How to build loyalty in manufacturing workers? Go off-script

When Rutland Walker spoke to welders at a Louisiana shipyard last year, they listened. Why, exactly? Perhaps it’s because he went off-script. He didn’t pontificate about employee engagement, loyalty, communicating better ideas, taking ownership over one’s work, having initiative, being an enthusiastic self-starter, collaborating—those hollow buzz phrases that populate the script of corporate culture. He instead asked a simple question: “Why do you come to work?”

Walker’s Atlanta-based company, The Academy of Marketing, specializes in communications in the skilled trades, including the building trades as well as manufacturing, although “communications” is a vague term. Walker really is about building connections in business between salespeople and clients and prospects; between supervisors, managers, and front-line employees; and between hiring managers and prospective talent. It all really boils down to what Walker asked those shipyard welders last year: Why do you come to work?

To build that connection, people need to relate to each other—not just understand what each person does, but also understand why. Money is a big reason, of course, but if it’s just about money, there’s a problem, particularly in manufacturing. If money is all that matters, there are easier ways to make a living. Ideally, the real reason goes back to a purpose, something more than just the company’s bottom line. “A connection strategy is building a business around a purpose that’s higher than just getting the work done,” Walker said.

Walker conceded that many in the skilled trades shy away from talk of connecting with people and uncovering a higher purpose, those “touchy feely” aspects of human psychology. Both engineering and the skilled trades involve people working on building tangible products. There’s always more than one way to manufacture a mousetrap, but the mousetrap is still a mousetrap. It’s something concrete. But connecting with people doesn’t mean managers need to turn into a psychoanalyst.

Instead, they just need to tell stories about what’s important in their lives with honesty, earnestness, and humility. Those stories reveal the “why.”

Building a Connection Strategy

“In many markets, there is such a shortage of people who can do the work,” Walker said, “that manufacturers and contractors get shortsighted. So anybody who can turn a wrench gets hired, because they have a work flow that they’ve got to manage. And that’s problematic, because people are a reflection of your brand. And if they don’t get along with the staff, or if they don’t feel connected to the business itself, it won’t work out in the long term, and you’re going to have to replace that person.”

This is where building what Walker calls a “connection strategy” comes into play. “This involves building a culture within a company where people feel connected to the company, and they feel like they can make a difference in that company. And that cuts down on turnover and gives them a reason to stay. People leave for money, but it’s not the only reason. If they don’t feel connected to an organization, then when the next person comes along to pay them 50 cents more an hour, they’re gone.”

How do you build that connection? “First, you have to believe in the principle of attracting people who believe what you believe—and that money is one factor, but it’s not the only factor,” he said. The first step is for company owners or managers to identify the things that are important to them, “so that they can then attract others who believe what they believe. Whatever bait you put on the hook, that’s what you’re attracting.”

Walker added that a shop can’t just communicate a “higher purpose” and expect people to be happy working overly stressful jobs at wages far below market norms. And sure, enough money can draw the most loyal talent away. But if a company has a good company culture, full of purpose that aligns with what’s important to workers, no employee should leave for just a few cents more an hour.

The Role of Trust

As Walker explained, everyone working with the same or similar purposes and beliefs helps them trust one another. With this, a team can go through certain exercises to understand how they make decisions. “You have personality styles that affect the way you see the world,” Walker said.

Rutland Walker, senior vice president for client strategy at The Academy of Marketing, specializes in communications in the skilled trades. Specifically, he specializes in building connections between people.

You can label someone an introvert or extrovert, but the important thing is understanding how personality type affects a person’s work style, how he operates, how he might perceive you, and how that person likes to receive information. Some like a lot of information delivered in a structured, planned manner and at predictable intervals. Others take their information in lighter doses more frequently. Some personalities work best when they start with the big picture, which gets them engaged, and then move back through the details. Others thrive on a sequential path—step one comes after step two—and only then do they get to the big picture.

“If you don’t have good communication, you have fear,” Walker said. “You build mistrust, and things start spinning in people’s brains that may or may not be reality. If I understand how you like to receive information, and if I understand how you make decisions, it’s going to make it much easier for me to bring you an idea or communicate with you in general. This in turn improves trust even more, softens the friction, and then allows for a better work environment. When people can communicate better internally, that improves the work environment, which improves the chance that employees will refer other people who believe what the people at the company believe.”

Walker added that, yes, manufacturing is cleaner than it once was, “But let’s be honest. Some of it can be hot and dirty work. If you don’t trust and like the people you work with, and recruit people who can get along with other people and understand the vision that you have—that you’re not just a fabrication shop, that you’re in it for something more—it makes it easier to get along, people want to work there, and they will want to come to work.”

Defining the Why

Before all this comes uncovering and defining those beliefs, why people come to work. And it starts at the top, with an organization’s leaders. The owner or manager needs to know why he or she comes to work in the morning. Walker conceded that this can be a challenge, particularly in metal fabrication (and other manufacturing segments) dominated by small, family businesses. The owners may have inherited the business. When their parents retired, taking the reins may have seemed like a good idea, but after several years, maybe not so much.

“It has to be important, and more than just ‘I don’t want to screw up the business my parents started,’ and it has to be more than the bottom line,” Walker said.

At this point, Walker suggests that the owner ask this question: Why do I come to work? If he can’t answer this, perhaps it’s time to hand the reins to someone else. But Walker added that finding an answer isn’t as difficult as it seems, even for someone unhappy with the current state of affairs. After all, the company owner has the power to change the current state.

The Power of the Story

The reason buzzwords—so common in corporate literature, marketing material, and job postings—sound so empty and lifeless is that they aren’t rooted in a story that implies a person’s beliefs.

“These stories have very little to do with the actual work,” Walker said, “and much more to do with what’s important in that employee’s life. If we can tell the story from the employee’s perspective, that story resonates with other people who might be attracted to that business.”

In one recent project, Walker told the story of two people who met while working at a Waffle House. “They realized this wasn’t a pathway to being able to raise a family—that was important to them. And so he went to trade school. The story was about him, his family, and what he and his wife built together. That resonates more than what your skill levels are.”

The owner who hired this person valued family, and so used this belief when talking to prospective employees. He told stories about his own family, the success and struggles, and through those narratives built a connection with people. Sure, the company practices continuous improvement, and they scrutinize operations and bend over backward for customers, but why do they do it? It’s about family.

Power and Accountability

“People aren’t accountable because they don’t feel like they can make a difference,” Walker said. “Accountability comes with power. If they don’t feel like they have any power, they won’t have accountability.”

This can be especially important when driving shop improvements. Say a company installs a system that monitors arc-on time—here comes Big Brother. Workers may feel like they’re a cog in the wheel, like they’re being micromanaged or, worse yet, will soon be axed. Here again the “why” comes into play. “If you just give them direction like ‘We have to hit this number,’ it’s not important to them. It’s important to them only if you communicate the why. This is effectively saying, ‘You are an important part of why welding efficiency is important to the company. What you do matters, and you have power.’”

By welding more effectively, the business becomes more competitive, can hire and pay more, and ultimately help build a better community. This is why monitoring is really important. It gives welders the right information, and that information gives them the power to make a difference.

To illustrate the lack of accountability, Walker described an impoverished area of any big city. “Ever wonder why it’s so dirty, why wrappers and other trash is everywhere? There’s no accountability because they don’t feel like they have any power. So why pick it up? You can’t expect someone to have accountability if you don’t help them see they have power and they can make a difference.”

Value Vulnerabilities

Walker added that the best narratives reveal human vulnerabilities, especially during job interviews. “If it’s all about checking their resume, you’re on-script. ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ Who really knows the answer to that? You have to get everyone off-script so you can get to the vulnerability part of the human relationship. It won’t happen if you use those scripted questions.”

How do you get off-script, exactly? Walker referred back to storytelling. The manager doing the interview shouldn’t make the company look perfect because, of course, it’s not. Instead, he or she can talk about past mistakes with earnestness, humility, and humor. Vulnerability is what makes a story human. Describing imperfections can build a powerful connection. It’s frank talk, not polished marketing-speak.

When a company tells these stories and communicates its purpose, managers can identify with people who share it, and this includes both current employees and, especially, potential hires.

“Doing this, you don’t recruit for a job,” Walker said. “You recruit for culture.” He added that you can’t force the matter and grill employees on what they have to do to get the culture the company needs. That’s backward. Culture comes from shared beliefs, and if an employee doesn’t share those beliefs, no amount of grilling will change that. This, Walker said, is why companies need to recruit for culture.

“And it’s not just talking about the job and what the pay is and the human resources material. Those are second-level conversations that occur after you understand what’s important to that prospective hire, what gets that person up in the morning, and then communicating to them a way they can express themselves within the company, based on what’s important to them.”

It could be that feeling of a job well done, or it could be something more concrete, like company-organized events for the Boys and Girls Club. “It makes it much bigger than just ‘the job.’”

Manufacturers can offer top pay, flex time, a revamped office or shop floor work environment, employee incentive programs, gift cards—all good things, but as Walker explained, they may not help build a better company culture on their own.

“Those are all fine tactics, but it has to be tied to a strategy,” he said. “There’s what you do, there’s how you do it, and then there’s why you do what you do. And fleshing that story out is extremely important. Most people just focus on the ‘what.’”

As Walker put it, if people get off-script, connect with one another, and share a common purpose, more employees will stick with the company for the long haul.

For more information on The Academy of Marketing and Rutland Walker, visit www.theacademyofmarketing.com and www.rutlandwalker.com.