How interpreters are helping this Indiana plant address its labor shortage

Like many manufacturers, DS Smith sorely needed more workers in 2022.

Like many manufacturers, DS Smith sorely needed more workers in 2022. The multinational packing company’s corrugated box plant in Lebanon, Indiana, tried billboards, yard signs, jobs fairs and flyers at churches and fast-food restaurants but found it still took an average of three months to fill roles. That meant existing employees had to put in a lot of overtime, including some Saturday shifts. Then, the facility’s human resources manager, Becky Gordon, had a novel idea. She had noticed that the plant, which opened in 2019, had to turn away a growing number of job candidates who spoke only Spanish because it did not have bilingual personnel to interview, train and manage them. “In order to diversify and bring in more talent, we needed to be able to speak with people whose first language is not English,” Gordon said, noting the growing communities of recent Venezuelan and Nicaraguan immigrants in the nearby cities of Indianapolis and Frankfort. So she decided to hire a full-time interpreter, then added two more. That has enabled the plant to boost its Spanish-speaking workforce to 92, or 42% of its staff, up from eight people, or 6%, in 2022. The facility, which pays $20 an hour to start, can now fill jobs in less than half the time. DS Smith launched the interpreter program as manufacturers were coming under pressure from all sides. The pandemic-fueled spike in online deliveries boosted demand for cardboard boxes, but the tight labor market made it hard for companies to find enough employees. At the same time, an influx of asylum seekers, many from Spanish-speaking countries, were looking for work.