The elephant on the manufacturing floor, Part 2

This is the second in a 3-part series of emails Erin sent out to the Syte mailing list. Manufacturing employment has become such a critical topic, we felt it was important to give context to the challenges and provide a jumping-off point for conversation — so we have decided to publish this email series as articles. As you read this series, we encourage you to reach out to Erin on LinkedIn and share your thoughts and ideas.

Last month I talked about this challenge that’s been obsessing me: manufacturing employment.

I know I’m not going to solve this overnight — but I feel that this is an important topic to have a conversation around, because it’s by far the biggest challenge manufacturing companies face today.

I’m looking at this topic through the lenses of the 3 Cs, because I’ve seen such dramatic results in every business scenario where connection, collaboration and communication are practiced intentionally.

Last month I looked at manufacturing employment through the lens of connection.

Now let’s look at it through the lens of collaboration.

Manufacturing Employment: Collaboration for Better Performance

In a study from 1984 to 2011, firms that made the “100 Best Companies to Work For in America” list outperformed their peers’ stock returns by 2.3-3.8% annually.

A key factor in these “best place to work” companies is that employees have a desire to stay.

In manufacturing, production employees frequently make lateral moves to improve their salaries and benefits. So how do manufacturing companies retain seasoned staff in an environment like this?

I believe collaboration holds the key.

The dictionary definition of collaboration is “to work with someone to produce or create something.” While this is usually applied in a project or production situation, it equally applies to the process of creating an environment or culture.

Collaborating with production employees means engaging them in finding solutions to the staffing challenges — it means talking to them as co-creators of the workplace environment.

Over and over in my conversations with manufacturing leaders and HR experts, I keep hearing that when management/leadership and employees are misaligned, it can make existing problems so much worse.

One example comes from one of Syte’s own manufacturing clients. They changed their job descriptions across the board to include jazzier role description language with the goal of weeding out people who weren’t a good fit. The problem was, they hadn’t run this idea by the people in lower-level production positions. For those positions, the jazzier versions ended up discouraging qualified applicants. When the leadership team realized the mistake, they changed the job descriptions back for the lower-level positions, keeping those straightforward and to the point. The result was more and higher-quality candidates applying.

So in a manufacturing environment, how do you spur better collaboration at all levels?

First, changes intended to increase engagement and reduce turnover need to resonate, matter, and make employees feel valued. To find out what matters to employees, Syte’s HR expert Judy Moore says, “I’d use an assessment, likely the Gallup 12 to understand the engagement in various areas.”

From there, the brilliant minds at Deloitte say, “Create a culture of employee development and growth by tapping candidates within the organization. Build an integrated training strategy. Train managers to support a culture of continuous learning.”

The experts at Black Line Group take this a step further: “Show employees a career path and meet with them on a regular basis to update the plan and stay on track. Provide internal or external training to help them succeed in achieving their goals. The more development you provide the more likely you are to retain employees, and the longer they will want to work for your company.”

Tap candidates within the organization. Meet with them. Again, this comes back to internal engagement and collaboration. No external staffing company can solve this problem alone — manufacturing companies must tackle these internal issues before any external resource can be effective.

Now, I’m turning the mic over to you. What are your thoughts, ideas and experiences around these challenges? Send me a note — or if it suits you better, schedule a call with me. I’d love to talk more about this with you!

Read the rest of the series here:

Addressing the Elephant in on the Manufacturing Floor, Part 1

The Elephant on the Manufacturing Floor, Part 3