Workforce Management
Topic Breakdown
June 7th at 11am CST, we will host the third webinar of the series, this one on Workforce Management.
Biofuels organizations today compete in a mature industry—the secret to success often boils down to a strong workforce and experienced managers. In this session, we’ll review recent wage, benefit and compensation trends from our annual labor survey, as well as tactics for successfully navigating and resolving turnover, retention and succession issues. Finally, we’ll examine the vital importance of effective communication between a plant’s board members, its management team, and its production workforce, providing tips and tricks on the best ways to ensure a smoothly functioning (and therefore profitable) organization.
This webinar will be broken into three parts with a different speaker for each. The topics will be:
Wage and Compensation Trends in Today’s Ethanol Workforce
A state-of-the-art ethanol bioprocessing facility can do a lot, but it can’t run itself. Biofuels organizations large and small are faced with the challenges of recruiting, training, and retaining high-quality employees from the executive suite to the production team. In this session, Connie will review recent wage and compensation trends from Christianson’s most recent ethanol industry labor survey. She’ll also highlight current trends in turnover rates, and discuss some of the latest findings about which critical employee benefits are “standard” for the industry, and which may become more common in the future.
Power Up Your Recruiting and Retention Strategies
Attracting and keeping top talent is a constant challenge for any business. During this session Kristie will take an in-depth look at recruiting strategies that will help you draw talent into your organization. She will also discuss proven ways to build a positive culture that will keep your workforce engaged and productive. Learn best practices for developing an effective recruiting strategy, providing new hires with a memorable on-boarding experience, and delivering timely and effective feedback to keep employees engaged.
Self-Insurance Healthcare Benefits in Real Life
Choosing a cost-effective and desirable employee health care plan is one of the most complex challenges today’s human resource administrators face. Self-insurance, or employer-funded benefit plans, are gaining traction as possible choices to add to the mix of options. Deb will tell the story of how she researched self-insurance healthcare for Big River Resources, and how their organization went from a fully-funded plan, to partially-funded, to self-insured. She’ll also share some thoughts on how well this has worked for their organization, from a financial perspective as well as an employee satisfaction viewpoint.
Speakers
Below, you will find information about the speakers for each of the three parts of this session. Contact information will be provided at the end of the content part of the webinar. There will also be room at the end for Q&A.
Connie Lindstrom on “Wage and Compensation Trends in Today’s Ethanol Workforce”
Connie Lindstrom is the Senior Biofuels Analyst at Christianson PLLP and she provides customized data analysis and reporting, working with participants in the Biofuels Benchmarking program at Christianson for the past five years. With over twenty years’ experience as a professional technical writer and business analyst, Connie helps benchmarking clients drill into their data to identify precise areas of opportunity for growth. Connie holds a bachelor’s degree in English and Communications from St. Cloud State University and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in business administration from the University of North Dakota.
Kristie Haefner on “Power Up Your Recruiting and Retention Strategies “
Kristie Haefner serves as Firm Administrator at Christianson PLLP, where she provides expertise on human resource management, including benefits administration, recruiting, employee relations, performance management and people development. A member of the Society of Human Resources Management as well as CPA Firm Management national and local chapters, Kristie graduated from Winona State University with a bachelor’s degree in Human Resources Management.
Deb Green on “Self-Insurance Healthcare Benefits in Real Life”
Deb Green has been an integral part of the successful team at Big River Resources, LLC, since 2003. Based in West Burlington, IA, Deb has been Human Resources Manager for the organization since 2009, where she manages all aspects of personnel development and benefits administration for approximately 250 full-time team members across multiple plant locations. A summa cum laude graduate of Western Illinois University, Deb holds a BA in Agricultural Business and Management.
