Peckham’s Flint location focuses exclusively on manufacturing. There are approximately 80 team members at the Linden facility, many of whom are veterans, have a disability, or another barrier to employment. Sally is one of them.
Sally has always considered herself a “free flyer,” especially when it comes to employment. She has a long list of workplaces that weren’t a good fit for her – and she wasn’t afraid to leave them in search of different opportunities. At one point, she ran a successful business designing and sewing costumes for competitive dance teams. However, the repetitive movement of elastic pulling required to create dance outfits injured her rotator cuff. Forced to look for other types of work, she found a couple of sewing jobs well-suited for her superior technical abilities. However, in both cases, she soon realized that her soft skills needed fine tuning and began scrolling through Indeed in search of new opportunities.
Peckham’s sewing operation in Flint seemed fitting. The chance to work on sewing machines she’d never used before in a large manufacturing facility proved far more enticing than daunting. Sally began as a Sewer Level One and in two short years, worked her way up to Sewer Level Three. In her current position as a Team Lead, she excels at ensuring the production line moves smoothly through all its steps and components.
To an outsider, manufacturing the same product over and over can seem repetitive and unexciting. However, for Sally, the variations in every piece of fabric and the nuances in every sewing machine and its operation, present challenges that she enjoys tackling. What’s more, working with her team to produce garments that meet exacting government standards fuels her passion for excellence.
Sally attributes her success at Peckham to the emphasis the organization places on developing team members’ soft skills, which in Sally’s case, support the outstanding technical experience she’s gained in over 40 years of sewing. She credits her supervisors with providing the right tools and support she needs to develop the ability to lead and train team members. She praised their indispensable assistance and guidance with helping her deal with issues that arise at work. In her opinion, the atmosphere and attitude of one’s employer are the key to workplace success for people like her.
The cherry on top is the fact that Peckham manufacturers apparel for the U.S. military. As an Air Force veteran, Sally is very modest regarding her years spent in the service, which including a tour in Japan. It seems that for this “free flyer,” Peckham was indeed the right place to land.
