TALENT MANAGEMENT
Materion employees are located throughout the world. We have the right people in place to operate our business successfully and we ensure staffing levels align with the needs of the business. At the end of 2021, we employed 3,422 people globally. Approximately 17% were in the Asia-pacific region, 14% were in Europe, and 69% were in North America. 61.5% were employed in manufacturing. Our strong employee base, along with a commitment to customer service excellence and uncompromising values, provide the foundation for our company’s success. Those values upon which our culture rests include: Safety, Ethics, Social Responsibility, Collaboration and Diversity & Inclusion.
Reporting to the CEO, Materion’s Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) is responsible for overseeing our programs that support attraction, development and retention of employees and that enable managers to drive performance and support employee development. The CHRO provides regular updates to the Board of Directors.
ATTRACTING, RETAINING AND DEVELOPING A DIVERSE 21ST CENTURY WORKFORCE
Over the last three years, Materion has continued to invest in an enterprise-wide, world-class Human Capital Management technology platform to support the growth of our business and to provide managers and employees with improved tools for hiring, developing and retaining a global workforce to drive company performance. As part of the transformation initiative, many Human Capital Management practices have been streamlined and standardized, and we continue to focus on building HRIS capability.
Talent Attraction
To improve the efficiency and effectiveness with which we recruit top talent, we have a centralized in-house Talent Acquisition team to support U.S. recruitment. In 2021, the team hired approximately 900 employees to support rebounding business growth.
In 2021, we also continued with strong U.S. hiring for exempt diverse talent, reflecting a year-over-year hiring increase of approximately 50% in females and people of color.
Building the early career pipeline is also an important part of our talent management strategy. In 2020, we launched a Campus Recruiting program to attract early career talent. Now in our third year, the program has expanded to include 28 summer interns in 2022. We also have a two-year rotational Financial Associate Development program for early Finance talent.
Talent Retention & Development
Materion operates in a highly competitive labor market and requires a broad range of technical and leadership skills in a variety of areas. To attract and retain talent, we offer a comprehensive set of benefits that includes healthcare, disability, retirement, business travel accident insurance, life and accident insurance, medical travel insurance, holiday and leave entitlement, tuition assistance, and access to retiree medical coverage. All full-time employees are supported by our benefits package, and over the last couple of years, we have enhanced our dental, vision, critical illness and accident coverages and established a Paid Time Off (PTO) plan.
We are fully committed to identifying and developing the talents of our current leaders, our next generation of leaders, and our early career Campus hires for whom we have rotational programs established.
We support the development of our employees in a variety of ways:
- Feedback and career discussions with managers and mentors
- Rotations and stretch assignments – including expatriate assignments
- Targeting training, including leadership development programs, coaching, technical training and conferences
- Apprenticeships programs - which we are currently expanding
Materion also participates in Women in Manufacturing, through which we are sponsoring education for female manufacturing employees. We also participate in the Manufacturing Institute’s STEP Ahead Awards, which recognizes women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) who exemplify leadership within their companies. In 2022, we were pleased to have a Materion employee recognized as an Award winner.
In addition, we provide professional development training for our female leaders in partnership with the PRADCO organization.
Leadership Model
To ensure a common performance language and clarify what successful performance looks like at Materion, we have a set of ten leadership competencies modeled around Leading the Business, Leading Others, and Leading Yourself. The competencies apply to all salaried employees, resulting in 100% alignment from executives to front-line supervisors. They are now integrated into our recruiting and performance management practices, and we continue to integrate them into employee development practices.
Talent Reviews and Succession Planning
Materion conducts annual organization, talent and succession planning reviews with our CEO and our business unit and functional leaders, utilizing a robust set of tools and criteria including performance calibration, to evaluate and monitor our leadership bench, talent pipeline, and future successors for key senior leadership roles.
We have full confidence in the Company’s senior leadership team to effectively support and activate our Human Capital Management strategies in support of the Company’s global business priorities and growth objectives.
Our focus continues to be on the recruitment of diverse candidates as well as the development of our internal cadre of diverse leaders so they can advance their careers and move into leadership positions throughout the Company.