Streimer

With several key employees in the Fabricated Products Department preparing to retire, Streimer faced an extraordinary knowledge and skill gap. The company knew it needed to capture intellectual knowledge, processes, and other information to train new employees as well as create reference material for ongoing training and development. Streimer also wanted to clearly define development and promotional paths. And by making this information transparent to employees, they too could be proactive in their development.

First, comprehensive job descriptions were developed for target positions within the Fabricated Products Department. Competency models were created to define meet/exceed expectations for the roles, with development paths created to provide a structured approach to employee growth and advancement.

Next came training materials to support employee development, proficiency assessments to verify learnings, and leadership training on OMEP’s Smart Talent tools and processes. In addition, process flows were created for 12 separate processes to capture intellectual knowledge and define desired skills, knowledge, and behaviors.

Then, on the eve of those key retirements, Streimer performed a process mapping activity. This captured critical information and memorialized it for the onboarding and training of the next individual to assume the new role, ensuring specific and important knowledge was not lost.

“The process mapping and competency models helped Streimer with a transitional time within a department and have been very valuable ongoing with employee coaching and promotion,” said Mark Van Sickle, VP of Manufacturing

In fact, the project mapping was so successful that Streimer repeated the activity with an individual technical contributor.

Thanks to the successful partnership between OMEP and Streimer, the following results were achieved:

• Culture: Streimer became more open and transparent about what is required to achieve the next step up in pay and responsibility. This will lead to improved retention of employees.
• Improved productivity: Process mapping improved productivity. It also had a tremendous benefit in reducing onboarding time.
• Increased/retained Jobs: This effort will help employee retention and potentially improve customer satisfaction.
• Training: Process documentation to prepare the next generation of workers.