When CEO Bill Polacek was a child, he used to listen to the conversations of his father — who was a steel worker — and his friends.
He knows from those conversations and his firsthand experience starting out in the manufacturing field how smart the “floor guys” can be.
“My secret is that (I know) the guy on the floor is very bright, and if you tap that intellect it makes you more successful. So you bring him in and make him part of the solutions,” he says of how he operates JWF Industries.
Polacek also sits on a lot of different boards. He says leadership will debate what folks are thinking, or what they want.
“I don’t debate that. I ask them. I bring them in; I make them part of the solution, and that gives them ownership,” Polacek says.
Too many employers think they know everything — that they know what’s best for the employees — but all that does is create a wall of distrust, he says.
A strong workforce culture is one of the reasons that JWF Industries, a commercial manufacturer of metal products, has 460 employees and $110 million in revenue, including 25 percent growth in recent years as Polacek has diversified operations.
The company’s mainstay of business is still fabricating components for original equipment manufacturers, but it is no longer just a tier one or tier two contractor for the defense department. Instead, it bids direct for contracts, such as armoring special forces Humvees.
In addition, JWF Industries has developed its own products for the oil and gas industry in the upstream, midstream and downstream sectors, which is where a lot of the growth has come, Polacek says.
Finding a gap …
Back in 2003 when JWF Industries needed to hire welders or other employees for its subsidiaries, Polacek says they often didn’t need to advertise. Just four years later, when the company needed people, they weren’t there — which was a big surprise.
But having the right people was more important than ever as the company was growing in the defense sector, and expanding into oil and gas.
“To just teach someone to weld, production weld, that’s not hard to get and you can teach that fairly quickly. But we’re looking for a higher-level caliber of employee — one that not only has a higher skill level from the welding side, but also the manufacturing side,” he says.
He likens the company to a four-cylinder engine, where certain markets go up and down. It doesn’t always line up perfectly, but the diversification limits the business risk.
Much of the basic manufacturing for the various sectors is the same, but JWF Industries needs employees who can juggle the 25 percent that varies.
