Latest / The Diversity Career Podcast with Fexingo: Inclusion, Equity, and Underrepresented Professionals / How a Manufacturing Company Built a Career Ladder for Refugees
Transcript
- Lucas: So last month I was looking at a report from the Tent Foundation about refugee hiring in the US manufacturing sector, and one number jumped out: companies that put refugees through a structured career ladder — not just a job, but a visible path upward — saw retention rates above 85 percent after two years. That's roughly double the industry average for entry-level production roles. Luna: Eighty-five percent — that's striking. What does a structured career ladder actually look like in a factory setting? I'm picturing something more than 'show up on time and maybe you'll get a raise.' Lucas: Right, and that's exactly the problem most programs solve. Let me walk through one example: a company called Pinnacle Plastics — they're based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, employ about six hundred people, injection molding and assembly. They partnered with a local nonprofit called Refugee Education and Advancement — REA — to build what they call a 'skill-ladder program.' Lucas: Here's the structure. Every new hire — most of them resettled refugees from Burma, Syria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo — starts at a Level 1 operator. That's basic machine tending, material handling. But from day one they're enrolled in a vocational English class, taught on-site twice a week, that uses the actual machine manuals and safety protocols as curriculum. Luna: So the language instruction is tied directly to the work — not generic 'hello, how are you' lessons, but the specific vocabulary they need to read a gauge or report a defect. Lucas: Exactly. The classes are taught by a certified ESL instructor from REA, but the content is co-designed with Pinnacle's shift supervisors. After completing one hundred hours of class and passing a practical assessment — identifying five common defects, performing a basic machine reset — they move to Level 2. That comes with a pay bump of about $1.50 an hour. Luna: And does the ladder keep going? Lucas: Yes — four levels total. Level 3 adds troubleshooting skills and quality inspection certification. Level 4 is a lead operator role, which includes training new hires and communicating with the production manager. Each level has clear criteria: hours of training, demonstrated competencies, and a peer review. The whole progression typically takes eighteen to twenty-four months. Luna: That timeline seems realistic — not a quick fix, but a real investment. How did Pinnacle justify the cost? I mean, the ESL classes, the assessment time, the supervisor involvement — that adds up. Lucas: The plant manager, a guy named Tom Okonkwo, told me they calculated the cost per hire for the ladder program at roughly $1,800 per employee. That includes the ESL instruction, the assessment materials, and the extra supervisory time. Compare that to the cost of replacing a production worker, which the National Association of Manufacturers estimates at about 20 percent of annual salary — for a $35,000 role, that's $7,000. Lucas: So even if only half of the ladder participants stay longer than they otherwise would, the math works. And in practice, retention in the ladder cohort was eighty-seven percent over two years, versus about forty-five percent for the general entry-level workforce at that plant. Luna: Nearly double. And I imagine there's also a word of mouth effect — if one refugee employee tells their community that Pinnacle offers real career growth, that probably helps recruiting too. Lucas: Absolutely. Tom mentioned that after the first year, more than half of new hires in the program came through referrals from current refugee employees. That's a huge shift from the usual pattern, where refugee hiring is driven entirely by resettlement agencies placing people. Luna: You know, this reminds me of something we talked about a few episodes ago — the bank that built a career ladder for restaurant workers. The principle is similar: identify a population that's often stuck in entry-level roles, then design a transparent, skills-based path forward. But the manufacturing context adds an interesting layer because the physical demands and language barriers are different. Lucas: Right, and one thing that made Pinnacle's program work, I think, is that they didn't try to solve everything at once. They started with a pilot cohort of just fifteen employees. They tested the curriculum, the assessment, the supervisor training. Then they scaled. That iterative approach meant they could fix problems — like the fact that the first version of the English class was too academic — before rolling it out plant-wide. Luna: What was the biggest unexpected challenge they hit? Lucas: Transportation, actually. Some of the refugee employees lived in neighborhoods that weren't served by the early-morning bus route that got them to the plant by six a.m. Pinnacle ended up adjusting the start time for the Level 1 shift by thirty minutes, and they organized a vanpool from a central pickup point. That's not a training issue, but it was a barrier to retention that the ladder couldn't solve by itself. Luna: Right — so the career ladder is part of a broader ecosystem. If someone can't get to work reliably, none of the other pieces matter. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's a good lesson for any employer looking at this model: the ladder itself is important, but you also have to look at the barriers that keep people from even starting to climb. Childcare, transportation, language access — those are the real-world constraints that a program design has to account for. Luna: Yeah, and that's why we keep coming back to these concrete case studies — because general principles are nice, but the specifics are what actually help someone decide whether to try something similar. If I'm a plant manager listening to this, I want to know what it costs, how long it takes, and what the first steps are. Lucas: Totally. And look, if today was actually useful to you — if you're thinking about how to apply this in your own workplace — the way these episodes stay ad-free is through listener support. People who find value in the show can throw a few dollars toward it at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's what keeps us going without sponsors or ads. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to keep the content independent. We really appreciate everyone who does that. Lucas: Alright, back to the ladder. So Pinnacle Plastics is now in its third year of the program, with about eighty employees active in the ladder. They've had five people reach Level 4 — lead operator. Two of them now serve as peer trainers for new cohorts. And the company is starting to look at how to extend the model to other shifts and other plants in their network. Luna: That's a real proof of concept. And I'm curious — did the program change anything about how the broader workforce interacts? I mean, did it shift the culture around inclusion for all employees, not just the refugee cohort? Lucas: Tom told me that one of the unexpected outcomes was that the line supervisors — most of whom had been at the plant for years — became more engaged in teaching and mentoring. They had to learn how to communicate more clearly, how to demonstrate tasks step by step, how to give feedback in a way that didn't rely on jargon. And that ended up improving their management skills across the board. Lucas: So the ladder program effectively became a leadership development tool for the supervisors too. That's a spillover benefit that wasn't in the original business case. Luna: That's fascinating — the program doesn't just move refugees up the ladder, it also moves supervisors up in terms of their own capabilities. So you get a kind of dual lift. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's why this model is replicable beyond manufacturing. Any industry that has entry-level roles with clear technical skills — warehousing, hospitality, healthcare support — could build something similar. The key ingredients are a willing employer, a nonprofit or community partner that understands the population, and a willingness to start small and iterate. Luna: What about scale? Could a company with five thousand employees do this, or does it only work in a midsize plant where you have that personal connection? Lucas: That's a great question. The Tent Foundation report I mentioned earlier looked at fifteen programs across different company sizes. The smallest was a fifty-person factory, the largest was a food processing company with twelve thousand employees. The scalable version involved a centralized curriculum and a dedicated program coordinator at each site. So it does require some infrastructure, but it's not boutique. Luna: And does the government get involved? I know some workforce development programs have tax credits or grants for training. Lucas: In Pinnacle's case, they used a state-level workforce training grant that covered about thirty percent of the ESL instruction costs. There's also the federal WOTC — Work Opportunity Tax Credit — for hiring refugees, which can be up to $2,400 per qualified employee. But Tom said the biggest financial incentive was simply lower turnover. That dollar figure convinced his CFO faster than any tax credit. Luna: So the business case is really about retention and productivity, not about being charitable. Lucas: Right. And I think that's the most important takeaway. This isn't a corporate social responsibility program that happens to have a business benefit. It's a talent strategy that addresses a real pain point — chronic turnover — and it happens to also create opportunity for a underserved population. The framing matters because it determines whether the program survives a budget cut. Luna: That's a good note to end on. I'm going to be thinking about that dual lift — for the employees and the supervisors — when I look at other hiring programs. Lucas: Same. And if you've got a story of a career ladder program you've seen work — in any industry — let us know. We'd love to feature it.