Your company needs certain skills to boost productivity and increase profits. However, when you look around your warehouse, you may have trouble finding them in your employees. For many manufacturing businesses, long-term success heavily rests on the ability of workers to produce and adapt during changing times. The sustainability of your business can be at risk when your employees start falling short. That’s when you start to see a widening skills gap.
Education, training and experience play a crucial role in workforce productivity, but employees aren’t the only ones responsible. It’s up to management to find a way to close the divide. Employers can’t build a bridge over the gaps overnight. It takes time and it takes a plan. That’s why the experienced staffing professionals at Pascoe Workforce Solutions have come up with three ways you can shrink your employees’ skills gaps.
Harness different ways to find talent
Posting an opening online is going to flood your inbox with applications, but will they be the right applicants? You may spend more time sifting through the mediocrity than you will onboarding your new hire. Partnering with a staffing agency can both broaden your search and make it more targeted. You’ll have access to a candidate pool filled with the exact skills you need. Hiring process professionals can do the sifting for you.
Provide on-the-job training
The dusty old image that manufacturing jobs and industrial work are old-fashioned careers is partly to blame for the skill gaps. From machinists to programmers, these jobs require highly advanced skills that come from a very specific type of training. Give your workers access to training, certifications and professional development that will help them build skills and learn how to work with high-tech equipment.
Inspire your managers and shift leaders
The lack of education and training may start the gap, but your company’s leaders are the ones who control whether it shrinks or grows. Management in the manufacturing industry is faced with many unique challenges. They have to learn how to lead their crews by being one of them. If they can’t relate to their workers, they can’t motivate them to see the personal benefits of improving their job performance.
During the last decade, manufacturing firms have been hit the hardest by the skills shortage. It’s been a slow decline, but every skills gap unavoidably creates a loss. Finding good talent isn’t a new problem, but it’s still a struggle for many businesses in the manufacturing industry.
Does your company need an infusion of highly skilled and certified workers? Contact Pascoe Workforce Solutions today!