Lampin makes employee development a top priority
Bill DiBenedetto (far right), president of Lampin Corp. in Uxbridge, said Lampin is willing to invest its resources into making sure employees reach their potential.
Bill DiBenedetto knows it's going to take a lot more than occasional contact with vocational schools to fulfill the manufacturing industry's huge workforce needs. The industry will need at least 100,000 new workers over the next 10 years, and that doesn't even take industry growth into account, he said.
For their part, DiBenedetto and his company, Uxbridge-based Lampin Corp., are always thinking long term. Lampin, a critical component manufacturer, is a company where everything – from recruitment tactics to workforce development to employee ownership – is done with an eye on the future.
Central to Lampin is the fact that the company is 100-percent employee-owned, and has been since 2006. Employee ownership motivates people to work harder, because they have a more personal stake in seeing the company succeed, DiBenedetto said.
“What it does is it provides incentive for people on an ongoing basis to be motivated, to raise the value of the corporation,” he said.
Employee buy-in
Employee ownership allows Lampin to be tax-exempt, making the company's ability to earn much higher. The company's average employee tenure is about 15 years, but there are people who have been there much longer than that, said DiBenedetto.
The key to good workforce development isn't necessarily hiring the most talented or best-trained engineers – it's picking the best people, he said.
“We're willing to make the commitment to train and develop our own people as long as we know that they value what the corporation has to offer, because the more we put into the development of those people technically, the more substantial the strength of our labor base is,” he said.
The focus on workforce development extends beyond just Lampin itself. For the past five years, the company has given a total of about $50,000 to schools in the Blackstone Valley to help them develop technical programs that the school budget wouldn't necessarily cover.
“We call them 'Lampin grants,' and the schools know them as 'Lampin grants,'” said Paul Lynskey, executive director of the Blackstone Valley Education Foundation. “It introduces them to the importance of being creative in the field of technology, and thinking outside of the classroom box. It allows them to explore some things students and teachers can do together that aren't part of day-to-day curriculum.”
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Manufacturing Excellence Award, midsize company
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