Why Maureen Scheitz keeps learning

“We’ve got a major problem,” Maureen Scheitz told Acres Group owner Jim Schwantz on the morning she learned the company might not get all of its H-2B workers this summer.

Scheitz found out that the company would get a few dozen foremen through the H-2B program, but not the workers it anticipated. Sherman Fields, vice president of marketing at Acres Group, says making up the loss of the H-2B workers would require a lot of additional recruiting locally and would potentially impact revenue for 2018.“That was a really bad day,” he says.

After sharing the bad news with people, Scheitz spent that day planning an emergency executive meeting for the following morning. She says she put together a list of everything that needed to be done from both a recruiting standpoint and a business perspective to manage the situation. Then, she communicated with managers on what they could do to resolve the labor issue, so they could prepare for the executive meeting.

The next day, people gathered for Scheitz’ emergency meeting. Fields says he remembers walking into the meeting with an expectation of doom-and-gloom.

“I remember walking into the meeting right when it was starting,” he says. “Everybody in the room was happy. I remember thinking, ‘Why is everyone happy?’ Jim looks up and says, ‘Did you hear?’ I’m like, ‘Hear what?’ He says, ‘We got ‘em!’ We found out right in time that our workers were confirmed. And that’s all Maureen – she did everything exactly right.”

Read the full story from the June issue here.