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Signal International is a leading marine and fabrication company operating from Mississippi to Texas in the Gulf of Mexico serving the offshore drilling and marine industry. Even before Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita, Signal was aggressively hiring craftsmen for its shipyards, but the hurricanes scattered the labor force due to lack of housing and the emergence of new opportunities as businesses entered the market that focused on rebuilding the damaged communities.

In an effort to meet its requirements for labor, unfilled despite aggressive local recruitment, Signal is using the U.S. government’s guest worker program, H2B, to make up the difference. Currently Signal employs 300 guest workers from India, employed full time as first-class welders and fitters at its Pascagoula shipyard. A second guest worker program is being started near Orange, Texas.

President and CEO of Signal, Dick Marler, says that the program will stay in effect until the Gulf Coast labor market returns to normal. In the meantime he says that the Indian workers have a reputation for “being pleasant and hard working.”

In many U.S. industries such as manufacturing, shipbuilding, and construction, there is a significant shortage of skilled labor. Some of this is due to cataclysmic events such as hurricanes that alter the labor market in a region, but probably more sweeping are the demographic shifts that are now resulting in fewer workers with such skills. Many of these industries are cited for using illegal immigrants. Signal provides an example of a legal and effective strategy to deal with labor shortages.

Increasingly, the talent strategies of our organizations will need to simultaneously local and global. We will need to become students of culture and of the globe.

• What have you begun to do in order to more aggressively recruit and develop local talent?
• And what is your plan to begin developing global labor resources?

The world is indeed becoming very flat.