How to Combat High Employee Turnover in Manufacturing

Keeping manufacturing employees interested and motivated has always been difficult, but things are even worse now as older employees are retiring in their droves. Manufacturing is suffering from low morale among employees and staffing shortages, and employees hold the long end of the stick nowadays. This is why you will now need to work harder and dedicate yourself to the well-being of your employees from now on if you want to keep them. Here are a few ways to combat high employee turnover in manufacturing.

Offer Real Development and Advancement Opportunities

One of the many reasons manufacturing employees leave is the lack of advancement opportunities. So, you have to help them develop professionally to get new certifications and skills that would allow them to reach more important roles within your organisation.

Consider Automation

Automating your line and some processes could boost employee satisfaction and reduce turnover rates. For instance, you could automate the onboarding process to make everything smoother for your employees. Give them access to a portal to get all the information they need about benefits, input their banking info, and get their training schedule. All of this will show professionalism and reflect kindly on your brand.

You then need to map out your processes and see if you can identify bottlenecks. This all starts by establishing clear flow charts. Look at every step of the manufacturing process and see if some of your employees are overworked. Also, see if tasks handled by human employees could be handled entirely by a machine.

If you have many cases to pack, there’s no point in appointing one or multiple employees to this task. This is the type of menial task that erodes employee morale and pushes many of them to leave.

Here, we suggest you check out a few case packer manufacturers and see what they offer. Case packer manufacturers like Douglas Machine will look at different options with you. They’ll be able to assess your operation and which machine would work the best for your needs. They can also provide financing and help automate multiple parts of your chain.

Review Job Listings

Many employers don’t realise how damaging a misleading job description can be. Making the job seem more exciting than it is or omitting some of the tasks is one of the surest ways to anger employees. The goal should be to describe the job as faithfully as possible so your prospective employees have the right expectations. If you’re doing this in-house and you’ve noticed that many employees leave right after they get hired, we suggest you let a professional team handle the recruiting and onboarding part.

Employee turnover in manufacturing is a severe issue. Still, if you are ready to give your employees the best work environment possible, you can retain them longer. Always keep your finger on the pulse and know what your employees want and need.