Digitalisation is one of the biggest challenges, but also one of the greatest opportunities for UK manufacturing. Although changes to the way businesses operate may often seem daunting, there is plenty of evidence that tells us that by adopting new technologies first, can enable them to become more resilient, more efficient and importantly, more productive.
It may not even be tech that your manufacturing business needs! You may just need to adopt succession planning, or perhaps recruiting from a different talent pool altogether like the ones we discuss in our FREE Guide to Best Practice in Modern Manufacturing Recruitment.
Some manufacturers do not even think about succession planning and the lack of pipelines for young talent goes hand in hand with the need to be an attractive brand to establish stronger manufacturing candidate pipelines. Manufacturers just starting initiatives such as engaging students in school are competing with sectors like tech, pharma, healthcare, business consulting and the military, all of whom already have strong pipelining programs in place.
In addition, almost half of manufacturers are revising their recruitment strategy to employ workers with transferable skills from other industries and sectors. This suggests that, in line with our findings earlier, manufactures are recognising the shrinking talent pool available to them and are beginning to actively recruit from elsewhere. This places greater emphasis on the need for employees to have transferable skills in the next five years.
Despite this, enhancing your flexible workforce should be an important part of all manufacturing firms to take full advantage of the talent and upskill or invest into education which will potentially bridge the skills gap, by doing this with years to come you’ll be ahead of the competition.
In a recent article the I.M3 post mentioned that there will be a program In play for youngsters, the UK will help promote and develop the ‘Engineer Apprenticeships: Best Practice Programme’ – an initiative design to support firms to overcome skills challenges and build talent for future success. This programme can be beneficial and a foot in the door to help kickstart a career path in manufacturing and engineering which will hopefully bridge the skills gap as more apprentices learn.For recruitment Parsable’s Blog title “This is why Manufacturing Needs to Prioritize the Recruitment of Young Talent”stated that “In 10 years, there could be a global human shortage of 85 million people… with manufacturing jobs alone accounting for 22% of global employment” an immense figure which will impact the manufacturing businesses but as mentioned above the scheme should offer a way into the industry.
In addition, almost half of manufacturers are revising their recruitment strategy to employ workers with transferable skills from other industries and sectors. This suggests that, in line with our findings earlier, manufacturers are recognising the shrinking talent pool available to them and are beginning to actively recruit from elsewhere. This places greater emphasis on the need for employees to have transferable skills in the next five years.
Automation is a potential solution to manufacturers’ problems of a growing ever so apparent skills gap and flatlining productivity. The use of machinery, robots and automation is a synonymous with productivity improvements and improving production processes, but also changes the skills needed in business.
