Imagine a bustling assembly line in a mid-west-based automotive aftermarket parts plant on a crisp Fall morning. Robots hum alongside workers, feeding data into connected machines that promise to streamline production and cut waste. However, the line grinds to a halt, not due to a mechanical failure, but because the frontline supervisor, overwhelmed by unfamiliar AI-driven analytics dashboards, hesitates to make a critical adjustment. This scenario isn’t fiction; it’s the stark reality for many U.S. manufacturers navigating the uneven terrain of digital transformation. As factories push toward smart operations, the human element often becomes the unintended roadblock, turning cutting-edge tools into sources of frustration rather than efficiency.
At the core of this tension lies the U.S. manufacturing skills and behaviors gap, a widening chasm between the competencies required for modern production and the workforce equipped to deliver them. In 2025, this gap manifests as delays in adopting automation, higher turnover among hourly workers, and stalled pilots for connected systems, resulting in billions of dollars in lost productivity for the sector. Projections paint a sobering picture:
By 2033, the industry could face 3.8 million job openings, yet up to 1.9 million of those positions might go unfilled due to talent shortages.
Nearly 60% of manufacturers already rank attracting and retaining employees as their top challenge, with quits rates hovering at 1.6% and replacement costs for skilled frontline workers ranging from $10,000 to $40,000 per hire. These aren’t abstract numbers; they represent real friction and bottlenecks in the daily grind of American factory production, from Midwest fabricators wrestling with legacy equipment to West Coast electronics firms eyeing reshoring opportunities.
This skills shortage isn’t isolated—it’s deeply intertwined with the dual waves of Industry 4.0 and the budding Industry 5.0. Industry 4.0, with its emphasis on IoT, AI analytics, and interconnected machines, is expected to see U.S. adoption reach about 50% for core technologies like IoT this year, fueled by a $21.4 billion market. Yet, for many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), foundational hurdles persist: high capital costs, legacy system integration snags, and cybersecurity fears that escalate with every new connection. Enter Industry 5.0, still in its infancy but gaining momentum among larger players through human-centric pillars like resilience, sustainability, and collaborative robotics (cobots). North America leads globally, capturing the highest revenue share in 2024, with the market valued at $82.57 billion in 2025 and projected to surge to $2.15 trillion by 2037.
Federal initiatives, like the CHIPS and Science Act, are accelerating this shift by incentivizing domestic investments in AI-powered tools and edge computing that blend human ingenuity with machine precision.
But here’s the pivot: Technology alone won’t close the gap. Frontline leadership—those supervisors and team leads overseeing 80% of shop-floor operations—holds the key. Underinvested, they become friction points, amplifying resistance to new tools and exacerbating turnover. Empowered through targeted training, development, and accessible digital aids, they transform into accelerators, guiding teams from wary skeptics to confident collaborators. This guide explores that dynamic, offering a practical 5-step framework to equip frontline leaders for the U.S. manufacturing skills and behaviors gap, the demands of frontline leadership in 2025, and the execution ahead in 2026. Drawing on insights from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), Harvard Business Review, and recent industry outlooks, we’ll unpack the challenges, map actionable strategies, and spotlight real-world wins. In a year where manufacturing jobs have stabilized near 13 million and productivity hits all-time highs, bridging this gap isn’t just smart—it’s essential for survival in an era of simultaneous progression of Industry 4.0 and 5.0.
The U.S. manufacturing landscape in 2025 is a tale of two revolutions: the entrenched struggles of Industry 4.0 adoption and the tentative optimism of Industry 5.0’s human-tech harmony. While larger corporations experiment with cobots and predictive maintenance, SMEs—comprising 98% of the sector—struggle with basic tasks such as integrating decades-old equipment with modern sensors. This uneven evolution spotlights the workforce skills gap as a frontline crisis, where leaders either perpetuate delays or propel integration.
Consider Industry 4.0’s foundational challenges. Despite a robust market, adoption lags due to significant financial barriers. Legacy systems, comprising over 70% of North American equipment older than 20 years, create interoperability nightmares, while cybersecurity risks deter connectivity expansions. The result? 70% of Industry 4.0 pilots fail, often not due to technical glitches but rather human factors such as inadequate training. Frontline leaders, tasked with daily oversight, bear the brunt: Untrained in AI analytics or robot maintenance, they contribute to 25% of integration downtime, turning promising tools into workflow bottlenecks. Industry analyses indicate that data quality and validation obstacles plague 70% of AI efforts, yet only 51.6% of firms have a coherent corporate strategy—leaving supervisors to improvise amid fragmented systems.
Layer on the emerging demands of Industry 5.0, and the gap sharpens. This evolution—projected to grow from $66.9 billion in 2024 to $312 billion by 2030 at a 19.54% CAGR—redefines manufacturing not as tech-dominant but human-amplified, emphasizing customization, sustainability, and resilience. U.S. momentum is evident in reshoring trends, where firms leverage CHIPS Act funds for AI-driven robotics and digital twins, extending beyond factories to logistics and healthcare.
Yet, with 54% of workers needing upskilling by 2030, the transition exposes raw vulnerabilities. Over 450,000 manufacturing jobs stood unfilled in early 2025, fueling a $1 trillion labor crisis as retirees outpace entrants.
Frontline leaders managing hourly teams amplify this: poorly equipped, they foster resistance, which spikes turnover by 18% and delays rollouts by up to 30%. HBR research highlights how new leaders often feel isolated without clear norms, which can exacerbate loneliness and disengagement in high-stakes environments.
Skills Gap Frictions (Underinvested Leaders)
Adoption Accelerators (Invested Leaders)
The bar chart below contrasts the costly frictions from underinvested frontline leaders (orange bars: e.g., high delays or churn risks) with the gains from targeted investment (blue bars: e.g., efficiency boosts or growth potential). Note the mixed scale, frictions highlight pain points, while accelerators show upside ROI—to underscore how equipping leaders flips hurdles into opportunities.
This table, adapted from 2025 benchmarks, illustrates the duality. In SMEs still mastering Industry 4.0 connectivity, underinvestment manifests as reactive fixes and mistrust of AI tools. Forbes highlights how jobs linger vacant not from lack of applicants, but mismatched skills in industrial tech. Conversely, empowered leaders, through programs blending technical and soft skills, drive rapid uptake. IndustryWeek reports that digital tools, when paired with leadership development, re-energize workforces by clarifying roles in connected factories. As 3.8 million openings loom by 2033, with technical roles growing fastest, frontline investment isn’t optional; it’s the bridge from 4.0’s efficiency grind to 5.0’s collaborative promise. In reshoring hotspots like the Southeast, where supply volatility meets tariff pressures, leaders who foster trust in edge computing and cobots can slash misalignments, turning potential $1 trillion drags into productivity surges.
With employment stabilizing at 13 million yet participation declining for two decades, the path forward demands a people-first lens amid tech’s relentless march.
Closing the U.S. manufacturing skills and behaviors gap requires more than proclamations— it demands a structured approach that positions frontline leadership at the center. This 5-step framework, informed by our first-hand experiences, recent 2025 industry outlooks, and HBR’s reskilling imperatives, is designed for U.S. firms at any maturity: from SMEs bolting IoT onto legacy lines to larger players piloting Industry 5.0 cobots. Each step emphasizes investments in training, development, and tools, transforming leaders from friction amplifiers to integration catalysts. Expect measurable outcomes, like 15% efficiency gains in 90 days, as seen in NAM-backed transformations.
Start with a thorough audit to identify where skills shortages and misaligned behaviors disrupt operations. Use anonymous surveys on tech confidence, behavioral observations (such as resistance to change or siloed decision-making), and workflow analytics from tools like DPS for tracking mission-critical KPIs. This reveals up to 80% of misalignments. For instance, it uncovers AI dashboard blind spots in legacy setups or leaders relying on top-down directives that limit collaboration. In sectors like semiconductors, where a 39% technician shortage persists, prioritize automation oversight and flag behaviors like risk aversion that block cobot adoption. U.S.-tailored diagnostics, informed by CHIPS Act data, expose not only technical voids but also behavioral gaps, such as poor change communication or low adaptability.
For example, an Ohio metal stamper in early 2025 applied this step to map 25% delays from unintegrated sensors. They prioritized robot handoffs while identifying habitual micromanagement as a key friction driver. Outcome: A baseline friction index to guide spending amid $12 million upgrade realities.
Using your diagnostics, launch modular training that builds both skills and adaptive behaviors. Focus on Industry 4.0 essentials, like IoT interoperability and basic AI analytics, and Industry 5.0 priorities, such as cobot safety protocols. Pair this with coaching for mindsets like embracing experimentation over perfectionism. Aim for 40% reductions in barriers through community college partnerships, as Indiana’s programs show in closing pipelines for 3.8 million future roles. Integrate soft skills too. HBR emphasizes mentoring to reduce frontline loneliness, which boosts retention and reinforces proactive behaviors like problem-solving.
A Midwest fabricator in Q2 2025 upskilled 50 supervisors on edge computing through virtual labs. They added role-playing to shift from reactive to collaborative habits. Result: 30% faster tool adoption, addressing the 54% retraining need without $10,000-per-hire churn.
Break down silos with rituals like daily huddles tied to real-time data from connected machines. At the same time, promote transparent, inclusive behaviors that invite input from every level. Provide leaders with mobile apps for action logging to cut misalignments by 20%. This is vital for tariff-impacted supply chains. Reward open dialogue to build trust in Industry 5.0’s collaborative core. IndustryWeek notes that blending IT, OT, and ET systems clarifies roles, enhances cybersecurity trust, and amplifies behaviors like active listening.
In a Texas electronics plant with 18% turnover, leaders rolled out AI-augmented briefings for sustainability alignment. They also recognized team members who championed shared ownership. Gains: Smoother 4.0-to-5.0 transitions, with engagement up 15%.
Make leadership development ongoing by linking company values to tech ethics, such as ethical AI in Industry 5.0. Assess, train, recognize, and reward behaviors that emphasize accountability, innovation, and resilience over rigid hierarchies. Use performance metrics to celebrate collaborative successes, raising engagement by 25% and curbing 8% turnover spikes by highlighting adaptable leaders. Forbes promotes “capital T” talent. This means holistic growth in technical and interpersonal areas to counter retiring expertise and instill 5.0 habits like cross-functional teamwork.
A 2025 California reshoring effort integrated this via quarterly workshops, aligning 200 frontline staff on resilience while rewarding shifts to inclusive decision-making. Impact: 22% productivity increase, preparing for human-robot partnerships amid $1 trillion crisis warnings.
Track progress with KPIs like overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and indexes for both skills and behaviors, reviewing quarterly. AI-based tools for deployment tracking, expected to be standard by 2030, help scale from 4.0 pilots to 5.0 resilience by spotting and promoting high-impact behaviors. Surveys show 55% gen AI adoption, but true ROI depends on these feedback loops.
A Florida supplier achieved 15% throughput gains in 90 days, scaling cobot integrations while honoring behavioral leaders who accelerated team buy-in by 20%.
This framework isn’t theoretical; it’s battle-tested for the U.S. manufacturing skills gap frontline leadership 2025 reality, where 70% of digital efforts falter on humans. By investing ~30% of budgets in tech-human synergies, firms unlock the 19.54% CAGR of Industry 5.0, preparing resilient ops for 2026’s anticipated challenges like supply volatility.
The proof of any framework lies in application, and U.S. manufacturers are delivering compelling cases of frontline-led triumphs amid 2025’s skills turbulence. These stories, drawn from industry collaborations and IndustryWeek spotlights, show how targeted investments turn potential pitfalls into progress.
Take a classic Midwest fabricator, entrenched in partial Industry 4.0 with aging presses and sporadic IoT trials. Facing 25% line delays from data silos, leadership audited frictions per Step 1, revealing supervisor gaps in analytics interpretation. A six-month upskilling push (Step 2) via partnered bootcamps equipped 40 leads with cobot basics, while huddle protocols (Step 3) bridged team divides. Culture rituals, like “tech share” sessions (Step 4), embedded 5.0 sustainability, and OEE tracking (Step 5) confirmed 22% productivity lifts—slashing unfilled roles from 15% to under 5%. As NAM data underscores, such moves directly counter the 1.9 million shortfall projection.
Zoom to a Southeast automotive supplier leveraging reshoring winds.
Zoom to a Southeast automotive supplier leveraging reshoring winds. With CHIPS funds fueling robot influxes, early 2025 pilots stalled at 30% adoption due to resistance, echoing the 70% pilot failure rate.
Frontline coaches, developed through HBR-inspired mentoring (Step 4), reframed tools as enhancers, not replacers, cutting turnover via clear norms. Simulations for AI oversight (Step 2) accelerated fluency, yielding 20% faster integrations and positioning the firm for Industry 5.0’s human-AI ethics. Broader ripple: A 18% engagement surge, aligning with Forbes’ call to rethink blueprints beyond coding camps.
These aren’t outliers. In healthcare-adjacent manufacturing, like a Pennsylvania device maker, leadership investments mitigated the $1 trillion crisis by blending 4.0 connectivity with 5.0 customization—retraining 60% of staff for digital twins, per recent 55% gen AI benchmarks. The result? Resilient ops amid 450,000 vacancies, proving that equipping the frontline to win every shift scales from SMEs to giants. As 3.8 million openings beckon, these insights affirm: Invest in leaders, and the skills gap becomes a launchpad.
In 2025’s hybrid horizon—and the 2026 pathways it unlocks—where Industry 4.0’s $21.4 billion tech foundations underpin Industry 5.0’s $82.57 billion human-centric surge—the U.S. manufacturing frontline leadership skills and behaviors gap challenge boils down to one truth: People power progress. From diagnosing frictions in legacy-laden plants to scaling cobot collaborations under CHIPS incentives, frontline leaders, fortified by training, development, and tools, dissolve barriers that once cost billions in delays and churn. As projections warn of 1.9 million unfilled roles amid 3.8 million openings by 2033, this isn’t mere adaptation, it’s reinvention, blending AI analytics with human judgment for resilient, sustainable factories.
Looking ahead, trends like gen AI’s 55% adoption and reshoring’s momentum signal opportunity: Firms prioritizing leadership will capture the 19.54% CAGR, turning hurdles into ROI engines.
Yet, success demands boldness—upskilling 54% of the workforce, fostering a workplace environment of trust, and measuring beyond metrics to morale.
For U.S. manufacturers charting this course, shop-floor resources like DPS, our Digital Production System offer grounded pathways to frontline empowerment, rooted in real transformations that align people and tech for tomorrow’s edge.
At POWERS, we help manufacturing leaders bridge the skills and behaviors gap and conquer technology adoption friction through targeted frontline leadership development. With decades of results-producing expertise, we address the behavioral and technical hurdles that slow digital transformation, equipping your supervisors and team leads, the guardians of 80% of shop-floor operations, with the skills and behaviors to foster seamless people-tech integration.
Our proprietary and proven methods, and DPS, our Digital Production System, provide the practical tools and training to turn reluctance into rapid adoption. We don’t just train; we transform your frontline into resilient accelerators, delivering measurable gains in productivity and profitability. Whether you’re tackling legacy system silos, upskilling for AI analytics, or prepping for reshoring demands, our tailored programs unlock the human potential that drives sustainable results.
These supervisors, team leads, and floor managers are not just a connective tissue between strategic vision and day-to-day execution, but they are the strategic backbone of this industrial revival. In a reindustrializing America, their role is becoming not only more critical but also more complex.
After decades of offshoring and the decline of domestic manufacturing, America is seeing a resurgence in industrial investment. Driven by global supply chain disruptions, national security concerns, and massive federal incentives such as the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, companies are bringing production back to U.S. soil. Industries like semiconductors, electric vehicles, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing are expanding rapidly across the country.
However, reindustrialization is not just about infrastructure and capital investment—it’s about people. Rebuilding American manufacturing at scale demands not only engineers and technicians but also a new generation of highly capable, agile, and tech-savvy frontline leaders who can drive performance, culture, and innovation at the ground level.
Historically, frontline leaders were often promoted based on tenure or technical expertise. Their primary tasks included monitoring output, enforcing policies, and solving immediate operational issues. While these functions remain essential, the scope of frontline leadership has expanded dramatically.
Today’s frontline leaders must:
This broader scope requires more than just technical know-how—it calls for a unique blend of leadership, communication, emotional intelligence, and systems thinking.
To meet these demands, the development of frontline leaders must undergo a transformation. Here are key areas shaping the future of this critical workforce segment:
Traditional classroom training is giving way to more agile, accessible, and job-embedded approaches. Bite-sized digital learning modules, mobile apps, and just-in-time content allow leaders to develop skills in the flow of work. At the same time, experienced mentors and frontline coaches are being deployed to support learning through observation, feedback, and guided reflection.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping leadership development. AI-driven platforms can now assess behavioral patterns, identify skill gaps, and recommend personalized development plans. Tools like virtual simulations, conversational AI coaches, and performance analytics empower frontline leaders to learn and improve continuously.
While technical expertise is crucial, human-centered leadership is increasingly viewed as the differentiator. Programs focused on empathy, conflict resolution, inclusivity, and psychological safety are being integrated into frontline development curricula. These skills are essential in building high-performing, engaged teams in fast-changing industrial environments.
To attract and retain frontline talent, organizations are investing in clear, credentialed career pathways. Partnerships with community colleges, trade schools, and workforce boards enable frontline leaders to earn recognized certifications and degrees, often with employer sponsorship. This approach not only builds competence but also signals long-term investment in the individual’s growth.
Forward-thinking manufacturers are no longer treating frontline development as an HR afterthought. Instead, it is becoming a strategic lever for productivity, quality, and retention. Companies like Toyota, Siemens, and GE have long understood this; now, mid-sized and even small manufacturers are adopting similar mindsets.
America faces a significant workforce challenge: millions of manufacturing jobs are going unfilled due to a lack of skilled talent. Frontline leaders are not just critical to solving this problem, but they are also responsible for shaping the experience of the workers they lead. They ensure productivity and safety, and they can be the difference between high turnover and long-term employee commitment. This responsibility underscores the importance of their role in the industry.
Moreover, the reindustrialization wave offers an unprecedented opportunity for personal and professional growth. It’s a chance to tap into underutilized talent pools. Veterans, women, people of color, and workers in economically distressed regions can all play pivotal roles—if they are supported by strong frontline leadership that understands their needs, motivations, and potential.
As automation and AI transform the industrial landscape, the human element becomes more—not less—important. Frontline leaders are the bridge between machines and meaning, between data and decision, between policy and practice. They are the ones who will translate the promise of reindustrialization into real productivity, quality, and resilience.
For America to truly reclaim its place as a global manufacturing powerhouse, we must invest in those who are closest to the action. That means redefining what it means to lead on the frontline—and ensuring that every new factory, every revitalized plant, and every reshored operation has the leadership talent it needs to thrive.
The next industrial revolution won’t be powered solely by machines. It will be led by people—specifically, by the empowered, equipped, and inspired frontline leaders who show up every day to make it happen.
POWERS partners with manufacturers to strengthen frontline leadership, improve productivity, and build lasting performance improvements. Our team works directly with leaders on the shop floor and across the enterprise, equipping them with the tools, systems, and coaching needed to deliver measurable results. Central to this approach is DPS, our Digital Production System, which gives leaders real-time visibility into performance and helps sustain operational excellence. With expertise spanning operations, leadership development, and workforce engagement, POWERS serves as a trusted management consultant, helping organizations align strategy with execution so that every level of leadership drives sustainable growth and competitive advantage.
Transitioning from an individual contributor to a frontline supervisor is one of the most challenging career moves. The skills that made someone a great worker—technical expertise, efficiency, and reliability—don’t automatically translate into leadership capabilities. Yet, many companies promote their best employees without equipping them with the tools and training necessary for success.
The result? A high turnover rate among frontline managers due to stress, burnout, and a lack of support. In fact, 26% of first-time managers feel unprepared for leadership, and nearly 60% receive no training at all when they step into their role.
For new supervisors, this transition can feel like being thrown into deep water without a life raft. The challenge isn’t just about meeting production goals—it’s about learning to lead, motivate, and manage people effectively.
Let’s explore the common challenges new supervisors face, essential leadership skills they need, and practical steps companies can take to set them up for long-term success.
Being promoted from within is an exciting milestone, but it comes with an abrupt shift in responsibilities. Yesterday, you were part of the team. Today, you’re responsible for leading it.
Many first-time supervisors feel unprepared for this shift, which can lead to frustration, second-guessing, and even resentment.
One of the toughest adjustments is the change in relationships. Yesterday, you were an equal. Today, you’re the boss. This can lead to:
Solution: Establish boundaries early. Communicate openly, set expectations, and demonstrate fairness in decision-making.
Many frontline managers have responsibility without real decision-making power. They are expected to:
Solution: New supervisors need clear guidance on what they can control and where they need to escalate issues. Leadership must also support them in carrying out their responsibilities.
Supervisors are often caught between hitting production targets and dealing with team issues. If they focus too much on numbers, they risk alienating employees. If they focus too much on team dynamics, they risk missing performance goals.
Solution: Developing communication, problem-solving, and time-management skills is essential. Supervisors need to be able to navigate tough conversations, prioritize tasks, and motivate their teams effectively.
Every supervisor will eventually face uncomfortable situations:
Many new supervisors struggle because they have never been trained in conflict resolution or effective discipline techniques.
Solution: Role-playing exercises and mentorship can help supervisors build confidence in handling difficult conversations.
Many new supervisors receive little to no formal training. This must change. A structured onboarding program should include:
Pairing new supervisors with experienced mentors provides real-world guidance. This allows them to:
Supervisors need to know what success looks like. Are they evaluated on:
Leadership should set realistic, measurable goals and provide ongoing feedback.
Training shouldn’t stop after the first month. Offer:
Promoting from within is a commendable practice that rewards hard work and retains talent. However, without proper training and support, new supervisors may struggle, leading to burnout and attrition. By investing in comprehensive development programs, organizations can empower their frontline leaders to excel, fostering a productive and engaged workforce.
POWERS specializes in developing frontline leaders and optimizing workplace culture to achieve sustainable operational performance improvements. Our approach aligns leadership and workforce behaviors with the company’s vision and core values, resulting in enhanced productivity, reduced costs, and increased value.
To further support manufacturing operations POWERS built DPS, a next-generation manufacturing operating system. DPS combines lean manufacturing principles with advanced digital technology to streamline processes, improve productivity, and drive sustainable performance increases throughout the value chain.
By partnering with POWERS and implementing DPS, organizations can provide new frontline leaders with the tools, training, and support they need to thrive in their roles, leading to improved operational performance and reduced turnover.
Nothing can stifle operational performance and hit your bottom line like the inability to adapt to changes in the marketplace. As we’ve experienced over the last few years, business change can come from external forces, such as skyrocketing customer demand, supply chain disruptions, or a global health crisis.
Change can also come from internal forces, often introduced in response to external forces, such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A), new systems, processes, hiring, equipment, relocation, expansion, contraction, and more.
Change can be planned or unforeseen. And with the current global economic climate, change is constant and inevitable.
Of course, seasoned business vets already know this fact. Customers can change their suppliers and leave practically overnight. Suppliers can go out of business or drop a product line. Your product mix may need to vary to meet customer demand or shore up the bottom line. New hires and promotions create changes in the workforce dynamics and culture.
So how do you prepare a new generation of leaders coming up in your organization to embrace and respond productively to the inevitability of change? How do you increase your organization’s flexibility to adapt to the marketplace and thrive through change? How do you excel at organizational change management?
Let’s set the systems and processes aside for a moment and focus on the human element of change management and how your organization can respond more productively. Let’s make your company’s response to change a strength, a competitive advantage. Here are four practical ways to improve your team’s ability to manage change.
The more frequently and openly executive or senior leadership can inform frontline leaders (managers and supervisors) of upcoming organizational changes, the better equipped and successful those people will be in managing their direct reports through the process.
Of course, there may be information that needs to be held close to the vest, at the executive level, for proprietary, competitive, or fiduciary reasons. But the faster and more effectively the information flows to your frontline leaders, the more successful any change will be. Period.
Employees learning about layoffs or site closures, for example, through the media, instead of through open internal communication, can have a devastating effect on the remaining team members and overall productivity. Moreover, the aftereffects of poorly communicated company changes can last for years and devastate the bottom line.
Nothing can put a team into turmoil like dumping a massive change on them without their knowledge or input. It’s even worse if they hear of upcoming changes through employee rumors or gossip. We covered open and transparent communication.
But letting your people know of the forthcoming changes is only part of effective management and response. Involving them in change planning is critical.
Your frontline leaders are more equipped than anyone in your organization to provide feedback on how the change will impact performance. Ultimately, they will be the ones held accountable for maintaining (or even improving) performance amid changes. So, involve them in the planning process.
Tapping this often-overlooked resource will likely increase frontline leadership engagement and improve their buy-in. In addition, utilizing their problem-solving capabilities imparts ownership of the challenges and accountability for the outcomes.
Effective change planning will also provide organization and structure and build a common language around the changes, increasing the likelihood of success.
Properly preparing your frontline leaders to handle change is a must. You can take a practical approach by providing formalized sessions with step-by-step guidance through various change scenarios. This type of change management training may cover topics like what to do if a significant order comes in, how to shift a product mix effectively, or how to integrate a new piece of equipment or application.
But ultimately, the type of training that is most necessary (and sometimes completely absent) is training your leaders to develop the right mindset, skillset, and behaviors to manage any change. And each person handles change differently. So, it’s going to come down to one-on-one assessment and coaching.
Investing quality time with your frontline leaders to develop an effective response to change is vital. They will be the success or failure points. They will elicit and inspire buy-in from their direct reports. You must assess their current capacity and understanding of change management and then give them the tools to improve their response and manage others’ responses through it. This level of personal investment is the key to successful change management.
Properly preparing your frontline leaders to handle change is a must. You can take a practical approach by providing formalized sessions with step-by-step guidance through various change scenarios. This type of change management training may cover topics like what to do if a significant order comes in, how to shift a product mix effectively, or how to integrate a new piece of equipment or application.
But ultimately, the type of training that is most necessary (and sometimes completely absent) is training your leaders to develop the right mindset, skillset, and behaviors to manage any change. And each person handles change differently. So, it’s going to come down to one-on-one assessment and coaching.
Investing quality time with your frontline leaders to develop an effective response to change is vital. They will be the success or failure points. They will elicit and inspire buy-in from their direct reports. You must assess their current capacity and understanding of change management and then give them the tools to improve their response and manage others’ responses through it. This level of personal investment is the key to successful change management.
As a senior leader, when it comes to navigating and managing change successfully, it’s up to you to assess the capabilities of your people. Do they have the tools to deal with change? Do they have a productive mindset and the skills to manage changes from whichever direction they come? If not, take a proactive approach and start working with them now.
Senior leaders that train and ingrain their frontline managers and supervisors with the right behaviors to manage change foster a more productive work environment and build a more agile organization. Effective change management can increase your organization’s scalability, sustainability, and momentum in the marketplace. You become more competitive and profitable.
Building and fostering effective change management in your organization can help prepare you for whatever the market may bring your way.
At POWERS, we focus on Frontline Leadership Training and Development to transform operational performance and prepare your leaders to be better change managers. We help you build a growth and performance culture that operates at peak levels to lower costs, increase productivity, build agility, and sustain that performance over the long haul.
Our team has helped executive leadership across many industries operationalize their culture for rapid and sustained performance improvement, increased competitive advantage, greater value, and a stronger bottom line.
To put our experienced team and proven track record to work for you, schedule an initial discovery and analysis by calling +1 678-971-4711, or emailing us at info@thepowerscompany.com.
Continuing our conversation on identifying and breaking down communication silos in your organization, let’s dig a little deeper and implement some improvements. Let’s start breaking down those barriers to productivity and more positive business outcomes. In short, we may need to take a wrecking ball to those walls that have built up over time!
Like any business, there is no end to the insider terminology and jargon that make up the manufacturing industry language. Layer in some commonly used acronyms, and it gets far worse. MOS, MRO, CRM, WMS, APS, BI, ERP…the list is practically unending. The compilation of acronyms for Inventory Management alone is pretty staggering.
One of the most challenging cultural barriers is language. When we travel to another country, we may need help understanding the ins and outs of the local culture simply because we do not speak the language.
The same can be said of the “country” or “domain” of business and manufacturing. One of the significant barriers to entry and advancement in any industry is that new people simply do not understand the language.
Beyond the waves of insider jargon lies a sea of software applications and technologies and their oceans of data, flooding our systems and pouring out nonstop. We’re drowning in the stuff. We swim against the rip current of 24/7/365 information and struggle to tread water, let alone make progress.
The learning curves for each new software tool and technology we implement are getting steeper and steeper. As a result, the ROI moves further away from the shore, off into the distance.
Instead of breaking under the strain of too many tools, techniques, technologies, and terminologies, let’s break down the barriers between the knowledge “haves” and “have nots.” If information is power, and the more you know, the more you grow, as they say, let’s share the wealth.
As part of our business discovery process, we sit in on many meetings and work alongside a lot of people at differing levels in each organization—from Line Operators to Shift Supervisors to Maintenance Technicians to CEOs.
The executive leadership team often looks at their data set and uses their own language to make sense of it and make decisions. Accordingly, so do the frontline supervisors, operators, and technicians. They have their own vernacular and understanding of what the job requires. And, of course, a giant chasm exists between what a CEO may know and what a line operator may know.
Unfortunately, and all too often, we find that vital information, like daily KPI targets, is kept on computer dashboards or whiteboards in senior management offices and away from the workforce that must reliably perform to those standards. Why is that?
Sharing vital information with the employees responsible for performance should be a no-brainer. But unfortunately, critical information transparency is often overlooked or purposefully avoided.
Insider jargon, terminology, and acronyms can become an easy shorthand for long-term employees in well-entrenched departments like maintenance. But for new hires, the ease and familiarity with that terminology may not be there yet.
So one of the most inclusive things a department head can do is break down the commonly used language for newcomers so that it’s clear and understood.
That new hire may be very experienced and eager to perform but may come from an organization, industry, or sector that uses different terminology to refer to the same job, task, or more.
Both parties can learn a lot by making no assumptions that acronyms and insider terminology are automatically understood and agreed upon. If you’re a new hire coming into an organization and don’t understand a term or acronym, ask what it means.
Nothing can undermine a business culture like unspoken or invisible performance standards. As a result, you don’t know how to perform to the target because no standards were ever agreed upon or made visible to you.
If your plant needs a line to operate at a specific capacity each shift to meet customer orders and conform to ROA calculations, everyone who touches that line must know that number. And they need a real-time way to “see” if they are “in” or “out” of performing to that standard.
Without visible daily performance targets, it’s like running a race with no designated course and no finish line. No one wins, and work can become mundane and repetitive, like an endless treadmill, leading to burnout and high turnover.
Making performance metrics visible is a good start but making them viable requires clear communication and mutual agreement. Do your managers and frontline leaders know how to secure that agreement from their direct reports and inspire performance? Telling someone they need to hit a target number each shift is only part of it.
As a leader, you need to uncover whatever may be hindering that performance, bring it out in the light of day, and deal with it. Show them how to meet their targets by listening to their concerns and removing obstacles. Clearly set expectations are the basis for evaluating performance and the first step toward improving!
There is no such thing as “one and done” when it comes to training. Instead, training is all about delivering information critical to your organization’s success, whether it be operator training on a new piece of equipment or training and developing leadership skills to improve a manager’s capabilities working with their team.
Training is about clear communication until the information is received and repeatable by the trainee. They must own the knowledge and have it committed to muscle memory. And you must transfer that ownership in a way that’s effective for them.
And bear in mind that people learn through different techniques and at different paces. So beyond the one-and-done approach that doesn’t work, there is also no “one-size-fits-all” method to training and developing your people. You may have more visual or experiential learners, for example, so be sure to broaden your approach and training methods.
These may all seem like simple steps, but I can assure you, based on our experience, these fundamental communication barriers can really trip up an organization and impact productivity, performance, and profit.
We see simple things like daily KPIs being kept from shift supervisors and line operators all the time, and as a result, there’s no goal for the production team to shoot for and no way to determine if production is on or off track.
When it comes to people in a room working together, take basic communication practices seriously. Everyone is at different levels of capability. For example, millennials in the workforce may often struggle with face-to-face communication. Or you may have people on your team who don’t typically speak up in big group meetings. As a result, you may need to spend more time with them one-on-one.
It’s up to you, as a senior leader, to work with your frontline supervisors and managers to identify the communication methods that work best for your team members. If you want to remove obstacles to peak-level performance, begin with breaking down barriers to effective communication, it can pay immediate dividends in performance.
At POWERS, we focus on Frontline Leadership Training and Development to connect the dots between exemplary leadership behaviors and your desired operational performance outcomes. We help you build a growth and performance culture that operates at peak levels to lower costs, increase productivity, build agility, and sustain that performance over the long haul.
Our team has helped executive leadership across many industries operationalize their culture for rapid and sustained performance improvement, increased competitive advantage, greater value, and a stronger bottom line.
To put our experienced team and proven track record to work for you, schedule an initial discovery and analysis by calling +1 678-971-4711, or emailing us at info@thepowerscompany.com.
Despite everyone’s best intentions, new frontline managers and supervisors can be set up to fail right from their first hour on the job. So whether you’ve brought in an outside hire or promoted a talented individual up through your ranks, setting up a new frontline leader with the right tools, training, and techniques for success is critical.
First, let’s take a moment to examine some of the upper management behaviors that can lead to failure. Of course, this isn’t a complete list of everything that can lead to a frontline manager falling short. But in our experience, getting inside hundreds of companies, these are a handful of the top issues that impair new leaders and impact performance.
Having no bar, a constantly moving bar, or a bar set too high can discourage new managers and cause them to disengage from the business and ultimately leave. It’s that simple. It’s human nature to want to succeed at what we do. We want to contribute and feel that satisfaction and success in our lives.
But when the expectations of upper management on the workforce are poorly formed or unclear, it can lead to widespread disengagement, low morale, and high turnover. This issue is especially real for new frontline managers.
It can take several months or more for a new frontline manager to settle into their new role and start being effective. Ensure you set realistic performance expectations and that your new managers clearly understand them.
Try using the S.M.A.R.T. goals process. It’s proven effective and can produce very clear expectations. And be ready to reinforce those expectations through check-in meetings, training, coaching, and mentoring.
Unprepared. When we work with new frontline managers, we get this response quite a bit. These are typically great people, willing to learn, hard workers, loyal, and dedicated to the business’s success. They just lack training.
They may need to be better communicators, know how to handle conflict better, make better decisions, or whatever. But often, they know they need to improve, but the company has no training to help them learn and master new skills. This issue is especially true of the so-called soft skills.
Training and developing your new leaders are essential to your company’s value. It’s not only to hit the daily performance KPIs. It’s for your business’s long-term scalability, sustainability, and competitive advantage. Talented people want to come to work for, and stay with, companies that train them up to be successful and advance professionally and personally.
You’ve hired or promoted a new manager. They’ve taken to their role and are digging in and uncovering issues that are harming productivity and performance. Then they try to communicate those issues with upper management, and the wheels come off. And, too often, they are ignored.
Dropping good people into critical positions in your organization and not listening to them when they bring up issues impacting performance can be a company culture killer. Instead, make the time to check in with your frontline leaders (especially your new ones!), listen to their insights and concerns, and support them in making changes and creating solutions.
Taking up valuable and productive work time with unnecessary meetings has been a meme for decades. And yet, it still happens. So, if you’re sitting in an upper management office and want to know what’s happening, get out onto the shop floor and talk to your frontline leaders.
If you must schedule a meeting, be sure to clearly communicate the purpose and objective, distribute an agenda, be concise, allow time for questions, and be open to responses.
As a mid, upper-level, or executive manager, respect the time of your direct reports, especially your frontline leaders. Getting them back to work as quickly as possible with a clear and brief meeting should always be the game plan.
Nothing can lead to swifter burnout for new managers than being heaped with new responsibilities with no real authority to effect any change. This conundrum can be true at whatever level of management you operate within.
If you expect a new frontline shift supervisor to improve the yield numbers on their line, but they have no real authority to make any changes, expect failure.
This no-win situation can present itself frequently with individuals you’ve promoted from within. Your responsibility is to communicate the new level of authority your new manager has in their role throughout your organization and help them build on it. As you do, be careful not to undermine their new authority, especially with their direct reports. Instead, let them lead and support them in it.
Structure your organization to advance and better your people. Younger people coming into the workforce are pretty much demanding it. Your new frontline leadership needs to see their role as a gateway to upward mobility in your company. If you want people to commit to your organization long-term, they need to know that you have a long-term plan for their success.
Building your business by building the success of the individuals that make up your business is essential to long-term sustainability and scalability. If your frontline leaders see a barrier between their level and further growth in the company, it can impact their motivation and longevity with the company.
This problem is a big one. You’ve been promoted or brought in from the outside and think you need to have all the answers on day one. You don’t. Be willing to ask questions. A willingness to question and uncover what you may not know or understand is vital to your success as a new manager.
Asking questions makes you a more empathetic leader and builds trust with your workforce.
If you’re new to your role as a manager and find yourself in over your head, it’s essential that you ask for help. Although upper management should be checking in with you, especially in your new role, it’s critical that you reach out when you need help.
Uncovering areas where you may need support, training, or coaching will help you and the organization succeed. So, be the first to put your hand up and ask for assistance when needed. The worst way for upper management to find out that you need help is after there’s a problem.
You may have been hired or promoted into your new management position because you performed the job well that you’re now responsible for managing. For example, you may have been a hard-working line operator who has been promoted to a shift supervisor. So, what do you do when one of your new direct reports performs poorly at your old job?
In this case, typically, because of non-existent training, you jump in and do their job for them. We see this often when we’re out on the shop floor during our discovery process. Unfortunately, this helps no one.
The person performing poorly at their job learns nothing, and you take on the responsibility that is not yours. You’re better off stepping back for a moment, documenting the issue, and creating and implementing a trainable solution.
If it’s an emergency, and you’re the only one that can step in, make sure it’s the last time. Or you’ve just become the go-to whenever the problem arises again. You may think you’re doing a great job when you may be given poor performance feedback for not doing the job for which you were hired.
If your operation runs without a well-formed Management Operating System, chaos may be the daily routine. It would be best if you made the time to back away from that disorder and not get caught up in it. Remember, the company probably hired you in your new role to fix it.
Take the time to evaluate the issue objectively. Make sure to uncover any root causes, not just the symptoms. Then, create a simple action plan to create change and act on it. Finally, bring your findings to upper management and seek guidance. Your objective observations are critical for decision-making.
Remaining immersed in the chaos and continuing a daily firefighting culture is costly, ultimately unsustainable, and can put the overall health of the company at risk
In your new leadership role, you must be constantly vigilant about not falling back into old habits, routines, and poor practices. Improving yourself and your skillset is critical to your growth and the company’s success.
Be honest with your manager about any old habits you have that may undo your success. Help them keep you accountable for working to improve them. Seek out mentors and coaches that will also hold you accountable.
This above-board way to learn and grow in your new role will be evident to those that hired or promoted you and can lead to your long-term success in the organization.
Underdeveloped leadership skills like effective communication, problem-solving, decision making, and more may not be on you to solve. Still, you must recognize your shortcomings and push for proper training.
Recognizing any areas that may need improvement is critical to success as a manager. Asking for training and support to improve is also on us. If you know you struggle to have tough conversations about performance with your direct reports, reach out to your managers for training.
Don’t shy away from making tough decisions and actually leading. That’s why your company put you in that position in the first place. But, if you don’t use the authority you’ve been given productively and positively, most likely, you’ll lose it over time.
And, if you have no power to effect change, it’s time to have a heart-to-heart with your manager. You should not accept a position where you have all the responsibility but none of the authority. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.
Building successful new frontline leaders is a partnership between the people in their new management role and those who put them there. It takes recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of both parties and working together to improve them. It’s a symbiotic relationship built to grow the entire organization around the success of each new frontline leader.
Making frontline leadership and development a priority in your company can combat the burnout that leads to high turnover and lost productivity, help attract and retain top talent, and build a company culture designed for peak performance. Ask yourself, are you doing everything you can to set your new frontline leaders up for success?
POWERS is a management consulting firm using our proven Culture Performance Management™ methodology to connect the dots between optimized company culture and desired operational performance outcomes. Frontline leadership training and development is a crucial area of focus for our business.
Our team has helped executive leadership across many industries build up their frontline leaders to achieve rapid and sustained performance improvement, lowered costs, increased competitive advantage, greater value, and a stronger bottom line.
To put our experienced team and proven track record to work for you, schedule an initial discovery and analysis by calling +1 678-971-4711, or emailing us at info@thepowerscompany.com.
Focusing on improving your company culture can dramatically impact performance no matter what business you’re in. From our experience working with our manufacturing clients, we’re seeing paradigm shifts in productivity, efficiency, and savings across the board when company culture matters.
We’ve written extensively about how to build a winning company culture with our 7 Pillars of Culture Performance Management series and more. For this article, however, let’s look at some of the specific and practical benefits to focusing on improving your workplace culture.
Happier people perform at higher levels. It’s pretty much a universal truth. And in this instance, being happier at work means being valued, appreciated, engaged with, and heard by management. A recent Forbes article reported that “happy employees are up to 20% more productive than unhappy employees. When it comes to people in sales, happiness has an even greater impact, raising sales by 37%.”
But the benefits of building a winning company culture don’t end there. Those engaged and satisfied employees can significantly impact your overall company growth and the bottom line. According to Forbes, the stock prices of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work for” rose 14% per year from 1998 to 2005, while companies not on the list only reported a 6% increase.
So how does it work? A winning culture improves the granular, departmental, daily, and shift-wise metrics like uptime, capacity, yield, maintenance performance, and throughput that roll up into the higher level KPIs such as overall productivity, efficiency, quality, cost reduction, ROA (Return on Assets), and profitability.
You can’t build a winning culture that performs at a high level without improving the daily performance numbers. And you can’t improve the daily metrics with an undervalued, unappreciated, and unempowered workforce.
If your employees are unhappy and underperform, a typical management response is to add overtime and more people, increasing labor costs. Simply throwing more hours and bodies at the problem.
This practice can make those unproductive hours even more costly and dramatically decrease profitability, especially with rising labor costs. It makes better sense to attack the problem at the root: improving employee satisfaction and engagement. In other words, improving your culture.
A winning company culture creates a sense of purpose that is commonly understood across the organization at every level. The business’ values and purpose are clearly documented and communicated. And the employee attitudes and behaviors reflect and embody those core values, beginning with your company leaders.
This shared “hive mentality” improves communication, connectedness, and cohesion at every level of your organization. We like to say that it turns “us and them” into “we.” Performance-wise, a business comprised of people with shared values, purpose, and mission is more agile in the marketplace, able to adapt to change, and outperform competitors.
One of the main reasons scores of people underperform at work (or simply quit) is a lack of feeling appreciated and valued by management. As a result, they do not feel connected to the business. This failure is often attributed to leadership failing to recognize and appreciate their performance. And often for simply not listening.
But in many instances, we find that leaders fail to embody the values and behaviors they expect from their employees. This disconnect not only sends mixed signals about the authenticity of the culture you’re trying to build but also undercuts its importance.
Training and developing your managers, supervisors, and frontline leaders empowers them to work better with their direct reports. Leaders who are invested and engaged with their company culture, and understand and exemplify its values, are more likely to be fully committed and accountable for its success. And ultimately, they are more likely to engender those same attitudes and behaviors to empower their employees.
Finding the right people to fill critical roles (or, for many businesses, any roles!) is proving challenging right now. The labor market is extremely tight. So how does improving your culture help you solve this issue? People want to come to work in an organization with a thriving and robust company culture. It’s that simple.
Ask anyone in your HR department if an improved company culture would help them attract and land the right people for the job. It will be a resounding “yes!”
Gallup reports that companies with robust, thriving cultures and engaged employees enjoy a 41% reduction in absenteeism and a 24% reduction in turnover. These are colossal productivity advantages. In addition, the decrease in training costs and learning curves are massive boons to productivity and profitability alone.
A recent Business News Daily article cites these crucial statistics for your company culture’s impact on hiring and employee retention.
A great company culture builds employee trust, loyalty, and longevity. Recognizing individual accomplishments, coaching, mentoring, training, developing, and promoting from within are all signs of a company culture designed for the betterment of its people.
This type of commitment can truly reinvigorate long-time employees and attract and integrate new team members more easily. This type of company gets people excited to come to work.
What business doesn’t want happier, more satisfied customers? As we’ve shown, improving your company culture improves your numbers and bottom line, leaving you in a far better position to satisfy your customers and respond to the marketplace.
Although supply issues and outright bottlenecks are improving somewhat, getting customers their goods as promised is still a challenge up and down the value chain. Your surest bet to continue satisfying your customers and retaining (and improving) your competitive advantage is to lower existing costs and improve productivity and efficiency. You simply can’t expect that kind of performance improvement without focusing on your people and your culture.
Beyond performance gains, your customers are increasingly aware of your company culture and its authenticity. If you have “we put our customers first” as any part of your core values, and you don’t deliver on that promise, it’s obvious, and your business may suffer.
Building a company culture wherein your people embody that “we put our customers first” commitment, but better yet, know how to connect the right attitudes and behaviors into daily performance outcomes is a winning combination. This is a winning culture your customers will notice.
Our unique approach to improving operational performance by focusing on your people is the key to turning an “us and them” culture into a thriving “we” culture. For us, “WE” means Workforce Empowerment. That’s why “WE” is at the center of POWERS!
Our proven Culture Performance Management™ (CPM) methodology connects the dots between optimized company culture and desired operational performance outcomes. It can help break down silos, and open lines of effective communication, collaboration, innovation, and help lower costs.
Our team has helped executive leadership across many industries implement CPM to operationalize their culture for rapid and sustained performance improvement, increased competitive advantage, greater value, and a stronger bottom line.
To put our experienced team and proven track record to work for you, schedule an initial discovery and analysis by calling +1 678-971-4711, or emailing us at info@thepowerscompany.com.
Good communication is an essential quality of any successful organization. How your executive leadership communicates with management and how the management team relays information to frontline supervisors and workers significantly impacts overall productivity and growth. Conversely, poor communication can wall off entire departments, facilities, and tiers within an organization over the years, bricking them in a little at a time.
Unfortunately, many organizations don’t focus on improving communication, especially regarding cross-departmental collaboration, training, and development. Queens University of Charlotte found that 75% of employers rate teamwork and collaboration as “very important,” but only 18% of employees get communication evaluations in their performance reviews. It can be challenging to ensure that all departments communicate effectively, especially when a company is growing rapidly, understaffed, or dialed up trying to meet marketplace demand.
According to a recent study by The Economist, poor communication has a tremendous impact on the workplace. Unclear instructions from superiors, pointless meetings, and other stressors can snowball into more significant issues with widespread effects on the business. For example, respondents to the survey said communication barriers are leading to a delay or failure to complete projects (44%), low morale (31%), missed performance goals (25%), and even lost sales (18%). All of these issues, of course, lead to high turnover and trouble attracting new employees.
When there is a communication breakdown, it is often between departments. Often, different departments within an organization don’t have a system in place that allows them to have productive conversations with other departments. One had, as they say, has no idea what the other was doing. As a result, sales may make customer delivery promises and fail to communicate with operations, and so on.
This phenomenon is referred to as “the silo effect.” A silo may develop due to physical spaces or managerial differences, among other things. Patrick Lencioni defines silos as “nothing more than the barriers that exist between departments within an organization, causing people who are supposed to be on the same team to work against one another.” Silos exist between management and workers, from plant to plant, across skills and technical knowledge divides, even generationally. No matter the source, silos flourish due to a poorly implemented operational culture.
Department leaders may tend to point the finger at the individual employees within their departments, but a silo often begins at the top. Silos can result from department leaders not communicating with or collaborating. They can also stem from a fear-based culture or inefficient processes. Finally, they demonstrate a lack of trust.
Ultimately, though, a silo happens when there is a lack of leadership. It occurs whenever employees develop loyalty to one specific department rather than to the organization as a whole. They may also happen when there are differences of opinion in management or priorities. Not working from the same page with the same goals in mind divides people at all levels.
There may also be ill will due to long-standing relationships within the organization. Negativity among co-workers can have a significant impact on productivity. Whether between team members, managers, or employees, negativity and disrespect in the workplace can lead to a toxic environment affecting your bottom line.
So how do you go about improving cross-departmental communication? Here are a few tips.
Excellent communication and collaboration are a result of a positive employee experience and overall workplace culture. And it begins at the top with clearly-stated expecations and leadership. So without a robust and cohesive mission, without a culture of respect, it’s impossible to facilitate a collaborative work environment.
It needs to be entirely clear what each department is supposed to accomplish, so everyone is headed in the same direction. Department leaders need to establish clear guidelines for the employees under them. Unclear expectations can undermine the entire organization you’re trying to build.
Know the strengths of each frontline leader, every team member, and trust each other. Focusing on building a high-trust environment is critical. A study by the Harvard Business Review found that employees in high-trust organizations reported 74% less stress, 76% more engagement, and 50% more productivity.
Once you have established clear guidelines for communication and collaboration, you need to hold each other accountable. Throughout the day, have check-ins between departments where you can follow up on the status of issues. Be consistent with these check-ins and create an environment where staff members feel they can be open and honest with their leaders and colleagues.
Creating an environment where departments can hold each other accountable will do wonders for your productivity. The American Society of Training and Development did a study on accountability, and found that if someone has a specific meeting with someone they’ve committed to, they have a 95% chance of success.
For example, bringing the maintenance manager into a production strategy session is an excellent idea and pays immediate dividends. Leaders in other departments can bring valuable insights to the strategy and goals within your department. It’s vital to encourage leads within each area, not just at a leadership level but at a frontline level.
Be mindful during strategy meetings and let the leaders from other departments know that their thoughts and ideas have merit. Make sure you are taking the time to really listen to each other. Don’t assume you have the best ideas about running your department; a leader from another department may have a different approach that may help things run more efficiently.
A healthy and thriving culture is the key to building effective communication and cross-departmental collaboration in the workplace. At POWERS, our proven Culture Performance Management™ (CPM) methodology connects the dots between optimized company culture and desired operational performance outcomes. It can help break down silos, and open lines of effective communication, collaboration, and innovation.
Our team has helped executive leadership across many industries implement CPM to operationalize their culture for rapid and sustained performance improvement, increased competitive advantage, greater value, and a stronger bottom line.
To put our experienced team and proven track record to work for you, schedule an initial discovery and analysis by calling +1 678-971-4711, or emailing us at info@thepowerscompany.com.
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Keeping track of what’s in your warehouse may be easier said than done, but it’s also critically important to your bottom line. The only way to know the true value of what you’ve got is to price your inventory accurately. As frontline leaders and manufacturing executives will attest, this entails paying special attention to every single warehouse item coming and going through your acquisition, sales, and use processes. It also requires diligently locating all items across your operations.
Whether you run just one or many warehouses, how well you know what your supply partners have in stock can make all the difference in your potential success as an industry leader. So much so that, experts at Business.org claim, “Companies can increase their profitability 20–50 percent or more through careful inventory control.”
SOURCE: BUSINESS.ORG
Not only has this always held true for manufacturing, but this reality has only been heightened in in the wake of the global pandemic, as explored in the Harvard Business Review’s recent piece, “Coronavirus Is a Wake-Up Call for Supply Chain Management.”
The article builds a case for organizations needing to know “exactly which suppliers, sites, parts, and products are at risk.” Only by gaining this insight will manufacturers be uniquely prepared to pivot in emergencies (like a pandemic and resulting global economic disruption), the author continues.
Why? Because those organizations have wisely equipped themselves to understand when and how to jump into action and “secure constrained inventory and capacity at alternate sites.”
Need further convincing? As reported by Manufacturing Tomorrow, inventory management “leads to savings of thousands of man-hours and results in increased efficiency and profits.
SOURCE: FLEXIS
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to streamlining your inventory management process. No “magic key” to turn and then all of your inventory management worries are over. The good news, at least, is that when you focus on the processes, systems, and behaviors that need to change, and when you’re willing to look at how your business can adopt the necessary tools you need, that’s when you’ll see major results in profitability.
To get started, our team at POWERS has compiled 4 key questions that you and your team should consider when it comes to inventory management, especially when it comes to the adoption of new technology or available inventory management software.
As PC Magazine reports, “While ‘inventory management’ sounds like it’s a simple tracking of what you have, inventory management software actually goes several levels deep. The software should integrate with at least one other back-end office system, namely, with either your accounting or enterprise resource planning (ERP) package.”
Yes, clearly inventory management is something that moves faster and smoother with a little automated help. But how do you know that you’re selecting the right software for your business? You actually won’t be able to answer that question until you answer several other questions.
As framed by Industry Weekly, optimal software will be “designed specifically to help companies automate this process and improve their business efficiency. By automating this process, companies cut critical human errors, streamline logistics, establish reliability on available goods, improve customer service and strengthen brand reputation.”
Too often today, businesses are trapped by technology instead freed. Software across all business disciplines, including inventory control, has become bloated, complex, and hard to learn and use every day. Make certain the technology you’ve implemented adds value. For sustainability, technology should scale easily with your business and be easy to train on.
Sometimes, the software doesn’t suit the complexities of the processes you have in place already. Or it may not align with the technology already in use by your team. Therefore, allowing the time and resources necessary to train your team on any new technology properly is vital to implementing it successfully.
It’s amazing how often the long-term goals of the organizzation aren’t considered before rushing into making a major purchase of the latest and greatest gadgets and gizmos. Have you taken steps to define your goals? If not, it’s time to rewind and start from there.
While it may be time to explore your more robust technology options, the solution to more effective inventory control may come down to your frontline leadership and your company culture.
POWERS management consulting’s unique Culture Performance Management™ methodology connects the dots between optimized company culture and your desired operational performance outcomes.
POWERS has helped global leaders across many industries operationalize their culture for rapid and sustained performance improvement, increased competitive advantage, greater value, and a stronger bottom line.
To put our experienced team and proven track record to work for you, schedule an initial discovery and analysis by calling +1 678-971-4711, or emailing us at info@thepowerscompany.com.
The unemployment rate in the United States stands at 3.6 percent, which means there are roughly 5.9 million people who are currently unemployed. Despite the vast improvement in the unemployment rate in the last twelve months, many companies have job openings they still cannot fill, especially in manufacturing. There has been a labor shortage in manufacturing for quite a while. Current estimates put the shortfall at 2.4 million by 2028.
There are well-reported issues affecting labor in manufacturing, but two stand out. First, much of the manufacturing workforce is aging out or has retired recently, taking decades of experience and on-the-job knowledge with them. In addition, the manufacturing industry is not doing enough to attract younger workers.
The National Association of Manufacturers reports that despite an increase of 349,000 in manufacturing labor in 2021, the most significant single-year addition since 1994, manufacturing still has 219,00 fewer workers than before the pandemic began. So, despite the improving labor picture, manufacturers have to do more with the people they have, and one thing is sure: employee retention has never been more critical.
So how can organizations approach the retention of employees? Is this just an HR problem or is it a problem with the entire organization?
In the past, whenever an organization needed to hire frontline employees, they would simply put out notices and hope for the best. The whole process is very passive. Put up a job notice and see who comes through the door. And many companies have not changed the way they hire frontline employees.
It is common for companies to recruit at higher levels for salaried positions, but they rarely solicit potential frontline employees. With a high turnover rate, it becomes a revolving door. A survey by Jobvite found that 33% of employees quit within the first 90 days. When companies are more active in the recruiting process, they can find the talent that is a good fit for frontline positions and have a better chance of retaining them.
Organizations also need to realize that recruiting is not simply a function of HR, and direct supervisors and managers need to be just as much a part of the hiring process as anyone else.
A crucial strategy for employee retention is investing in their training and development, especially as they move up in your organization. According to ClearCompany, 68% of employees say that training and development are an organization’s most important policies. Investing in better training will help organizations retain employees longer, but it can also impact your bottom line. Huffington Post found that companies that invested in training had 24% higher profit margins.
If an employee is underperforming, before an organization just gets rid of them, they should consider if the employee is a better fit for another position. When a new employee is hired, managers should do everything possible to keep that person in the organization.
This directive doesn’t mean you shouldn’t address performance issues. But it’s much better to turn an underperformer into a performer than to give up on them. So before you fire an employee, ask yourself if you have done everything possible to help them succeed.
Employees don’t want to feel like they are just another cog in the wheel, another number. A 2017 study from Office Team found that 66% of employees will quit if they don’t feel appreciated. This number increases among millennials, who actively seek employment with organizations with healthy workplace cultures that make them feel connected and valued.
If you want to retain an employee, it’s crucial that you make them feel valued and appreciated. It doesn’t even take much to do this. Simply saying thank you or acknowledging their hard work goes a long way. Therefore, it’s essential to recognize and reward employees.
You don’t want to have a mindset of “If this person doesn’t work out, I’ll just hire someone better.” Instead, think of your employees as valuable team members, not just replaceable labor. Simply put, if you don’t value employees, they will leave.
The workforce is shifting. Too many organizations are relying on experienced employees rather than focusing on developing training processes that allow them to transfer knowledge from employee to employee. And they aren’t doing enough to attract younger employees.
Millennials don’t want to just “get a job.” Instead, they are looking for opportunities to grow within an organization and be connected to something they believe in. Despite the bad rap many young workers get, 86% of millennials said they would rather stay in one organization where they can grow.
The company culture is also of utmost importance to millennials. Business Insider found that millennials who were surveyed would absolutely love to work at Google, Apple, or Facebook. Why? Because these three companies have a reputation for having strong company cultures. Creating a healthy company culture is one of your organization’s most significant pursuits to improve employee retention. Be the place that people want to show up to every morning.
Too many organizations are stuck in the past, especially in manufacturing. They are using outdated processes and systems, and it is a much different world than it was five years ago. If an employee has a bad experience at your organization, they can now announce it to the world thanks to social media and sites like Glassdoor.
Another quality workers are now looking for in an organization is flexibility. There are small ways organizations can accommodate employees. For example, offering flexible hours or hybrid working situations are essential to many employees. You also may want to have two part-time employees instead of one full-time employee.
You don’t want to stick to processes that aren’t working simply because “that’s the way it’s always been done.” The most important part of employee retention is your organization’s ability to step back and reevaluate its systems and processes.
If you are focusing on employee retention, take a look at your business. Are you the kind of organization that people love to work at? If not, what changes could you make to become one?
Employee retention may begin with your HR team hiring the “right fit” employees to start with, but keeping them is the job of everyone in the organization, from the top floor to the shop floor. As evidenced by recent workplace phenomena like job “ghosting” and the “Great Resignation,” employees leave unhealthy company cultures and get away from poorly-trained managers in record numbers. Therefore, building a workplace culture that employees want to grow with falls on everyone.
The pandemic has made employee retention even more complex, and there is more of a demand on the employees you have to perform. If your organization struggles with employee retention or requires performance improvement, our team is here for you. We are dedicated to helping you build the kind of workplace culture that increases performance and attracts and retains talented employees. We also offer critical role support to help organizations fill vital roles.
POWERS management consulting’s unique Culture Performance Management™ methodology connects the dots between optimized company culture and your desired operational performance outcomes. A healthy workplace culture contributes significantly to employee retention.
POWERS has helped global leaders across many industries operationalize their culture for rapid and sustained performance improvement, increased competitive advantage, greater value, and a stronger bottom line.
To put our experienced team and proven track record to work for you, schedule an initial discovery and analysis by calling +1 678-971-4711, or emailing us at info@thepowerscompany.com.