Give more skills to your skilled workers

One of the hardest things a shop can do, especially a busy one, is upskilling.

It’s becoming even more vital as an aging workforce of manufacturing professionals retires without a new crop of young, competent workers that are ready and willing to take their place. This situation not only creates a skills gap because of the highly technical skills and tribal knowledge that are lost, it creates a workforce gap as positions are left unfilled.

Upskilling is a simple concept: It’s the acquisition of more (advanced) skills through education and training. It’s essentially future-proofing your staff. One way to best accomplish this is by starting small and doing what you can in your own shop.

Adding to the skillset and knowledge base of your workers is essential to your overall success. Doing so without leaving the comfort of your home shop is a bonus. Luckily, you have many options to aid in this endeavour.

A typical No. 1 option is developing an in-house learning program. It first requires a skills-gap analysis to fully uncover the current and future knowledge deficiencies the shop may have. It’s also a good idea to determine your learning objectives so you can design the content and methods to be used during training. Then you bring in experts to show workers how new skills can be used in their day-to-day work.

Another in-house option is job swapping. This job rotation method moves employees among jobs and machines so they can learn new setup techniques, machine load/unload processes, and cutting parameters. This training method also is temporary, so workers can move back to their original job after a finite learning period.

Peer-to-peer coaching is an important part of job swapping. It happens when colleagues work together to teach each other the ins and outs of their current job function. Peer-to-peer coaching shows your employees what tasks other individuals in your shop perform and is good insurance for an unexpected absence or illness.

This training method is the simplest way to improve your workforce’s existing skills and add to them because it’s easy to control costs while focusing only on the specific needs of your business.

Its informal nature also allows employees to talk directly with others in the shop, ask questions, and learn new skills by watching. In most cases, it also leads to soft skills development by encouraging communication, active listening, mentoring, and positive reinforcement.

Upskilling can solve many of your skills-gap problems. Then, with that taken care of, you can focus your time and energy on attracting new workers. Upskill them too.