Case analysis: Chobani's early success was heavily reliant on learning by employees at every level of the organization. That learning process hasn't stopped as Chobani insists on hiring the majority of its employees and buying supplies from the surrounding communities in which it operates. In addition to its original manufacturing plant in upstate New York, Chobani opened a second plant (at a cost of $750 million), what is now the world's largest yogurt facility, in Twin Falls, Idaho. The new plant is estimated to have created 7,000 jobs in the region. Once operational, the unemployment rate in the region dropped from 6.3 percent to 2.4 percent. Hiring employees from the community isn't always the easiest task, though, because they generally require more training in order to run the automated machinery effectively. In addition, language skills become a barrier as many of the members in the area are refugees and immigrants. However, CEO Hamdi Ulukaya considers the decision to reach out to refugee communities "one of the best things we ever did" because they end up becoming an incredibly loyal and surprisingly innovative workforce. With 16 languages being spoken among employees across Chobani's plants and 30 percent of its employee base being refugees, one of the major forms of training is ESL (English as a second language). Employees who complete personalized language training and an ESL apprenticeship are granted a salary increase (average salaries across the two plants are $19/hour) and earn a greater likelihood for a promotion. Like many companies, training and modeling behavior became a major issue during the pandemic for Chobani. Always innovating, though, Chobani introduced a number of virtual tools to assist with maintenance, commissioning, start-up, and training. One of the major tools being utilized is augmented reality, which gives a plant employee the opportunity to wear a headset that allows a remote support person to see what the plant employee is looking at and communicate with them. Hugh Roddy, vice president of global engineering and product management, explains, "So we won't need to have people come on-site all the time. We can do virtual training on the plant floor. We can train our operators on operating the machine because this actually allows us to record what's been done." This augmented reality option also allows for long-distance training. Employees in Chobani's original New York facility can use the headsets to train employees in Idaho. They even use these recorded sessions to help train vendors.
1) What do you see as some of the advantages of training and using direct members of the community around each of Chobani's locations?
2) What are some of the downsides of having a CEO being willing to make unorthodox decisions? What are some of the advantages?
3) Is the use of augmented (virtual) reality dangerous to train employees in any way? What do you see as the issues for transfer of training with this method?