Wiley Metal Fabricating Share

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Wiley Met­al is a fam­i­ly-owned met­al fab­ri­ca­tion com­pa­ny that is proud to call Mar­i­on home. Start­ed in 1982 by Verne Wiley, Wiley Met­al is now owned and oper­at­ed by Verne’s sons, Ed and Rob, and Ed’s sons, Mike and Ben. Wiley Met­al cur­rent­ly has about 130 employ­ees and 2 loca­tions in Mar­i­on.

Over the company’s 38 years of oper­a­tion, Wiley has grown expo­nen­tial­ly through­out the years, expand­ing its foot­print and prod­uct line. Some of Wiley’s most eas­i­ly-rec­og­nized prod­ucts include fire truck bumpers, RV lug­gage doors, semi-truck parts, lift bas­kets for elec­tri­cal trucks, and jet bridges (pas­sen­ger board­ing bridges from air­plane to terminal).

In a time of his­tor­i­cal­ly low unem­ploy­ment rates, where recruit­ing and retain­ing skilled tal­ent is a nation­wide prob­lem, Wiley has suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed pro­gram­ming to dras­ti­cal­ly reduce their turnover. First, Wiley enhanced their onboard­ing pro­gram: con­vers­ing with each employ­ee about expec­ta­tions and oppor­tu­ni­ty with­in the com­pa­ny, hav­ing quar­ter­ly ​“check-ins” with employ­ees, and fos­ter­ing rela­tion­ships so that each employ­ee feels val­ued and inte­grat­ed into the famil­ial cul­ture. Sec­ond, Wiley imple­ment­ed the ​“Com­pen­sa­tion Pro­gram”: a pro­gram designed to moti­vate employ­ees to learn addi­tion­al machin­ery in exchange for increased pay. Employ­ees have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make more mon­ey by learn­ing more skills with­in the com­pa­ny and main­tain­ing qual­i­ty hours of work. Third, Wiley cut the time of tem­po­rary employ­ees in half so that ​“temps” would become full-time employ­ees faster, there­fore access­ing full-employ­ee ben­e­fits faster. Last­ly, Wiley has cre­at­ed intern­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties for high school and col­lege stu­dents to learn about the weld­ing trade. This last sum­mer, Wiley host­ed 12 weld­ing interns from Madi­son Grant High School, and 4 of the stu­dents went on to a weld­ing school in Flori­da for fur­ther train­ing.

Between the more robust onboard­ing, the com­pen­sa­tion pro­gram, reduc­ing the num­ber of temps, and offer­ing intern­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties, Wiley has dras­ti­cal­ly improved employ­ee reten­tion. In 2016, they hired over 280 peo­ple for 8 posi­tions, but in 2018, they hired less than 60 peo­ple for the same 8 roles — a sub­stan­tial reduc­tion in turnover! Wiley Met­al has embraced the mil­len­ni­al work­force by offer­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth and con­tin­ued learn­ing as well as fos­ter­ing a fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed environment.

Sub­mit­ted by:

Mikay­la Marazzi

Grant Coun­ty Eco­nom­ic Growth Council