Launching a career in metal fabrication and the skilled trades

Operators MIG weld a large component. Spectrum Metalcraft employs a mix of MIG and TIG welders, while Vortex primarily employs TIG welders. Each position has a career progression designed around the company’s needs. Images: Vortex Companies

The past few years have been a time of transition in the custom and contract metal fabrication arena. Leaders, be they founders or subsequent generations of a family business, are looking for exit strategies. Often, they’re looking to sell, whether to outside investors or another company. And therein lies the worry.

Will people lose their jobs as the new owners gut what legacy employees worked so hard to accomplish? Will the businesses be stronger together than they were apart? Fortunately for Salina, Kan.-based Spectrum Metalcraft, the latter occurred.

In 2018, the custom metal fabricator was purchased by Vortex Companies, also based in Salina. Vortex Companies is a collection of firms that also includes Hamar Automation, a maker of electric linear actuators; and Vortex Global, a manufacturer of slide gates, diverters, valves, and loading systems for handling dry bulk powders, aggregates, and granules—the products that make the manufacturing of drywall and other everyday items possible.

The companies use similar equipment and processes (especially Vortex Global and Spectrum)—laser cutting, press brakes, welding—but they really are very different operations. Hamar and Vortex Global are product manufacturers, with a mix of make-to-stock and engineered-to-order work, while Spectrum is a custom and contract metal fabricator.

Considering their differences, what has made the merger under one corporate umbrella so smooth? To answer that question, The Fabricator sat down with Travis Young, CEO of Vortex Companies. Part of the answer has to do with the business strategy: Acquisitions have focused on products that complement or expand existing lines (like Hamar) as well as vertical integrations like Spectrum, once one of Vortex’s major suppliers of fabricated metal parts. Today, the overall organization employs about 450, and about 100 of those work at Spectrum.

Still, as Young explained, the most important aspect of the company’s success has less to do with any sweeping business growth strategy and more to do with culture. “It’s about finding the right people with the right ‘PHIRE,’” he said, adding that the acronym is read like “fire.” It stands for passion, humility, integrity, respect, and empathy.

Value statements aren’t unusual, but they can ring hollow if they’re just posted on the wall and repeated mantra-like during all-hands meetings. Actions make them real. At Vortex Companies, those could be boiled down to two core areas: career path planning and open communication—about process knowledge, training, growth opportunities, and even worker pay.

Avoiding Rudderless Work

Picture this common conundrum: You love welding. You have an artisan touch with the TIG torch. You know how to make that stack-of-dimes-looking weld people want. Then someone from top management offers you a supervisory role. You’re one of the best at what you do, so that means you should be a leader—right? Besides, the move makes intuitive sense: You’re good, so you should climb the organizational ladder and benefit financially from doing so. After all, it’s the best way to get that larger paycheck. But then the realities of the new role come to light. You miss the hands-on work, the feeling of accomplishment seeing a near-perfect weld. So, eventually, you leave for greener pastures.

Now picture another common conundrum at the opposite end of the spectrum: You’re a new hire. You shadow someone running a machine. You learn the ropes as best you can, but you really have no idea where you’re headed. There’s no standardization. No one tells you exactly what you need to do to succeed, what your future opportunities could be, and what future pay you might be able to achieve. Considering all this, you just keep your head down and learn what people tell you. You feel lost, untethered. So, again, you depart for greener pastures.

These specific examples are purely hypothetical and a bit extreme, but as Young explained, they do represent issues Vortex Companies has worked to avoid, especially as the organization rebounded from the pandemic.

A master technician prepares a setup on a vertical mill.

As Young recalled, “We tried to walk in the shoes of someone onboarding here, especially on the manufacturing side. We noted that there really wasn’t a defined career path. They really didn’t know what their potential was, what they were accountable for in terms of skills development, or, in truth, why they were here.”

Detailing a Career Path

This ultimately led the company in 2022 to develop Launchpad, what it calls a “career trajectory program.” It identifies potential career paths, both in technical and leadership areas, and maps out where each path might lead, along with the skills people need to get there.

As a starting point, Young and his team looked at the knowledge and training required for entry-level positions in manufacturing. Aside from a few positions in welding (especially TIG welding), nearly all of Vortex Companies’ entry-level manufacturing jobs don’t require metal fabrication experience.

“Because people don’t necessarily need manufacturing experience when they get here,” Young said, “we need to make sure we have a good plan in place to develop skills and knowledge over time.”

Employees’ first year is their most significant, the time where they learn the most. They do a mix of classroom work and job shadowing, but the experience is supported with detailed work instructions. Technicians always have more to learn, but the fundamentals are documented, not tribal and locked inside people’s heads.

The first three technician levels cover the basics, including general shop skills like print reading and inspection, as well as fundamentals related to specific machines, technologies, and jobs. “If they can prove they can get through our Tech 3 level, we start getting into more detail about efficiencies and utilization,” Young said. “And, depending on where they work, we might delve into more cross-training.”

Concurrent with all this, all managers and supervisors attend the company’s Leadership Academy, a group of sessions held between six and eight times a year. These meetings complement various smaller classroom events that cover specific leadership aspects, like coaching or interviewing techniques. Everyone with a direct report attends. The biggest theme: The entire organization avoids a command-and-control management style but instead practices servant leadership, where listening, educating, and supporting win out over dictating.

Servant leadership calls for a specific kind of person, Young said, and the more existing leaders learn about it, the better they can identify other potential leaders. “This ensures we’re appointing the true leaders. We’re not giving a leadership role to people just because they happen to be the best welder or assembler.”

Pay Transparency

Launchpad gives a road map for employees. What do they need to do to become a Tech 3 CNC machine operator, or a shipping and logistics tech? How about a Tech 3 TIG welder? The road map will differ depending on the position and division they work for. A TIG welding career at Vortex Global looks different from a MIG welding career at Spectrum. But Launchpad spells out all the details—the required training, specific skills needed for every job level, and even pay.

For every manufacturing position, if someone knows your job title and your tenure, they know what your paycheck looks like.

Vortex offers positions both in manual and robotic welding, and both are detailed on the company’s technician career path matrix.

“When we started Launchpad, we also started making pay transparent,” Young said. “We publish charts that show the pay for reaching a specific technician level at so many years of service. This makes it very clear where everyone stands in their job. In part, we made pay transparent because many people knew what others made anyway. Word got around.” He added that publishing exactly what specific positions pay “eliminates any subjectivity or bias and holds everyone accountable.”

Welders who happen to be friends of the boss won’t get preferential treatment. They’ll need to achieve the same level of skill as anyone else in their position, and they’ll get paid at the published rate, no more and no less. Making pay transparent did highlight the effects of inflation, especially for entry-level positions. “The entry-level wage has gone up, simply because we’ve had to keep up with inflation and be competitive in the market,” Young said. “Without it, we wouldn’t be able to get people to apply.”

This again comes back to transparency. Rather than pretending to hide the reality of rising entry-level wages, the company published them for all to see. Having that information opens the gate to more communication. The facts are objective. They’re not personal, just based on labor market realities. Someone with good connections isn’t making more than anyone else.

Choosing a Path

Since not everyone works at the same pace, not everyone makes it to Tech 4 and 5—the master technician level. These top tiers serve several purposes. First, they show the opportunities for people who love and excel at hands-on work—and the pay transparency allows them to see what kind of money they can expect. They see that they don’t need a leadership position to make a good living.

The pay transparency also shows how the company rewards years of service. Performance is critical, but tenure still matters. “We try to get everyone to Tech 3, then evaluate from there,” Young said. “And because we do offer higher pay for tenure, people needn’t feel like they’re stuck in a rut. And, of course, we make annual adjustments based on the market.”

After Launchpad, new employees now see a clear path ahead. They see all the available positions, from robotic weld cell operator to programmer to machinist to fork truck driver. They see what the pay is now, and they see what they could make in the future. They needn’t climb the org chart to make more money.

So, has Launchpad paid off? According to the numbers, it has. “In the past, we’ve doubled revenue every decade,” Young said, “and that’s happened both through acquisition and organic growth. And between 2020 and 2025, I think we’ll be doubling our revenue again. We keep beating our targets, so we’ll have to continue making big, audacious goals.”

Perhaps most telling was the announcement Spectrum made in February. The custom fabricator had just begun a building expansion that included renovations and technologies that aim to streamline manufacturing by eliminating constraints and leveraging data analytics.

The expansion also makes room for a new meeting area called the Peterson Family Conference Center, in honor of Spectrum’s founders. The press release called it a “collaborative workspace” for both employees and clients.

The 7,500-sq.-ft. space has no machines, nothing that would increase manufacturing capacity directly—but indirectly, when people talk and information and ideas start flowing, the potential abounds.

Operators guide a workpiece through a three-roll machine.