palletcentral

PalletCentral • May-June 2022 13 set up a care team, and offered Key Performance Indicators based in caring for the company's people, their families, and the greater community. We encourage our people to give by taking the lead as a company and offering funds and a monthly budget to bless others. e caring team decides where the money goes and to whom, either to the employees or to the community. e caring team also offers the employees a chance to give a "Caught You Caring" award to other employees that uphold company core values. It started slow, yet last week alone we had 13 awards to employees that another employee "caught caring." is has been an extremely effective program to bolster moral by instilling an "I got your back" mentality throughout the team. e motivation for these programs at Hay Creek Pallet is with the employee at heart. Running programs above normal human resources duties needs to be a priority for employee engagement – as we all know an engaged employee is a happy employee. Each of us wants to be involved in something bigger than ourselves or than just taking home a paycheck. e caring team leader is separate from human resources, but the HR person does sit on the caring team along with about five or six team members. Regarding the time and effort it takes to do this, we don't look at it as an option. Some may wonder why should we have to reward what our team members should be doing anyway? Yet, the caring awards help to keep our mission and core values top of mind and keep us all on track. We recently had a competition between six different divisions in our company. We divided into teams for donations to the local food pantry which we titled, "e Hunger Games," and gave an award to the team that donated the most food for the pantry. Another time, employees through the caring team, did a backpack drive for the start of school to supply school supplies for the students. is was done also in a friendly competitive way to encourage engagement. We also do a driver education scholarship fund for the local high school to help to pay for new drivers to get their license. Another thing that is a big part of our culture is our Wednesday meal that is provided every week. We call it "lunch and learn," where we do a bible study along with a meal. We get great participation and is done in a way to get good engagement. Visit https://haycreekpallet.com to see a video of Tom Gardner on his company's outreach. McVantage Packaging — Coming Along Side of Employees Submitted by Joe McKinney, Managing Director M cVantage Packaging was originally founded in the early 1950s by C. L. McKinney (my dad). At the time it operated under the name McKinney Lumber, Inc. As his three sons graduated from Auburn, he offered each a job for one year to "prove yourself " even though we had all worked at the company our entire lives. Each of us expanded the business in some way, which also included moving into the pallet business in the 1970s. Today, the company has four locations in North Alabama and Central Tennessee, with headquarters in Tuscumbia, Alabama. e company has 190 employees total, who work in new pallet manufacturing, recycling, and manufacturing of combo pallets from recycled wood. We also manufacture some of its cutstock through a scragg mill and has cut up and saw lines for cants and KD SYP, as well. e company focuses on specialty pallets and crating – making just under 400 different styles and sizes of pallets, boxes, and crates. As for our servant leadership, the company has always worked in this way. My parents knew we had been greatly blessed and with those blessings comes a responsibility to give back. e company operates on five "Core Ideologies," two of which are "A Commitment to the Responsible Individual" and "No Waste." We feel if someone is working to or will do what they can to help themselves (be responsible) it is our obligation to make sure they have the tools available to succeed. Over the years we have offered help in many ways, which include, but are not limited to: • Tuition matching and payment for additional education; PalletCentral • May-June 2022 13

• Cover