I'm joined by our VP of talent strategy, Amy Schudeau, and a very special guest, John Ratzenberger. Now depending on when you grew up, you may know him as Cliff Clavin from Cheers, or maybe you recognize him as the voice behind some of the Pixar's most beloved characters like Mac on Cars or Ham on Toy Story.

John's connection today's...

To today's conversation goes well beyond Hollywood. Before becoming an actor, he worked as a carpenter and later hosted Made in America. He spent decades supporting manufacturing, vocational education, and the skilled workers who keep the world running. We're going to talk about the work John has done to help lift up this industry, and then Amy and I will talk about what you can do to help attract, hire, and retain the next generation of employees.

So welcome, Amy and John, and let's start with you, John. So, John, welcome to Maintenance Hero Summit.

Thank you, Sarah.

To have you here. Very excited to chat with you right now. And I think I'd like to get started by asking you this question. First, I'm sure people who are watching are very interested in how you got into acting, but also how you got into being such a great advocate for manufacturing laborers and people in the trades.

My appreciation for people who work with their hands is that I'm one of them.

Right.

When when they came to me to to to host Made in America, they said, you've got Made in America written on your forehead. And...

Yeah. I was a carpenter, but that began as a... At a young age.

I grew up on the East Coast.

But there was always tools laying around, whether my father's tools or neighbor's tools. I lived across from a shipyard. I helped the guys in the summertime cocking their boats, crawling underneath the dark things. And it just... It was part of my childhood. So fixing things, building things, amending things was part of who I am.

And I still do it to this day. I still build furniture for my grandkids and whatnot, and I have a shop in the garage.

And surprisingly, there's a lot of actors who do the same thing.

I have a question for you. Do you think with, like, the onset of AI, which is also, like, taking away white collar jobs right now, and then also the advancements in technology, especially there's so many advancements in technology around manufacturing from robotics and all of that. Do you think there will eventually be a convergence of the need for people who know how to use their hands and build and have, like, engineering mindsets or, you know, that type of... So, like, yes, the four year degree might be important, but you also need to know how to put something together.

And... Or maybe you don't have the four year degree, you become like a top notch technician, and you're learning it, you know, on the job at one of these, like, advanced tech, you know, technology companies that are building the robotics, and you're there fixing it. How do you think about that?

Well, I think, first of all, when you have the data centers, now that's a big conversation nationwide.

I want a data center. We don't want a data center, whatever it is. Someone's gotta build the data center. Someone's gotta show up on that piece of land, survey it out. You gotta get a bulldozer operator. And and many bulldozer operators, backhoe diggers, people that know how to operate that machinery.

Right.

Now not only do they operate their machinery, but you gotta have a mechanic to repair the machinery. And this is before any I... AI is is is there. It's just dirt and skill. And finally, to build the AI center, well, that takes a long time. You gotta have cement.

You gotta have cement mixers. You gotta have trucks chucking it in. You have to make the the framework for the AI centers. It's steel, but it's everything we're talking about.

It's people that can do it. And AI is not gonna, install your water heater anytime soon. You're gonna need a plumber to do that. They're not...

It's it's carpentry, electricians, plumbers.

These are the kings of the future.

Yep. I think this sort of leads into my next question about, like, the college or bust narrative, which has, you know, often left skilled careers off the radar for so many.

What do you think it would take to position manufacturing as like an intentional high-tech career choice for for people and, you know, rather than like them discovering it by accident?

Well, that happened naturally. Unfortunately, it was for a world war because we had to have people building things. Like, right now, there's a huge deficit in the shipbuilding industry. We don't have people to build our ships. We're not at war. We just ran out of people that the retirement rate and the younger people aren't interested, but you gotta make it attractive.

Hollywood make films of how that person's a hero.

That's that's...

You can make $2,300,000 a year without a college degree. I know of a kid that was given a speech somewhere in Pennsylvania, a tech school. Has one kid, he's a welder, and he's just graduating, and he was gonna start a job paying a 126,000 a year.

That's a kid. Just wanted... With a profession. And I just think these are my heroes.

What we found that nearly three out of four maintenance teams have at least one critical asset that only one employee knows how to repair.

So what role did mentors play in your own development, if any? And what does a company owe an experienced craftsperson who takes responsibility for teaching the next generation?

Well, you have to make make that part of your ethos, the part of part of the company.

And this should... It's... Regularly, if you're... You get to be a master at your craft, you make sure you got somebody on your left hand, your right hand side learning your craft.

And you judge them. You grade them. You're the one that promotes them.

Excuse me. And you you tell the boss, who's who's ever in charge, this person has to be promoted. This person is now ready for that machine or this craft.

And it's like even holding a hammer when I first started carpentry.

The first, first guy I worked with is Italian guy, e t t o's Burrini.

And he had me lugging two by twelves in a muddy frostbitten yard for... God. It had to be three months. I was outside all the time. I was freezing. It's wet, muddy, and a hole in these two by twelves, picking a pile over here.

And come spring, you know, there was a delivery of all the two by twelves, and a truck pulled up and goes... And tells the guy, put them over here.

And I said, well, why why did I put them over here? I piled him. He's... You're gonna do that. And he had me just doing that, and now and now I really understand. Well, then I said, well, I'll I'll do it because I got... You know, money's good.

And he wanted to see what I was made of.

Now the first thing he taught me was how to hold a hammer. I thought I knew. I mean, how dumb is it? You should... Just hold a hammer and get a hammer. No. There's a skill attached to just holding the hammer.

And I I was amazed. I was just amazed. Because by that time, I was, like, 18, 19 years old. I thought I knew it.

I built boats. I, you know, repaired this, repaired that, put up kitchen cabinets for somebody. I thought I knew. I didn't know.

You... You've spoken about the rising average age of America's skilled workers.

What happens to our economy if we fail to close that gap, and and what's the most important step companies should take now, John?

Well, no. I... See, I I think companies... It depends on the size of the company. It depends who's running the company.

But important... It's important to know your people.

It's important to know their faces, their names. These smaller companies, you know, their their wives or kids.

You you do company wide projects where everybody knows everybody.

Well, John, thank you so very much for for speaking with us today. I'm sure everybody really appreciates your message and all that you're doing for the industry, and I appreciate you being here today.

So, Amy, John talked about the opportunities ahead for people who work with their hands.

So as our VP of talent strategy, you've spent your career developing programs that help people discover and grow into careers. You've also built relationships with technical schools. What can those partnerships do to help more people find a path into skilled manufacturing work?

Thanks, Sarah. Happy to be here today. I think that partnerships between educational programs or educational institutions and industry are incredibly kind of beneficial to both sides.

So from an industry perspective, you're getting potential candidates who have seen some of the work that you've done before or are trained on some of the equipment that you might be main... Maintaining. And from a school perspective, you get the industry insight. So at the end of the day, schools want their students to be successful. They want them to be placed into roles where they are qualified and where they enjoy the work. And so the opportunity for industry, for employers, for businesses to give that feedback to the school on what they're looking for in a potential candidate helps them even tailor their curriculum to that... To those needs within the community or within the industry, in your local area. I think some of the things that employers can do, and have done very successfully are things like doing class classroom visits to talk to students about the opportunities at, you know, their... Within their company.

Industry individuals can also join advisory boards, which can then again help advise on curriculum that the schools are then teaching to the students, sponsoring equipment or sponsoring whole programs if there's an ability to and the the financial ability to do that can be really beneficial as well.

Yeah. It's really important for people to come and interact with these students because to to... So that the student has a better understanding of what manufacturing jobs are actually like. But what do the students really need to know or understand to be able to see a career in manufacturing or manufacturing or maintenance as a real viable option coming out of high school or, you know, before choosing, you know, their next step?

I think that a lot of times students and young people now are picturing manufacturing from maybe twenty years ago, a loud, dirty, dusty environment. They're not necessarily picturing modern day manufacturing that is increasingly technical in nature. There's a lot of really interesting types of equipment and technology going into manufacturing these days, and we're not necessarily talking a lot about that. And so people aren't necessarily seeing that and how interesting it can be in these careers.

I think it's important for students to see someone close to their own age doing this work and being successful in it as well. So although a thirty year veteran is gonna be a wealth of knowledge, a 17 year old, you know, high school senior isn't necessarily going to maybe connect with that person as much as they would, say, somebody that's 22 years old or 20 years old that's actively in that field. A 17 year old is gonna measure themselves against a younger person, rather than an older person. So opportunities to bring some of the younger workforce to these, you know, career fairs or classroom visits, could be really beneficial.

Yeah. I also think students seeing, technology that they already recognize. So we know the younger generation is increasingly plugged in these days, so seeing technicians and the technology that they use to accomplish their jobs could be really beneficial. So a tablet, a sensor dashboard, robot arms, these are things that these kids have grown up with, and so showing them that they exist in the workforce as well is, I think, something that could really speak to them and maybe pique their interest in this as a career field.

Yep. Yep. I agree. I wanna spend some time on apprenticeships because it really gives people a way to learn while they work. And I... From your perspective, why why is that model valuable for the person entering the field and also the employer?

I think apprenticeships are incredibly valuable to both apprentices and to the company as well. So for an apprentice themselves, they get paid while they work and while they learn. So they don't have to choose between paying rent or paying for college or paying for an education or their training because they get to do both of them.

They also get to apply what they're learning directly, you know, kind of right away as they're learning it. They're getting to apply it in the workforce, which I think is is a really strong way of reinforcing the learning as well, versus maybe the traditional model of going to school for several years then going into the workforce and applying what you learned maybe, you know, three years prior. From an employee... Employer perspective, you're growing your own talent through apprenticeship programs. So the apprentices are trained and getting their their on the job training on the equipment in your facility, which is incredibly valuable for you as an employer that they're trained on the equipment that you need them to be able to fix or to maintain.

It also... I think apprenticeship programs or programs in general where employers sponsor learning and development, we see that it creates a lot of loyalty. And in turn, those employees tend to stay longer within those companies too. When you invest in them and their education and their training, they'll end up staying a little bit longer.

This is great, Amy. Great information. And technical schools and apprenticeships are are two ways students can find out more about this industry. But how can employers make sure they're also reaching people who might not picture themselves in manufacturing, like veterans or women?

You know, I don't think that most of these people ever actually said no to manufacturing. I think that we just never asked them the right way. So these sorts of manufacturing jobs maybe never showed up somewhere where those individuals thought, oh, this is for me. This is a path for me.

So, honestly, before we even get to outreach tactic, it's worth sitting with that, that the invitation is the problem, not necessarily the pitch. So for veterans, as an example, the biggest thing here isn't persuading them into careers in manufacturing. It's the translation of their military skills into civilian skills. So, typically, nobody comes out of the service, and on their resume, it says, I troubleshot equipment under pressure.

They're gonna write their resume in military terms. So it might say things like eighty nine b or third infantry platoon sergeant.

And those types of phrases don't necessarily map onto the job postings that they could be looking at or onto the jobs that you're trying to fill as a hiring leader. But there's a tool for this. So when I was recruiting, I used this. Military.com

has a translator where you can put in as a a couple of drop downs, and you can put in the branch of the armed service that the person is. And then you can type in their MOS number, which is a lot of times, again, listed on their resume. That's a a code that translates to the jobs in the military. And so you can see what civilian jobs that lines up with.

And that's a really beneficial tool for employers, hiring managers, HR recruiters to be able to help translate that military experience into what it would look like in the civilian world. It's a really quick fix that we can use to see where the...

Where those transferable skills exist.

That's great. So for women, sometimes it's really this it's really this simple.

Who shows up to represent the company is what... Is sort of what speaks volumes for that for that particular group. So if every recruiting event is staffed by men, every picture in the brochure is men or a guy at a machine, that tells a story before anybody ever says a word. Goes further than recruiting even. If a woman looks at the leadership team and doesn't see anybody that looks like her, no amount of good outreach is gonna fix that.

Yeah. So it isn't just only who's at the career fair. It's also who's showing up in the room and making decisions.

Excellent. That's great. And and then you... If you think about it after someone enters the field, there are so many groups like women in manufacturing and SMRP that can help these people find peers and continue learning.

How can an employer make those connections accessible to to its team?

I think just sharing them. I think making sure if you do, like, a daily toolbox meeting or a stand up meeting or, you know, whatever that cadence is, making sure to bring those up regularly and often so people know that there are resources available for them. Another thing is that they can add it into any sort of a new hire onboarding program they may have as they have new people join the organization. And that way, they are told that these organizations exist, and here's how you can join from the very beginning of their employment with the company.

Yep. Yep. Now John spoke about the value of working with your hands, you know, holding a hammer and and essentially getting your hands dirty.

So those skills still obviously matter, but, you know, technology is changing so so quickly. The equipment is changing, and it's really...

It's amazing and fascinating. So today's, you know, teams are working with robotics, as you mentioned. The automation is is really advanced and increasingly connected, you know, they're increasingly connected systems. How can employers really help their current workforce build the skills to keep up with these changes? Just as we're keeping up here in our corporate world, this has to happen as well. So what what could they do?

Absolutely. I think one of the things is is if there's an opportunity to bring them in...

To bring your technicians into conversations about new equipment as early as possible, so even when you're doing the process of identifying what that new equipment's going to be or who the vendor is, your maintenance technicians are gonna ask questions that we prob...

That you probably aren't even thinking of because they're thinking of it from, I'm gonna have to maintain this equipment, whereas you are thinking about it from the perspective of, is this equipment gonna meet our needs? Is it going to produce the parts that we need or the products that we need fast enough or or whatever the case might be. So there could be some really interesting learnings there, and then there's an awareness of we're getting this new equipment. I think also asking the technicians how they like to learn.

And that way, if it's hands on, you know, maybe there's opportunities to, you know, bring in again some, like, equipment from the the the supplier so that they can get their hands on it a lot sooner so they can start, you know, learning it, learning the schematics, learning how it works. Those sorts of things can be really beneficial.

Combining classroom training, lunch and learns, things like that, if there's an opportunity to send technicians. I've seen that as well where companies, vendors will host technicians and do their own certification or training programs on their piece of equipment or on the equipment that they provide to companies. Something like that can be a great option as well where they're learning directly from the vendor exactly how that machine works and exactly how to fix it or what to look for. Those can all be beneficial things for the technicians.

There's so much knowledge that's held by the experienced workers in many of these businesses, and a lot of it has never been written down. I mean, we know that Limble and and products like Limble are very helpful for that. But how can teams make sure that knowledge truly reaches the next person coming into the job?

I think that pairing people together, that mentorship that we've already talked about between maybe, like, an apprentice and a mentor, I think that's really beneficial to be able to continue to to pass knowledge down to newer generations coming into the workforce. But even just pairing two people on the team, if you don't have an apprentice program, for an example, just pairing people on the team who might be, you know, experts in different pieces of equipment. And I think really encouraging people to talk through how they've identified a problem, how they're determining how to fix it, I think that's really beneficial.

Again, just watching somebody replace a part, that's certainly one way to learn, but understanding how did you identify that that part needed to be replaced? How did you think through why, why now? Why is that the problem, or why is this the the correct fix for it can really be, again, beneficial in helping people understand how to problem solve, identify issues, and then figure out the correct solution for them. A lot of that is is the verbal or it's the unspoken knowledge that we have that needs to get passed from one one tech to the other.

So we've talked about attracting employees and then helping them learn and knowledge share. But once they're on the team, what do you feel makes them feel valued enough to stay?

I think listening to them. I think, again, we talked a little bit about that feedback loop and psychological safety in the workplace that you want your employees to be able to bring problems to you or issues that they're experiencing and cocreate solutions with them. So I think that that's one way is asking for their feedback and then listening to it, making adjustments in the workplace that could be really beneficial to them. I think another one that gets lost sometimes, especially in the... This kind of, like, technical space is really helping them understand the value that they bring to an organization.

When somebody needs to go in and and, you know, get a building back up after power outage at eleven at night, that technician is the most important person in your business at that time, but they don't necessarily maybe feel that way or we're not being clear enough in in sharing the impact of their work and how incredibly valuable it is to an organization. So I think that making sure to highlight those types of opportunities when they bring a lot of value is really important as well.

We know maintenance teams often get attention when something goes awry. How do we make sure that we're better recognizing the work that prevents the emergency or downtime?

I think, again, it goes to, leaders and supervisors really being, around and and visible of what the work that their teams are doing, the maintenance teams are doing, and calling attention to that. So things like, you know, cross training people, making sure that, you've got strong preventative maintenance protocols or workflows to make sure that we are checking the equipment early and often to potentially spot where those risks might be and taking care of them before something happens, making sure that there's documentation on those practices as well. I think things like celebrating and rewarding when somebody sees a risk or an issue before it becomes an actual issue. So whether there's a dedicated program to that where you get, you know, company shout outs or a gift card or something like that, but even those sorts of programs can be really beneficial and really motivating for people to want to spot risks and address them before they become bigger issues within an organization.

Yeah. Reward and recognition is really important, and it it matters. It's part of that employee experience. So, Amy, if a leader watching could do one thing differently with their team next week, what would you want it to be? What would you suggest?

I think I would suggest making sure to share how important the role is that these individuals, these technicians are doing and what the impact that it hit...

Is...

That it has on a business and really naming it and putting some data behind it. So, again, it's easy to say, oh, thank you for coming in at 11:00 and getting the building up last night. Like, that's a great...

You know, that's a nice thing to say to an employee, but being able to say, hey, James. I really appreciate that you came in last night at 11:00 at night and got the building back up and running. Because you did that, our company was able to avoid a $10,000,000 loss.

Like, that sounds like a big number. I did make it up, but that's not that's not unrealistic for manufacturing companies to experience things like that. Or, you know, we were able to retain a customer that was really important to our business, or we were able to get the delivery out on time, which resulted in, you know, maybe it's medical equipment. Right?

Like, we were able to get our medical equipment to the hospitals where they're saving people's lives. Like, the work that these maintenance technicians are doing within our facilities is incredible. And, again, a lot of times the unsung, you know, kinda heroes of the workplace, But the impact that they're having in keeping our equipment, you know, running well, you know, back up on time when needed, fixed appropriately, it really helps make sure that our businesses are and that a lot of times the end customer as well that really needs whatever the product might be. And so I think that that's one thing I would do is make sure that you are not just saying, hey.

Thanks. Hey. Great job. But what is the impact that it's having? What is the really incredible impact that their work is having on our workplace.

Yeah. And and to sum it up, it feels like the thread that ties this all together is to invite more people into the work, invest in the people who are already doing the work, and make sure their experience is valued and is shared. So I wanna thank John for sharing his perspective. And, Amy, thank you for joining me. I hope this conversation gave a few of you some ideas you can take back to your own team. And if you have any questions or wanna continue the conversation, please feel free to reach out to Amy or me at Limble. Thank you.

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