Reducing Employee Turnover Rate By 50%

The Company: American Paperboard Manufacturer

The company operates over 40 divisions across the country, providing comprehensive packaging manufacturing services. Boasting an annual revenue of over two billion dollars and a continually expanding team of more than four thousand employees, they specialize in producing cutting edge corrugated packaging, folding cartons, and coated label stock.

Despite their industry leading low turnover rate, a high number of their veteran workforce is approaching retirement. They are anticipating unexpected turnover at a record high level. With aggressive hiring and expansion goals, this manufacturer sought better training and onboarding to help support expansion and prepare for new production equipment.

To prepare for the tsunami of oncoming retirement, proactive hiring became a top priority to shore up their workforce. To accommodate new hires, a strategy was devised to instill day one confidence and ensure their long term retention.

The Challenge: Solving The Onboarding Problem

From a job execution standpoint, the company had work instructions and SOPs documented, but not in an accessible manner. Workers needed easy access to those materials at work stations across a variety of environments, from their paper mills to the corrugated packaging production lines.

More importantly, the company hired 100 employees in 2022, but ended the year with only 6 people staying. Exit interview data revealed negative impressions from recently departing staff who claimed work instructions were confusing, and thus safety concerns were high.

Turnover was starting to rear its ugly head, which led to significant issues like increased scrap waste, overtime, safety incidents and delayed workflows. The company anticipated 20% turnover within the next five years (compared to their 6% retention rate in 2022), and they knew that using their current outdated and unsophisticated training program would make that a permanent number.

Overcoming The Knowledge Capture Gap

For employee transition, a big chunk of their workforce is on the way out. And that expertise needed to be captured before they departed. Many workers with deep operational expertise are either no longer around, or won’t be soon.