From man-ufacturing to robot-ufacturing?

The manufacturing employment challenge: who will fill the millions of open positions? People or machines?

The situation with finding skilled, qualified workers in the manufacturing sector looks increasingly dire. This is an industry that was hard hit by the pandemic due to drops in product demand, supply chain bottlenecks, and general uncertainties caused by the need for process transition and tech evolution. Reports out of the United States describe a fairly solid comeback for the sector, but still the needed talent to support continued industry growth is lacking. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) in the US found in a recent survey that 75.7% of manufacturing leaders in that country consider attracting and retaining a qualified workforce to be their number one business challenge. Moreover, statistics from Deloitte show that over 2 million jobs will likely go unfulfilled by 2030, while there are currently roughly 750,000 positions available in the sector. At the same time, ABI Research points to similar struggles with finding manufacturing talent in China. There, the issue is an ageing workforce with over 60% of current workers having been born between 1975-1985. Research on China’s manufacturing industry shows that a key problem for that market is young applicants’ demand for higher salaries and a feeling that their education levels are too high to pursue manufacturing roles.

Search struggles push industry toward machines

Given the problems with securing qualified labour mentioned above, NAM market assessments highlight that manufacturing businesses are looking for other peopleless solutions. Just over 65% of US manufacturing companies say the are planning on putting more money into capital spending on new equipment and technological investments. Greater amounts of funding will be poured into automation and if there’s a continuing lack of human talent to do jobs, machines will take their place. The question though is whether this is bad news. Our Gi Group Manufacturing: Global HR Trends report shows that greater levels of automation in the industry sector will require more skilled labour to take on supervisory roles. This skilled labour demand will in turn lead to a change in thinking about life-long worker skills development and talent retention. Manufacturing sector team and process leads working with automated systems and advanced technologies will need to count, moving forward, on a constant learning element in their roles. Indeed, companies Gi Group surveyed in the UK state that technology is impacting roles at various levels: while machines or robots are involved in work automation for labour-intensive, less-skilled roles, new software platforms are expediting administrative process automation in higher-level administrative roles freeing up time for management and leadership teams to focus on business strategy and creative processes.

Open minds on labour process management can lead to greater opportunities

Understandably, this massive shift in how manufacturing work is done and frustration with finding qualified human resources for the industry could paint a bleak picture. However, here I would argue that the best solution is optimism. Each industry challenge can also be viewed as an opportunity. For example, our Global HR Trends report found that more automation in manufacturing can actually be supportive of a more diverse workforce. For example, physically-challenged persons who are not able to take on traditional, labour-intensive manufacturing roles can be brought onboard to handle machine supervision along with some servicing and planning tasks. Likewise, per our company research there is an opportunity to bring more skilled talent into the sector for businesses willing to rethink their communications and invest in industry makeover. 37% of persons surveyed for our Gi Group report said that today workers are less willing to start in blue-collar jobs in manufacturing and 36% of candidates see these roles (even the industry) as obsolete. Interestingly though, industry leaders whose companies are invested in bringing more automation and use of robotics to the sector say that greater use of machines does not preclude a need for more human talent. The company Rapid Robotics in a survey of 300 larger manufacturing firms found that 92% of them are actively hiring machine operators. At the same time, another company Universal Robots is calling on governments to support greater investment in STEM-focused education so that the younger device-dependent generation can better connect to roles that build on their natural affinity for working with mobile tools, i.e., new jobs will increasingly allow them to run and monitor their job peers or cobots (co-worker robots) from their smartphones or tablets.

These are just a couple of examples of areas where new, younger and more diverse talent can be found and brought into the manufacturing sector. It’s now in the hands of business leaders in the sector to invest more in communications on innovation-focused job opportunities and skills training to fill talent gaps. We are at an exciting breaking point in reshaping manufacturing jobs of the future, and if communicated properly more workers will be interested in signing onto the industry’s man+machine-driven future.?