Workforce Survey with Tom Wilk
This episode is based upon the workforce survey conducted by plantservices.com back in 2015 and now again in 2017. These surveys were done to know more about the workforce concerning issues that the professionals face during a change in technology, media, and external environment. These surveys are actually to help industry leaders and managers to get a better insight about their concerns regarding recruitment, training, and finding career opportunities. In this survey the respondents were divided into groups but most of the respondents lay in two major categories—Boomers were 49.8% and Generation X at 39.3%– based on the generational distinction.
The data received from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that 27.6% of the manufacturing personnel are women but their participating respondents in the 2017 survey were only 4%. The respondents also answered the location of their company’s plants as urban (30.3%), rural (26.9%) and suburban (42.8%). It also included the results based on the job titles and there was a decline in the managers by 27% while there was an increase in the front-line workers by 16%. This explains the increasing problems while hiring employees in the industry according to the newly done survey.
There were also some common points that these industry leaders agreed upon when they were asked about the challenges they face during workforce change. For front-line workers,
- The lack of communication and poor strategic measures at the executive level is a big issue.
- The transfer of knowledge needs to be more effective.
- The workload increases because of the unskilled workers and due to the insufficient budget for the skilled ones.
And for managers,
- Recruiting talent and then retaining that talent was a big challenge.
- Low budget for labors, training programs and capital investment was a problem.
- Capturing of knowledge and then transferring it was a huge challenge.
When they were asked about recruitment, training, and retention issues, the results were really plain and simple. The survey showed that 65% of the industry officials were completely dissatisfied with the recruitment programs of their companies, 20% of them considered them to be simply ineffective and only 2.7% said, they were effective. So basically, there is no winning in that department for anyone. The biggest challenge in these programs for people was attracting young people towards the manufacturing field— 84% of the respondents indicated that. Then a high majority of the people gave retirement of skilled workers a 77%. Attracting a diverse pool of candidates was of high concern at 76.1%.
About the retention of employees, there were concerns like most of the people didn’t want to be working for the same organization for more than 10 years and the others were willing to look for a new job within 1 to 5 years. The reason behind this trend was that 84.6% high chance is that they would look for better job opportunities. They ranked compensation at 80.9% and a new job in the same field factor was given a 66.1%.
Eruditio Links:
- Eruditio, LLC
- A Smarter Way of Preventative Maintenance – Free eBook
- Maintenance Planning & Scheduling: Planning for Profitability Video Course
Thomas Wilk Links:
- Plant Services
- Tom Wilk Bio
- Plant Services Leadership Blog
- Plant Services Workforce Survey Part 1
- Plant Services Workforce Survey Part 2
- SMRP Annual Conference
- IMVAC
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