Recruiting and Retaining Manufacturing Talent

In case you didn’t know it, October 7th is Manufacturing Day℠, which is a celebration of modern manufacturing meant to inspire the next generation of manufacturers. Ever since the Industrial revolution began in United States in the early 1800’s manufacturers have experienced the constant pressures of change and staying one step ahead of their competitors.

In addition, as a manufacturer you are constantly experiencing the demands of multiple stakeholders ranging from your customers, stockholders, community, government (agencies) and most certainly your employees. So what stakeholder is most important to you? Of course it must be your customer, because without your customer you don’t have any sales and no business, so of course it is your customer right? Well….Maybe...Maybe not. What if you did not have any employees, well that would mean you would not be able to provide your customers any products and again you would have no sales and no business. Yes this is the same conundrum of which came first the chicken or the egg. Since we have not figured that one out yet, let’s just say your employee’s are unequivocally critical to your organizations success; agreed, great!

As a manufacturer of products, how can you differentiate yourself from your competition?

• Do you have unique or special access to a market or customers that your competitors don’t…Probably Not.

• Do you have access to unique technology that is not available to your competitors….Probably Not.

• Do you have special exemptions from the myriad of regulatory compliance challenges…Absolutely Not.

What can differentiate a company from its competition is how it goes about selecting, developing, engaging, motivating, recognizing, appreciating and rewarding its employee’s. Studies regarding employee engagement indicate engaged employees range anywhere from being only somewhere between 15% - 30%.1 Every employee is “paid to do a job” so why is employee engagement important? Increasing employee engagement has a direct correlation on employee willingness to make discretionary efforts and has a direct impact on business results. A Gallup research2 study established that work units in the top quartile in employee engagement outperformed bottom-quartile units by 10% on customer ratings, 22% in profitability, and 21% in productivity. Work units in the top quartile also saw significantly less turnover (25% in high-turnover organizations and 65% in low-turnover organizations), shrinkage (28%), and absenteeism (37%) and fewer safety incidents (48%), patient safety incidents (41%), and quality defects (41%).

Increasing and sustaining employee engagement must be part of an intentional and specific process communicating organizational goals, providing feedback of performance toward those goals and reinforcing employee actions and behaviors in support of those goals. Aliniti has an established and proven process that will ensure organizational goals and objectives are clearly defined, communicated to employees at all levels and incorporated into an ongoing process of providing employee’s performance feedback on their actions, behaviors and results that are contributing to organizational goals and objectives. Please feel free to contact a Aliniti representative anytime at 513-578-6500 for more information.

Sources

1 http://www.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees-engaged-work.aspx
2 http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/166667/five-ways-improve-employee-engagement.aspx