Youth Movement: Manufacturers promote culture as way to draw in younger workforce

Jim Sheldon: DT Engineering is intentional in efforts to recruit a younger workforce.

Robert Randolph: PMC showcases the changing landscape of manufacturing.

Jessieca Hollister-Graham: Millennials and Gen Z comprise 50% of DMP workforce.

• 
• 
• 

With the 2023-24 school year at education institutions wrapping in May, local manufacturers are among industries looking to fill job openings with the newest high school and college graduates.

Springfield area manufacturing company officials say college campuses are a regular recruiting ground for finding young talent in an aging workforce. The median age of an employee in U.S. manufacturing was 44.1 years old in 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. While the age is down slightly from 44.3 in 2022, the median age of the labor force that same year was 41.8.

Lebanon-based manufacturer DT Engineering, which employs over 100, has been intentional in efforts to recruit a younger workforce in recent years, said owner and CEO Jim Sheldon. When Sheldon bought the 1933-founded company in late 2016, he estimated no more than 10% of employees were either millennials or Gen Z members.

“I’m going to say we’re probably up to 40% now,” he said, noting DT Engineering has a  flexible working environment as part of its company culture.

The industrial automation company also has an inside track to catch the eye of youth who visit or attend Ozarks Technical Community College’s Springfield campus. DT Engineering occupies 15,000 square feet on the first floor of the Robert W. Plaster Center for Advanced Manufacturing, a space it has filled since the $40 million, 120,000-square-foot building opened in 2022. At PMC, the company works on automation products mostly for pharmaceutical and clean industrial purposes, and Sheldon said its workforce in the building fluctuates weekly between four and 15 employees, depending on the workload.

Three of the local employees are graduates of OTC, he said, and these include Ben Funderburk, who graduated in May. He worked part-time for DT Engineering while attending college and recently became a full-time employee.

Center of attraction
Robert Randolph, executive director at the PMC, said he believes the facility is a strong attraction for students considering a variety of career paths in manufacturing. Its programs include drafting and design, automation and robotics, mechatronics, cybersecurity and precision machining.

“It’s a huge benefit for our local manufacturing industry just to have this here – the capacity and capability that we have to train, the variety of programs that we have to train students on,” Randolph said. “It brings our region up a notch.”

OTC also was able to acquire new automation equipment at the PMC, mostly purchased through grants, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting. One of those was a $345,725 grant issued by the National Science Foundation, which college officials said was used to buy programmable logic controllers for classrooms, as well as invest in a summer camp related to automation and robotics for grades 7-10.

“We designed the whole center to be toured because we wanted it to showcase the changing landscape inside of manufacturing that it’s not the same dark, dirty, dangerous job that people maybe envision,” Randolph said. “It doesn’t have that same stigma anymore. So, we have brought a lot of potential students through the doors for field trips and career exploration.”

Randolph said as young as fourth-grade students tour the PMC on field trips. With the younger students, he said it’s less about the career focus and more about showing them how fun it can be to train in manufacturing.

“For some of our older students that are coming in, maybe the later years of high school, we’ll actually get into a little bit of admissions information about OTC and what it’s like to be a student here,” he said. “We tier that experience a little bit, but we’re trying to introduce them to a broad variety of training programs and how that can connect them with career fields.”

Recruitment strategy
College campus visits, including OTC, are part of the workforce recruitment strategy at Digital Monitoring Products Inc., said Director of Human Resources Jessieca Hollister-Graham. She said roughly 320 of DMP’s 400 employees are based in Springfield, and she noted about 50% of the workforce comprise millennials or Gen Z.

“I wouldn’t say that we have an expressed goal of hiring more of that younger workforce,” she said, adding the company designs, engineers and manufactures electronic security systems. “We’ve let that happen naturally.”

However, she said DMP visits college campuses at least twice a year, including Missouri State University, Missouri University of Science and Technology and the University of Missouri.

“If we’re visiting a college campus, the goal is to find those interested in hardware and software engineering technical support,” she said. “If we’ve got individuals that are maybe looking for a technical role while they continue their degree program, technical support is a great place to start.”

DMP also is willing to hire workers coming out of high school for some of its manufacturing or warehouse jobs.

“You don’t have to have any sort of degree to start in technical support,” she added.

Hollister-Graham said any companies hiring software engineers would agree the market has gotten very aggressive.

“It’s a delicate balance between hiring people who have previous experience and also keeping a good feed of individuals newer to the field. We have not been specific in them having to have a degree,” she said. “We’ve targeted software engineers both directly from school as well as coming out of a bootcamp program or something like that. It’s all about the aptitude and the skillset that they show in the interview.”

DMP has to compete against some major industry players such as German-based Bosch and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Honeywell International Inc. (NASDAQ: HON), Hollister-Graham said.

“Some of the things that are really unique and important to us is that we have worked really hard to focus on what our customers need and then respond quickly,” she said. “Responsiveness is one of our values, and that quick response to customer needs is what has set us apart in the industry.”

The company culture includes nine values such as kindness, fun, teamwork and generosity. Hollister-Graham said from the first day of employment, which includes a foundational class that teaches DMP’s mission and values to guide employees on how to make decisions, employees are empowered to use their voice.

“To go kind of a step further, we want to hear from employees when things aren’t going well,” she said, noting all company managers regularly have one-on-one meetings with workers. “Those one-on-ones, we’re asking for feedback. We encourage that conversation.”

DT Engineering’s culture is laid back, which Sheldon said employees tell him is appreciated. He never wears a suit and tie at work, typically favoring jeans or even shorts during the summer. Its 260,000-square-foot Lebanon facility allows dogs on-site and includes pool tables and arcade games among employee perks.

“They know we have a job to get done for projects we have, and it’s flexibility in all our work schedules,” Sheldon said, adding he’s adjusted the workplace to better appeal to younger workers.

Additionally, the employees, even those new on the job, are trusted with responsibility and the ability to be creative.

“They want to use their brains,” he said. “They can do that and learn on their own as long as they’re also respectful to learn from the others around them.”