Staff shortages aren’t just being felt in manufacturing. With the current lack of candidates across every field, it’s a problem many businesses are experiencing. No matter what sector. But you have a business to run. And to do this successfully, you need a full team of committed staff. But how do you do that in the current market?
Firstly, let’s look at the reasons for staff shortages in manufacturing
You could say that the manufacturing sector was experiencing a staffing crisis well before the country locked down. As a country, we lost a lot of our European workforce after Brexit. And UK employees are still yet to take up those roles left open by people returning to Europe.
COVID only intensified the issue with staff shortages. Stability become a big topic during the pandemic. Employees were looking for greater security. But due to the supply chain issues experienced around the lockdowns, there was a smaller demand for staff in many areas of manufacturing. However, whilst some companies experienced shut-downs, others saw a huge spike in demand. This in turn put additional stresses and strains on the current workforce which had an impact on retention levels. The general uncertainly of the time caused the perfect storm.
Those factors alone would be enough, but there’s also the health concerns held by employees in manufacturing during the pandemic. Manufacturing usually requires employees to work in close proximity to each other. And some, especially those with vulnerable family members, saw this as a huge concern.
Current needs of manufacturing employees
Flexibility – To continue to attract people to the manufacturing sector, we need to understand what they are looking for. Flexibility has become a hot topic! But it’s not always possible to offer traditional flexible working manufacturing. However, there are still things you can do. Shift swapping, part-time options, voluntary overtime. These are all things that you can offer to give your employees greater flexibility.
Security – Temporary work, by its very nature is transient. But employees are now looking for more stability, even when it comes to temporary work. And this is something that can really work in your favour. If you can offer long-term opportunities to your team, you will see great consistency and high productivity. Ask our team about our annualised contracts for temporary staff.
Development – However, to keep your temporary staff long-term, you need to offer something a little different. There have been numerous studies around continual learning and the positive impact that has on our mental wellbeing. By offering training and development opportunities at your company, not only will your employee retention improve, but you’ll reap the benefits of an unskilled workforce. Ask our team about our free Vocational Training offering.
Whilst this is not an exhaustive list, focusing on these three areas will help you to attract and retain your team.
About CSP Recruitment
Since launching over a decade ago, we have established ourselves as the benchmark across our client base. Our ‘supply partnerships’ allow us to deliver industry bashing performance across all key metrics which has seen us become one of the fastest growing independent recruitment agencies in the UK.
We are helping businesses meet their production targets with our unique staffing solutions. But don’t just take our word for it. Let’s see what one of our clients recently had to say about working with CSP Recruitment.
With the skills crisis and shrinking talent pool in the UK, we had concerns about our ability to attract the right number of people with the right skills. We understood that candidates had so much choice in the market that it was hard to stand out and attract strong people. Working with CSP changed all that. By utilising CSPs vocational training offering, we have been able to continue to attract great people, and the improvements in retention and continuity have been excellent. Working with CSP has enabled us to not only achieve our headcount and retention targets, but to also upskill our current team too. The personal development plans, for temps and our own employees, are giving our teams more skills to do the job and this is resulting in increased productivity. We’ve become an Employer of Choice thanks to the innovative approach from CSP.
Isn’t it time you talked to our team? Call 0116 2538222 and make your staff shortages a thing of the past.
