Presidents Message
2011 has been a banner year for AcmeLabs and for exploration generally. Exploration activity is solidly up in all regions of the world with gold being the main driver but lots of activity in base metals as well. These global spending increases are again outstripping our sectors ability to find the professionals needed. This brain trust shortage is occurring in the laboratory business also. Good people are simply getting much harder to find. Acme’s response is similar to some of our customers. We have taken every opportunity to hire good people when they become available. This is a shift from ten years ago when companies would only hire when a job opening was created. Today we will hire the person first, knowing that their expertise will soon be needed. This has occurred for the last several people we have hired;
- Dr. George Siasios, a 15 year minerals lab manager with experience running laboratories throughout Africa. You don’t run into that kind of experience every day; George is now responsible for our operations in Eastern Europe and Africa. George is working in Ankara building a large regional laboratory for AcmeLab s to serve Turkey and Eastern Europe.
- Josolito Alviar, a 20 year minerals ICP chemist with experience managing large technical departments. We did not have an immediate position for Jo but he worked initially retraining Managers and is now our Production Manager in Vancouver;
- Claudia Severin, a 20+ year minerals laboratory auditor, returned to us after working for another laboratory. Her experience working in different countries is invaluable for Acme as we grow;
These individuals are unique and valuable to our company because they bring knowledge that is not readily replaceable. In each of these cases, they were hired before their positions were created. This is a new operating requirement that did not exist before; a new paradigm.
In retrospect, we have been lucky that these people came to us rather than to a competitor. Why was that? In talking to them and other people at AcmeLabs, they tell me it is because they enjoy working for AcmeLabs and they have heard the message through friends. So this is another important shift in corporate thinking. Companies must work harder to make the working lives of their staff better, a more enjoyable experience. Steve Jobs said it. “You have to find a way to get your employees to love your company.”
Over the years, I have taken several business courses that talk about “Customer Intimacy”. This is the art of creating sticky customers. This is good for business and also good for customers. This is one of Acme’s primary corporate goals. However, in all those years I have never taken or seen a course on “employee intimacy” for the sole purpose of creating sticky employees. Surely this must also be good for the business and good for customers. Yes, there are examples of leading companies taking exceptional steps to ensure employees are well taken care of. These are stories mainly from the 1990’s Tech sector where brains seem to have been carefully nurtured. But why so little of this thinking in the general corporate world? This seems strange. Companies spend a lot of time, effort and training making sure they can establish strong HR departments that spend most of their time thinking up batteries of rules and regulations for employees to follow or for managers to apply. My O my, this doesn’t sound like much fun for employees does it? How in the hell do we get sticky employees this way? How do we build a business around dedicated people when we spend so much effort on mechanized human governance? Yes, every company needs rules, but our new world requires another paradigm shift in how management thinks and operates. Our people are important to the business. No, our people are absolutely critical to the success of the business. This means management must be more inclusive and more open to staff, willing and able to discuss relevant topics and most important, listen. It is surprising what you will hear.
The young people that are entering into the workforce today are different. They are far more interconnected. Communication and ideas are flowing all the time. We just need to open up the stream.
This is sometimes not such an easy task to accomplish. The entire management structure needs to take on this paradigm shift, but some managers simply don’t have the skills to pull it off. This then, is where the training dollars need to be applied. If done well, this generates motivated and sticky employees that are much more likely to make happier, stickier customers and this has to be the right thing to do.
George Cartwright
President, AcmeLabsTM