Richards Machine Tool Company Inc. specializes in computer numerical control (CNC) machining for the aerospace, medical and commercial industries.
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5th Place — Less than 25 full-time employees category
Richards Machine Tool Company Inc. specializes in computer numerical control (CNC) machining for the aerospace, medical and commercial industries.

What is the biggest challenge to your business in the coming year?
The aerospace industry is very active and busy right now and the challenge is recruiting and retaining a trained workforce. Everyone has similar challenges no matter what industry, but our challenge continues to be balancing business development with the available workforce.
In an industry that is so active, we find that the larger companies are flexing their financial muscles and enticing our trained hires to go work for them and this creates a challenge for small employers. This opportunity keeps us on our toes with finding creative ways to recruit and retain workers to grow to a mid-size business and we are fully prepared to take on this challenge.
How do you instill your family values in your employees?
As a family, we are very involved in the day-to-day of our business. We work side-by-side with our employees, getting to understand them as individuals. By doing this, we are able to share our family values and help the employees grow in their jobs and life in general.
We have employees of all ages and we encourage teamwork with the older machinists to assist in the training of the newer machinists to reduce the skill gaps. We find that sharing our values and demonstrating them daily through our actions, creates a very respectful work environment. We also allow for employee flextime to accommodate work-life balance.
