How To Keep Your Best Talent In The Machine Shop
A refreshing piece in a metal fabricating site stressed the importance of leaders’ role and how they shape the success of the machine shop.
Just like any production process, compliance is a necessity. Flexibility is a choice and maybe subjective for some. Shortage of skilled labour is a world-class challenge. However, the topic of finding the right talent for a machine shop has so many facets that it caused countless misalignments.
For starters, skills can be imparted, but it is up to the worker to receive or reject – subject to information delivery methods, if he/she is given room to be inquisitive enough to find out the last detail, or even the worker’s comfort level in prevailing management styles. The worker’s willingness to receive the knowledge with open arms can be diffused or even eliminated by the collective atmosphere in the machine shop.
The piece made an interesting point. ‘A conversation about skills and competency—knowing the difference between air forming and bottoming on the press brake, monitoring tool utilisation on the punch, or the best technique for a challenging out-of-position weld—ends up being a conversation about character. A company culture is nothing more than the collective character of an organisation.”
Leadership Is Influence
John C. Maxwell, a famous author said, “Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less.” As much as it stings, an organisation chart identifies managers, but not leaders regardless of authority level. Not everyone can lead, but a leader can come from anywhere. All it takes is the effort to foster connection, helping the team to develop into the values that propel them forward.
If there is anyone within the team deemed performing below par, the next course of action is a message from the top about company values and culture. The speaker watches as everyone nods quietly but remains unfortunately unaware why nothing has changed. The article wrote explicitly that the manager is not making any connection. His “manager mode” is the very wall that blocked any attempts for connection.
The long and short of the tale was a change in managing one’s mentality – influence the team in a positive way through trust building, not rhetorical suggestions. The manager had the humility to know when to follow, admit he did not know about what people were doing, and he wanted to learn. Applying the same anecdotes in a machine shop, it is the people on the ground who face the challenge first-hand, after all they are the ones doing the work.
As Mack from Blue Collar Workforce puts it, “When leadership is missing, you get frustration. When buy-in is missing, you get resistance. When unified purpose is missing, you get confusion. When competency is missing, you get anxiety. When execution is missing, you get stagnation. When it’s all missing, you get chaos.”
Skilled Talent Vs Automation
At trade shows when booths are tooting about how good their equipment and tools are, why would there be steadfast attendants eager to sign on prospects? Today’s machines are all about efficiency, wastage reduction and striving to be carbon neutral, plus the hype about Internet of Things (IoT) and smart manufacturing integrate technologies, including sensors, the cloud, and machine automation, with your machines and processes. Combining these technologies allows for automatic data collection as well as real-time analysis and reporting.
Conventional businesses tend to be hesitant towards such as it is somehow linked to having to release a cohort of manpower. However, if decision makers can look at automation as an extension of shop floor capabilities – freeing the skilled people to take on complex aspect on site, one might just be surprised at the enhanced performance sans the guesswork and errors. Investing in competency transcends dispensing directives misaligned with ground reality. It is nothing less than disappointing to be told as an employee all efforts put in amounted to nothing just because it did not bring in the results management had in mind. By the same token, working one’s fingers to the bone to facilitate conditions for materialising success cannot be discounted. Additionally, the employee is also looking for “results” for the investment into the machine shop.
One could argue the employer has an insatiable expectation, if not consistently demanding beyond staff’s bandwidth. In the employers’ defence, it is the way the world works today. Employers technically have the upper hand as others are willing to take on the job for survival. However, it does more damage to the company in the long run. It would be known for having an unbalanced management and even toxic culture given no boundaries are respected.
That gives employees no incentive to have initiative. Whatever competency accumulated would be taken elsewhere willingly with no regrets. Eventually, it is a lose-lose situation for the business.
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