Like many other manufacturing companies trying to contain costs, Xylem has steadily chipped away at things like health care benefits and staffing levels (RIFs, position eliminations, delayed backfills, department outsourcing, etc.), plus extended vendor payment terms, and relentless chasing of lower material purchase prices. Good to know, but nothing unique there.
Here’s where Xylem (Morton Grove in particular) is treading on thin ice: Lack of talent retention and development.
Across the site, average years of service has declined well over 65% in the past 6-7 years. In some departments, that number is much more dramatic. The reduction started as an intentional strategy to cull the old “dead wood” and reduce overhead, but failure to implement meaningful succession planning has created other serious problems. Success of the site was built not via investment in progressive business solutions but rather by brute force, on the shoulders of people who knew the levers to pull. Talented new employees now have few veterans from whom to learn the business and the many idiosyncrasies of a site that has struggled for decades to get a grip on its core processes. In addition, poorly conceived talent development programs, and (on the Operations side) an ad hoc personnel performance review process, plus repeated department re-orgs have left many promising individuals with stingy (if any) professional development support and no logical career progression. This has contributed to an accelerating turn-over rate among short to mid-tenure salaried associates and managers, even affecting those graduating from the management rotation program, thus introducing an existential crisis of staffing “bench strength” and continuity.
