Center for Business, Industry & Labor

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Retraining Eases Downsizing at Sigma-Aldrich

When St. Louis biochemical products manufacturer, Sigma-Aldrich, decided to close its diagnostics division last spring, it was faced with what is becoming an increasingly familiar dilemma for businesses in these uncertain economic times: the prospect of having to let good people go.

Not content to do so, however, Sigma-Aldrich began to seek alternatives to laying off employees affected by the shutdown. Management resolved to retrain ten diagnostics personnel to function in the company’s research and development division.

“We had ten quality employees who needed homes in the company,” said JoAnne Kershner, Director of Research and Development at Sigma-Aldrich. “Normally, we would have gone out and gotten experienced R&D people, but we like to keep good employees. We knew these ten people worked well for diagnostics, and they all had a scientific background; what they needed was some specific ‘retraining’ in the area of biotechnology research.”

How to get that training was the next pressing question for Sigma-Aldrich. Sparked by a proposal from Senior R&D Scientist Tom Juehne, Kerschner and Principal R&D Scientist Brian Ward knew they wanted to offer their diagnostics people an all-encompassing course to bring them up to speed with biotechnology research and development and prepare them for their new duties. Though possible, it was evident that designing and implementing a quality curriculum on the required timetable using internal expertise alone was not the best option.

“We started calling the local colleges and universities to see what they had to offer,” Ward said. “We found that St. Louis Community College, through the Center for Business, Industry and Labor, had a course and a program that was just right for what we wanted to accomplish.”

The College worked with Sigma-Aldrich to prepare a six-week, on-site training program for the employees transitioning to research and development. Classes were held at Sigma-Aldrich, and the employees were able to do their lab work on-site in the company’s dedicated training lab.

“Having the class here was a great setting for everybody to learn in. They were in our facility, using our equipment, and learning everything together. It wasn’t an intimidating experience; I think it was a very safe environment in which to make mistakes and see other people making mistakes too,” Melissa Spears said.

While the lab portion of the program was limited to the ten diagnostics employees, the lectures were open to any interested employees who wanted to attend. Spears said 35 or 40 people attended each lecture.

“The whole thing worked extremely well,” Ward said. “The program was time-efficient, cost-efficient, and complete. The beauty of it was that the College listened to our requirements and tailored a course that met our needs.”

“And the best part is that we were able to keep some really good people. In our business, we need and want people with high technical ability and high quality personnel skills. It’s difficult to train someone to have good personnel skills, but if someone is a little lacking on the technical end, there certainly is something we can do about that,” said Ward.