Manufacturing
Finding the silver lining
How to cope during economic downtimes
By Brooke Bates
Smart Business Akron/Canton | December 2008
Page 1 of 2
Rod Robinson
CEO, Waltco Truck Equipment Co.
Rod Robinson isn’t panicking.
Sure, the transportation
industry has been hit by soaring
fuel costs, and Waltco Truck
Equipment Co. is no exception.
But Robinson, Waltco’s president and CEO, maintains hope
for his company, which manufactures hydraulic liftgates and
custom hydraulic cylinders for
the transportation industry.
“You have to recognize that
you will get through this, and
along the way, there are going
to be opportunities,” says Robinson, who expects the
business cycle to hit a valley
every few years.
Although this stretch seems
to be dragging on longer than
usual, Robinson is loath to use
the economy as an excuse for a
struggling company. Instead, he
has learned to view crunch time
as a chance to evaluate his
company’s efficiency and prime
his people for the upswing.
With an unfaltering positive
attitude and creative motivation
techniques, he has refined his
300 employees to reflect that
optimism.
Smart Business spoke with
Robinson about evaluating,
motivating and rewarding valuable employees during tough
economic times.
Re-evaluate attitudes. A downturn every three or four years
gives you a great opportunity
to look at the people that you
have and say, ‘Do I have the
right people with the right skill
sets in the right places?’
A downturn makes it easier
to go to people and ask them
to take on new responsibilities
where you think they might fit
better within the organization.
They know they need to contribute because there’s a consequence if they don’t.
It gives management an
opportunity to say, ‘We have a
person who has become a
marginal employee. Do we
want to take the time to invest
in this person, try to get them
where they should be, or are
we going to target this person
as a layoff candidate?’
The biggest factor when you
decide whether someone gets
an investment or whether they
go into that target list for
potential layoffs is their attitude. Are they a self-starter?
Are they the kind of person
that’s willing to do whatever it
takes to get a job done, to
make a contribution?
Some people do, and some
people just see it as a job. I try
to surround myself with people
that see it as a career and want
to feel like they’re part of moving the company forward and
aren’t satisfied with just moving
paper out of their inbox to their
outbox and waiting for the
economy to turn up.
Reward your key players. You
have to present them with
stark reality, the harsh truth:
We’re in an economic downturn. We need to make sure
that all our people are properly optimized.
We need to make sure, on a
department-by-department basis, that we didn’t make a
bad hire or we didn’t become
complacent and add a person
when we were booming. When
you’re booming, the easy thing
to do is to throw money at a
problem instead of taking the
time to analyze and streamline
it. Typically, what you do to
throw money at a problem is
you add people.
Identify your key people that
you just can’t afford to lose. You
can’t necessarily give them a big
raise because you’re struggling
with an economic downturn, so
you look for ways to recognize
them. I’ve gone to them and
said, ‘I’d like you to take your
wife out to dinner. Here’s a
coupon so you can.’
Or, ‘I know you’ve got a big
game coming up. You’d like to be at your son’s football game
or soccer game. Why don’t you
take the afternoon off so you
can be there?’
Treat people fairly, but don’t
treat them all the same. Everybody should be given the same
opportunities, but you need to
do things uniquely to them
because of the extra efforts
they make for your company.
I welcome employees to
come to me and say, ‘How
come so-and-so got to do this?’
And I say, ‘Well, I’m glad you
asked. It’s because of this and
this and this, and I’ll be glad to
do that for you also if you
want to do this and this.’
