Episode Details

Connect with Sue:

Emails: sue@hpwpgroup.com

Website: https://www.hpwpgroup.com

Show Transcript:

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan, host of the Manufacturers Network podcast. I am excited today to bring you my guest, Sue Bingham. 

For more than 30 years, Sue, a human resources executive, has provided direction to companies in the transportation and logistics, pharmaceutical, aerospace, food bottling, floral, optical, textile, and medical device industries. 

She's worked closely with company leaders to analyze their organizations and facilitate the implementation of common-sense systems that positively impact the organization's bottom line.

Sue is an expert at effectively using culture to form a common language across global operations, leading to greater collaboration, higher team member satisfaction levels, and increased business unit cooperation. Her passion is helping companies embrace and transition to high-performance work environments. Sue, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you today.

Sue Bingham: Thank you, Lisa. 

Lisa Ryan: I know you're a former human resource executive, but kind of share with us a little bit about your journey and really what led you to what you're doing today.

Sue Bingham: My journey, as as you could tell, started in manufacturing. I was exposed relatively early on to the pretty traditional management approaches and pretty traditional HR, which is a role where we micromanage attendance records. We tell supervisors how to manage. We have lots of policies that we enforce and so on. And none of that ever felt right to me because when I was younger and the people I talked to were adults. Whether they worked in the plant or whether they worked in an office didn't matter to me. They were still adults. 

I had trouble taking on some of the traditional human resource responsibilities that a traditionally managed manufacturing company had at that time. So that was my real awakening. I happened to have a mentor who led me in a different direction, who showed me an entirely different role for human resources. It was one that that was genuinely adding value in a business partner through actually having fewer policies, not more. We also recognized that everybody could be all salaried. Getting rid of the two-class system that seems to permeate manufacturing operations in particular, where you're one class of person with even different benefits and different rules if you work in the plant. If you work in the office, that's different. 

So that two-class citizenship bothered me quite a bit. When I found all these ways to eliminate that by treating people as respected, responsible adults, it made a world of difference. I wanted to take that learning to more and more companies. 

Lisa Ryan: So when you look at the different companies you're working with; obviously the two-class system is one of the manufacturing challenges. What are some of the biggest challenges they're facing right now?

Sue Bingham: Well, across the board and working with some of the manufacturing groups that get together and talk about their biggest problems, clearly it's staffing and retention. In recent research, I heard that there were some four hundred thousand open positions in manufacturing, which as of October and yet from last year, hiring was up. Turnover is down because people need the jobs they have and are looking for jobs. So I think the problem is that we're still doing staffing in the same old way.

Manufacturing is not getting creative at recruiting, not having a culture that causes people to be attracted to the job, using a hiring process with a certain turnover. And everybody accepts it as a cost of doing business. Right.

Lisa Ryan: Well, and I think that leads very nicely into