Reducing Employee Turnover: What your manufacturing facility can do to learn how to reduce excessive turnover.

Are you finding it harder and harder to find and keep good help? Are you looking for ways to learn how to reduce employee turnover in your manufacturing facility?

Learning how to reduce employee turnover can help save a manufacturing facility millions. In a report from Tooling U-SME, they find that employee turnover cost may cost manufacturers millions of dollars annually. The study finds that two of five manufacturing companies (43 percent) report an average of at least 20 percent annual turnover. In some geographic areas the turnover can even be much higher.

Most often we are quick to point blame at the departing operators, and cover up the real issue by saying such things as:

“That operator was terrible.”
“That operator had no production experience.”
“We just cannot find good help anymore.”
“This younger generation just does not want to work.”

Manufacturing companies need to really look in the mirror for the real reason why their facility has a constant revolving door of production employees. In most cases, recently hired production employees simply quit a job out of pure frustration. They get thrown into a production position with no professional machinery training and are expected to keep the equipment running without any issues. As we all know, this irresponsible approach to training (or lack thereof) results in high safety risks, low productivity, and usually the need to hire a new employee. Plus, the Maintenance Technicians get irritated due to constantly being called to the machine for simple problems and adjustments that normally should be made by the operator, and the operator gets frustrated and usually quits because they never receive training on how to properly operate the equipment. Next thing you know, this time-consuming hiring cycle continues to happen repeatedly.

Although it is much harder said than done, there are many things a manufacturing facility can do to help reduce employee turnover. A few simple steps include:

Putting a structured preventive maintenance plan in place so that your maintenance organization is proactive and less reactive, reducing job losses due to stress and frustration

Hiring outside professionals to help your employees learn the correct machine operator training so that there is less frustration when working with machinery.

Identifying the skills needed by your maintenance organization so that you can effective hire the right employees using valid assessments and identify the most critical skill gaps for your existing employees – showing your employees that you are investing in them

Have a valid training program in place for each job role, reducing the effects of attrition due to employees not being clear about their job roles or lacking the skills needed to perform at a high level

Provide better training during the new employee onboarding period. Employees who understand the company’s mission, how it is accomplished, and their role in that mission will greatly reduce the chance of them leaving

Putting your maintenance employees through an industrial maintenance training program tailored specifically to their needs and lack of skill/knowledge.

Let Multi-Skill Training Services help you put an end to all this non-productive madness. Give us a call and let our sales team explain how we can develop a custom “Machinery Specific Operator Training” program specifically for the equipment used in your facility.

Tony Ericson

VP, Operator Excellence