By Susan Crowder – Industry Week
During uncertain economic times, focusing on your people and building culture is a stabilizing strategy.
How will the manufacturing industry continue to evolve in uncertain economic times? While we can’t predict the future, we do know some factors that will make the rest of 2024 tricky to navigate, including financial market fluctuations, political instability as we approach the November general election and government policy changes.
Our HR experts have identified three rising trends: a renewed focus on employee retention, managing a more informed workforce and HR’s role in preparing the workforce with artificial intelligence (AI).
You can help your business be prepared for the unknown by implementing flexible strategies, managing costs and, perhaps most importantly, fostering strong employee retention.1. Employee Retention
When you create policies that encourage happy employees, you are working to combat morale problems, decreased innovation and productivity, and poor client experiences. You are also reducing the likelihood of employee turnover.
Fostering employee retention saves money, too. Employees who leave take with them institutional knowledge and experience, plus productivity is lost as replacements are hired and trained. To help retain your employees, we recommend these four strategies:
Transparent communication: Employees want to feel included in the company’s process, which can be achieved when you share company information, including financial health, future plans, and how external factors are affecting operations.
Support and resources for employee well-being: When you promote employee well-being, everyone in the company benefits. Depending on your company’s resources and workforce’s needs, support could include health and wellness programs, flexible work arrangements, mental health resources and access to counseling services.
Employee recognition and rewards: Employees want to feel appreciated, and frequency of recognition matters more than a reward’s size. Consider thank you notes, gift cards, special parking spots, extra time off, and bonuses.
Professional development: Professional development reinforces your commitment to employees and their progress. Developing clear career paths can also help your employees envision a future within your company. This is especially important within the manufacturing industry, where career advancement opportunities aren’t always apparent. Consider offering programs such as online coursework, cross-training opportunities, job shadowing, mentorships, cross-functional project teams and educational assistance.