Page 30 - BusinessWest July 6, 2020

goal of attracting different types of customers and doing more for them. Expansion efforts started with the acquisition of a competitor, Mayfield Plastics in Sutton (since renamed Universal), an operation similar to the one in Holyoke.
“We offer a product called custom thermo- forming,” she said of the Holyoke facility. “It’s good for small volumes, but as some customers ramped up, we would lose those customers. Then we started thinking about how we could keep that customer for a longer life cycle, and we started looking at injection molders.”
This led to the acquisition of Sajar Plastics in Middlefield, Ohio in 2018, and the subsequent addition of a blow-molding facility in Pennsyl- vania that had a strong focus on medical-equip- ment manufacturing — steps that have greatly diversified the corporation and opened the door to new types of opportunities.
While Pia is certainly involved with all aspects of the company, especially short- and long-term strategy, she told BusinessWest that people are her main focus, and it’s a role she believes she’s well- suited for.
“I try to spend a lot of time with employees; it’s part of what my focus is with the company,” she explained. “I like to really get out there and talk to people and really understand what our people are saying and thinking, and what their fears are.”
She traditionally did this through those afore- mentioned office hours — the in-person variety, especially in Holyoke, where she would walk the floor every day and talk with people. With the other plants, she would make a point of getting out to each at least once a month.
But COVID-19 changed all that, as it has many other aspects of this business — from the prod-
ucts being made, like those face shields with skirts and plastic dividers for automobiles (similar to those found in cabs), to the precautions being taken to keep employees safe.
Shaping Core Values
What hasn’t changed, especially during these trying times, is the company’s — and especially Pia’s — efforts to help employees overcome those barriers she mentioned.
me an understanding of the barriers that people face that I never had.
“I was in many ways taking for granted things like childcare and transportation and having access to affordable education,” she went on. “These are really, really good people who want
to come in every day and do a really good job, but these are real barriers that they face. It’s not a question of how motivated they are or how ambi- tious they are — there are just structural barriers that people face that I became attuned to when I
“These are really, really good people who want to come in every day and do a really good job, but these are real barriers that they face. It’s not a question of how motivated they are or how ambitious they are — there are just structural barriers that people face that I became attuned to when I talked to my employees.”
And there are many of them, she went on, adding that a good percentage of the company’s employees are single mothers, who faced a num- ber of hurdles before the pandemic and now face even more. She came to understand these hurdles over time, she said, and it was a real learning experience.
“Before we came here, we lived in New York City, we worked in finance, we worked in venture capital,” Kumar explained. “We were doing things with a group of people who had a lot of opportu- nities; they went to certain schools and had the right types of jobs and the right kind of résumés. Coming here and working in manufacturing gave
talked to my employees.”
This understanding of the issues has translated
into policies regarding attendance and other mat- ters that Kumar considers worker-friendly. Elaborating, she said the company has
explored such things as ride-sharing and on-site day care and have encountered significant bar- riers to success. What has worked, she noted, is talking with people to understand their specific situations, and then making accommodations when and where they are practical.
“Our single moth- ers are some of our best workers,” she
Kumar
Continued on page 32
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