Family Business Values: Investing in Workforce Training

Beckett Thermal Solutions wants to shape a better tomorrow for its employees. The North Ridgeville, Ohio-based combustion technologies company was founded in 1998 as part of the Beckett family of companies dating back to 1937. Chairman John Beckett instituted the company’s “Ethical Values of Integrity, Excellence and a Profound Respect for the Individual.”

This respect for the individual drives the company’s propensity to invest in the training and career advancement of its employees, according to Paul Calaway, senior director of culture and colleague care. He also cites Beckett’s four guiding principles:

• Walk in humility
• Help others thrive
• Foster a “make-it-happen” attitude
• Create an energetic and uplifting environment

The company, which employs 450 people in the United States across three Ohio facilities—and another 160 more in the United Kingdom—has expanded over the years through organic growth and key acquisitions. Morrison Carter, president and CEO of Beckett Thermal, says “developing and training colleagues is an essential part of our success as a company. We’ve built a culture that strengthens the future of our people.”

Career Pathways

As part of the company’s growth strategy, Beckett Thermal knew it had to expand its training initiatives and invest even more into its workforce development efforts. To this end, the company is developing the Beckett Performance Academy to build various career pathways and different roles for colleagues to pursue.

It started with the SME Certified Manufacturing Associate Certification (CMfgA) prep program available from Tooling U-SME that was offered to 32 production employees at Beckett Thermal in 2022 through Lorain County Community College, the costs of which were covered by a grant secured by the school. Participants were given two hours a week of paid time to work through the course. The SME CMfgA certification is recognized as part of the Ohio Manufacturing Competency Model.

Several of those who completed the program have been promoted, and many have continued with additional Tooling U-SME courses,. “It’s improved our retention of our colleagues as well as our overall ability to promote from within,” Calaway says. “Obviously, it’s a lot better when you’re having people that have been with the company for a while now in a supervisory role. They understand the company better and can get people up to speed a lot quicker.”

Recognizing the benefits of online learning, Calaway and his colleagues are building the Beckett Performance Academy, in which employees will be able to advance their skills on site or at home via online learning modules. Though it began on the production side of things, the Beckett Performance Academy is in the early stages of growing into a four-track program, adding one for leadership and two more for engineering (product development and manufacturing engineering).

“As we continue to build out our program, we’re really trying to build career pathways for our colleagues. So that they might have a variety of different roles that they can go into,” Calaway says. “We just see a continual need to really keep developing people as we go forward to help meet the needs of the business.”

It’s All Academic

Denise Fritz, another member of the team creating the academy, knows the benefits of internal training firsthand. Starting as a production worker in September 2008, Fritz advanced through the company over the years. She eventually became a training coordinator after completing the Tooling-U SME prep program.

“When the company invests in their people it gives them the confidence to say, ‘I’m worthy of doing other jobs. I can do other things; I can become a supervisor,’” Fritz says. “We’ve had three people who took the Tooling U-SME program with myself who are now supervisors.”

Her colleagues recognized the traits of a great teacher after watching Fritz train new employees on the production floor.

“You need to have patience and you need to be able to work with people at different levels,” she confides. “We have people who come in who have lots of manufacturing experience; and then we have people that have never worked a day in manufacturing ever ... they’re scared, (so) you have to build their confidence.”

She is also quick to mention that training needs to be adaptive to different styles of learning. Not everyone will reach their “aha moment” through the same training methods. “It’s always nice when you can see the happiness and the satisfaction on their face when they understand it,” she says.

Reaping Big Dividends

After 16 years with the company, Fritz can attest to Beckett Thermal’s position of investing in training. The company prefers to hire from within, advancing its own workforce and leveling up their skills through the job-specific training Fritz and her colleagues are creating.

“They’re looking inside because we have so many colleagues that have hidden education, hidden talents, hidden skills that they don’t talk about, and we’re trying to bring those out,” Fritz says. “We’re trying to talk with people, get to know them, get to know if they’ve had training in other areas and bring some of that out.”

For Calaway, the internal training isn’t just a way to strengthen Beckett Thermal’s capabilities. It’s also a way to express gratitude to the company’s workforce.

“We’re helping them to better themselves and we just see that as a way of paying it back, if you will,” he says. “They’ve worked with us for a number of years, and this is the way we can help them to achieve what they want to do with their lives as they go forward.