Springfield Remanufacturing Corp. in Springfield was established in 1983. It’s known for creating a highly engaged employee-owner workforce with its open-book management. The secret sauce of knowledge incentivizes employee-owners to become dedicated to high performance. Because of this, training plays a big role at SRC.

When the company’s Heavy Duty East location needed to upskill workers on wiring electrical panels, they turned to Ozarks Technical Community College (OTC) to develop a training program. OTC is a partner of Missouri One Start, which provides training funds to eligible companies.

Associates tasked with ensuring electrical panel wiring was properly connected and tested lacked the proper skills and were involving engineers to help complete their tasks. To get new employee-owners up to speed, SRC contracted Bob Sherman from OTC to conduct classes on basic, intermediate, and advanced industrial electrical generators. The training courses took place over four weeks and upskilled production testers, engineering technicians, quality technicians, and whole goods assemblers.

So far, feedback has been outstanding. “The basic electrical training was so excellent that all the associates wanted a chance to do the intermediate/advanced training,” said Maggie Anderson, HR at SRC. “The biggest takeaway from these trainings has been the skill of troubleshooting. When associates can work through a problem and find the issue without calling one of the engineers, it’s game-changing. It creates efficiency on the floor and allows the engineers to focus on their projects.”

SRC’s strong relationship with OTC allows it to leverage specialized training when employee-owners need to increase their skills, knowledge, or abilities. “We can use their expertise and guidance to get our employee-owners the tools and knowledge to succeed in their careers,” said Anderson. “Retention has been a struggle, but with the support of specialized training, trends are moving in the right direction. We are seeing more and more associates stay.”

About Missouri One Start:

Missouri One Start is a Division within the Department of Economic Development. Training programs are administered regionally by local education agencies (LEAs). In addition to meeting certain eligibility criteria, companies must be making a capital investment five times greater than the amount of training funds they receive.