Fairfield-based Bigelow Tea CEO Cindi Bigelow said she’s struggling to find the right hires for approximately 15 current job openings in Connecticut, which require engineering and manufacturing skill sets.
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Fairfield-based Bigelow Tea CEO Cindi Bigelow said she’s struggling to find the right hires for approximately 15 current job openings in Connecticut, which require engineering and manufacturing skill sets.
“That’s a decent number were having a hard time filling,” Bigelow said in a recent interview “You can advertise, you can go through [employment] agencies, but you can’t find the skill sets you need for the business.”
It’s one of the reasons Bigelow, who oversees an approximately $150-million operation with 400 employees across three states, decided to join the reconstituted Governor’s Workforce Council, which includes 24 official members, including a long list of top corporate CEOs in the state.
Another reason she joined the council is because she wants to ensure Connecticut keeps a strong and growing manufacturing base, whether it’s a dried tea production operation like hers or an advanced aerospace manufacturer.
“I want to continue to be able to have manufacturing in this state,” Bigelow said. “It is getting more difficult for me to be able to maintain that.”
Bigelow Tea has two of its larger production sites in Idaho and Kentucky, where it’s about 30 percent cheaper for the company to operate, she said.
Bigelow said she loves Connecticut and has no interest in moving, but wants to make sure that other manufacturers here feel the same.
“I can handle that 30 percent spread, I just want to be on the commission so we don’t make it even bigger than that,” she said. “Let’s do everything we can to make the state more employer friendly, and also make sure we’re doing what’s best for the workforce.”
Bigelow spoke during a roundtable discussion organized by Hartford Business Journal following the Governor’s Workforce Council’s first meeting in November. She was joined by council chair Garrett Moran, vice chair Kelli-Marie Vallieres of Sound Manufacturing and Monster Power Equipment in Old Saybrook, and (by phone) council member Ravi Kumar, co-president and deputy chief operating officer of Infosys.
Vallieres was one of the architects of a manufacturing training program in eastern Connecticut to meet the workforce needs of submarine maker Electric Boat and other employers. Over the past four years, the Manufacturing Pipeline Initiative, which has mainly targeted workers with no prior manufacturing experience, has placed in jobs 1,500 workers — 15 of them with Vallieres’ companies.
The pipeline program model has already begun to spread to other parts of the state, but Vallieres said such programs could help a broader swath of industry sectors, such as health care or finance. She said she hopes the workforce council identifies ways to make that happen.
“I think the model is very transferable,” Vallieres said. “If you brought more companies into these arenas, you could develop these types of programs.”
What’s key, she said, is a cooperative dynamic between the employers that could benefit, even if they are direct competitors.
“We would put competition aside and say ‘well, what do we really all need?’ ” she said of the manufacturers who worked to launch the pipeline program.
In the technology sector, Infosys has been pursuing its own model for training workers it needs, including those it’s been hiring in Hartford.
Working both internally and with higher-ed partners like Trinity College, the company is providing eight weeks of technical training to liberal-arts majors — who come already equipped with critical thinking, communication and other valuable workforce skills — to make them proficient enough to land digital jobs at Infosys or in other sectors, like health care.
“It’s a fascinating experiment,” said Kumar, who wants to impart the experience and lessons learned to his fellow council members.
Kumar said he perceives a tight-knitedness among government, employers and the education sector in Connecticut that could give the state a competitive advantage. He saw that close connection last year when Lamont and a team of local CEOs helped sell Infosys on opening one of its U.S. hubs in Hartford.
“They can come together for a common cause and to solve common problems,” he said. “It doesn’t happen in every state, but there are a few states where my experience has been very positive. Connecticut is one of them.”
