The future of all our industries relies on one thing – having a workforce to keep them going. When it comes to the trades, that’s easier said than done.
For decades, teens have been strongly encouraged to go to college instead of the skilled trades. Now, that the trade workforce is rapidly nearing retirement, there’s a renewed effort to infuse the trades with some new blood.
But how do we do this? We are joined by Dave Hataj, President of Edgerton Gear, Inc. His company has developed a really cool program for engaging high-school students in the trades, and he sharing some of the things he’s learned along the way.
Dr. David Hataj [00:00:00] I grew up in the shop here since I was five, and I’ll share that story, but you know, I’m in the same boat that I think I have been in the same boat that a lot of folks have been with the employment issue of how do you get young people to come into the trades and fill the employment pipeline? Because I remember talking to my apprenticeship instructor back in 1984-85, and even back then, he said there’s going to be a huge shortage of skilled trades folks in manufacturing and all trades. He said We have an aging demographic and we’re going to be in trouble. And back then I was 22, 23 and like, “Yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about and I can’t see that.” But I noticed just in my apprenticeship class, when I started at 1981, there was there was like 20 people in it, and four years later we were down to five and it was really weird. Even back in the 80s, I started to realize and started to see that there is something happening in our society and our view of jobs and the trades manufacturing that students are getting the wrong message that it’s not a good career path and everybody should go to college. So I just want to do a short presentation and kind of talk about how we’ve gotten where we are. Share my story a little bit, why we developed this course, why it’s been successful, how it’s been successful and hopefully give everybody a little bit of hope that there are some solutions on how to figure out this employment puzzle that I think everybody struggling with.
Dr. David Hataj [00:01:36] So I want to go over my story. I’ll serve the Craftsman course benefits of it and then just how we really need to think about investing in the future. So the picture on the left is my dad back in Chicago in the when he was 18, so that would have been 1953 I think it was. And there I am later, shortly after I graduated high school in 1981, just running the gear hobber. But I often say that we’ve lost an entire generation of Tech Ed in our country because when I was in high school and I think a lot of you guys can relate, we had shop classes, you know. And I took woodshop printing shop and print … back then it still learned how to a set print or Typeset print, auto mechanics, drafting and machine shop and welding. And that’s just my world that I grew up in. I didn’t go to college when I got out of high school, I went into the shop and I became an apprentice. But as the years went by, I found out that nationwide we’ve closed down our tech ed departments in our high schools. And I was talking to a tech ed teacher about this not too long ago, few years ago, and he was actually in college. And there’s a pretty key person, professor, there’s two there’s two colleges or universities in Wisconsin that they actually trained tech ed teachers. And he got an argument with this one professor because the professor said “the future of tech ed is is going to be lab coats and computers. We’re not going to need plumbers. We’re not going to need people that know how to turn wrenches. We’re not going to. We’re not we don’t need people to figure out how to run a lathe or a hobber or any of that.” And Joe, our tech ed teacher, said “that’s crazy. You’re always going to need people to fix stuff.” Well, this professor actually was nationally known, and he had a lot of input on education in general across the U.S. and he convinced nationwide he was one of the voices that convinced people in high schools to get rid of your tech ed departments and completely overhaul them. And Edgerton did that, and it was one of the schools. And so when I came back into the shop 30 years ago because I was gone for about eight years, I was asked to come into our tech ed department, our high school and take a look at it, and I was stunned at how it had been shuttered. And so that has happened thousands and thousands of times in high schools across the country.
Dr. David Hataj [00:04:06] So we have lost an entire generation of kids that should have been in shop class, woodshop machine, machine and welding or whatever. And so, you know, you think about that, that that’s like 20 years of people that should have been applying for a job that should have been exposed to manufacturing the trades that have not been. So, the other issue that goes along with that is if you don’t have kids in tech ed classes, you don’t have tech ed teachers because all of those kids that take tech ed, then some of those people eventually become teachers. So now we have this incredible shortage of tech ed teachers that society are our industries are really. And school districts are struggling with. My middle son, Nathan, he actually went to school to be a tech ed teacher at Platteville and before he graduated the senior year, he was bombarded with offers from schools literally around the state, and I think it was four years ago, fighters who has been teaching out there were 70 openings for tech ed teachers in the state of Wisconsin that year, and there was only five graduates. So, you know what I’m saying so.
Dr. David Hataj [00:05:17] So we have this crazy shortage not only of tech ed teachers, but we don’t have us all. Also, we don’t have kids coming into trades. So we’ve got to teach those kids. So that’s that’s and I make that point because if we’re going to teach kids our trade as industry people, we’re going to we have to take responsibility and kind of take control of that whole, that whole topic.
Dr. David Hataj [00:05:39] So why is there a skills gap like I’ve talked about? But there’s also the stigma and the perception that everybody needs to go to four-year college working in a machine shop or working on a job site as a carpenter, electrician or plumber. You know, that’s like as Mike Rowe often says it’s a consolation prize. You know, if you’re if you’re not good enough to go to university, if you’re not college material, we send a pretty strong message that, ok, you can go maybe work in a factory or work on the shop floor or just get on a labor job. So we have this horrible perception in our country that, you know, we’re going to CNC machinist working as a plumber, electrician, et cetera, is not is not equal or worthy of compared to the other jobs that are out there. And so as parents, we struggle with parents in our school district when their kids want to come and work here, “why would you want to go work in a machine shop? You need to go to a four-year university.” Well, we all know the problems with that. One is maybe that kid wasn’t meant to go to a four-year university. There’s an incredible amount of crushing debt that students are graduating with, often a four-year schools. And the other things maybe they’re just more into hands on learning. .
Dr. David Hataj [00:06:56] So the solution, as I’ve talked to a lot of different companies, there is no silver bullet. The schools don’t know what to do. We have the perception problem. Parents really don’t even hardly know that these good jobs exist. And that’s my point. That is, as industry, we got to we got to take it back. We have to figure out real solutions because no one’s going to figure it out for us. So the course we came up with this course called Crafting With Character and really how it started when I got invited to come back to our tech ed school and high school here, I walked in or a room. I went, Oh my gosh, you. The same machines that I ran back in the 70s and 80s there are covered up with tarps that are shoved into a corner. And we actually helped renovate the whole tech ed department. But the thing that struck me was that I’m looking at all these kids kind of in the tech ed department and I realize they are me. I mean, I was them, you know, 30 years ago. And often the tech ed departments are at the end of a long hall somewhere in school. They’re separated from the rest of the school where you know the math and the social studies and history. And it’s a bunch of these kids that don’t feel like they have much to offer. They’ve been given a message that, like I said, they’re not college material, and the career counselors really don’t know what to do with them. So I started looking at them and going, You know what? I wonder if there’s a way that we could at least introduce them to show what’s available in our industry because they don’t have any idea what’s out there.
Dr. David Hataj [00:08:26] So we started this, this kind of journey of how can one we can we expose kids to the trades and manufacturing and to really work on character development because. Talking to the school districts the last time any of the students these days get any character discussion or teaching maybe goes all the way back to elementary school, and I think we’ve all experienced things like you go to a grocery store and you got maybe have young person working at the counter. They don’t even know how to sometimes sort of make change. A lot of times they don’t know how to look in the eye. They don’t know how to just be cordial and respectful. And it struck me that we just don’t need workers. We need good workers. We need we need young people with the character qualities of showing up on time, being respectful, team players know how to communicate and all of that. But since a lot of these, these kids in the shop classes maybe come from just fragmented homes, maybe, you know, we run into kids that are parenting themselves. They’re under very, very little supervision. Decent social media, I think, has been a real detriment. We have not learned, I think, good social skills. We’ve given students a reason to be isolated by themselves. So the course I realized when I did my research. We we need to get back to that character development. But a lot of these kids don’t do well sitting in a class five days a week. So we decided what they really need is to be mentored and to see character qualities modeled rather than just spoken. And just tell them how they need to be. We need to show them how to be.
Dr. David Hataj [00:10:06] So the course we developed, it’s 80 percent job shadowing four days a week, and it’s an hour and a half course, just like any other class in the high school. It’s actually a high school class that they sign up for, but 80 percent of it four days a week. They’re just out of the shop for job shadowing and the other 20 percent one day a week. I get them in the classroom and we go through a whole curriculum that basically helps them explore their world view. What do they think they’re going to need to be successful? What character qualities do they need? And really, it’s a 16 week course where we ask them every time we get together what you learn this week and what’s out there in the world or what’s out there in the shop or in or other businesses that their job shadowing that really strikes you? And how do you think you’d fit in there? And with that, those four days that their job shadowing, they’re seeing those character qualities that we need to be successful, modeled by these crusty old machinists who often don’t think they have much to offer these kids, but they become the kid’s friends, and it’s really the character part of it and also just seeing it in person how it needs to be lived out.
Eric Zoromski [00:11:13] So, hey Dave, we’ve got a couple of questions, just how many kids are in the shop at a particular time?
Dr. David Hataj [00:11:23] Great question, and I appreciate you interrupting me. Don’t let me just babble on. So of course, we limited the course to 10 students because there was a couple of reasons for that. One is the small group dynamics. We have a lot of discussion with the kids. These kids are opening up about their lives and really crazy, powerful ways. A lot of brokenness, a lot of dysfunction at home and it needs so our class needs to be a safe place in our lives and our discussion groups, right? So we decided we had to limit the class to 10 and then up in our shop, we’ve got, you know, we divide our shop up. We’re about a 40 person shop. So what? We divided the shop up and then the nine or 10 departments for the kids can kind of spend a week in the saw department or week in the lathe department. But now we’ve got five other businesses involved in our program, so the kids just aren’t job shadowing our shop. They’re in auto body shop. They’re in auto salvage yard. They’re up at the school of the HVAC guys and electricians. So they’re able to job shadow like, I think, five or six different places. So we spread them out throughout the community during that course. And then that one time week, we all come together.
Eric Zoromski [00:12:37] So it’s really become a community program more than just a Edgerton Gear program.
Dr. David Hataj [00:12:42] Right, first time we did it, we had all the students here, but now we’ve got so many other folks involved. So we’ll have two, you know, during the week, we’ll have only two students here a week or day. And then the other students are, like I said, at the school or in these other businesses, OK?
Eric Zoromski [00:13:00] And then Kyle asked, Does the shop have overhead cranes?
Dr. David Hataj [00:13:03] Yes, we do. We’ve got cranes throughout the shop. And that’s a really good question, too, because one of the things as well is this allowed or what about insurance and liability issues? The school treats our course just like a field trip. So they are the students are covered under the school’s insurance because it’s an umbrella policy. So just like if they went on a field trip anywhere they’re covered, we don’t allow the students. They can’t run equipment, they can’t. Obviously, it’s a class. It’s job shadowing. So they just have to watch. And obviously we make them aware safety glasses and and follow all of our safety protocols. But they are, by insurance policies, they’re very welcome to be out in the shop and on job sites.
Eric Zoromski [00:13:54] And it looks like, you know, in some of the videos I watched, they do get some hands on in the classroom piece on, you know, measuring and, you know, doing other types of, you know, kind of learning activities that accurate.
Dr. David Hataj [00:14:06] Yeah. In fact, the picture that you’re seeing on the screen right now, when our the kids are out job shadowing our guys realize a lot of them didn’t know the kids didn’t even know how to read a ruler. So our guy said, Hold it. We have to step up with these kids and can we can we teach them stuff? So in this this picture here, one of our guys is actually teaching a measuring a measuring course of how to read a caliper. But he had to start with a ruler just basic fractions. So that becomes part of the course for our guys are really interactive and we had we had students that they come in with a hoodie, their hands or some of their pockets or pants or halfway down their rear end. And our guys like, that’s not acceptable. And the parents have been telling the kids that the parents and the teachers have adult the kids that but when it’s a guy in the shop floor who tells them that all of a sudden they listen. And so we often say, it’s our shop, our rules, and you need to pay attention and take out your earbuds and you’re here to learn. And the teachers and the parents are like, “Man, those kids listen so much more powerful ways than we can ever get through to them.” I mean, just think back to when you know any of us four, 15, 16, and we may now listen to our parents or teachers. But boy, you see someone else in a worksite or someone else, and you tend to listen better.
Eric Zoromski [00:15:27] Cool. All right. Carry on, sir.
Dr. David Hataj [00:15:30] OK. So, you know, basically we we partner with the local high school and this is an accredited class, so we really need the schools to get on board with us because obviously they’re going to help orchestrate and their going to have coordinate. It’s an accredited class where the kids are getting graded. And so we’re working with our, our principal, our superintendent and our career guidance counselors and our shop teachers, our shop teacher, actually our tech ed teacher. He actually helps you and helps teach the course. But he has a relationship with the kids and he knows what kids will probably be a good fit for our course. So it’s it’s really it’s really giving these kids those career options that are available, just make them aware of it and it’s really trying to inspire them. I pound on these kids constantly that you are way more valuable than than you realize. The world desperately needs you guys to step up and you’ve got gifts and skills that have been completely overlooked.
Dr. David Hataj [00:16:26] A lot of these kids, I don’t think they’re smart, right? Because they don’t do well in social studies or history, et cetera. But the really good wasn’t working with their hands. We got kids, the young girl in this photo here, she knows how to take apart our diesel truck engine, but she’s failing her other classes, and so she gets this mindset that, “well, I’m not smart.” Well, holy cow. You’re way smarter than a lot of smart people that we know. So to me, the course is really about inspiring the students and giving them an opportunity to see what’s out there and possibly where they fit. Now there’s been a lot of talk about youth apprenticeship in, especially the state of Wisconsin, and my criticism of youth apprenticeship is it’s only successful less than half the time. And there are statistics that will back this up. And if you talk to people from the state and corner them, they will admit it’s only successful half the time. And why is that? Well, typically with youth apprenticeship, they go to the kids and say, Hey, we have opportunities for youth apprenticeship in this company, right? The kids, OK, that sounds fun. Well, the kids don’t know the company. The company doesn’t know the kids. So it’s kind of like this blind date that you put together and it may or may not work out, you know, half the time it does, but half the time the kids go “I don’t like this.” And they haven’t been given the the soft skills, or taught the soft skills of what they need to do to be successful. So the employer gets frustrated, the kid gets frustrated and it breaks up before he even gets off the ground.
Dr. David Hataj [00:18:00] So I say our course is a pre apprenticeship course where we do teach soft skills. We develop those mentoring, mentoring relationships. We get to know if we like the kids and the kids like us. It’s it’s they need role models. We really emphasize we got to have character before we can really teach the skill and it really takes the community. It’s not just the teacher, the parents, but as business people, we get that opportunity to really shape the character of these young people.
Dr. David Hataj [00:18:30] And this is this is the guts of the course of what I call The Craftsman’s Code, and there’s a lot more to it. But I pound on these kids and I make them stand up and memorize this Craftsman code. Now, if any of you guys are parents, you’ll get a kick out of making a 16, 17 year old young person stand up and say, “I am not the center of the universe,” and they got to say it with conviction, right? And that’s the favorite part of my core of the course when I teach it and then they’re like, OK, fine. And then number two, “I do not know everything or nearly as much as I think I do.” But it’s not a smack down. It’s let them understand that they are part of a community and like in machining and gear making we stand on the shoulders of all the generations that came before us to learn our trade. So it’s really teach them the respect for who came before us and that they really are part of a great fraternity in our industry and in our communities, and we should be respectful, appreciate the past. So that’s why we teach that there is dignity and purpose and knowing my trade, no matter what it is, every trade is developed with a lot of incredible people, right? And then number four is a real powerful one when it takes a while for some of these kids to really embrace it. But “the world needs me” right? Every person has their unique gifts and talents. Number five: “pay is a reward for my efforts, but not my main motivation.” But the key of it all for us is seeing that light bulb come on with these kids when they finally start to believe that the world needs me, that I have something to offer and value and contribute to society, to my family, to our world. And that’s that’s what gets us excited, because that’s the real transformation that we see taking place in these kids. You want me to respond to the chat there, Eric?
Eric Zoromski [00:20:19] Sure.
Dr. David Hataj [00:20:20] What if you don’t like the kid or they feel they better fit somewhere else? Do you connect them with another company trade that would be more suitable? Eric, that’s a great question. So what happens in the course – We’re not making a big commitment to these kids. The the the course is, like I said, a vetting process. So the fact that they’re in the class, you know, they’re going to be moved around to other businesses and they just have to job shadow. And we may not like the kid right off the bat. But over that 16 weeks may they start coming out of themselves, and maybe they start gaining more confidence the way we handle it. You know, I think in the eight years we’ve run the course, we’ve had two kids who didn’t finish because they just won’t show up. But what happens over the 16 weeks is we get to know the kids, kids get to know us, and the next step for us is OK and finish the course. Do you really want a job at Edgerton Gear? And if you and and we have to say OK. Maybe, maybe not. Let’s see what what you’ve got. And so our next step is a is a summer internship that we would say it’s boot camp. And we warn them like, we have to find out if you have the work ethic and the character to make it here. So we’ll have the kids, you know, clean machines do lawn maintenance. Maybe we’ll do some community service in, you know, helping other people or just doing some grunt work around the shop. But they’re exposed to our whole manufacturing environment. We see their work ethic and we get to the end of the summer and then we sit down and say, OK, if they’re worthy and we’d like them. The next step is the youth apprenticeship, and then we’ll sign them up on the youth apprenticeship course with the state. And it’s again, it’s an accredited course for the high school. So the kids are getting school credit, they’re on the job getting paid, and that’s during the school day and they get sort of a certificate from the state that said they’ve completed the youth apprenticeship course. But I don’t like to get to that point of doing youth apprenticeship until we do the Craftsman course and then the summer internship. That makes sense. And with that, you know what, I said earlier that less than 50 percent of youth apprenticeships work out. Since we’ve done it this way, we haven’t had 100 percent graduation rate with youth apprentices. We have never lost one because we’ve done the work of building that relationship ahead of time.
Eric Zoromski [00:22:45] That’s awesome. Dave, what what’s your most memorable story? You know, I know I’m sure there’s the kid that walked in and no hoodie and didn’t say a word, and by the end of it, they were a completely different person. What’s what’s your most memorable story?
Dr. David Hataj [00:23:01] You know, there’s so I got to tell you there’s so many and I’ve got three. I got three guys right now that that all fit the same, the same kind of mode where they were D students in high school and school didn’t know what to do with them. They are literally on the verge of flunking out or just dropping out. And and all three of these kids same story. They took our Craftsman course, the light bulb went on, and in every case they became almost A students the next semester. It didn’t affect just our course, but their whole outlook changed where they went, Wow, I think I know what I want to do with my life. And the light bulb went on when they started applying themselves and all three of them. And it happens. It happens all us with all the kids. Their grades improve. But these three in particular, they went from D students to A students. They ended up becoming summer interns. They end up becoming youth apprentices. They graduated high school. We ended up helping them to scholarship, to tech school and all three of all Dstudents as juniors in high school made the dean’s list their first all four semesters that we put them in the tech school. In fact, one of the kids when he graduated the school, asked if he would help stay and teach as a 21 year old. He was that good. And his response because we teach so much humility, that’s one of our core values here in the shop. His response was No, I have way too much to learn. I’m not ready to teach. I need to go back to Edgerton gear and learn to grow up and learn my trade better. Yeah, that’s why we get so excited, because our our average age in our shop now you and most we’ll be back up in most companies. I think in manufacturing, the average age is between 50, 55, 58. Our shop, our average age right now is down to 28. And that’s because we’ve had eight years of of this pipeline that’s developed. It takes a lot of work, but every semester, every year we get one or two new students that become eventually full time employees.
Eric Zoromski [00:25:18] That’s awesome. All right, you can keep rolling if you’d like.
Dr. David Hataj [00:25:24] Well, you know, and you can make this PowerPoint available if you want, but like I said, I am not the center of the universe, and that’s what I talked about, the traits down on the shoulders of those who have come before us. So there’s a little paragraph with every, all of all six principles about this that we just help the kids understand. And like I said, they have to memorize not all the words, but the main the main six headings. And they, you know, we get a hard time. They give me a hard time how we got to say to you and I go, Yeah, I’m going to say this again until you get it, till it really starts to sink in and you believe it. And they do. So what we get out of this one of the exercises, which which I really get a kick out of amazed every time we do it is we have this project where we say,.
Dr. David Hataj [00:26:07] OK, you guys, and just give an example, what in class would be like. One day I said, OK, here’s your project for today: we have ruined planet Earth and we have to go in and build a new civilization on another planet, right? But in sci fi movies, you rarely see a plumber. You really rarely see a toilet. You know, it’s all this, you know, all this fancy stuff that’s going on. But we don’t respect the trades. And in Hollywood doesn’t respect the trades, and we saw video clips and so on proving that. So I said, here’s the deal. If you’re going to go build a civilization somewhere else, we need the tradespeople to go first. Right? So how are you going to choose who’s going to go? And the criteria that we’re going to use that you guys have to figure out is they’re going to choose people based on their character qualities. And so what character qualities you think these trades people that you’re going to select to send to a different planet, do you think they need to be successful on that mission? And the crazy part is they come up with a list and it’s the exact same list all eight years. And then it’s the exact same list that I show them that are on our own guys came up with. And it’s the exact same list that is universal for no matter what culture, no matter what age everybody in the world for, for civilization to function, we need to be trustworthy, need respectful kindness, humility, responsible discipline, team players, all of that. And that really opens up the eyes. The kids say, Oh yeah, that’s how these are really important in my life. And then from there we say, OK, now he got do a serious self-evaluation. You have to go home and find somebody that really will be honest with you and tell you, how do you do on this list? How do you measure up? And then we come back and we talk about the kids get really honest feedback, like, yeah, I’m not nearly as respectful as I need to be. I’m not nearly as disciplined. And so we’re taking the conversation about character and we’re actually applying it to the workplace in their personal life. Yeah, this is where I need to grow up and be a better person to be successful. And again, the transformation we see in these kids is just really, really fun. So that’s where, again, the character analysis I just talked about, and for the students, they obviously gain confidence. They get a sense of direction. We’ve had kids who come and say, Oh, I want to be a welder. Have you ever sat underneath a welding put for 40 hours a week? But that’s all they knew about manufacturing. So when they come, they see, you know, CNC lathes and they see other businesses, and it just gives them a bigger perspective all that’s out there in the real world of experience. And again, the adult apprenticeships, the apprenticeships and the college prep they get for it. It’s a real pathway to employment.
Dr. David Hataj [00:28:55] One of the questions often is, well, what’s it do to your shop? Our employee engagement has just gone through the roof because all of a sudden our guys were like, Wow, I have something to offer this next generation. And when you got someone looking over your shoulder and having to explain what you do as I’ve tracked this for eight years, our productivity has climbed every year as well as our profitability. So I often say that you almost can’t afford not to do this if your company is going to survive. We have to invest in this next generation in a way that that really brings them in and mentor them and trains and helps them to grow up. My middle son, my youngest son, works at a Menards as an HR guy and this generation of students, they’re young people, he’s saying we almost have to think in terms of re-parenting these young people that are coming to work for us because they’ve learned such bad habits. They don’t have all these character qualities that any company needs for our staff to be successful. So that’s kind of the perspective that we’re taken. So obviously, our future is at stake. It’s, you know, it takes some time, it takes some money to do this because we’re freeing people up in the resources, but our businesses aren’t going to survive if we don’t. So I wrote a book about it. Well, it’s kind of my faith perspective, too on on the workplace. But I really believe that that we are civilizations are at stake if we don’t figure out how to teach our young people to do good work, so. So there we go.
Eric Zoromski [00:30:33] That’s awesome. Thanks. Thanks, Dave, for sharing the story there. One question came to mind for me, I guess, you know, at this point, what’s more fulfilling and rewarding for you running this program, running the business?
Dr. David Hataj [00:30:49] That’s a good question. I think you probably can see with my passion, it’s it’s run in this program and really seeing the kids transformed. And you know, I’ve gone through burnout cycles here at the shop for 30 years. This is my 30th year and just this morning we’ve got some major employee issues that we’re dealing with. A couple of guys just aren’t pulling their weight. And we’re going to and after this meeting, I have to go deal with that and have a real honest conversation. But when you see young people and you see people clicking and working together, my stress level used to be just insane. But we have this young crop of leaders coming up that really have a passion for the business, but to also mentor and train the next generation. So we really call ourselves a mentoring culture. And it’s just it’s making gears as easy. But we often say making gears is easy. Helping people and fixing people is hard working with people. I think we can all agree with that whatever industry is. I often say that we’re in, that we’re more in order for whatever industry you’re in, we’re really in the people business, you know, because we need people to run our companies. And so it’s it’s been it’s been life-changing for for me personally and also for our company and for a lot of kids. So yeah, it’s pretty easy answer. I’m really excited to do this course.
Eric Zoromski [00:32:11] Can you talk a little bit? I know you and I talked briefly about, you know, kind of the the next phase of this program and, you know, kind of where you’d like to take it. Can you talk a little bit about that? And maybe you know how if people are interested in talking to you, you know how they might go about doing that?
Dr. David Hataj [00:32:29] Well, I would love to see it expanded. We have some other schools and businesses that are taking it on. I’ve got the curriculum already developed that I’m more than happy to share. And you know, I’m I’m such a believer in seeing how it’s transformed people that if we can help other businesses or school districts or tech schools, however, take it to the next level and really expand it. Couple of people on this call that I invited in there actually kind of part of a team to help me think through how to do that. But we’re really looking. I’m looking for for other places that are willing to to to become models of it and prototypes. So if anybody’s interested and want to know more and figure out how we got this off the ground working with our school district, be more than happy to talk to you and show you our curriculum. I can send it to you and we can. We can have a conversation. But I’ve had folks, there’s one man in here on this call right now, Jay Mason and a few other folks who are saying, This is this needs to go national because this is needed everywhere. We’re we’re losing our generation, our businesses and our civilization is really suffering because we don’t we haven’t done a good job of communicating our young people that that they’re really valuable, important contributors to society, and that’s primarily through the work.
Eric Zoromski [00:33:46] And, you know, all of us, all of us, quote unquote smart people, are going to be paying $200 an hour to have somebody come and fix a pipe in our house. So please. I think we already already are. There’s another question there in the chat for you.
Dr. David Hataj [00:34:05] Are we partnered with the local apprenticeships? Yes. We have the full gamut of of training that the state offers that we’ve developed. So we have our Craftsman course. We’re partnered with the state and the Schools for Youth Apprenticeship. And then we also have a very vibrant adult apprenticeship program. I think I’ve got six apprentices registered right now with the state. So we’ve develop our own training program that follows the whole gamut where it’s a natural progression from Craftsman course, to youth apprenticeship to adult apprenticeship.
Eric Zoromski [00:34:39] So. We lose sense. Still there, David, that we lose you. Or did I just lose, Dave? You know, he’s frozen. Thanks, Eric. Oh, let’s see if we can get him back. We’ll give him a second to see if he got a message and is trying to reconnect. Sorry about that. What is David, you know, he is he is eager to extend the program, looks like he’s dropped off, so we’ll get right back down here. He is looking to extend the program and deal for anybody that wants additional information. You can certainly reach out to me and I can connect the two of you. And in the email that we’ll send up following this will will include a recording. Dave also just had another video is produced on the program that followed the journey, a couple of the kids that have been in the program. And I think that’s that’s ready to share as well. So we will get all of that information out to the group and we’ll try to give Dave a minute here to jump back in. Hopefully you didn’t lose power or something catastrophic. Yes. You know, Kyle, I see a note there. Did you say adult world, do you mean like including adults in the course? And I can open up a. I can open up your microphone to Kyle if you want to. I’ll open up people’s mikes if they want to jump in and chat here at all. Yeah, I’m not sure I haven’t spoken specifically with with Dave about, you know, applying it to your population beyond the high school realm. But but I’m sure he’d be he’d be there. Talk about that with, you
Dr. David Hataj [00:37:10] know, I can tell you that they they got, yeah, they currently don’t do anything with adults. When he referred to adults, he’s referring to the engagement of the adults working in the shop with working with students.
Eric Zoromski [00:37:27] OK. Thanks, Scott. Part of my panel or impromptu panel? Scott, do you? Well, we have a minute. Do you want to share? I know you and Dave have been talking about some different things that the. In the Rockford district you want to kind of talk about, you know, how how you guys might be leveraging the program.
Scott [00:37:48] Yeah, we’re you know, we’re in the exploratory stage right now. But yeah, I serve as an academy coach at at Roosevelt Community Education Center. That’s a part of Rockford Public Schools. Rockford, Illinois. And one of the unique things about the academy program is that a lot of what, Dave, if your schools in your area follow the academy’s model, a lot of what Dave is trying to do is is a part of it really at the heart of what we’re trying to do with the academies. And so we’re actually I’ve been having a lot of conversations is actually in Rockford. We’re a machining town. This was a town that was built on screw making over the years. And so we’ve been talking to to some of the employers and some pretty big names about the idea of how do we do this? And what we’re finding is the more we talk to employers in our area, the more we realize that they are all craving this. They all have the same kind of idea. They just don’t know how to bring it to fruition. So the beauty of what David’s doing is that it provides a mechanism to go in and say, Hey, we have a template for making making this work. Our situation is a little bit unique in the sense that we are technically a for lack of a better term, an alternative program. And so we’re not one of the traditional high schools, but in some ways that actually frees us up to do a lot more of it. So. So while we have not restricted the program and launched into the program, we’re using a lot of the same principles. And one of the things that we’re doing with eagerness is we actually have six times a year that we shut down our school and we take our kids from the various career pathways and we send them out into the community to do do do job shadowing. And so we’re we’re tapping into a lot of those, those same kind of ideas and themes and what we do so.
Eric Zoromski [00:39:41] Great, great, great, great. David, back with us.
Dr. David Hataj [00:39:45] Yeah, our internet dropped, we don’t know what it must be the part of the storm so that understanding and good,
Eric Zoromski [00:39:50] you know, we tap danced. Scott jumped in and talked a little bit about the things you guys are talking about. So here we are. But. Yeah. One of the things I met you in kind of a, you know, I’m doing some exploration around this office and I know that’s a path you’re going down in gear. Now, do you want to just just share a little bit about that journey that you’re on as well?
Dr. David Hataj [00:40:18] Yeah, basically, I was, you know, we’re all we’re all going to have an exit strategy, some somehow somewhere. And my stress run the business over the years has got pretty almost unbearable at times. But since we started on this craftsman course, we’ve got so many young leaders coming on. I thought, You know what? What’s the next step? Because these guys, they treat it like they work here, like they own the place anyway. I mean, their commitment here is just amazing. So I started exploring the whole ESOP option, I guess, about, well, actually about five years ago and this last year, I got real serious about it. So we have officially become an ESOP, started the process, and there’s there’s two ways it could do it. You could do a leveraged one or you just have the ESOP buys out or takes out a big loan and just buys you out as an owner. We’re doing the non leveraged option where I joke with the guys that they’re stuck with me for another 20 years because I’m slowly going to going to phase myself out. But I’ve still needed here and it’s still a lot of fun, so we’re doing our first contribution. So it’s probably about five percent of the company I’m putting into the ESOP this year and really giving them really giving the employees a stake in the ownership of it.
Eric Zoromski [00:41:35] So that’s great. Great. That’s great. You know, it seems like you’re kind of wrapping the whole thing together, which is which is really cool.
Dr. David Hataj [00:41:46] Yeah, yeah, I would say so. When you get the when, when you have a say and kind of developing the character of folks and really getting them on board, I guess to me, it’s why when I meet the owners, because the other option is selling out to somebody that’s going to come in and gut the company and flip it and the commitment that I’ve got that I have from our staff and I have to them, that would just be a wrong thing to do. So I really want to give them a future. And and what kind of controlling their own destiny, I guess?
Eric Zoromski [00:42:18] Any other questions for Dave, either by a chat or I can get turned on. You can turn on your microphones if you want to jump in and say hello. Any other? I know that couple of people have expressed interest already, so. I can probably tell
Dr. David Hataj [00:42:35] you, I can respond to Kyle. As far as for adults. Yeah, we do use the course for adults as well. When we hire anybody new, that’s already out of school. We have them take the course with the kids. I mean, granted, they’re working all in the shop, but we have them join that one day a week in the classroom to share their experiences. And it also teaches them the culture of our company and helps reinforce, you know, these are our values. And this is what’s really expected. And I’ve had 40 year old, 45 year old people take the course with the kids and go, How come I never had this when I was in high school? This would have changed my life. Because we really stress that that every person on this planet, we’re here for two reasons. You know, for that sense of purpose, we need to be doing something worthwhile in our lives and we need to have a sense of community. And it kind of opens their eyes about, well, my my work really does matter. It gives them a sense of dignity and that sense of purpose every day and really teaches and helps them to be more of a team player and committed in our community. So we just make everybody take it.
Eric Zoromski [00:43:46] So it doesn’t feel like a huge stretch if you wanted to, you know, perhaps modify the program and extend it to you, whether it’s, you know, church groups or, you know, people that are working with, you know, either people who didn’t make it through high school or, you know, kind of that that young adult population that’s that’s after yeah, it seems like it’s something that could be fairly easily adapted to that.
Dr. David Hataj [00:44:12] And that’s what we’re looking at, too. Could we make it retail with character, hospitality with care for health care workers with character? I mean, the course is really adaptable because it’s got the same basic principles that no matter what industry we’re at, that we really need. You know, we have to be good people and we got to be able to get along with each other and have that sense of dignity and purpose and in coming to work every day.
Eric Zoromski [00:44:38] Yeah. And would you say, you know, I’ve never run a manufacturing facility, but I would think that most of the challenges that you face from from a people perspective are not that they can’t do the job that they’re physically unable or even, you know, intelligence wise, unable. But the fact that they’re lacking those character skills that are necessary to really be part of a team?
Dr. David Hataj [00:45:04] Absolutely. Absolutely. But far and away, those are the biggest issues that we face is how you help people have those soft skills like the issue you got to deal with after this meeting. Those guys are on their phones too much. And I’m sure no one else would have that issue. And and we’ve got two guys that aren’t pulling their weight in the department. So we have to go back and revisit those, those those ethical work ethic, things that we have to focus on. Like, man, you guys got to work together as a team better and you got to respect each other. And and and I think in any, any business that’s our biggest issues is just getting people to to work better with each other. I mean, Eric, that’s what you do in your business, right? You consult and say, how can you create better cultures within complex? So, yeah. We can we can hire all we can buy all the machines that we’re closing, but how do you get good people and that’s the big challenge. You can buy equipment, but people are the hard part.
Eric Zoromski [00:46:07] So, yeah, absolutely. All right. Any other closing thoughts, Dave? And I think we can probably wrap up.
Dr. David Hataj [00:46:15] No, I just appreciate giving me an opportunity to share. And again, if there’s anything I can do to help, you know, just feel free to share my email or get a hold of me somehow. And this is this is our, you know, we’re all in this together and and I’m willing to share this as much as possible because I think our our communities and our businesses are really at stake. So.
Eric Zoromski [00:46:39] Agreed. David, you good with sharing the link to the new video that is that is that free for
Dr. David Hataj [00:46:46] viewing, although the forged one. Yeah, yeah. Jay, you’re on this call, that’s OK to share, sure, right?
Eric Zoromski [00:46:55] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. It’s really, really well done. So, all right. Thank you all for joining. And we will see you next time. And if you got any questions you want to connect with there, drop me a note and I’ll make sure that that happens. So take care. Everybody have a great holiday. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. All that good stuff. We’ll talk to you soon.
Dr. David Hataj [00:47:21] Thanks, Eric. All right.
