workforce
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How Managers Can Keep Unions on Their Side
- September 1, 2024
- Posted by: Nanette Gregory
- Category: Business, Leadership, Manufacturing
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I had a rule as a manager that I would never take union leadership by surprise. If anything, despite the traditional “management versus the union” conflict, I always believed they were an important part of my team. For example, if I was ever thinking of initiating a new process or major idea, I would share
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How to Develop Good Habits as a Leader
- June 24, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership
Good leaders are always open to new ideas about how to become better leaders. They don’t assume they know everything, especially as they ascend to higher and higher positions. They know their strengths and work to make them even stronger. They know their weaknesses and work to make them, well, stronger, too. You don’t have
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Dealing with the Fallout of Bad Managers
- December 23, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
I’ve always said, “Hire slow, fire fast,” and that’s served me well on a number of occasions. It helps me avoid hiring people who will be bad for an organization, and in those rare instances that someone slips through the cracks, I don’t spend weeks and months agonizing about the problem as they slowly infect
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Manufacturers, Focus on Recovery and Grooming the Workforce for 2021
- December 9, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
I recently read an article in the Hartford (Connecticut) Business Journal (as one does, when you live in Central Texas) recommending that manufacturers should focus on recovery, technology, and grooming the workforce in 2021. While the numbers are specific to Connecticut, they represent a larger trend in the United States. Their big concern in January
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Five Strengths Every Leader Needs as We Resume Operations
- June 10, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership
I read a recent article in Industry Week — Five Strengths Every Leader Needs as We Resume Operations — that discussed what leaders at every level need to bring back to their manufacturing operations even as states open up and try to return to normal. As the author, Jay Richards said, “where some see doom
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How Did We Handle Racism at Robroy
- June 3, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
We never had to deal with too much racism during my time at Robroy, mostly because I made sure people knew that wasn’t allowed. One day, we had an incident where someone had scribbled someone’s name on a bathroom door, and calling them a racial slur. I certainly wasn’t going to stand for that or
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What Will the New Normal Look Like? Can We Return to What Was?
- May 27, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Safety
People are talking about reopening the country and returning to work as if we can “return to normal.” Except we cannot return to what was. There’s a total shift in our country’s paradigm in working, playing, and socializing, especially because the coronavirus is still contagious and spreading. And unless and until there’s a miraculous discovery
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Your Return to Normalcy May Depend on How You Treated Your Associates
- May 20, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
The last few months have been pretty rough, and many companies had to lay off associates or at least furlough them, just so they could collect unemployment for the 2+ months no one was working. But now that we’re reopening the country, the return to normalcy may be a little harder for some companies than
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Who Should Lead and Fund Retraining, Government or Business?
- November 13, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Productivity
During the Obama administration, the federal government put a lot of money into retraining and education for workers who had lost their jobs due to the 2008 recession. And while I think it was a good idea for the government to help fix the economy in this way, I wondered if government was really the
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A Successful Company Needs Intrapreneurs
- January 31, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Productivity
A friend once told me he thought the people who were troublemakers were the ones who made the best entrepreneurs. They were the ones who got in trouble because when they saw problems, they found ways around them, or they challenged the authority figures, rather than toeing the line and accepting the status quo. These
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