Meeting the Need for Seasonal Labor

The Situation: Paper Mate, the emblematic two hearts logo company, has operated a manufacturing facility under the shelter umbrella of IVEMSA in Mexicali, Mexico for more than 18 years. During summer of each of those years, the plant reached peak production in preparation for the “back to school” season during which product demand was routinely doubled and often tripled.

The Challenge: Meet the increased labor demand during the back to school season. This involves augmenting the existing labor force of approximately 800 workers to over 2,000 in a very short period of time while ensuring that all labor compliance requirements are met. And of course doing all of this with the minimum cost and disruption possible.

The Action: Using internal resources, and an external network, the IVEMSA HR team developed a full suite of recruitment tools to guarantee labor pool availability. To help achieve recruitment goals, the HR team created flexible work plans, worker’s benefits, creative salary categories, and studied market trends to assure that efforts would be competitive. The team then hired, trained, managed and ultimately laid off the seasonal workers, keeping complete documentation of every hire to minimize risk and exposure of Paper Mate to potential labor lawsuit or penalties from authorities.

The Result: Each year IVEMSA meets the dramatic seasonal labor requirements needed, allowing Paper Mate to meet increased product demand with no delays or disruptions. Additionally, there have been no legal incidents or complications that could impact cost or operations.