Besides remedies like offering more competitive salaries or paying recruiters, there are several essential strategies that process-industry companies can use to attract, develop and retain new and existing employees. Here’s a summary of some of the most useful:
- Expand recruiting to new formats and demographic groups. Go beyond online job boards and LinkedIn by establishing a presence on multiple social media platforms that younger, potential candidates often rely on.
- Align skills and interests of new hires and mid-career staffers with capabilities the company needs by exposing them to multiple departments and disciplines within the organization. This process can also guide what internal or external training and retraining will be needed.
- Improve retention by showing leaders and managers from the top down how to practice sincere, active engagement with individual staffers and teams. Give weight and meaning to core values and missions by living them daily, and give all personnel opportunities for real, positive impact on their organization, industry and communities, which are typically valued more than compensation.
- Partner with local community colleges, universities and high schools to help develop curriculums, confirm that courses are teaching relevant skills needed by area employers, present some guest lectures, and maybe help teach some classes.
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- Invite local elementary and middle schools, families and communities to an open house for facility tours and technology demonstrations to raise awareness about what neighboring manufacturers and industries do, and raise awareness
- Join and support local FIRST Robotics and other Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) teams and organizations to help get youngsters interested in engineering and technical disciplines, and start to think of them as possible professions they could pursue.
- Work with whatever local and regional workforce development groups are available, including chambers of commerce, municipal, county, state and national economic development and jobs organizations, such as Manufacturing USA’s 18 nationwide institutes.
