Rebounding Market Meets Workforce Challenge

Last week, Part I addressed how the market has rebounded for Pyramid Mountain Lumber Inc. in Seeley Lake giving them more raw material to work. While the future is looking bright for Pyramid, they are facing a challenge they were not expecting: lack of employees.

SEELEY LAKE - Twenty years ago, Pyramid Mountain Lumber Inc.'s sawmill and planer ran 80 hours per week. Production time has now decreased to 40 hours at the sawmill and 60 hours at the planer per week.

Chief Operations Officer Loren Rose credits technology for reducing the number of hours and people operating the mill and planer while still increasing production. An example was the elimination of the green chain in 1992. The green chain had nine people for two shifts.

"That was 18 people and we put in our sorter and that's one person [to do the same function]," said Rose. "But we have more people now than we had then because of the expansion in production. When you produce more product you need more people to move the product."

Because of the mill closure in Columbia Falls, Pyramid now has six million more board feet in their log yard compared to a year ago. Due to the International Trade Council's decision in favor of the United States in the trade case against Canada, lumber prices are up 20 percent and expecting to continue to improve.

Rose indicated that their options are to either hire more people or put money into technology that will ultimately eliminate 25-30 jobs. To really do what needs to be done would cost $10 million.

"That's capital that we don't have," said Rose. "We need to work with who is here, how do we do better [for our employees]."

To work at the mill there are pre-employment drug screening and quarterly random drug screening. Rose feels that anyone male or female in decent health and physical strength is capable of employment with Pyramid. There is no physical requirement for employment and education is not a limiting factor. The mill offers full benefit package to all their employees.

"We are just looking for someone physically capable to do the work that is willing to show up every day and do their job and help us understand what we can do to make it better for them," said Rose.

Due to the lack of qualified applicants, Pyramid has temporarily abandoned the idea of two, 40-hour shifts at the planer and 50 hours at the sawmill even though they have the material to run. They are also trying to fill three management positions due to retirements.

Nearly half of Pyramid's employees have been with the company less than five years with half of those working for Pyramid less than two years. Pyramid is hosting lunches with their employees of five years and less to find out what Pyramid could change to make their job better.

"Darlene [Troutwine] says our most effective advertising is our current employees," said Rose. "Depending on how they feel about their job that is the kind of advertising that we get."

Pyramid is also training their supervisors on how to work with the younger employees because what they have been doing for years is no longer working to retain them.

"Out of those 59 people [who have been working with the mill for less than five years] we need to start developing the leadership. We need to retool and rethink our approach to our people and how can we better communicate, better meet their needs and make them a better advertisement for working at Pyramid. We need to change, our supervisors need to change and we need to get our newer employees engaged in helping us understand what we need to do as a company. Once we accomplish this it should be easier to hire and retain employees."

One of the solutions Pyramid explored was creating a crew of 10-12 employees that would be trained as a flexible work crew to work in the mill and at the planer as an incremental step to increase production.

"That is one solution [mentioned] back in October and we haven't even been able to get there [because of the lack of qualified applicants]," said Rose.

Rose continued, "[To hire and retain employees] is a challenge across the entire country. It is extremely acute in Montana because we have an aging workforce. Recognizing that puts a greater importance on understanding the people that are working here and make it a better place so they want to stay here and by staying here they will invite others to join them. We have bought our logs right and the market has responded so we find ourselves with a tremendous opportunity and unable to capitalize."