The Workforce Edge

November 5, 2025

The biggest boxmaker innovations these days start with the people

In business, the word “innovation” usually conjures images of machines and processes that solve a problem or create efficiencies.

But people are at the core of quality boxmaking, and the nominees for the 2025 AICC & Board Converting News Innovator of the Year put people first. Their breakthroughs build human capital by instilling leadership skills throughout their plants and offices.

This year’s nominees are:

Atlas Container: State Work Release Program fills jobs and gives inmates a second chance.
Coastal Container: A one-page plan focuses managers on professional growth and company goals.
Liberty Diversified International: A carefully crafted program cultivates frontline leadership.

‘Good People’ for the Workforce

In a market where labor is scarce but prisons are full, Atlas Container cultivates a steady source of reliable talent by giving state inmates a second chance. “It’s so hard to get good people,” says CEO Paul Centenari. “These are good people.”

The Work Release Program from the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services supports inmates in the transition from incarceration to employment. Participants work during the day and return to prison at night. Under eligibility criteria, they are within 18 months of completing their sentences, meet education or employment readiness standards, have good disciplinary records, and face no other charges.

Atlas Container ran a second-chance program prepandemic and returned to the idea in 2021, suggested by HR Director Rose Lis as the COVID-19 pandemic propelled rising demand for corrugated boxes. Today, about eight to 12 inmates from the Dorsey Run Correctional Facility belong to the 260-person Atlas team.

While correctional and case management staff track participants with on-site checks and calls, Atlas provides the same training that all employees receive. Those who successfully complete the program are hired. “They treated me like a human instead of an inmate,” an Atlas second-chance hire told The Baltimore Sun.

The second-chance participants are quality hires whose respectable retention rates—six or seven people out of every 10 hired—near those of their immigrant co-workers and outpace other American-born hires, Centenari says. “They appreciate it,” he says. “They’re gracious. They work hard. They want to get a good start. They know when they get out of prison, it’s hard to get a job, unfortunately. It’s kind of a gold mine. I also like the idea that we’re helping them.”

Atlas requests nonviolent offenders, who are interviewed by Lis and, if hired, must follow the rules of employment, “just like anybody else,” says Centenari.

Although some don’t work out, perhaps leaving campus or breaking program rules about phone usage, most are “serious and no-nonsense. They want to learn. They want to work. They’re good listeners.”

So many fare well that Centenari doesn’t know “who’s in the program and who isn’t, unless somebody told me. Sometimes, I just forget, because they’re out there doing what they have to do.”

When full-time hires don’t succeed, transportation is usually the culprit, so Centenari is talking with a rental-car company about car or van service—which would be offered to all employees—and vehicle rent-to-own options.

Maryland’s Work Release Program takes risks on people, but Centenari calls it a “smart, brilliant move” that addresses two problems. The state reduces recidivism rates, while employers find people to fill their jobs and achieve strategic goals.

“When you get a good group of people who do good things, good things lead to growth, and growth leads to more investment,” he says. “It’s an epic find. It’s an opportunity to find Americans who want to work.”

People-focused innovations support AICC-member boxmakers and the industry by backfilling “the dearth of workers who want to work in a box plant,” Centenari says. “It’s hard to find people as it is, let alone in a box plant in the summer. This is an outlet to bring in people.”

Plus, second-chance workers “show up every day.”

“It’s a much better situation than the prison they have to return to at night,” he says. “I hope this opens everybody’s eyes and ears and minds and hearts to hiring people that have this disadvantage, because it’ll definitely be advantageous to the organization.”

One-Page Plan Drives Progress

Coastal Container innovates through strategic use of a humble spreadsheet. With every color-coded block, Coastal Container’s one-page plan aligns the quarterly output of each senior manager with the strategic plan’s pillars of vision, assessment, strategy, and quarterly planning.

“It’s taking a simple thing that everyone has, Excel, and creating a vivid treasure map of how to run a successful business,” says Vice President and General Manager Nathan Hoekstra.

The origins of Coastal Container’s one-page plan date to 2014, when Coastal Container Owner Brent Patterson envisioned growth led by process. Moving away from the mindset of sales-driven operations, he built a management team for his West Michigan-based company that is rooted in collective collaboration.

Strategic planning took center stage, but to make it viable, Patterson and the Coastal team developed the plan as an elegant and intricate use of Excel to spin the 12- to 18-month strategic plan into five individualized goals for each member of senior management to accomplish quarterly.

For each manager, the plan answers the question, “What do I do now?” says Hoekstra. “When you’re achievement-based and you’re winning, that provides motivation. It’s simple and complex. The plan has details of everything you need to do in your job. In the fire of a day, in the emotions of a bad week, in the context of a mega-crisis like COVID or tariffs, the one-page plan allows us to have not only direction but common direction.”

With its stoplight-coded blocks for each action step—green for on track, yellow for overcoming hurdles, red for “This is stuck. I need help.”—the plan serves as the basis for each manager’s development reviews.

The one-page plan surfaces strengths and areas of improvement, pairing them with the resources each leader needs to make progress toward the key indicators of sustainability in people, product, and prosperity. By putting professional development in the hands of individuals, the plan is a primary element in Coastal Container’s turnover rate of less than 4%.

The one-page plan instills comprehension of the science of business—those absolutes constrained by the laws of physics, finance, engineering, and mathematics. By following the plan, company leaders and their teams use their 2,080 yearly work hours to make progress toward strategic goals while making room for the art of business—the creative thinking that yields innovations and growth.

Continuous improvement is a cultural touchstone of Coastal Container, ingrained in every job description and backed by extensive learning resources, including a people center planned for the company’s next expansion.

“To be a sustainable organization, we need to evolve,” says Hoekstra. “From operators to office, and die room to design, there’s an evolution of all our folks that ultimately rolls back to the section of the one-page plan that answers the question, ‘Do you want to be here?’”

The system has fostered a shared language around managing the business process and “executing on our brand and promise and purpose,” says Hoekstra. The one-page plan template serves as a living document expressing the values that Coastal Container promises and delivers.

In a commoditized industry where businesses worldwide share common denominators in materials and processes, innovation is the differentiator that yields success. Achieving it means being good stewards for the interests of the owner, employees, suppliers, customers, and community. “If we are innovative, it creates that gravity of connectivity,” says Hoekstra. “We want people to want to do business with us versus selling them on a product that we manufacture. That is a subtle but intentional paradigm of how we have our business set up, and you do that through innovation.”

Developing Frontline Capabilities

Across Liberty Diversified International (LDI) and its 1,900 employees, about 85 frontline leaders supervise almost 1,200 people in hourly production.

“The frontline leader is a really impactful role,” says Chief HR Officer Jennifer Swanson. “They oversee so many employees in our workforce that you can make a pretty big impact by elevating their skills.”

LDI committed to developing frontline leaders as part of a five-year strategic plan launched in fall 2023. Lead the Line emerged as the third leg of a three-part strategy that also delineates the expectations and critical competencies needed in frontline leaders and formalizes onboarding for people new to the role. “Oftentimes, you’ll promote people that are good technical operators into those frontline leader roles, but you have to make sure they have the right leadership skills and capabilities,” says Swanson.

Lead the Line is a yearlong program spooling out across six bimonthly modules teaching key capabilities—the role of a leader, performance management, engaging the team, planning and time management, data and decision-making, and creating a safe work environment.

The program “fits squarely” into the LDI strategic plan’s pillar of talent and culture, says Swanson. Her HR team joined a multidisciplinary mix including plant leaders and supervisors to develop the curriculum. “Building the curriculum internally is probably a little more uncommon these days, but we felt so passionate about knowing the content and how it needed to resonate with our people,” she says.

All frontline leaders were enrolled in Lead the Line, whether new or in their posts for 10 years. Data points informing program design came from life cycle surveys pulsing employees at different stages of their careers and in exit interviews. Results revealed the critical role in retention of the relationships between employees and their direct supervisors. “It gave us a big opportunity to impact 1,200 employees by ensuring that we got the right 85 leaders who are trained and developed to be successful,” Swanson says.

Senior leadership played a key role in communication to frontline leaders regarding the benefits of the program. Frontline leaders were shown why and how the program would help them become better leaders before it began.
The program was developed over about 18 months, and the first module was offered in March.

Trainers include internal HR specialists, subject-matter experts, and senior leaders delivering practical lessons and examples of applying Lead the Line concepts in their daily work. “Storytelling is very effective, and people find it’s meaningful for them,” says Swanson.

Modules are 90 minutes long, minimizing participants’ time away from the floor and leveraging the tendency of people to learn in shorter, bite-sized segments. Virtual sessions, offered around plant schedules, have helped keep participation high.

Managers are told the content of each module and given questions to ask their frontline leaders to reinforce the lessons and how they apply them, “because we know that is a big hurdle, getting them from absorbing the training to very quickly put it into action,” says Swanson. “If we can make that happen, it will be more successful.”

Feedback from participants after each module elicits ideas for improvements. Homework assignments added after the first module now help participants implement their training rapidly.

In their feedback, 100% of frontline leaders said the program is preparing them to be better leaders and allow them to focus on their development. Managers are reporting better communications, more consistent use of shift huddles, and better problem-solving.

One manager reported boosts in productivity, communications, and alignment with business objectives, fostered by frontline leaders who are improving at performance management, engaging their teams, and setting clear expectations and goals.

Innovations matter because the packaging industry “faces constant change,” and LDI’s talent provides the company’s competitive edge, says Swanson. “Customer demands and workforce expectations have changed a lot, especially post-COVID. Operational pressures keep increasing. From my perspective in HR, innovation in the talent space is equally as important as innovation in machines or in processes.”

While generating advancements in production, Lead the Line is preparing the next generation of LDI leaders. “We talk about how you connect with your people, how you give feedback, and how you coach,” says Swanson. “Those are critical skills in every level of leadership, so I absolutely believe this will help us grow future leaders of tomorrow in our company.”