THROUGHOUT DONATELLE Plastics, Inc.’s expansive, brightly lit manufacturing facility in New Brighton, people are hard at work producing millions of different components and devices to support patients around the world. Rise workers perform a number of subassembly tasks, quality check products, as well as prepare products for packaging and shipping. Each job they do requires fine attention to detail and quality workmanship.

Nancy Hoff, Rise’s senior sales representative, knew Dave Blaido, Donatelle’s manufacturing manager for Molding and Assembly Operations, from when Dave had worked at another company that had a team of Rise workers. Because of his prior success with Rise, Dave was willing to put together a work team at Donatelle.

Nancy collaborated with Dave as well as Donatelle Human Resources team members Brian Walli and Ashley Dominicak, and Vice President of Manufacturing Operations Matt Knutson, to determine what kinds of jobs people from Rise could do and who would be best suited for the positions.

“The work itself is great and the Donatelle staff have been super to work with,” said Nancy. “Since we started there in June of 2019, they have gotten to know our capabilities and we have added several different types of jobs and tasks.”

“As with all employees we try to make sure we assign them jobs that match their skills and set them up for success,” said Dave. “We want people to be comfortable with the jobs as well as assign work that can be challenging to increase their skills and confidence. People from Rise are very engaged and take a lot of pride in their work.”

Rise Direct Support Professional Kaitlyn Thompson says the wide range of job tasks is something the team of four enjoys the most. “There is a family-like environment here that we truly feel part of. Donatelle employees are kind and appreciative of our work.”

“I like everything I do here,” said Denise Stillings. “It’s really interesting and I like that my work helps patients get better.”

Amy Pancake (shown here) considers the work they do very important. Her favorite jobs are working on surgical instruments and probes.

Molding Supervisor Peter Sellers works with Kaitlyn to determine what types of skills each person has, and what jobs they may be successful in, and an appropriate workload.

“Then we ‘buddy them up’ with other Donatelle employees for training until they are comfortable with the tasks,” Peter explained. “The quality of their work has matched and sometimes exceeded the average employee. They bring positive attitudes, a solid work ethic, and improvements to our work culture.”

Facilities Engineer Matt Call said when he realized how well Rise workers were doing out on the production floor and had an opening for a custodian, he decided to put Allen Jenkins in the position to do cleaning, sanitizing, stocking, and recycling tasks.

“Allen is dependable, keeps busy all day, and does good work,” said Matt. Allen noted that he likes his work, has fun and helpful coworkers, and plans to work at Donatelle for a very long time.

“Rise provides us with a great workforce that you can count on,” Dave added. “They bring a positive energy to the workplace and their dependability is second to none.”

This article appears in the December 2020 issue of the Rise Reporter.