Navigating Talent Obstacles
The tight labor market conditions persisting in 2023 are anticipated to continue into 2024.
According to a recent survey by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), nearly three-quarters of surveyed manufacturing executives identify attracting and retaining a high-quality workforce as their primary business challenge. Manufacturers have taken proactive measures to adjust their workforce strategies to enhance employee attraction and retention. Recent initiatives include:
Prioritizing flexibility: In a recent NAM survey, 46.8% of manufacturing executives surveyed indicated that their companies offer flexible scheduling options to production workers. Additional forms of flexibility provided to production workers include remote work, compressed workweeks, and opportunities for shift swaps or splits.
Rewarding employees: As per Deloitte analysis, there has been a 4% increase in the average hourly earnings of employees between Q1 FY2022 and Q1 FY2023. Notably, there has also been a 19% decrease in the average number of voluntary separations during the same period.
Developing and enhancing the talent pipeline involves engaging in partnerships with educational programs that initiate STEM career preparation from early childhood, potentially starting as early as kindergarten. This enables manufacturers to cultivate local talent, provide mentorship to students, and establish future workforce pipelines ready for STEM roles, thereby serving as a strategic approach for community involvement and long-term talent attraction and retention. Another valuable collaboration opportunity lies in forming partnerships with community and technical colleges, merging industry expertise with educational innovation to equip students with specialized skills. Manufacturers should also consider methods to facilitate the upskilling of existing employees. For instance, companies could allocate additional hours per day per person by implementing digitization and automation, subsequently offering more training sessions to employees during these freed-up hours. This proactive measure can better equip employees for current and future job responsibilities, particularly those demanding advanced digital skills, while also fostering the creation of career pathways. Moreover, the industrial metaverse presents an opportunity to introduce new, efficient, enhanced, and flexible training approaches accessible even from remote locations.
