Making Skilled Labor Shortages a Thing of the Past

Summary

The automotive manufacturing landscape is changing. The proliferation of electric vehicles (EVs) hosts a new set of challenges for the industry when it comes to new manufacturing and assembly operating processes and changes in supply chain necessities. These industry pressures only heighten the current skills gap within the industry. Counteracting these challenges are connected worker technologies, focused on the continuous improvement of learning and development of workforces to improve onboarding, training and reskilling.

Demand for new vehicles within North America is on the rise. By 2024, the market is set to grow by 5% to 2 million units, putting increased pressure on today’s automotive manufacturers to ramp up production.
However, a lack of skilled labor on manufacturing shop floor is causing a significant “bump in the road” when trying to fulfil such increases in demand. A drop of 9% in the manufacturing share of total employment within the U.S. since 1990 is only projected to get worse. To combat these downward figures, manufacturers need a solution, fast.

Customers want it new, and they want it now!

Rapid tech advancements such as EVs, the need to meet personal consumer preferences, plus new regulatory requirements, are presenting a need to reskill and upskill the sector’s workforce.

Aside from the well-publicized supply issues associated with these new developments, there is another significant gap looming—a growing skills gap. Closing this gap will require a radically new approach to training and education.

Widening the pool for more skilled workers

Manufacturers struggling to increase their skills pool must make sure they have the three essentials of workforce management on their radar.

1. Take advantage of digital tools: By using digital and analytical tools, organizations can understand the skills new employees need, assess learning retention, and evaluate the return on investment of their training efforts.
2. Keep an eye on future developments: A deep understanding of the future of your industry is crucial to ensure you are building the workforce of the future. By proactively addressing future skills needs, organizations can ensure they have the right skills in place to navigate disruptions and drive innovation.
3. Invest in upskilling initiatives: Upskilling investments are showing real ROI in the automotive industry. Upskill your new workforce to close the skills gap and drive new efficiencies and productivity.

It’s time to reskill–protect what you already have!

Closing the skills gap is not all about new employees! Employers now realize they need to invest in reskilling existing workers and focus on in-house training initiatives, with 8/10 American manufacturers investing in workforce training.

But traditional training and reskilling regularly involves shadowing a senior operator, and formal classroom-based learning. The problems posed by each of these methods is that shadowing will take a senior operator away from their existing daily roles, and formal training through PowerPoint, for example, doesn’t promote a strong caliber of information retention on the shop floor.

A new approach to learning and development

Training must unlock new employee competencies and skills in a more organic, efficient, and effective way, rather than a traditional ‘training events’ approach to workforce development. Yes, shadowing is hands-on, but it is inconsistent between each senior operator carrying out the training. Using a connected worker app to facilitate training means each new hire can be consistently trained in role-specific skills when and where necessary at the time of need.

On the clock, always

The adoption of the 70:20:10 model for learning and development is a key, progressive move for manufacturers worldwide:

• 70% of learning happens through on-the-job experience.
• 20% of learning happens socially through colleagues and friends.
• 10% of learning happens via formal training experiences.

So, a massive 90% comes from experiential and social learning! If experiential and social learning aren’t a part of your training mix, you’re missing an opportunity to reduce the time and costs of training in your factory, and to build skills versatility and coverage.

When using a connected worker app, automotive manufacturers can adopt an “always on” approach to learning so frontline worker trainees or existing skilled workers can self-serve with plenty of training content on their own, as and when they need it.

This approach can transform learning from being thrust upon workers, to a new generation of workers self-managing and taking initiative with their own training—while ensuring consistency across the organization.

Formal learning isn’t always a top priority–be creative

Integrating complementary apps on tablets, or even VR headsets into frontline worker training and reskilling is already seeing success in continual improvement use cases. Connected Worker apps offer a comprehensive solution to overcome labor challenges and empower employees to thrive in a changing industry landscape by fostering connectivity between the top floor and shop floor, personalizing learning, and enabling continuous reskilling—for them job satisfaction, for the company enhanced resilience and long-term growth.

The paper days are long gone–digital has taken over

Adopting a connected worker approach will help automotive manufacturers retain skills, diminish attrition rates, ensure regulatory compliance, and boost productivity. Giving workers on the shop floor access to a tablet or an Apple Vision Pro Headset, complete with the connected worker software app, will support them and enable each and every one of them to work effectively and safely, while training them on the job in new skills.

This new system makes delivering training easier and less reliant on formal training events. Instead of waiting for scheduled sessions, employees have on-demand access to training content. Real-time notifications keep employees informed of updates to training materials and work instructions.

Stop making training audits a slog–automate it

Going digital for training records can also help when it comes to audits and compliance requirements. Regulatory audits, such as IATF 16949 and Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) vehicle regulations require manufacturers to demonstrate how they are training workers on quality standards and practices.

Tracking and overseeing skills is time consuming and in many factories is still being done today in spreadsheets or, even worse, with paperwork locked in filing cabinets! This manual process is bound to result in outdated records and the risk of auditors finding gaps in training completion.

With an automated digital skills matrix, team leads and workers have visibility into and accountability for staying current on training curriculum. Management has reliable real-time data to identify training gaps and take corrective action where needed.

Regulatory standards require automotive manufacturers to establish, maintain and demonstrate a culture of continual improvement, which is precisely what tools, with its real-time data collection and analysis, problem solving workflows, and performance dashboards, are designed to do.

Connected worker technology paves a clear path for smoother automotive operations

How workforces learn and develop has changed, with experiential and social learning effective for 90% of the time. The potential that the connected worker approach has for automotive manufacturers is huge, think increased productivity, workforce retention, satisfaction. Amid a time when customers are not only demanding new vehicles, but new types of vehicles such as EVs, the connected worker approach provides a lifeline for navigating uncertain terrain.