Hardwood Floors April May 2018

BUSINESS BEST PRACTICES MANAGEMENT

Defying Statistics (Continued) Troy, Vermont, learned this rsthand and has made a remarkable turnaround in employee retention and morale resulting in increased productivity. A challenging startup Appalachian Engineered Flooring was founded in the year 2000 by Jean Leduc as a solid hardwood ooring manufacturer in Cowansville, Quebec. As the popularity of engineered ooring grew, Appalachian began purchasing engineered ooring from other manufacturers to meet its customers’ needs. e company decided to invest in the resources needed to produce its own engineered ooring and purchased the building in North Troy. By 2012, the plant was in full production. However, by early 2014, leadership acknowledged that the engineered plant was facing signi cant obstacles. Personnel turnover was 100 percent per year, manufacturing was inconsistent, and there was excessively high inventory coupled with long lead times. In the summer of 2014, Jennifer Fraser was appointed General Manager. Fraser is a sixth-generation family member in the wood industry, with a degree in forest engineering and 18-plus years in the ooring industry. In her previous role with Appalachian, she had managed the company’s engineered ooring purchasing program. Establishing a culture While the company faced multiple challenges, Fraser knew that the employment issues had to be addressed rst. “Turnover was anywhere from

needed to make; we knew that we could no longer rely on ‘we’ve always done it this way,’” said Fraser. e team started by establishing a set of core values including trust, respect, openness, honesty, and good communication. e company vision, “We seek to create a safe, respectful team environment that values the importance of each individual in order tomanufacture cost-competitive engineered wood ooring based on our understanding of the needs of our clients,” dovetailed with those values, giving Appalachian a much-needed identity.

one to three people a month, and absenteeism was high,” said Fraser. “It was incredibly di cult to retain the right people; we were losing talented people with potential for future leadership roles who would simply get frustrated and leave.” e process to transform the organization and genuinely de ne Appalachian Engineered Flooring as a company began with establishing a strong internal leadership team. e team also hired consultant Dr. Je Howe, of Dovetail Partners, Inc. “We needed to understand what changes we

The internal leadership team created this set of core values to begin their process of improving work culture.

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