With the services from Project FINE, Behrens was able to expand their number of employees — creating a diverse employee base that works alongside newly installed automation and robots. Project FINE is a nonprofit helps refugees and immigrants transition to life in the Winona area by offering interpreters, education and connections to work.

Finstad’s discussion with Behrens’ staff — President Dana Busch, CFO Pam Husman, and Vice President of Manufacturing Bill Bellingham — and Project FINE’s executive director, Fatima Said, was focused on the challenges of expanding companies’ employee bases.

“People are very aware in Washington about the workforce challenges we face. Pre-COVID, we already started to see some things happening. We knew that basic demographics and math told us people, especially in rural communities, were getting older and retiring. And we weren’t backfilling the workforce like we should be,” said Finstad. “I think all options have to be on the table. That’s the conversations I’ve been engaging in with folks in D.C. The traditional pathway into the workforce — maybe two-year, four-year or however it may have looked before — I think we turn it upside down now and say whatever works for each and every one of us has to be an option that we talk about.”

Finstad said through the two most recent presidencies, the nation seen very different approaches to border security and immigration. But the answers can come from a combination of both.

“I think (the answer) is a wall with a door and a process that we all can understand and get behind,” said Finstad. “We owe it to our country to make a legal process that we can all understand. We want to create legal citizens out of these folks (who come to America) and get them into the workforce, paying taxes, paying into Social Security and all of the things that we need.”

Busch said the struggle to get employees has pushed the company into adding automation in the workplace.

“We struggle like a lot of U.S. manufacturers do. We do OK, but we can do better.

We have challenges, we would love to upgrade, and we would love to add a lot to automation,” said Busch. “Automation comes at the perceived expense of job opportunities, but we also struggled to get enough employees on in the first place. Automation is actually really something we need. We aren’t going to lay people off as a result of that. We can take people we already have and easily redeploy. (Automation) eases that burden of having to keep that pipeline filled that we really are struggling to get right now. On top of that, it creates higher-paying, higher-trained jobs.”

Fatima Said said she admires the work Behrens has done to create a respectful and inclusive workspace in the community. They were awarded Project FINE’s Partner of the Year Award for their investments of resources and goodwill in building an equitable workplace.

“Project FINE is in the nonprofit sector but we need each other. All our community sectors depend on each other. So we want to support our immigrants by providing jobs for them and helping them get into places they can work and make a better life for themselves,” said Said. “We really understand that if the private sector in our community is not thriving, we all go down. So we want to support our private sector. We want them to do well. So it’s all about working with each other and bringing people together to support our community, our businesses, and make a better place for all of us to live and work.