Manufacturing is a dynamic, rapidly evolving industry, and some of the biggest HR challenges in the manufacturing industry involve a lag in keeping up with the changes. HR departments everywhere have to stay at the top of their game and ensure they’re with the changes happening globally and in their industry. In manufacturing, however, changes of technological and financial nature are so common and so rapid, it becomes a challenge to keep up with them from a human resource point of view.

HR Strategies for Manufacturing Industry Challenges

The current rapidly evolving and technologically adaptive industrial stage requires HR managers to grab the bull by the horns and make full use of it by maximizing productivity and efficiency of their teams. Here we have listed six major HR challenges in the manufacturing industry, and strategies to tackle them.

Shortage of Workforce

Workforce shortage is a common but serious issue – especially in manufacturing. It is important to have a team of skilled and qualified workers in this industry, and being short-staffed can have a terrible impact. It doesn’t help that the manufacturing industry also often falls behind in offering competitive wages and other health and safety benefits.

Hiring young people, especially millennials, is a great strategy to combat workforce shortage. The millennial perception of manufacturing being a slow and tedious industry to work in can be addressed easily by incorporating technology like VR (virtual reality) in the on-boarding processes, and making HR presence known at places like career events and conventions.

Global Competition

As industries expand to target and reach global audiences with advancements in technology and rapid digitization of everything, HR responsibilities grow to accommodate dealing with global competition as well. To continue being productive and competitive while also maintaining healthy recruitment and work engagement can be a huge HR challenge.

The best strategy to efficiently tackle such a big challenge is to introduce competitive employee packages and to ensure all health and safety requirements are fulfilled onsite. HR should make sure potential and current employees can clearly see how their organizations stands apart from the competition.

Recruitment Challenges

While there is always no shortage of people looking for work, finding talented new blood that will improve productivity and efficiency in the workplace can be a challenge. Nevertheless, HR has to find a way to work around such recruitment challenges.

A good strategy to smoothly handle recruitment challenges is to streamline the processes. The smoother and more flexible the process, the easier it will be to fill in workforce gaps. Lengthy and tiring recruitment procedures push skilled workforce away from the manufacturing industry.

Low Work Engagement

The rapidly growing manufacturing industry has definitely opened a lot of avenues and job opportunities for skilled workers, but work engagement still remains at a low. Proper employee engagement directly helps in employee retention and in overall efficiency and productivity as well.

Work engagement can be rapidly improved by improving overall work culture and the workplace environment. Manufacturing is considered a dry industry to work in, but it doesn’t have to be that way for your employees. Ensure feedback is respected, and that the culture is familial and respectful.

Retention of Skilled Workers

As challenging as finding skilled resources is, retaining them is a bigger challenge. A highly skilled worker in your organization will also be in high demand elsewhere, and high turnover rates in the manufacturing industry can be a nightmare for HR.

HR managers should remember that empowered employees are the ones that last in any organization. The collective voice of all your company’s employees decides whether or not it’s a healthy workplace for them. Employee feedback should be taken at all levels possible, and management and HR should take decisions based on that.

Training and Development

Difficulty in retaining employees and controlling turnover can be a huge HR challenge, but a lack of proper training and development aggravates it. If employees aren’t continuously trained, it becomes difficult to retain them.

Proper training and development opportunities ensure that all your employees are skilled employees. Moreover, since manufacturing is an industry that sees rapid technological advancements, technical and technological training and development should be focused on by HR as well.

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