Lawton’s All Employee Training 2020
The C.A. Lawton Co. held its annual training day on Friday, March 6, 2020. This training day is an opportunity for the company to update all employees on required safety and environmental issues as well as provide other specialized instruction.
The training day is a focused, full day event. Each employee was scheduled to participate in five different sessions. These sessions included the mandatory reminders of ISO requirements that allow us to maintain our current standard. Other sessions focused on creating a respectful workplace, active threat training, and preparing for ISO 14001:2015 accreditation.
The Respectful Workplace session was presented by the Northeastern Wisconsin Technical College (NWTC). The employees attended a 50 minute session which defined harassment and inclusion. The difference among harassment versus behavioral issues was also discussed. The C.A. Lawton Co. policy of Zero Tolerance was reviewed after bullying and discrimination were brought into the conversation. Employees were coached on how to recognize, handle, and react to these situations in order to create a safe environment within the workplace.
The supervisors within the company attended an additional 50 minutes of training on this important subject. They were also trained to handle any of these issues both between employees themselves and the company. The most important goal of this session was to enable supervisors to recognize when harassment is occurring and then addressing it. All supervisors were encouraged to contact Human Resources as soon as possible to assure the situation is handled correctly. To finish this session, all employees were given a copy of Lawton’s Harassment & Respectful Conduct Policy to review.
The active threat training session was presented by Community Resource Officer Jed Bradley of the De Pere Police Department. Although this was somewhat a familiar topic, the facts presented were staggering. In 2019 alone, there were 435 active threat incidents in the US which resulted in 517 deaths. This breaks down to one incident every four days. The average police response during last year was 4-6 minutes, with most of those incidents being over in 8-12 minutes. Officer Bradley stressed that you cannot stop the situation, but you can help dictate the outcome by your actions. The employees were trained to do something and do it quickly. He ended the session with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”
Lastly, the ISO 14001:2015 accreditation was presented by our Compliance Manager. The current program will include environmental policy, objectives and targets. Planning and mitigating risk along with emergency preparedness demonstrates our competence, training, communication, and awareness.
What does it mean for a company to suspend production to offer training for over 100 employees? That can best be summarized in The C.A. Lawton Co. values: Honesty, Caring, Continuously Improving and Success. Events such as this show that The C.A. Lawton Co. is developing Remarkable People to provide Remarkable Results.