IndustryWeek
Sponsored by:
Rockwell Automation

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Build Your Workforce to Combat the Global Skills Workforce Gap

KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • The skills gap is challenging the global workforce.
  • Achieving an agile and flexible workforce can be accomplished by marketing the industry, the quality of life, and the company.
  • Establish workforce flexibility to support and augment the workforce.
  • To remain productive, train and retain.
  • Rockwell Automation provides an entire ecosystem of industrial training in one environment.

The manufacturing industry skills gap has created significant challenges for organizations. However, with a workforce strategy that provides support, augmentation, and training, manufacturers can mitigate many risks to production, strengthen their workforce, and fill critical manufacturing positions.

 

Rockwell Automation offers services that companies need to implement a holistic workforce strategy for today and the future. In addition to multiple support options and field technician augmentation service, Rockwell Automation’s e-learning and virtual training platform makes more training available anytime, anywhere, and with more language and ease than ever before.

Build Your Workforce to Combat the Global Skills Workforce Gap

Build Your Workforce to Combat the Global Skills Workforce Gap

A clear workforce strategy can mitigate many risks to your production, strengthen your current workforce and fill critical manufacturing positions. Despite the challenging labor market, it’s never been easier to train your teams and access “work ready on day one” talent. Learn about the changing face of the skilled workforce and how manufacturers are addressing and filling these gaps.
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Speaker

Brian Fortney
Global Capability Manager, Asset Optimization Services — Rockwell Automation
Brian Fortney is the global capability manager for the Asset Optimization businesses within Rockwell Automation. In this role, he is responsible for the global strategy and portfolio of offerings that provide support for the production assets within industrial manufacturing facilities. This includes Repair, Inventory Services, Equipment Lifecycle, Integrated Service Agreements, and Customer Insights.
Context
Brian Fortney summarized challenges faced by manufacturers due to the workforce skills gap and how investment in training can address those challenges. He shared how Rockwell Automation offers a variety of solutions to retain employees and build the workforce pipeline.

The skills gap is challenging the global workforce.

In the U.S., there is a two-million-job gap between what industrial companies need to maintain their productivity and what the staffing pool can provide. This is due to multiple factors, including:
Lack of secondary school candidates
High rate of
retirement
Lack of interest from qualified candidates
Bandwidth required
to train and retain
Lack of secondary school candidates
High rate of retirement
Lack of interest from qualified candidates
Bandwidth required to train and retain
As a result of these challenges and gaps, there is no path to fast recovery. Although the cost impacts of the skills gap are hidden in HR budgets, maintenance budgets, and lost productivity, estimates place the skills gap cost between $65,000 and $146,000 per position per year. Losing talent to competitors only exacerbates this problem. Investment in maintaining existing workers is critical to optimizing an operation.

Achieving an agile and flexible workforce can be accomplished by marketing the industry, the quality of life, and the company.

Building a robust workforce strategy is important and relevant at all times, even in an inflationary environment. Having workers who are skilled, trained, and ready to work is key to maintaining the viability of both individual organizations and the wider manufacturing industry. This can be accomplished through three main strategies:
Change the perception of manufacturing.
Manufacturing Perception
Manufacturing continues to be presented as a low-tech industry, but manufacturing plants today are high-tech, software-centric operations where employees can make a difference.
Tie manufacturing to a strong economic outcome.
Strong Economic Outcome
Showcase how manufacturing jobs provide opportunities for financial success.
Market the
company.
Market the company.
Market the Company
Join LinkedIn and post content to show success stories, job postings, and articles that establish organizational credibility and build awareness of the organizational culture.
“If you want to attract folks to manufacturing, help them envision what their life could look like.”

– Brian Fortney, Rockwell Automation

Establish workforce flexibility to support and augment the workforce.

Spending less time reacting and more time planning allows organizations to be proactive at scale. This means putting systems in place to help people partner, leveraging technology in the industrial automation space, and supporting investments in technology with reinvestment in existing workers or recruiting additional workers.

 

Managing, maintaining, and optimizing the technology of digital transformation requires people who have the critical skills to optimize data flow, contextualize data, and drive information and insights that can help make businesses more productive. Partnerships to support or augment an in-house workforce are helpful when an organization lacks the skills or bandwidth for a project.

To remain productive, train and retain.

A key to employee retention is to provide employees with training. Continue their development, invest in them, and help them to see how they're being invested in. This fosters appreciation, which drives engagement and retention.

Investment in employee training has a positive impact on retention in three ways:

Empowerment
Empowerment
Giving individuals the power to make decisions to improve the work or move the work forward.
Engagement
Engagement
Fostering employee enthusiasm and passion for the work.
Transparency
Transparency
Being honest with employees about current conditions and the journey ahead builds trust and increases commitment.

There are three primary purposes for training, and providing training in all three areas supports a safe and sustainable workforce:

COMPLIANCE
to fulfill legal and local regulatory requirements.
ENABLEMENT
to raise output, reduce downtime, and lower overall risk.
DEVELOPMENT
to give employees more of the right skills to develop and grow.

Rockwell Automation provides an entire ecosystem of industrial training in one environment.

From on-demand online learning to customized solution implementations, Rockwell Automation provides support, augmentation, and training for customer organizations. Rockwell Automation fields tens of thousands of calls each month to support customers in real time on challenges from all levels of the organization and offers a knowledge base for self-service. With Rockwell Automation’s proactive alerts through application and highly qualified field service teams, customers can augment their workforce, drive change, and shift resources to focus on training and drive engagement. Rockwell Automation offers the Learning+ training platform in addition to instructor-led, tailored trainings. Training is accessible from everywhere, at any time, in many languages.
Rockwell Automation offers virtual coaching in live, one-on-one, or small-group interactions, with either an instructor or a field technical resource. For a larger-scale initiative, the Rockwell Automation Global Workforce Solutions is a consultative assessment aimed at wholesale workforce transformation. Additionally, the Rockwell Automation Academy of Advanced Manufacturing, created in partnership with Manpower Group, enhances the skillset crossover between veterans coming off duty and manufacturing workforce requirements. When troubleshooting in an intense, high-stakes, high-productivity environment, customers need technicians with resilience and grit. Rockwell Automation and Manpower sourced, screened, assessed, selected, and trained groups of veteran technicians in both technical and soft skills needed to be successful in a team environment.

Additional Resources

Build Your Workforce to Combat the Global Skills Workforce Gap
Despite the challenging labor market, it’s never been easier to train your teams and access “work ready on day one” talent. Learn about the changing face of the skilled workforce and how manufacturers are addressing and filling these gaps.
Build Your Workforce to Combat the Global Skills Workforce Gap

A workforce strategy that provides support, augmentation, and training, manufacturers can mitigate many risks to production, strengthen their workforce, and fill critical manufacturing positions.

 

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The Right Partner to
Empower Your Lifecycle Journey
Global disruptions, have a growing impact on your business. At Rockwell Automation, we see these disruptions and challenges as opportunities to increase operational resilience and transform your growth and performance.
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