🔒Vallieres plays key role shaping CT manufacturing’s workforce-development strategy

Whether it’s in her role as a manufacturing CEO or a key workforce-development strategist, Kelli-Marie Vallieres hasn’t been one to back down from seemingly difficult challenges.

The 51-year-old CEO of sister companies Sound Manufacturing and Monster Power Equipment in Old Saybrook took over the family business from her father in 2006. She never planned to run the company, but when earning her Ph.D. in adult experiential learning at UConn she did a class project on Sound Manufacturing, which makes precision sheet metals for a variety of industries — landscaping, telecommunications, industrial, automotive, etc.

The business was in a precarious position at the time, with one customer amounting to almost 90% of its revenue, Vallieres said. Further, that client was sold to an international conglomerate, making the situation even riskier.

“My goal was to do business consulting so I thought this would be a great first project,” Vallieres said. “But the issues were bigger than a consultant could fix,” so she decided to join the company full time as CEO, “and I’ve been here ever since.”

Since taking over Sound, Vallieres has diversified the company’s customer base, which included forming in 2011 Monster Power Equipment, a maker of commercial and municipal leaf and debris removal equipment.

Under Vallieres’ stewardship, the companies have grown to a combined 62 employees and $13 million in annual revenue. Her husband, John, and two sons also work at the family business, which recently moved into a new facility, at 1 Williams Lane, that includes 80,000 square feet of production space.

She’s also formed relationships with Connecticut manufacturers, policymakers and other stakeholders, boosting her influence on issues involving manufacturing and workforce development.

In fact, she was a runner-up for the state’s new chief manufacturing officer position (filled by Colin Cooper), and currently serves as co-chair of the Governor’s Workforce Council, which includes two dozen business, education and nonprofit executives, along with state and labor union officials tasked with reviewing and overhauling the state’s workforce-development programs.

Years before the council was formed, Vallieres was already steeped in workforce-development issues, as president of the Eastern Advanced Manufacturing Alliance trade group, and a board member of the Eastern Connecticut Workforce Board.

In the coming weeks, Connecticut will roll out a statewide version of an online manufacturing training program — called 180 Skills — that’s been used by the Eastern Connecticut Workforce Board for about a decade.

It will be available for free to all unemployed Connecticut residents.

“It’s an online platform where people who are unemployed can have all kinds of modulars they can go through,” Vallieres said. “Some of it is around how to find a job, how to interview, things like that … and there’s other more technical badges or certifications [users] can earn.”

The COVID-19 pandemic will likely increase the number workforce-education programs that can be taught online, which should help the state narrow a skills gap that has led to thousands of unfilled manufacturing jobs, she said.

And despite logistical issues the pandemic has presented, the Governor’s Workforce Council is currently operating full steam ahead.

In a more than hour-long interview with the Hartford Business Journal, Vallieres discussed the state’s current workforce-development issues, how the coronavirus affects them and how she’s been handling managing two companies amid a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Here’s an edited version of the conversation.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your business?

We had a scare where we thought an employee got sick while he was here probably a week that everything was shutting down. We shut down the business for a week, and then we slowly brought people back, and as of May 4, we’re back to a full staff.

We’ve implemented all the social distancing, face masks, we’ve got a good chunk of our employees working remotely from home — basically everybody who is in the office and can work remotely is.

We’ve got two shifts going on the manufacturing floor. It’s been very challenging to manage the business, the needs of our customers, as well as balancing the health and safety of our employees — which comes first.

But the thing that made me feel good is that when we were calling furloughed employees back to work they were all really anxious to go back.

How much is business down?

About 35% to 40%.

How has the pandemic impacted your customers?

We’ve had customers that I’m doing work for now that we haven’t done for three to five years because they moved their manufacturing out of the U.S.

But their plants in Taiwan and Mexico have been shut down, so they’re bringing stuff back to Connecticut, and they’re saying, ‘How do I look at my global supply chain moving forward?’

We may see more companies reshoring manufacturing back to the United States, which was already happening in a slower manner.

Is the Governor’s Workforce Council still on schedule to complete its recommendations by October?

There was a little dip in our communication when everything first hit, but we’ve been working very diligently.

We’re meeting with our subcommittees on Zoom every week, and emailing throughout the week.

We have some preliminary reports that we’re finishing up right now, and … we still believe that we’re on track for a full report to the governor in October.

Which industries is the Workforce Council focusing its efforts on?

We started working on three major industries, which include manufacturing, information technology (IT) and health care.

The reason why we focused on those industries is because they seem to be changing the most, needing the most workforce development for future needs, and also have a pathway for people to enter into those careers and move up, and engage in a career instead of a job.

Additionally, they offer higher-than-average wages.

What has the group learned about Connecticut’s workforce-development system?

We spent a lot of time looking at best practices — not only in the state of Connecticut, but in other states.

For example, the Eastern Connecticut Manufacturing Pipeline Initiative (MPI) has definitely been identified as a best practice that is scalable. Right now MPI is focused on manufacturing, but we are working on implementing that same program in health care.

As we move forward we need to develop programs that align the needs of industry, education and workforce.

Why has the MPI been so successful?

The foundation of the program is the communication and collaboration between industry, education and in this case, the state’s nine regional Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs). Because we’re working together, we’re able to set up programs that meet the immediate demand of industry.

When the Pipeline started in 2016 Electric Boat was written into the grant, and they committed to hiring 80% of the participants that went through the program, so the content was very heavily related to Electric Boat.

But the program’s flexibility is what also makes it highly successful.

With each cohort, it became evident at a certain point which participants were going to go to Electric Boat, and which ones would have to find work elsewhere in the manufacturing industry (people unable to pass a security clearance, for example).

So the instructors would then tweak some of the content to match more closely the industry needs of participants outside of Electric Boat. We now have our own pot of money we can use to develop these same pipeline programs that are not specific to Electric Boat.

We’re currently working on a five-week plastics manufacturing program that will include Middlesex and Three Rivers community colleges. We brought in 12 different plastics companies that helped come up with the program’s content.

Has your company hired anyone out of the MPI?

Yes. Before the pipeline program, it was really difficult to hire people. We would go to a temp agency, we’d pay a 30% premium. But now that we have this program, we have a place to go to hire people that we know have had 10 weeks of training, and that will benefit our company.

The introduction to manufacturing training program covers 80% of everything all manufacturers need employees to know.

We all need people who understand manufacturing math, how to read blueprints, how to take measurements and safety.

Is the MPI transferable to industries outside manufacturing?

Yes, absolutely. There’s been work done to develop a healthcare pipeline.

We’re looking at skillsets like licensed practical nurses (LPN) and entry-level people in the healthcare industry.

The MPI setup is also really applicable to any other industry, including IT. As we work through it, it’s just about developing the industry partnerships with the school systems, and getting to understand what that need is, and what the content is and developing that content.

The manufacturing industry benefits from workforce-development programs, since it gets a pool of skilled workers. What responsibility do manufacturers have in funding and providing support to these programs?

I think that no matter what, industry has a responsibility to work with educators to inform them of what skill sets we need in order for them to provide us with job applicants that fulfill our needs.

It’s a mutually beneficial relationship between all three stakeholders: manufacturers, schools and students. I think industry also has a responsibility to provide any support that we can to the education of students such as internships, job shadowing, open houses, guest speaking, mentoring, all of those things that are vital.

I think when you start looking at larger companies that are looking for really specific types of training and skill sets, there’s a different level of responsibility financially.

They should be contributing on some level to the expense of training those employees. I don’t necessarily know what that looks like.