Plastics & Beyond

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Lilian Judy
Welcome to the Plastics and Beyond Podcast, an SPE sponsored podcast supporting a diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce. I'm your host, Lilian Judy, and I invite you to join me every month for new, diverse conversations.

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Lilian Judy
Hi, my name is Lilian Judy with the Plastics and Beyond Podcast. And I have an amazing guest with me today. Lloyd Martin. And he's going to shed some light on his company's program called The Second Chance Program. So, hi, Lloyd. Hello. Welcome.

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Lloyd Martin
Good morning.

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Lilian Judy
Let's just start off by having you tell us a bit about yourself.

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Lloyd Martin
Okay. So I'm the Senior Vice President of Manufacturing and I.T. at our company. And our company is CKS Packaging. We have 27 manufacturing plants that make plastic bottles, containers around the United States and we're based in Atlanta.

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Lilian Judy
So as your background in plastics, are you also a plastics engineer or how did you start?

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Lloyd Martin
I have a plastics engineering technology degree from a university in southern Ohio called Shawnee State University.

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Lilian Judy
Okay. So I am also plastics engineer and I stumbled on plastics engineering. I had no clue there was a program called Plastics Engineering when I went to college. So was this something you always wanted to do or did you just kind of end up in it?

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Lloyd Martin
No, I actually went over to visit to be a electro mechanical engineer.

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Lilian Judy
Oh, wow.

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Lloyd Martin
And the plastics lab just happened to be next door to electro mechanical classes. And I saw all the equipment in there, big colorimeter and all that. So I looked at all that and said, I'm, I want to be a plastics engineer.

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Lloyd Martin
And I signed up for those classes.

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Lilian Judy
Yeah, that's very similar to my story because I also went in for chemical engineering and I ran into the head of the plastics department and he said, Oh, have you heard about plastics? And I said, No. He gave me some pamphlets to read and I was like, I'm sold. So that's how I kind of started my journey.

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Lilian Judy
But today's conversation is very personal to me because I love what you're doing. And the reason why it's personal to me is because my engineering journey was really tough and I consider myself a second chance engineer, if I can say, because I initially started in chemical engineering in Florida and I really struggled through my classes to the point that I almost got kicked out of my program.

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Lilian Judy
And so I managed to transfer over to Massachusetts, and I started in plastics engineering and finally made it. But the journey was about eight years long. And so, I always struggle to kind of open up and tell people about that. So, when you mentioned to me that, you know, you kind of give people second chances, I think this is a very important thing you're doing and a very important topic for us to discuss.

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Lilian Judy
So can you tell me a bit about how that started?

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Lloyd Martin
Sure. We were we're a family owned business, a privately owned still, the family has very strong Christian values and leads our organization with those Christian values. So we have a war room set up so that anybody can go in and pray. They're at corporate headquarters. And I was praying one morning before work and and it just kind of struck me that I think we should do something formal in helping people get a second chance.

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Lloyd Martin
And so I went and talked to one of the sons of the owners and one of the family members thinking that I'm too busy, I'm too busy, but God's put this on me in a way, so ask him what he thinks about me really just immersing myself into starting a second chance program on a formal basis. And and so I, you know, I explained to him, I know I travel a lot, but this is you know, this really just struck me on it.

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Lloyd Martin
You know, I really think we need to do something that's more formal and really track it. And what are your thoughts on it? And he said, well, who am I to argue with God? So. Well, so I really went down to the Safe House in Atlanta is where I started. I had no idea what I was doing and interviewed about 25 gentlemen that were homeless.

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Lloyd Martin
We talked to every one of them, hired five. And three of them still are working for us today. And the goal was to have five sustained employees at the end of the year. And the homeless led me to the rehab facilities because of all the drug and alcohol and the people being released from rehab.

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Lloyd Martin
That led me to prison release programs in Atlanta. And at the end of 2016, when we started this, we had a little over 100 sustained employees in the company. And today in 2022, as of last week, we have a little over 300. And so some great success stories. We had a gentleman that was he was my first hire, was homeless.

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Lloyd Martin
He lived seven and a half years on the streets of Atlanta. And he's an operator now in one of our facilities in Atlanta and has his own home, has his own transportation.

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Lilian Judy
That's amazing

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Lloyd Martin
So which is really a great success story, right there. One of the originals and just two weeks ago, I just promoted a gentleman to be our plant manager in our Illinois plant. He spent seven years in prison on drug related charges, came out and he worked his way up from the bottom. He just wanted to have a career.

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Lloyd Martin
So when I interview and when my leaders throughout the country interview people that are coming out of rehab or prison release systems or the homeless, you know, we tell them if you want to have a career, we can start out your school. Yeah. And we'll pay you to go to school and we'll teach you and you can branch out and do anything in the plastics industries that you want.

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Lloyd Martin
If you want to have a job, then we probably don't want to hire you. We want you to have a career. Yeah. We want you to have something that's life sustaining.

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Lilian Judy
I was going to ask you, like, what's the process like? You meet this person, the person stands out to you, okay, I want to hire this person. What is the process like? How do you onboard the person? Do you take them through any medical screenings? Like what? How do you kind of get to the point where they are employed?

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Lloyd Martin
Yeah. So we don't check the boxes, so to speak. Right. So I already know they have a history, so there's no need to go dig up their history.

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Lilian Judy
Yeah.

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Lloyd Martin
So that's how we literally, you know, it's been really great for a lot of my managers and leaders in our company because they've grown a lot from this. It has changed the way we interview not just second chance people but also you know, people from college, those coming in from any other program. Once we identify somebody that we think wants to have a career and is eager to to come into our company, then we hire them the next day.

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Lloyd Martin
Typically, we hire them the same day, Accroding to what time of day it is. And we put them in a position and we usually try to team them up with somebody to mentor and help them through. You know, the second I get somebody who needs a second chance, there's two parts of that really, and I'll talk about that later today.

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Lloyd Martin
There's reentry, which is pretty basic stuff. It's you need to have an ID, you need to get a bank account, you need a place to live, you need transportation. You know, you need to set all those things up.

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Lilian Judy
Yeah.

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Lloyd Martin
That's that but then there's, there's an issue if there's not reintegration. So there's reentry and then reintegration, reintegration is more about getting a new circle of friends, right? Building trust, understanding and having a plan on the weekend when you have time off so that you don't fall back to your old ways. Right. So helping them get through those first two, three months, having somebody they can call on, whether it's one of our H.R. people, another employee that has embraced, you know, them as a partner or mentor, helps a whole lot.

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Lilian Judy
Mm hmm. Yeah, because I think, so do you have programs that target the career portion of it and then the personal growth portion? Or do you just have one program that targets both?

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Lloyd Martin
So we're a business. So we focus on the career, right? And we focus on helping them build a career. So, you know, success is, I think Napoleon Hill said success is the progressive realization of a worthy idea or goal. Right. So you don't have to be a plant manager. You don't have to be an engineer.

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Lloyd Martin
You can be an operator, a packer, a quality technician, you know. And all of that is success if you're doing what you love to do. Yeah. And you're constantly excelling at it, right? So get, people in, start training them within our industry. Let them understand all the different paths they can take and let them settle in where they feel successful.

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Lloyd Martin
So that's kind of our program from the life part of it. You know, we're certainly not telling people how to live their lives, but we are there to support them if they need it. Yeah. So we're there. For instance, one of the homeless people that we hired originally came in and he was an electro mechanical type person, so he started out being a mechanic in the in the company, didn't have transportation.

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Lloyd Martin
He was taking the bus. He was always late. Four or five mechanics all chipped in at that plant and bought a bicycle so that he could ride it because he wasn't that far from work and he could ride it to work every day. Well, so, you know, I guess that's helping their lifestyle to some degree.

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Lloyd Martin
Yeah. And building that circle of. Of a new circle of influence.

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Lilian Judy
Mm hmm. Okay. Yeah. So is there any part of this that is very personal to you? Like, do you have any personal, like, experiences, family background that has had to go through this process? Is that why you're so? Because I find it very, like, amazing and really inspirational that as senior vice president of the company is embarking on this journey.

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Lilian Judy
I think it's real and it's not very common. So I really want to dig deep and find out, like, where where does this come from?

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Lloyd Martin
So yes is the answer during when I was going to college and I'm a military brat, my father was in the military. So there was a time that I was virtually homeless for a few days because of circumstances that happened. And I was going to join the military. I was going to give up on on college.

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Lloyd Martin
I didn't know which military I wanted to join, but I was going to join the military. And I ran into a gentleman that had a restaurant in the little town that I was in. And to the, it's a short story here, but he basically gave me a second chance. He gave me a place to live. He didn't charge me a whole lot for it.

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Lloyd Martin
And we became friends. And I stayed in college. I graduated to start my career out as well. So and, you know, build my way all the way up. And I think, you know, he kind of in a sense, he gave me that second chance to really start out in my career in plastics as opposed to just going into the military at the time and he kind of got me off the streets there for, you know, virtually for that two or three days that I was there, that has stuck with me because I had mentors that said, Never forget where you come from.

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Lloyd Martin
Yeah, they never forget where you come from. So I never forget those moments. And so it's time now to, in my career and my life, I think it's time to help others. And, you know, give back. Give back is is the way to do it. And that, like I said, in 2016, April 2016, I won't forget that you know, I was just praying about it and it just stuck with me.

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Lilian Judy
So people well, the buzz recently, I would say since the pandemic, a lot of people started having conversations surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion. And I think I've heard a lot of companies, a lot of people have these conversations, but it's very rare for you to this is an aspect of DEI that I don't think is even touched. Is that an untouched industry or untouched area where people people forget that this also needs work.

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Lilian Judy
This also needs support. You know, we're always talking about, you know, diversity and people of color, women. Those are the common ones. But I think that this is very foundational in trying to give back to because I personally don't know much about people who are incarcerated and how they try to assimilate back into society. But I've heard a lot about how tough it is for them to find jobs, for them to find like places to live and stuff.

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Lilian Judy
And so for you to be in this position to want to give back, I really applaud you and I hope that you do get your flowers. But I want us to wrap up this conversation by just touching a bit on running a company and implementing something as unique as this. Like you had mentioned that you have prayer Wednesdays and fasts and tell me a bit about that.

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Lilian Judy
Like, how.

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Lloyd Martin
So? Yeah. So in our company we have a prayer every morning. It's on Teams and anybody that is in our company can get on Teams and from from all over the country and be part of the prayer we have. It's typically from 8:30 till nine 9:15 every morning, every Wednesday. We have Bible study at corporate as well as a lot of our manufacturing plants have a Bible study typically once a week, Wednesday's, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and then once a month on a Wednesday third, usually the third Wednesday.

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Lloyd Martin
We have a prayer and fasting where we invite people from outside of our company to come in and actually have a prayer. Fast time from about 11:30 to 1:00, 1:30. So yeah, we, we do all of that and invite as many people as we can to join us in prayer, not only just for our company, but also prayer for all of our families and those in need, whether it's because of sickness or health or whatever it may be.

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Lloyd Martin
Yeah.

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Lilian Judy
Okay. So what would you say are some of the misconceptions about second chance hires that you have?

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Lloyd Martin
Misconceptions?

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Lilian Judy
Yes. Like societal misconceptions about hiring people, maybe someone who's homeless or someone who is incarcerated or someone, like what do you think is society's idea of these kind of people? And why is it that a lot of people don't.

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Lloyd Martin
I get it,

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Lilian Judy
Hire them?

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Lloyd Martin
Yeah, so, you know, I don't, you know, I certainly don't want to think that I know the answer to why everybody does it, how they how they feel about people that were incarcerated or in rehab or whatever. So but from a company standpoint, from back from the early eighties, even, we had you know, the War on drugs, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, you know, all that type of stuff, you can see a lot.

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Lloyd Martin
The incarceration rate went completely up and rehab facilities increased tremendously and so forth. So and a lot of companies at that time, their hiring policy was and still is today because it's hard to break that chain is if you've been incarcerated or you've been out of federal crime or anything like that, you know, they won't hire you. They just won't do it.

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Lloyd Martin
Yeah, right. And so a lot of companies now are breaking those barriers down and starting to trust that people have paid their dues. Right. And the people that went through rehab are, it's what it's about. They're rehabilitated. Right. They need that opportunity. They're not going to stay rehabilitatednd off of drugs or alcohol or whatever they did to go to jail or prison.

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Lloyd Martin
They're going to fall back if they don't have some sort of employment and job and a way of sustaining their life. Right. And growing in their career. So I think there are quite a few companies that have embraced, you know, a second chance type of hiring program. And what we're finding is that we're finding people that have electro mechanical degrees, master's degrees in business.

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Lloyd Martin
You know, it's amazing the amount of people that, you know, we're all one poor choice away from possibly be in trouble, right? Yeah. One or two. And, you know, and so I think everybody deserves an opportunity to to restart their life and restart their careers. And so I think that the misconception is that they can't be trusted, that they didn't rehabilitate, that they're still doing drugs or alcohol.

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Lloyd Martin
Yeah. They're going to bring it to the workplace, you know, all those those fears. Right. And I would just ask companies to overcome those fears. Yeah. I have 300 sustaining employees.

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Lilian Judy
Yeah, that's very like amazing. So to kind of wrap up our conversation, do you have any advice, I guess, to companies that may be considering second chance hires? Do you have any tips for any companies that are looking to venture out into this? Like any last words?

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Lloyd Martin
Sure. Start small. Yeah, start small. If you start a team, you always want to start with small successes and build the teams, encourage the team, and till they get big successes. And I think the same with this program. Start small, start with five or six. You understand what you need to do to sustain and help them sustain their their careers and your in your company and then grow it from there.

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Lloyd Martin
That's, I guess, the best tip I could give.

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Lilian Judy
Yeah. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation and thank you for all that you're doing.

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Lloyd Martin
And it's nice to meet you.

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Lilian Judy
Nice to meet you, too. Well, I hope you learned a thing or two from this episode, and I will definitely see you all on the next episode of The Plastics and Beyond podcast.