5 HR Challenges Manufacturing Firms Experience

Only a few sectors of the economy are as fast-changing as the manufacturing industry, especially when talking about the workplace, which is why it’s so important to evolve and adapt with updated HR policies and procedures. A thorough understanding of these challenges is crucial before tackling potential solutions and starts with analysing each manufacturing HR issue on an individual basis, so distinct strategies can be developed to maximise its effectiveness.

In this article, I’ll be sharing the top 5 HR issues faced by the manufacturing industry, and solutions to help combat them.

Safety Incidents

HR is responsible for the oversight and responsibility for people, culture, and other related policies and procedures, which means one cannot ignore the critical role in supporting workplace health and safety. There are several solutions to implement, such as:

• Making worker safety a core organisational value which is practiced and starts from the top down
• Eliminating hazards, and continuously improving workplace safety and protocols
• Providing sufficient resources to implement and maintain the safety of your workers
• Visibly demonstrate and communicate their safety and health commitment to workers
• Use virtual reality video or gaming health and safety technology to make health and safety a practical training experience

Recruitment Challenges

Low recruiting budgets, compensation packages, and lack of modern-day technological resources often make recruiting for the manufacturing industry that much more challenging. Recruiting must be market research-driven with a modern interview and application process to secure quality talent. Manufacturing businesses can’t afford to lose talent based on outdated paperwork procedures and lengthy recruitment processes, and the HR department must be well versed in a hiring strategy that communicates innovation, learning, and excitement.

Low Employee Engagement

High productivity has always been at the forefront of manufacturing companies, with employee engagement often neglected or not prioritised. To build a thriving workplace with high productivity levels where employees feel respected, heard, and valued amongst their peers, companies should work to build better communication between management and employees, as well as a person (such as an hr consultant) for employees to leave feedback, complaints, and suggestions without feeling pressured.

Not Enough Education and Training

Training is important because it ensures your employees remain engaged and competent with their job duties, even in a fast-changing environment like manufacturing. Education and training also reduce employee turnover rates and helps retain top talent. By having and maintaining personal and professional development opportunities for your employees, you will both reap the rewards of higher job satisfaction and work output.

Negative Company Culture

Making significant changes to your company culture and maintaining the changes is the only way to address and tackle the problem. One of the best ways to measure how effective your culture initiatives are is to collect employee feedback before, during, and after culture initiatives to measure their effectiveness.

Enhancing Manufacturing HR Strategies

When HR policies are set up correctly within the manufacturing industry, they’re in better positions to reduce employee turnover, complaints, and safety concerns, while maintaining a positive company culture that produces high employee morale and increased productivity.

At FIC Consulting, we take the headache out of HR from you and manage this on your behalf, saving you time, energy, and most of all, money.

If there is something I want you to know about me right away, it’s that I have a passion for supporting business owners. I believe in the future of South Africa and that there are so many opportunities out there to be successful and to make a change to our economy.

I want to be part of that change by providing businesses with core HR and Labour Solutions that will not only result in legislative compliance but actually positively impact their bottom line.

Over the years I have gained practical HR experience working in various sectors such as mining, construction, financial services, and corporate legal. As a business owner myself, I can relate well to businesses and what their needs are.