There are many effective ways to recruit and hire quality employees, but it all starts with knowing what workers want and expect from a manufacturing career. These expectations can vary to a great degree, but two expectations in particular can be found at the top of most manufacturing workers’ priority lists.
First, employees expect a hybrid work model that allows some degree of working outside the office, especially for those with advanced degrees and high-level digital and technical skills. Second, they expect a company to cater to younger generation workers who grew up using technology and digital tools in most aspects of their lives. They will not seek employment where such an environment is not available. Here are four ways to approach narrowing the labor gaps in your manufacturing business.
1. Recruit to your target
There is a lot more to recruiting than the standard career web pages, social media advertising, speaking engagements and so on. Techniques that generally produce good results with younger generations and highly educated recruits are wide ranging, but many of them include the use of generative AI, which can gather data and fulfill the following tasks:
- Creating compelling job descriptions for open positions to post them quickly
- Including a chatbot on your career site to answer questions and prompt potential workers to apply for jobs that fit their skills
- Sourcing a large pool of diverse, qualified talent
- Making a list of best-fit candidates to avoid excessive outreach
- Sending personalized texts and emails to high-potential candidates
- Sending personalized job offer letters to speed up hiring of top talent
But not all techniques are AI-generated, of course. The following strategies are also recommended to boost hiring and, in turn, retention.
Invest in your existing workforce. Upskilling helps retain workers and prepare new workers by developing their skills with new internal training programs.
Promote manufacturing careers to younger students. Partner with middle and high schools to recruit young workers with training opportunities that teach skills needed for a manufacturing career. Meet with the future workers to dispel the misconceptions they hold about manufacturing, such as “long hours, dangerous work and low pay.”
Promote manufacturing education for adults. Partner with community colleges and vocational schools to provide adult students with access to career options of which they may not be aware. Look for educational institutions that develop courses to teach the skills in high demand.
Reward for retention. Recognize and reward workers who follow safety rules, meet their goals and show interest in learning. Create a flexible reward system that gives workers the freedom to choose a reward or incentive they prefer, such as:
- Flexible scheduling, including four-day workweeks and the ability to switch shifts
- Financial incentives like bonuses and profit sharing
- Paid time off
- Smaller rewards such as weekly lunches when targets are achieved
2. Build a good environment
Make your workforce diverse. Diversity promotes a more dynamic and creative environment that improves employee morale; enhances retention; and attracts women, veterans and others seeking careers in manufacturing.
Provide more opportunities for women. Many universities are providing technical and digital skills programs for women in college and high school. Other programs, such as the Manufacturing Institute’s 35×30 campaign, are working to build a more diverse workforce by inspiring and empowering women through recognition, research and leadership.
Reach out to the military community for their discipline, teamwork, leadership and problem-solving skills. Get involved in career fairs and virtual hiring events to learn about attracting, hiring and retaining military talent. The Manufacturing Institute’s Heroes MAKE America is committed to helping manufacturers integrate great talent from the military community into their workforce.
3. Take care of your people
Taking good care of your people and the environment they work in minimizes the need to constantly recruit and hire replacements. Valuing your workers motivates them to continue their career at your place of employment. Ways to do this include:
- Maintaining a safe and positive work environment
- Recognizing employees for their efforts and results
- Asking for and listening to employee feedback
- Providing fair compensation and benefits
- Encouraging strong peer relationships
- Investing in career growth and development
- Involving employees in your company’s success
The use of an ERP system can also help to automate routine and repetitive tasks, which reduces the administrative burden on employees. Offer internships and apprenticeships as a head start to career growth. Encourage studies in STEM and other areas critical to the future of manufacturing.
Leverage technology for high-skill workers, such as remote engineers, who can use dashboards and manufacturing apps to provide constant visibility into production from remote locations. With these tools, remote engineers can monitor machines and lines to identify issues and collaborate with on-site colleagues in real time.
4. Improve with ERP software
ERP systems are proving effective in filling some labor gaps by simplifying work processes and working more efficiently. Using an ERP system, for example, to automate manual tasks provides speed and efficiency in back offices and on the shop floor. It enables employees to complete jobs faster and with greater accuracy, allowing companies to get more done with less people. By connecting your ERP system with third-party software like BOM Compare, CAD Interface and Nesting Interface, you can dramatically reduce the time and manpower needed to build complex bill of materials, efficiently cut metal from one piece for different jobs and eliminate manual data entry by importing the bill of materials into your ERP system straight from your CAD software.
Implementing cycle monitoring time measures the efficiency of your production processes using a a three-step process to gather data; simplify production processes; and optimize people, machines and design. ERP software plays a key role in this efficiency technique by tracking real-time data essential to revising and upgrading your processes. When workers are involved in continually simplifying and improving production, it makes them want to be a part of the company.
Making all employees part of your company’s continuous improvement is a good move. Engaging workers in making improvements to processes better taps into their personal knowledge base and encourages them to put their ideas into practice. It also helps with employee retention as workers feel they are contributing to their jobs and the business as a whole.
Organizing training tailored to the skill sets of individual workers is a good way to attract new employees and upskill existing ones. It is especially good at further developing skills and tasks employees are good at but can improve on. Investing in employee training will cultivate a skilled and loyal workforce for your business.
Implementing paperless manufacturing solutions produces monumental improvements in productivity and efficiency. ERP software makes it easy to eliminate or minimize paper usage with barcoding, mobile technologies, tailored dashboards and real-time tracking of labor hours, job costs, defective parts and much more. Switching from paper to digital data recording boosts employee morale to a great degree. Mentioning your paperless environment can also catch the attention of digital job seekers.
Filling unfilled jobs
Finally, there is one strategy you really should pay attention to – hiring outsourced specialists to plug important unfilled jobs. For example, during and after the Covid pandemic, many manufacturers lost their controllers, making it difficult to create accurate financial reports and close the month-end books in a timely manner. Manufacturers can now hire experienced controllers to complete the financials every month on a temporary basis. This gives the company time to recruit and hire a full-time financial professional with highly developed financial and ERP skills.
In some manufacturing jobs, it is okay to start with on-the-job training, but not for jobs requiring advanced degrees. ERP software can help companies track the training requirements, certifications and skill level of employees to identify gaps that can be closed through training programs and upskilling. If new employees will use ERP on the job, be sure the advanced classes integrate ERP learning with the topic being studied.
The best way to do more with less is to use your ERP system to its full capacity to optimize your people and machines. Start by onboarding or developing an internal ERP “guru” who thoroughly knows your ERP system and can help any users with a problem. Then develop departmental gurus, experienced employees who are trained in the specific areas for which they use the software. Create a work environment of continued personal growth and development and you will attract employees who want to make working in your manufacturing business a career.
