Tag Archives: Great Resignation

 

There’s no sugar-coating it. It’s tough out there for manufacturers on the front lines of the hiring wars. We are in an unprecedented hiring-and-retention situation in this country. The Great Resignation numbers just keep climbing. According to CNN, 47.4 million people left their jobs in 2021. That’s a lot of open positions and a lot of people out of work. You’d think it would be a hirer’s market. It’s just the opposite.

“54% of U.S. manufacturers are finding it difficult to attract skilled workers to get the job done. That’s up from 38% before the pandemic.”

Companies in all industries are feeling the hiring pain, but manufacturing is getting hit especially hard. IndustryWeek reports that 54% of U.S. manufacturers are finding it difficult to attract skilled workers to get the job done. That’s up from 38% before the pandemic. Competition for skilled workers to fill all of those jobs has never been more intense. And that competition isn’t just coming from other manufacturers. It’s also coming from other industries, like transportation, warehousing, even retail.

Hiring is only one part of the challenge. It’s also about retention. From a study by the Workforce Institute at HR solutions company UKG, manufacturers are getting “ghosted” by workers who simply don’t show up for their shifts. A shocking 68% of manufacturers said they let employees go because of it between January and March 2021.

So, what’s going on? Instead of the Great Resignation, you might call it the Great Reassessment. As Industry Week puts it, workers aren’t just reassessing what they do for their 9-to-5 and walking out the door, they’re also thinking about where they do it and why they do it. People have streamed out of the workplace in record numbers because they want more. More pay, more flexibility, more benefits, more meaning and more happiness.

Manufacturers who understand that is the key to winning the hiring wars. Let’s look at how to put that into practice when you’re trying to hire and retain employees.

What manufacturers can do to hire and retain workers

Here are six strategies to help you attract and keep the people you need to get the job done.

1. Open your company purse strings. To borrow a line from Cuba Gooding Jr., show them the money. With McDonald’s paying more than $20 an hour to flip burgers, it’s tough to compete with that. But look at what your competition is paying and match it, or if possible, exceed it. Job seekers today are ultra-choosy, and a high salary is one of the most important weapons in your hiring arsenal.

2. Cast your net wider. Do you have a background check that excludes people who have had felonies or other arrests? Would you consider hiring a retiree? How about someone with special needs? From the same Workforce Institute study, 62% of manufacturers have hired or considered hiring people with special needs, 56% have hired retirees, and 52% are considering hiring people who have been incarcerated. You may not have considered this talent pool in the past, but there are great advantages to hiring people who traditionally have trouble getting a break. Increased loyalty is a big one.

3. Work with schools to train and recruit students. The National Law Review points out that an entire generation of manufacturing workers is getting ready for retirement, and younger workers simply don’t have the skills to take up the mantle. By training students and those just out of school, you’ll be creating a pool of new employees who have the skills to get the job done in your workplace. This, in turn, will help reduce the skills gap that separates your new hires from your seasoned veterans and retirees.

4. Rethink your benefits. Your benefits package is especially important in luring Great Resigners back into the workplace. As we said, many people have quit their jobs because they’re looking for something more, and benefits are a big part of that. Robust health care that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg is a must. But think outside the box, too. Industries like retail and hospitality are luring younger workers by offering to pay off their student debt, cover childcare expenses and grant generous PTO.

5. Invest in upskilling and training. This is vital for retention, but it’s important for hiring, too. If your candidates know you are committed to your current employees’ futures, giving them the opportunity to learn new and valuable skills, it’s a big plus. It shows you’re in it for the long term, not just hiring a warm body to fill a hole on the line. For your employees who are already on the job, upskilling and training can increase their engagement exponentially. One of our clients recently put a new training program in place for longtime employees and awarded certificates when they completed the course successfully. Engagement went through the roof, along with employees’ pride of achievement. A benefit for you, along with happier, more engaged employees, lies in cross training your people. That way, if and when an employee “ghosts” you on a shift, you’ll have a pool of qualified people to step in and do the job.

6. Consider your efficiency. Are your machines breaking down frequently? Are there stoppages on the line? The same client of ours that invested in training and upskilling realized that their employees were continually frustrated with snafus on the line day in and day out. Correcting those problems and making your operations as efficient as possible gives employee satisfaction a boost and helps with retention. Also, it’s crucial to involve employees at all levels, from the corner office to the line on the shop floor, in the process of improving your operation’s efficiency. People with varying viewpoints of the job bring a variety of opinions and ideas to the table.

At USC Consulting Group, we’ve spent more than 50 years helping companies improve employee engagement and realize greater efficiency in their operations. Ready to talk about what we can do for you? Give us a call.

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If the Great Resignation has hit your company, leaving you short-staffed and scrambling to fill open positions, you’re not alone. An average of 4 million people per month have resigned from their jobs since April 2021, according to the Department of Labor Statistics, and the trend is showing no signs of slowing down. In November 2021, the number reached an all-time high: 6.3 million. It is unprecedented. Economists are calling it a disaster. It is creating headaches from the corner office to the shop floor and everywhere in between.

Why are people leaving their jobs in record numbers? You can point to the pandemic as the major cause. To put it mildly, it has been a challenging time for everyone, and many people have decided life is too short to stay in a job that isn’t fulfilling.

For businesses, it means a necessary shift in focus. Employee engagement and retention needs to take its place at the top of the priority list for HR, managers and shift supervisors. Employee engagement is job one. Why is it so important? Gallup reports that just 36% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and 74% are actively looking for new jobs.

It’s not enough anymore to issue a paycheck. The work has to be fulfilling and meaningful and engaging in order to retain your best people. One powerful way to address that growing problem is by increasing employee training, learning and development.

“According to LinkedIn, 94% of employees say they’d stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development.”

Engagement through training

The statistics bear out the connection between training and development and employee engagement in study after study. Udemy: 80% of employees said learning and development opportunities would help them feel more engaged. LinkedIn: 94% of employees say they’d stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development. The list goes on.

It stands to reason. Companies that are invested in their employees get invested and engaged employees in return. It really is as simple as that.

The benefits of giving your employees training, learning and development opportunities radiate throughout the company.

At USC, we’ve seen it work in practice, playing out on the shop floor. Many clients are dealing with issues resulting from the Great Resignation — lost productivity, dwindling throughput and low engagement on the part of employees. The fix for that is by focusing on your employees and keeping them on the job.

We recently helped one client get a dramatic uptick in employee engagement and retention as a result of increased training. But it didn’t start as a training project. It began as a productivity project that led to increased training. Oftentimes, many facets intertwine to create a snarl of challenges in the workplace, and this was no exception.

We’ve highlighted it all in our recent case study, “Construction Materials Supplier Builds Up their Equipment and Employee Engagement Programs“, but in a nutshell: The client was dealing with dwindling efficiency due to challenges on many different fronts, including maintenance and equipment breakdowns, hiring and retention difficulties, and operations and communication breakdowns.

As we dealt with maintenance and other machine issues, we came upon some old manuals that detailed how best to operate and maintain equipment on the shop floor. Nobody was using the dusty, old volumes anymore, but we thought they held important gems of knowledge that, perhaps, had been lost. That’s a common byproduct of veteran workers leaving or retiring — they take that hard-earned institutional knowledge with them when they walk out the door for the final time, leaving younger workers without skilled mentors who really had a firm handle on how the job should get done.

We took those manuals and updated them. The next step was formalizing a training process to add a new level of skill to the workforce.

Certifications were the key

We decided to take the extra step of issuing certifications to all of the employees who successfully underwent the training process. We found this one, small step was a crucial piece of the puzzle. Employees who worked hard and passed the training were given a tangible symbol of their achievement. Like a diploma, a marriage certificate, or a driver’s license, they were just pieces of paper. But the meaning infused into that paper certificate was all about pride, advancement, achievement and mastery.

We saw employees waving their certificates to others on the shop floor, boasting about what they had achieved. For trainers, it doesn’t get any better than that.

And the company saw a change in productivity as well, with highly trained people working the line on the shop floor. All of that training led to the machines functioning better, which in turn lessened the frustrating situation that led to them coming to USC in the first place — low productivity and dwindling throughput. With engaged employees, that problem was solved.

Construction Materials Supplier Builds Up their Equipment and Employee Engagement Programs

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