Hiring For Potential Used To Be Scary!

I recently read an article by Industry Week that talked about the hiring conundrum facing manufacturers....... One really stood out as what has historically been a chicken or egg type dilemma for industrial organizations and specifically, the call-out is:

Manufacturing hiring criteria may be too restrictive

In fairness, industrial work can be dangerous and highly technical and with that, the easiest way to hire would be to bring on people with practical experience in exactly the tasks and environments a company is hiring for. The issue is that the needed gene pool of qualified workers no longer exists so manufacturers have no choice but to do something.

So what is a manufacturer to do:

1. Wait for the tech schools, universities, and apprenticeships to ramp up their programs to bring on a future workforce. While this should definitely be a strategy the issue here among others is a long-tail approach to what is an immediate need.
2. Hire for potential- An approach we have seen in other industries is to assess aptitude, desire, inquisitiveness, and other factors as predictors of a good employee without the prerequisite skills. The issue here has been the associated risk.... Hiring a variable workforce with no way to deliver personalized support as well as a way to in-line quantify a new worker's areas of proficiency and deficiencies could easily have a negative impact on an already fragile business environment

So, how can AI help manufacturers with their worker dilemma?

1. AI can deliver different sets of instructions and support with in-line guidance to each worker based upon their newness, trending proficiency, recency in doing a job, etc.
2. AI can immediately assess in real-time how a new worker is doing at every task and provide guidance on exactly where you can offer them additional training/ support.

What are some of the business impacts of this approach

1. Increase the candidate pool by allowing AI to personalize your support based upon varied experience. We have seen this increase the potential workforce for a company by up to 50%
2. Decrease onboarding/ time to value by delivering performance support at the point of need, where the worker is doing their job. We have seen numbers as high as 80%
3. Increases in quality of throughput via AI seeing in real-time how every worker is doing at every task and course correcting.
4. Retention increases as workers know they are measured based on performance facts vs relationships and hunches of others.
5. Optimized resource allocation, pairing workers with where they can have the largest impact on your business.

#performancesupport. #augmentir #performanceanalysis