The world of manufacturing is grappling with serious labor shortages due to changes in workforce demographics, prolonged education, and significant shifts in employee expectations. All of these factors have also fueled a high turnover rate where workers with poor job satisfaction are quitting in droves. As a result, as of January 2024, over half a million manufacturing jobs (622,000) in the U.S. are yet to be filled.

This can have massive implications on productivity, performance, and the overall profitability of manufacturing facilities. Labor retention in manufacturing is critical to keeping operations running smoothly. Not only is attracting new talent harder and more expensive, but labor turnover disrupts your production lines and irreversibly reduces your in-house knowledge. 

Here, we explore the root causes behind this high turnover and what you as a manufacturer can do to address it and build a thriving, engaged workforce.

The Root Cause of High Turnover

High turnover isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s an indicator that there is a deeper problem causing employees to have an unsatisfactory experience at work. While some turnover is unavoidable, there are a few things that could be making the situation worse: 

• Low engagement rates: Repetitive tasks and limited autonomy can make employees feel disengaged and burned out. Workers who feel removed from the decision-making process or lack a sense of purpose are also more likely to seek opportunities elsewhere.
• Siloed teams: Manufacturing environments can sometimes feel isolating as each worker is focused on their specific task in the production process. Without the ability to collaborate with other team members and departments, work becomes stagnant.
• Lack of advancement opportunities: Undefined career paths and lack of growth opportunities can demotivate workers and push them to leave.
• Poor work culture: A lack of recognition and collaboration can make workers feel undervalued, leading to dissatisfaction and eventual departure.

Luckily, this is something that you, as an employer, can influence. A connected workforce solution built specifically for the manufacturing floor can help you gain insight into the productivity and performance of each employee and identify opportunities for improvement. It gives you the information you need to build tailored interventions to drive each of these parameters up, whether through upskilling, better communication practices, or improved processes across the board. 

Drive Communication and Engagement

One surefire way to boost employee engagement is to facilitate communication between teams. The lack of reliable communication channels can lead to misunderstandings about equipment status, ongoing tasks, or shift handovers, which can disrupt production lines or result in costly delays. All of this can cause frustration and dissatisfaction among teams, not to mention a reduction in performance.

Introducing real-time communication channels across production, quality assurance, and equipment maintenance teams can remove siloes and empower employees to seek solutions to problems themselves. A specialized collaboration tool that can be used on the go can help employees share videos, photos, and comments and resolve issues as they arise. 

This seamless and immediate collaboration not only boosts morale and engagement but also helps employees recognize each other for a job well done. The more employees collaborate, the more they can see the great work others are doing and share that with the rest of the team.

Measure and Recognize Performance

There’s nothing more demotivating than going above and beyond only to have your efforts go unrecognized. This is especially true in environments where complexity and exactness are essential, like in manufacturing. However, employee efforts can easily go unnoticed without the proper tools to track performance and output. 

A dedicated performance-tracking tool can change that. Cloud-based workforce management platforms can give you insights into labor efficiency, equipment utilization and real-time productivity. Nowadays, manufacturers can gain granular insights into the throughput and downtime during each shift, and identify areas for improvement either in process optimization or workforce training.

Equipped with such data, managers and leadership teams can make staff promotions much more transparent and fair. Everyone can have visibility into how they’re performing and what aspects of their work they need to improve in order to further their careers. Employers can also use this data to reward the best-performing employees with monthly shoutouts (like employee of the month), bonuses, and other perks—further boosting morale and engagement.

Provide Opportunities for Growth and Development

Career growth is incredibly important for attracting and retaining talent. In fact, 74% of millennials and Gen Z are prepared to quit their job if it doesn’t offer enough learning and development (L&D) opportunities.

If you haven’t already, now is a good time to look at building an L&D strategy that will serve as a blueprint for aligning the skills of your workforce with your business needs. First, start by assessing the baseline skills of your employees and identifying gaps that can be addressed with training. Next, address those gaps in a clear L&D plan and seek technology that provides your workforce with this training.

When delivering your training, empower employees to train each other. Use more experienced workers to develop training manuals and how-to videos to help upskill others. Organize live demonstrations and highlight good practices on a regular basis to encourage consistency in operations and knowledge sharing. 

This will not only empower well-performing employees but it will also make the learning experience more relevant and immersive while driving collaboration. 

Make Labor Retention in Manufacturing a Priority

Labor retention can be elusive. Workforce priorities are constantly shifting — what was true yesterday might very well change in the future. Regardless of your employees’ professional aspirations, having a workplace where they can easily communicate with one another, feel valued, and have plenty of growth opportunities will always be the right approach. 

While in the past manufacturers had to tackle retention challenges one by one, today’s integrated software solutions can centralize operations, empower employees, and give leadership teams detailed insights into workforce performance. Armed with such knowledge, employers can become far more intentional about how they hire, train and retain talent. 

Ready to boost retention and empower your workforce? Discover how QAD Redzone’s Connected Workforce solution can streamline communication, increase engagement, and drive productivity across the board. Contact us today!