4 minute read
Laitram
from Top Workplaces 2020
by The Advocate
LARGE BUSINESS WINNER FEATURE
By Kim Chatelain | PHOTOS BY CHRIS GRANGER
In 1943, James Martial Lapeyre, then 16 years old, was working at a Houma seafood-packing plant when he came up with an idea to make shrimp peeling easier. Four years later, the teen’s concept led to the issuance of a patent for the world’s first shrimp peeling machine.
Lapeyre’s invention revolutionized the shrimping industry and spawned a Harahan-based company known today as the Laitram Corporation, which includes four operating divisions and about 2,000 employees worldwide – just over 1,700 of whom are in the New Orleans area. A global leader in the manufacturing of conveyor belts, the company holds more than 1,300 active patents.
Laitram – a name derived by spelling Lapeyre’s middle name backwards – attributes much of its success to a workplace featuring an
intense commitment to innovation, integrity and a culture where employees support one another for the common good of the company, its shareholders and customers.
Employees at Laitram, Large Companies winners for The TimesPicayune | New Orleans Advocate’s 2020 Top Workplaces competition, say they value a work environment that allows them to be self-managed professionals with an eye toward the type of creative autonomy that fosters corporate success and high company morale.
“The work environment at Laitram is deeply rooted in our business philosophies and they ground us in everything we do,” said Jennifer McMillan, the company’s human resources director. “Most businesses hang the posters up touting their business philosophy or principles and it stops there. But employees at Laitram live them every day.”
McMillan said the company has an aggregate employee turnover rate of 7% and a corporate office turnover rate of about 3%, both far below industry averages. The national turnover rate for all industries has hovered around 17%, studies show.
Gregory Washington, an extrusion supervisor in the company’s Intralox Division, said he values the autonomy the job provides.
“No one is micromanaging your efforts or telling you what to do,” Washington said. “Creativity, productivity and individual growth expectations are set high by all of us. We challenge and motivate one another to improve and soar to new heights.”
Washington said the company
provides free computer training and other skills training to its employees, giving them the ability to advance their careers. “This unselfishness on the part of the company reminds me of the quote: ‘Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he feasts for a lifetime.”
Shannon LeBlanc, who works in the customer service department of the company’s Lapeyre Stair Division, raved about the work environment and relationships she has made in her more than three decades with the company.
“It may seem cliché to say that it feels like family, but my work family truly feels like family,” said LeBlanc, who began working at Laitram when she was in college. “Not just within my team and my division, but across divisions with employees who I haven’t worked with directly. The company picnic feels like a family reunion.”
With coronavirus virus guidelines in place this spring, McMillan said corporate employees were immediately empowered to work from home. Manufacturing facility employees were provided with protective equipment and had their temperature tested regularly. Sanitizing was stepped up, using electro-static treatment in high touch areas.
“Rather than layoffs or
furloughs, we actually provided an incentive for our employees who still had to come in as a thank you for the hard work,” McMillan said.
In addition, the company’s onsite health clinic gave employees and their families access to COVID-19 testing and support and helped parents meet their child care needs while daycare centers were closed due to the coronavirus lockdown.
“We believe we rose to the occasion to meet the needs of our employees during this trying time,” McMillan said. “As an essential business, we needed to ensure that our operations could still run but that employee health and safety was our top priority.”
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