The Manufacturing gold collar!
Today I like to share some thoughts about how the manufacturing industry increasingly needs a new type of employee, let's name them the?"The manufacturing Gold Collar!"?
Let me start by explaining the background to my ideas, Industrial manufacturing has traditionally divided the workforce into?"The blue-collar"?(manual/shop-floor/field workers) and?"The white-collar"?(knowledge/office workers). Blue-collar workers emerged through the Industrial Age as work migrated from farms to factories. White-collar office workers became a significant class in the twentieth century, outnumbering their blue-collar.
But the white or blue paradigm is clearly outlived.?The industrial manufacturer increasingly requires a?new layer of a knowledge worker:
A highly skilled multi-disciplinarian who combines the mind of the white-collar worker with the hands of the blue-collar employee. Often armed with a solid grounding in engineering, mathematics, science & tech(physics, chemistry,?biology, and programming). Again my idea is to name this new labor group "The Manufacturing gold-collar”?workers!?The term?"Gold-Collar"?was first used by Robert Earl Kelley in his 1985 book "The Gold-Collar Worker"; It is a newly formed phrase that?has been used to describe either young, low-wage workers who invest inconspicuous luxury (often with parental support). It can also be used to refer to highly-skilled knowledge people who are highly valuable to the company. Example: Lawyers, doctors, research scientists, etc. So it is not ( yet) established as a general term in the manufacturing industry, but again?I believe the term can be used in the context of?"The Manufacturing Gold-Collar"?( it was already mentioned in #Harvard Business Review back in 2001, but then I believe nothing really happened, read more at?Cultivating the Gold-Collar Worker by Mary Ann Roe)?
So in this context, is this then really important for the industry? Well, the industrial manufacturing industry is challenged by labor shortages & lack of relevant skill sets for the industry, so they are for sure in the need to better market their industry and attractiveness. The manufacturing workforce also has been absorbing new technology for more than two centuries today, however now it finds itself in the midst of an "Industrial Revolution" which is poised to transform work at an unprecedented pace. This transformation and innovation are also happening at an exponential rate due to new technologies such as artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, and cognitive automation, advanced analytics, and the Internet of Things (#IoT) etc.
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This in combination with the focus on automation of the administrative & production labor ( e.g. utilizing robots/co-bots to improve efficiency) has forced the shop-floor workforce to move for higher-level tasks – moving blue collars to a new type of worker... "The Manufacturing Gold Collar".
So what is then the Strategic imperative to get started? I suggest that with the new labor definition can manufacturers address the significant labor shortages & the needed redesign of Blue/White collar to "The Manufacturing Gold Collar" workers to:
With this in mind, let′s get started to make the Blue and the White manufacturing labor shine with gold. What do you think?
Vice President of Digital Sales Central Europe & International
2 年Thank you Stefan for your really interesting insights here. I think the way an employee experiences his/her employer matters a lot. See my recent post on Employee Experience in the Manufacturing Industry https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/activity-6960211875489820673-8qfC?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web
Global VP Sustainability Performance
2 年It’s a great concept Stefan and requires a paradigm shift and moving to new ways of manufacturing. How does the job description look like?
Strategic Communication | Business Value | Emotional Intelligence Practitioner | Coach | Trainer | ECR & ECR 360 Certified | Points of You? Explorer | Inspire for Performance Practitioner
2 年Great insight, Stefan! Thanks for sharing all these articles. You know what I would love to see in here? How would job description will actually look like for a Manufacturing Gold Collar employee? This will set the bar for a great vision of the future ?
??Megadeals Co-Founder & Managing Partner I Speaker
2 年??????
Author 5 x ?? Keynote Speaker ?? 3 x TEDx | Guest Professor | Consultant | Creative Futurist
2 年Good as Gold??I really like how you are connection history and future?? Stefan Frank