114 Business View - November 2015
ing a workplace where people want to work. There’s noth-
ing sexy about our business, so we have to be a terrific
place to work to achieve our goals.”
Matt Mazzella, the fourth generation of the family to join
the business, also talks about the need to support the
company’s employees and provide them with a secure ca-
reer path. “As of now, we have an average tenure of ten
years for each employee. We want to continue to grow that
number and the only way to keep people is to train them
and continue growing them,” he says.
Craig elaborates: “We can’t rely on the educational system
and the background of how people are put into a work-
force, or to rely on somebody coming to us and having
that skill set. So, we’re taking it upon ourselves to educate
them and give them a career path through our company,
so that we do have similar tenure, going forward. Because
if you have someone who’s been with you thirty, thirty-five
or forty years, and they retire, you’re hoping you can have
somebody to fill in and at least stick around for a majority
of that time. It’s much more difficult to do, today, so we put
it upon ourselves to initiate that.”
Hayward remarks that educating the company’s custom-
ers is just as important as educating its workers because
safety is a top priority for everyone. “We spend a lot of time
teaching people how to use the equipment, so that they
are using it correctly,” he says. “Generally, if there’s an ac-
cident, 90 to 95 percent of the time, it’s been misused.”
Mazzella also believes that safety is a prime goal. “We’re
in a business where things are at risk – people lifting prod-
ucts over people’s heads. Our goal is to instill confidence
and comfort. When people think of our name, we want
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