Georgia Company Builds Lean Workforce with WorkKeys^® and Certification Process

Only those with a Work Ready Certificate need apply at Osborne Wood Products, Inc., a family-owned business in northeast Georgia.

The company’s approach to hiring requires candidates to take three WorkKeys assessments—Applied Mathematics, Reading for Information, and Locating Information—and earn a Georgia Work Ready Certificate before they can interview for a position. The Georgia credential is an ACT-authorized certificate; each is assigned a number to allow verification on the National Career Readiness Certificate website.

The 28-employee company makes wood products, including kitchen island legs, table legs, architectural columns, cabinet and crown moldings, and corbels, plus decorative finials and appliqués in a variety of sizes, styles, and wood types. It offers an extensive catalog of stock items and also designs and crafts custom products.

Osborne Wood Products’ approach to lean manufacturing allows employees to turn around jobs in hours versus the days it used to take.

Rapidly changing technology motivated the company to eliminate time and material waste—a process known as lean manufacturing— to stay competitive. Extending lean principles to its hiring practices was a logical step, said Leon Osborne, chief executive officer.

“Hiring at our company used to be a laboriously difficult process. We would advertise a position, receive many applications, and try to determine who had the right skills to do each job,” he said. “Until the Georgia Work Ready Certificate program, we hadn’t been able to figure out how to ‘lean down’ our hiring process.”

Georgia Work Ready was launched in August 2006 to improve the job training and marketability of Georgia’s workforce and drive future economic growth for the state. The program helps companies more reliably match the right people with the right jobs. Georgia Work Ready is based on the WorkKeys assessments and certification for job seekers and a job profiling system for businesses.

Initially, Osborne officials were concerned that implementing Work Ready would take too much time. Once they learned about testing facilities in Georgia and the support that state, county, and area technical colleges and the Chamber of Commerce were providing, they were on board.

“We now have a hiring process that is greatly streamlined,” said Osborne. “Applicants schedule their WorkKeys testing, take the assessments, and bring their certificates to us. We used to spend up to 300 hours sorting through 100 applications for one open position. Now we can find the best applicant in 30 to 40 hours, and we can be confident of our choice.”

A skilled workforce is more important than ever before at Osborne Wood. Computers were nonexistent at the company when it was founded in 1979, and managers could easily train people to do jobs. Today’s complex technology demands that new employees bring high math, computer, and language skills to their positions.

The WorkKeys assessments provide a valid measure of the skill strengths and skill levels of each new employee. “We’ve seen an elevation in the level of skills that new employees have, and their ability to work with a team has been much stronger. The certification process is one of the most significant advances in hiring I’ve ever seen,” said Osborne.