Helping workers enhance or develop new skills is a way to improve their productivity, engagement, and satisfaction. It holds benefits for manufacturing companies as well.
According to Gallup, 71% of workers who received upskilling opportunities say their overall satisfaction with their jobs increased. Additionally, 65% say their standard of living has increased and 75% have gone on to advance in their careers.
Imagine that kind of impact on the workers in your company, and how increased satisfaction and skill level could translate not just into increased engagement but also business success. Upskilling, or training workers on develop or enhance their current skill sets, should be a priority for manufacturing companies in a time when employee retention is more important than ever and new technologies are being adopted at ever-increasing rates.
But manufacturing companies simply can’t leave upskilling up to their employees. It has to be a deliberate initiative that includes a comprehensive upskilling plan that will meet business goals and address skills gaps strategically.
To learn more about their experiences with upskilling, we surveyed 600 frontline manufacturing workers for our second annual "Voice of the Essential Manufacturing Worker" report. Based on their insights, we’ve created this guide explaining how and why you should build an efficient and impactful upskilling program today.
The work world is constantly changing; responsibilities and knowledge must also evolve to keep pace with the industry, especially as manufacturing companies adopt new technology. But who is going to use and manage that new technology, new business units, or initiatives that are created and advanced by innovation or market changes? It's not effective to continue hiring new talent with applicable skill sets once a job role changes. Instead, invest in upskilling opportunities.
Here's a look at the state of upskilling in manufacturing today, according to last year’s and this year's "Voice of the Essential Manufacturing Worker:"
These falling numbers emphasize the need for a refocus on upskilling, which can improve engagement, productivity, work satisfaction, and retention.
There are a number of benefits to upskilling your workers. Most notably, it achieves two major wins with one initiative: improving your business overall while positioning you for competitive success and boosting staff engagement and morale. Here’s a look at a few more ways upskilling can positively impact your business:
Creating a great upskilling program takes time and effort but can pay off in numerous ways. Here are three steps you can take to get started today.
The first step in creating or growing an upskilling program is to identify what areas of training you want to invest in. Is there a new technology you're adopting company-wide that requires new skills? Are job roles changing or being reclassified? Are you digitizing or automating parts of your process and need individuals to oversee those new processes? This means knowing your business needs through meticulous tracking, or asking your employees what skills they're lacking to do their job effectively. Offering broad access to a learning management system (LMS) may be beneficial, but it may not be precise enough to target the skills you truly want to develop in the employees you’re focusing on.
Next, determine how you'll deliver your upskilling initiatives. Respondents said what they see most at their companies is on-site or on-the-job training, which allows for immediate practical application of new skills within the workday setting, lowering the learning curve. Because it’s hands-on training, it’s also more active and engaging for the worker, helping to build rapport with their supervisor or trainer.
Respondents also say their organizations provide upskilling through access to an online training platform. While less hands-on, immediate, and tailored to the individual, there are still many benefits to providing access to an LMS. Certification or compliance courses and exams can be completed through the LMS. Workers can also access courses in hard and soft skills to improve their current role or prepare them for a new role in the future.
In addition to the channels through which they're upskilling, respondents say that their organizations cover tuition for courses and training and give paid time off to take these training courses—an investment that will be worth the return.
You can roll out all the upskilling initiatives you want, but unless they teach the skills that best serve your business, make your workers more confident and productive, and positively impact your bottom line, you're wasting time and money. Before you launch your upskilling initiatives, determine your objectives for what you want to accomplish—for example, X number of people take AI prompt training by a certain date so they can manage new AI initiatives. Then create a set of key performance indicators that you'll use to track the impacts of this training. Don't just look at completion rates, but review productivity metrics to get a clear picture of the overall benefits and value.
Track your upskilling efforts through a digital platform like your ERP. This will let you see who's been involved in upskilling initiatives and the impacts they made, so you can quantify your efforts. This will help you to know what to stop or improve, as well as your return on investment. Finally, gather feedback from those who participated to learn about their experience, and use this feedback to improve and amend your efforts in the future.
With today’s speed of innovation and the need to attract and keep a skilled workforce, manufacturing companies who invest in fostering upskilling programs for their workers will find a happy and engaged workforce, a more productive company, and a competitive advantage in their industry.
Download the full report for more in-depth insights and data to better support your workforce and adapt to the evolving manufacturing landscape.
