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Here’s What the Future of Manufacturing Will Demand From You

Posted on October 20, 2020November 22, 2024 by Matt Bernot

In the 21st century, technological and societal change is increasing at an exponential rate. Just as each generation of manufacturers before you faced obstacles unique to their era, you face challenges that are unique to yours.

The future of your manufacturing operation relies on finding the most efficient ways to overcome these challenges. As you face them head on, remember that your success rests on your ability to do the following:

Establishing a pipeline of young, motivated, skilled workers that you are able to maintain productive and open communication with—and who can effectively coexist with the senior members of your team.

Investing in advanced manufacturing technologies in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Establish Intergenerational Partnerships

“Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”

– Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), Men In Black, 1997

People from different generations see things from different perspectives. They have different areas of expertise, different methods and strategies, and different norms that they subscribe to. This is great for your business. By unifying diverging skill sets, you’ll be able to bridge vital knowledge gaps within your business. Your older workers will become increasingly tech savvy, and your younger workers will gain insight into the value of emotional intelligence and intrapersonal networking.

By implementing the proper systems, you can facilitate this exchange of information and ideas from anywhere. Some easy actions you can take today would be to:

Assign projects to generationally-diverse teams.
Set quarterly goals for your employees to train in areas where they may be knowledge-deficient.
Create an online environment where ideas can flow freely.

As you bridge the gap between your employees’ skill sets, you’ll find solutions for problems that could not have been solved otherwise—or perhaps you didn’t know existed.

58% of field service professionals say their top pressure is competition. As you know, your business isn’t the only game in town. With the field services industry gaining traction each day, it is your responsibility to separate yourself from your competitors.

Stress the importance of having an open mind and being receptive to alternative perspectives—your team will be more productive and prepared for the future. With each passing day, the foreign will continue to appear less and less so.

Transform Your Tech

Manufacturing plants don’t have the same ideological, creative flair that places like Silicon Valley do, but that doesn’t mean that your business can’t be optimized for the 21st century. With younger generations of workers being drawn to places with shiny veneers, your business—and industry as a whole—needs to keep up.

Advanced robots, wearable devices, and real-time data integration software are not only profit-generating tools, they are vital recruitment tools. Workers that are able to see state-of-the-art technology being used in practice will be drawn in.

Make sure that your employees know that you’re putting your best foot forward. Advanced manufacturing technology—that is easy to use—will let you keep product planning in scope, distribution and logistics running smoothly, and production scheduling punctual.

Using the most advanced technology at your disposal is in the best interest of your business. It will also send a message to your employees—and future employees—that you are striving to work at peak efficiency.

Price Out The Competition

Young people want excitement in their professional lives, and are often willing to sacrifice more than previous generations have in order to achieve that. But don’t misconstrue this—they still want to get paid.

The average salary of manufacturing workers in the United States is $63,295. With an above-average payscale compared to other American industries, this is something that you can use to your advantage. Money is not the end-all-be-all factor that it used to be, but it goes without saying how beneficial offering above-average salaries can be when attempting to attract the best talent around.

Benefits of continued optimization and development of technology will only allow you to increase the wages you offer. Investing in technology to streamline your supply chains from start to finish allows you to invest in what really matters—American manufacturing jobs.

Don’t Stop Innovating

Stagnation is not a tried and true method of success. As humans, we have a tendency to stick with what works. It’s a natural survival skill. But as time continues its march onward, it’s up to you to make the necessary operational changes to avoid being left behind.

The future arrives one day at a time. As you strive for a more collaborative, high-tech, and competitively compensated work environment, ask yourself what you can do today to make that a reality. Infrastructure doesn’t appear out of thin air—the first step is finding systems that will work for you.

The world keeps turning and technology keeps evolving—your business needs to be fluid, mobile, and responsive. Investing in systems that put your business in a position for long-term success is the first step in preparing for whatever flavor of change comes next. Your products, systems, and technology will continue to change. Your staff will change. Your business model may even change. Change is as inevitable as the sun rising each day—make sure your business treats it as such.

Building and Maintaining a Trusted Team of Technicians

Posted on October 14, 2020November 22, 2024 by Matt Bernot

Right now, many businesses in the American economy are taking a page from the field services playbook. Employees are scattered across county lines, customers require an inflexible degree of personalized—and safe—service, and remote technology has become a requirement. As field service businesses continue to adapt to these trends, one thing becomes clear: it’s more important than ever to find and retain trusted technicians.

No matter what type of service you provide, your business relies on trust. Your technicians are an extension of your business—you’re trusting them to execute the goals you’ve set out to achieve. Their professionalism—or lack there of—will represent your business in the eyes of your customers. In fact, for your customers, your technicians are your business. As customers are increasingly diligent about who enters their personal space, your technicians need to be more reliable than ever.

Professionalism is a controlled variable. It’s a practice that your employees have the ability to engage in at all times. But even for the most professional workers, uncontrollable errors and discrepancies always find a way to seep their seedy fingers into your plans. No business, industry, or human being is immune to that. What you can control, however, is how well you prepare your technicians for the task at hand and how in tune you are with the progress of each job so that errors and discrepancies can be kept to a minimum.

By using the best tools at your disposal, you can be sure that you’re doing everything in your power to plan for success while preparing for the inevitable hurdles that pop up alothe way. With the proper field services management software, you can:

Dispatch the right employee to the right location at the right time.
Track the status of each job.
Improve your hiring process.
Get new employees up to speed without sacrificing additional resources.

By knowing how each of your employees work best and by clearly defining their roles, you can confidently manage from a distance knowing customers are being optimally serviced.

Your Technicians Are Your Ambassadors

Your primary focus as a business owner is to generate revenue by means of continued customer satisfaction. The most prominent impression that your business will leave on customers derives from the experience provided by the field technicians who provide services in homes and workplaces every single day. It’s not just where satisfied customers come from—trustworthy service leads directly to referrals.

So what is the best way to facilitate the web of trust between you, your field techs, and the customer? It starts with adapting a mindset of personal responsibility. As a business owner, show your employees that trust and transparency is a two way street. They may be hesitant about being monitored on a granular scale out of fear of being micromanaged—avoiding micromanagement is very important—so allow them to gain insight into your workflow, too.

Establish the idea that transparency is in everyone’s best interest. It won’t happen overnight, and it certainly won’t happen without investing in the proper resources. By investing in technology that will empower your employees to work their best, they’ll reciprocate by investing themselves in their work. While the process of establishing trust starts with you as a human being, here are some ways that technology can be a means to that end:

Outgrow Your Old Organizational Habits

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Though Ben Franklin specialized more in politics than field service management, he had his hand in creating Philadelphia’s first fire company—talk about the importance of prompt and successful service in the field.

People don’t prepare and plan in the same ways. Some of your employees are apt in seeing your business’s larger picture and are able to efficiently plan their days—or weeks, or months—accordingly. Others need to take a much more gradual approach, hour by hour. As their boss, you should know as much about their work habits.

With the right field services assistant app, your technicians can have a schedule optimized for them. Assign tasks tailored to each employee based on their certifications, performance history, and—often most importantly—their current geography. Prompt service leads to pleased customers.

Sometimes organization will come in the form of mapping out quarterly goals; other times it will take the shape of breaking down days hour by hour. Regardless of the timeline, give your employees performance reviews and feedback. Beyond putting your employees in direct position for success, you’ll be able to maintain a flexible, universal calendar that you can adjust on the fly. This level of maneuverability that you’ll have at your disposal ensures that nothing slips through the cracks.

Planning For Growth and Turnover

While your goal is certainly to spend more time onboarding employees than offboarding them, cloud technology will give you the tool kit to prepare you for both inevitabilities. More likely than not, the methods and systems you use to hire your personnel is not integrated into the rest of your business’s technology. Considering the importance of hiring the right people, shouldn’t this process be in sync with the rest of your operations? With proper field service management software, it is.

As your business grows, make sure that your hiring technology has a leg up on the competition. Offer your candidates unique skill assessments tailored to your business’s real day-to-day needs, not just cookie cutter interview questions. Once you make the right hire, streamline their training within the same system so that they aren’t overwhelmed on day one. The premise is simple: a better hiring process makes your business stand out amongst the competition.

At the end of the day, if you do right by your employees—past, present, and future—they will do right by you and your business. The more you invest in these processes, the more your business will gain.

Ask About Their Needs

Take the time to ask your employees questions. Ask them what they think they need to have a more productive workday, what they like and dislike about their current role, and—the most difficult of all—ask them what changes they want to see from you, their boss. It’s nearly impossible to build trust without having the truly tough conversations.

Tough and awkward conversations are best handled delicately. It might behoove you to use the technology at your disposal to send personalized questions and surveys to your employees digitally as opposed to asking them from across a desk. Odds are both of you will feel more comfortable this way—you may even receive more honest feedback.

By being empathic and open with your employees, they will feel better about the work that they do. If you made a decision that didn’t pan out, own up to it. Show your employees that when things go south, the best path forward is to learn from the mistake and move on. Walking the walk of vulnerability and personal responsibility will trickle down to the way your employees handle themselves, ultimately fueling the fire of productivity.

Dispatch With Confidence

Each job that you tackle will come with its own unique challenges. Sometimes jobs will go smoothly, and sometimes they will be a bit hectic—Murphy’s Law bets on the latter scenario. When trouble arises, count on your software to be there for you. When you’re able to have a uniform system that your employees can lean on 24 hours a day, they will be empowered to do their best in their respective roles. And while no one employee will determine the outcome of your business, the collective effort of your empowered and trusted employees will allow your business to adapt to all of the challenges that lie ahead.

Trust is fragile—it takes time to build, but it can break down almost instantaneously. Utilizing the technologies at your disposal to lay the groundwork of success is necessary, but lasting success ultimately lies with you and your employees putting trust in each other. Stay diligent in your efforts and true to your process—help your employees be the best they can be.

What Most Businesses Get Wrong About Company Culture

Posted on September 26, 2019May 22, 2023 by Scott Hammer

Every business wants a great company culture. It’s something that can’t be manufactured, faked, or copied. It has to come organically— and not just from the people at the top.

Company culture is made up of values and beliefs that every employee who contributes to your business shares. A strong expression of your company’s beliefs doesn’t just help you attract future employees; it gives candidates an immediate sense of whether they’ll be a good fit.

Looking at it the other way, lack of company culture can create toxic environments, leading people away from your business.

Your business culture shouldn’t just be easily seen when someone walks through the door. It should radiate on social media, on your website, in your emails, and anywhere else you have a presence.

But how often does that happen, really? It’s rare. And for a reason that everyone knows, but few acknowledge:

Company culture is meant to be celebrated, not enforced.

We all understand how important our values are, both on a macro level and with daily operations. But too often we spend time worrying that people aren’t practicing what they preach. So we subconsciously enforce, reminding teams what the party line is without engaging in honest conversations.

It’s habitual. But there are ways to break the habit while turning belief statements into feelings that resonate with every single employee. Here are a few ways to do it:

1. Collaborate On Company Beliefs

Have honest conversations with your employees about what they value in work and in life. Keep the focus away from your company. Instead, allow people to dig deep into asking themselves the kinds of questions they rarely ask of themselves on their morning commutes.

A great way to do this: search for the “why.” Why do we get up every day? Why did we choose this type of work? Why are we looking forward to the future?

“If you are lucky enough to be someone’s employer, then you have a moral obligation to make sure people do look forward to coming to work in the morning.”– John Mackey, Whole Foods Market

If you’re hesitant to ask these questions, it’s a sure sign that your workplace culture isn’t as strong as you’d like it to be. For that reason alone, you need to ask those questions. When you do, you’ll build stronger teams and bonds between people.

When just a few people create company values, you’ll naturally feel like you’re enforcing them because you didn’t get buy-in from your employees. People will think: “okay, this is how I’m supposed to feel.”

The more all employees can participate in the process, the more proud they’ll be to express shared purpose— because it actually includes them.

2. Turn Belief Into Action

Once you’ve established the shared values and beliefs that comprise your company culture, turn them into action. Ask yourself: what does this belief look like?

For example, if it’s important for your company to be a part of your local community, think about how to express that. Set up volunteer days to get your employees working for a local organization or community initiative. Not only is it great for team building, it shows people what being part of a community actually means.

There are other ways to do it, too. Hold meet-and-greets, host events, and let other people from your local community into your office. Communities and neighbors have the ability to support each other; give people a chance to experience it first-hand.

Now consider extending that belief: when your company responds to emails, speaks with customers, or sends out updates, how can they communicate a sense of community?

No matter what your company’s shared beliefs are, you need ways to express them in daily work. When that happens, people turn from just having beliefs to living them.

3. Emphasize Employee Talents

Chances are, someone at your company is a great visual artist. Someone else is a great storyteller. Someone else is a great musician.

Give your employees the opportunity to express your company culture in creative ways. Again, don’t enforce this— just build it into the architecture of your business.

A great way to do this is to nominate a belief advocate on a rotating basis. Give that person full creative control over how they want to express the belief(s). Doing this makes people feel ownership of the values that comprise your company culture. Each person will be able to express a value that no other person can.

You’ll also show your employees that their creative talents are appreciated. Those talents may have absolutely nothing to do with their daily work. But they could have a lot to do with the people behind that work. Never forget: company culture is about people, and really not much else.

Conclusion

You could read another blog with statistics about how important company culture is… as if that would convince you. Those stats miss the point entirely: great company culture is a feeling, a state of mind, and (at best) a creative expression.

Company culture is less about getting your employees “on board.” It’s much more about finding honest, open, and shared ways to inspire and support beliefs. With a little thought and planning, you can create a better workplace environment and nurture the heart of what makes businesses run best.

Tag: team culture