Making the most out of the great reshuffle

The pandemic has changed so many aspects of our modern lives, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of work. 'Business as usual' in the conventional sense of the office worker used to be a rigid 9-5 routine, but this is growing increasingly unlikely to return.

Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, and we enter 2022, more and more people have a newfound value for their work-life balance, some are questioning what they actually want out of their positions. Your business, therefore, needs to embrace this change and actively engage with both employees and customers, to make sure you are accommodating the changes they expect to see.

There are many claims being made that between 40% to 75% of the workforce is actively planning to move jobs in the near future. If you don't want to risk losing those volumes or need strategies to retain, nurture and grow your existing talent pool, you need to embrace new ways of thinking.

Let’s explore some of the ways you can start to align business goals with the needs and requirements of creating fulfilling environments for your current and future teams.

Skills-based hiring

If you have lost talent over the last few years, you may wish to adopt a skills-based hiring strategy to safeguard your future. Ignore qualifications and experience is not what is meant here, moreover this strategy ensures that those criteria are simply not your only determining factors when making a hiring choice for new employees. Hiring new recruits based on skills is different from hiring based on knowledge or experience – it looks at how well suited a person may be for a job in terms of transferable skills rather than just their previous experiences or education history alone.

As mentioned above, flexibility is key – this applies both ways– so businesses need to embrace flexible working hours as a as norm. One great way to do this may be offering more part-time positions, with better suited working schedules to the candidates looking for a less conventional position.

Train to upskill existing teams

Your current employees are a valuable asset and providing the opportunity for further development or knowledge building is a key strategy for retention, but also to bring in new ideas and insights.. Alongside this, of course remuneration conversations may sit hand-in-hand – however having tools or a system in place where you offer training, you develop your own learning academy, or you open the door welcoming their inputs into how they want or need to grow to align with the changing dynamics of department-required skills or the wider business needs.

Training can include anything from online courses, attending industry events or even taking part in short workshops. If you can show your employees that you're investing in their future as well as steering their skills to build a sustainable business, they may be more likely to be loyal and stay with your organisation for longer.

Staying ahead of the curve with new technology

Technology is always changing and evolving, so it's important for businesses to keep up. If you don't, you risk the chance that you may quickly find yourself falling behind your competitors.

Many businesses were caught off guard by the harsh realities of the first COVID lockdown in 2020, some having to source and assemble the hardware and software required to successfully set employees up to work from home.

One way to add extra value to your operations and connect the factory to your remote, homeworking teams, could be to consolidate your business software tools into one-integrated system. Enterprise resource planning, ERP solutions enable you to connect the manufacturing shop floor with finance, supplier and end customer relations, helping you track and control the end to end process from one system. Cloud-based systems can be easily accessed from different devices and locations, acting as data feeds from wherever your teams may be.

Centralised operations systems are integral to successful modern manufacturing businesses, so if you don’t have one yet, now might be the time to update so you can track everything from production to HR records and training plans… Talk to the team today to learn how to put skills and systems front and centre to not only survive but also to ensure you thrive during this great reshuffle.

Read more about tracking HR solutions here

Or discover how WinMan ERP was built and designed especially for the manufacturing industry here