When Heather Williams calls her team at Specialty Plating a group of “MisFit Toys,” she does it with love, appreciation, and also having walked in their shoes.
The Chief Operations Officer at the shop in Denver, Colorado, is no doubt proud of the work her team does for its customers in providing aluminum anodizing, chromate, chromate chrome-free, passivation, black oxide, and zinc plating.
The proof is definitely in the pudding:
- In the past seven years, on-time delivery has gone from 75% to over 90%.
- In the past six years, the non-conformance rate has gone from 1.57% to 0.81%.
- And in the past four years, customer satisfaction has gone from 4.41 to 4.8 on a scale of 5.
But peel back the layers of Specialty Plating organization, and you find a culture deeply rooted in giving second chances to many who walk in the door looking for a job and a family-oriented sense of having each other's back when times get rough.
Help When a Personal Crisis Arose
COO Heather Williams says she had a nervous breakdown in early 2022, and her team at the shop stepped up to keep things running smoothly.And no one is a better example of that than Williams, who, despite being the “mother hen” to a staff that includes convicted felons, recovering addicts, and others who have somehow fallen through the cracks in life, had to deal with her own life crisis recently in which the Specialty Plating stepped in to watch her back.
“I had a nervous breakdown,” Williams says of an extended absence from the shop in early 2022. “I have bipolar, post-traumatic stress disorder, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. I was in the hospital for three weeks and in outpatient for five weeks. My jobs were killing me.”
Not only does Williams run the Specialty Plating operation for owner Valerie Hastings, but she also helps run a machine tool company that Hastings owns. Williams felt that she was overwhelmed but didn’t ask Hastings for help, although the owner sensed something was off well before Williams finally hit rock bottom.
Aside from owning plating and machining companies, Hastings also has her own accounting firm that she runs — as well as at times serving as a volunteer firefighter — and left Williams alone to run the businesses without micromanaging.
“I have so much stress in my life from running three companies, so I didn't realize entirely what was happening until all of a sudden there were some major incidences that happened,” Hastings says. “And then I knew something was way off. Basically, the choice was you either go get it fixed, or you don't work here anymore.”
Where Williams had given second chances to numerous employees who came to her from halfway houses and some directly from prison, Hastings says she also needed to give Williams some tough love so that she would take care of herself before taking care of others.
“There's no other way to get around that,” Hastings says. “Because it's not okay if you are upsetting other employees or making really bad decisions that could harm other people and yourself. The reality check was a good one because we wanted Heather well.”
MisFit Toys Step Up in a Big Way
Jeremy is one of the employees at Specialty Plating who has enjoyed a second chanve working at the shop.While Williams was working to make herself physically and mentally healthy, the remarkable reality was that Specialty Plating’s MisFit Toys stepped up in a big way to keep the company going and the work flowing through the 10,000-square-foot shop.
Luckily for Williams, she had already been grooming Lab Director Carl Funk to assume her role as General Manager of Specialty Plating, a plan that had been put into place by Hastings, who wanted Williams to oversee both the finishing shop and the machining company officially.
Funk is a former specialist with the U.S. Army who had maintained all lab duties and was trained to run the quality and chemical testing. He has been with Specialty Plating for nearly five years and has organized all lot control and certification records for the company.
Funk’s main responsibility was in several areas of the quality management system, including chemical analysis testing, quality assurance testing, calibration, and chemical lot control. Aside from completing daily bath testing and monthly quality testing of coating weight, salt spray, and heat resistivity testing, Funk also handles dealing with our regulatory agencies.
Funk joined Specialty Plating after being released from prison and says it was one of the few places that offered to hire him after his incarceration.
“I was locked up for a little while, and it was hard to find a job,” he says. “But this place was known to be willing to give people a second chance.”
Working Way Into Management
The staff improved Specialty Plating’s on-time delivery rate from 72% to nearly 90%.His first job was in production, where he worked under the tutelage of Jeanette Leon, who has been with Specialty for 17 years and has more than 25 years of experience in the industry. Leon is the floor lead and head racker for all aluminum side processing, which is 70% of all production in the facility.
Funk also worked alongside Genaro Barron, who has been with the shop for 28 years. Barron is in charge of all chemical maintenance processes and is able to plate on all production lines, as well as being the main source of historical knowledge of parts.
When the shop’s lab technician passed away, Funk was moved to quality control because he had training in that area, too. He says having worked on the production floor with Leon helped him better do his job in the lab.
“I think I better understood the theory behind things and the practicalities of it,” he says. “I started building my way from the lab into the management side and went through a few training classes to build up my knowledge.”
When Williams had to take a leave of absence, Funk knew it was time to step up and help lead the team of 12 production employees and three office staff. At first, Williams was hit or miss when she showed up in late 2021, and finally, when she admitted herself into the hospital for help in early 2022, that’s when the MisFit Toys stepped up.
“We didn't know what was going on at first,” Funk says. “We just knew, ‘Oh, Heather didn't come in today.’ Some days, she worked from home, and other days, she was here for a bit. We knew she had other interests out there that she takes care of, so often we thought, ‘this is just one of those days where she's not coming in.’ Then we got more information that there was more going on.”
Get the Most Out of Everybody
Supervisors Carl Funk and Leroy Milburn help grill for the staff, a usual site at Specialty Plating.Production Lead Leroy Milburn was another who helped step up to keep things running. His job already entailed scheduling the projects, working with customers on updates, and ensuring parts were delivered on time. He’s also the hiring — and firing — manager, although he despises the latter.
“My job is trying to get the most out of everybody,” Milburn says. “It’s about putting people in positions where they're going to be successful and where they are happy. If they're happy, they're going to work more; they are going to do better. You can't just take somebody and expect them to succeed. You have to be aware of what they're good at and what they're not.”
Like many other employees on staff, Milburn came from a troubled background and has changed his life entirely since working at Specialty Plating. He originally started there in 2011 when his probation officer gave him a list of businesses that would hire people with criminal records, and he had no idea what the company did.
He worked there for about a month and a half but ended up going to prison for a year.
“I just disappeared off the face of the earth to them,” Milburn says.
When he was in jail, Milburn wrote them a letter telling them he wanted to come back to work when he got out but didn’t hold out much hope. When he did get out, Specialty Plating still had his last check here from before he went to prison, so he called about picking it up.
“It's an odd thing, but when I called, they asked me if I wanted my job back,” Milburn says. “I wrote them a letter because, when I first started, it seemed really tight-knit, very, really family-oriented. People here are close, and yeah, people bicker and get stressed out, but we all care about each other, and we all do everything to help each other.”
Troubleshoot Finishing Baths Prior To Becoming an Issue
Williams made sure that everyone gets a birthday cake at the shop, as some staff members have gone years without a celebratory party.That was the mentality first set by Williams, who holds a Bachelor of Science degree in biology with an emphasis on botany and a minor in chemistry. With a strong background in chemical analysis, she made her importance known to Hastings early on 12 years ago when she was hired at Specialty Plating for being able to troubleshoot finishing baths prior to them becoming an issue quickly.
Williams says Specialty Plating’s Customer Service Manager Kim Gutierrez and she have been friends for years, and that their daughter were best friends in elementary school, which is where the two met.
“Kim has been my best friend for 17 years,” Williams says. “I have known her longer than working here.”
The two hit it off big at Specialty Plating and combined Gutierrez’s need to get parts out the door quickly — and at the highest quality — with Williams's penchant for fixing bath issues even before they slowed production.
Between the two, they improved Specialty Plating’s on-time delivery rate from 72% to nearly 90%.
But that emphasis on quality, delivery, and working with some hi-tech components — their customers include Air Comm, Air Methods, Ball Aerospace, and Sierra Nevada — began to take its toll on Williams, who says she began to feel anxiety whenever the machining or plating shop had the rare occurrence of producing non-conformance parts.
Having Nightmares About Tolerance Being Off
In fact, the over-worrying about defects actually was keeping her up at night and causing her to lose sleep, even though the minuscule percentage of rejects was acceptable by any standard. But for Williams, she kept imagining what would happen if those rejects somehow found their way onto aircraft and other components.
“It seemed like we kept having corrective actions at the machine shop, and all I could think of was that I wanted to escape, run away and hide, or do self-harm of some sort to myself to make it to make all of it go away,” Williams says. “I was more concerned about the flight worthiness of the components that we were making; I was having nightmares about the components that we make.”
Williams says that some of the parts they make are utilized in components “that go boom, so you can figure out what we made.” Even though there was no significant evidence of it happening, it bothered her incessantly.
“I was having nightmares that because a tolerance was off on some part, the trajectory was wrong, and all of a sudden, it hit a school, or it went into a community, or there was some kind of fault with it that ultimately was going to be our responsibility,” she says. “I'm so compassionate about what we do, but I'm also I'm very sensitive. I just kept worrying and having these nightmares that just accumulated over time.”
Finally, the anguish came to a head when Williams’ work habits began interfering with the operations of the companies, and that is when Hastings stepped in. She ordered Williams to seek professional help, or she would need to be replaced.
Owner Puts Her Foot Down to Help Staff
Valerie HastingsHaving a team of MisFit Toys means this wasn’t Hastings's first time putting her foot down, but she was also more concerned about getting Williams healthy again. To spur her to get the medical and psychological help she needed, there were times when Hastings threatened Williams with her job.
“It's not the first time I've had to do it, and I don't like doing it,” Hastings says. “I give way too many chances as it is, but that's because my mom and dad did the same thing when they owned the companies.”
Williams began receiving the help she needed — and she still talks to a therapist every week ‚ She was in the hospital for three weeks and then did outpatient for five weeks, but some of it was at night, so she was able to return to work six weeks after departing.
But Hastings also put her foot down on the way Williams was running the companies, encouraging her to delegate more work to others and stop putting the weight on her shoulders.
“Before Heather's incident, she had a little bit of a control freak problem and didn't want anybody else to know what she was doing,” Hastings says. “And I said,’ That's changing right now.’ We now have multiple people that can cover multiple disciplines. If something happens to any one of us, we should be able to function. But I just hadn't put my foot down enough.”
Promotion to Chief Operating Officer
After coming back to work, Williams was promoted to her COO position to oversee both of Hastings’ companies and feels much better about how she is adjusting. For the last year, she has been focusing on getting Funk up and running so that she can spend more time overseeing the machine shop operations.
“I'm doing pretty good,” Williams says. “I didn't want to necessarily step up into the COO position because I really liked being the general manager, and I love being with my staff every day. But it comes down to where the owner needs me the most, and right now, she needs me at the manufacturing facility.”
That doesn’t mean Williams isn’t still involved with her MisFit Toys at Specialty Plating. She still works closely with parole officers and social workers to provide the most supportive environment possible for those who need it, and she is constantly writing letters to parole boards or officers informing them of an employee’s progress they have made.
One of those is Brian Davison, who works part-time at Specialty Plating and is also employed at faith-based rehab center 180 Ministries, where several other employees have stayed. Williams says he is their liaison to a sober living house and is a very energetic person.
“He recently married his sweetheart and is saving to get a place of their own,” she says. “Brian is the funny cousin everyone has with stories, a boisterous personality, and overall enjoyment to work with.”
Davison says he is appreciative of the opportunity that Hastings, Williams, and the Specialty Plating team have given him.
“I was homeless for a few years here in Colorado and on drugs,” he says. “When I came here, I was super nervous at first. I've done construction and other stuff, but here you're not just working for a paycheck. It’s about the people you're working with. It's like a family.”
Where Everyone Gets a Piece of the Cake
Some employees are thrilled to get a second chance at Specialty Plating.Another is Nate Clements, a new addition to the Quality Management Team, but who Williams says has been an integral part of the Specialty Plating team for the last five years. He had been a part of the production team for the first year, then he moved to shipping/receiving for two years, and finally, he has been promoted to their accounting team for the last year.
It was Clements who initiated the 180 Ministries pipeline to bring those needing a second chance to Specialty Plating.
Williams says what makes things work at Specialty Plating is that many of the employees have seen hard times, but they have also spent a long time in self-reflection, studies, and programs to create a life worth living.
In fact, celebrations are a common occurrence at the shop, and Williams says they can be anything from a birthday, anniversary, monthly potluck, getting off parole, graduating from a mandatory program, 30 days of sobriety, or a holiday party.
After finding out that some employees had not had birthday cakes in over 15 years, Williams says they do birthdays for everyone; they get a cake and a card, but they must share the cake.
The Specialty Plating website even encourages applicants to “see if you fit in with our large dysfunctional family.”
For those who work at the shop, it is probably the closest thing to a family they have.
“We don’t judge here,” Williams says. “Everyone has a past, and everyone has repercussions from it. Supporting a sober environment allows for all workers to come together in comradery as we progress through the workday.”
