Developing a High Performing Connected Culture

As baby boomers retire, the long-predicted labor shortage is starting to become a reality in many industries. Manufacturing has been particularly hard hit in developed markets such as Europe and North America.

A recent survey from Deloitte found that over three quarters (77%) of manufacturers expect that attracting and retaining workers will be an ongoing challenge in the coming years. Further, Deloitte estimates that unless there are substantial changes to the skills composition of the workforce a further 2.1 million jobs could go unfilled between 2020 and 2030.

The era of low-cost labor has ended and the new normal means a fierce competition for manufacturing talent. Never has the maxim been truer that people are your most important asset.

But retaining those people is a challenge.

In the US, for instance, the Association for Manufacturing Excellence says that the average manufacturing company has an absenteeism and employee turnover rate of approximately 37%. Meanwhile, in the UK, the manufacturing organization, MAKE UK, says that overall churn in the industry was 17.6% (or 8.1% excluding redundancies).

READ: The Disappearing Manufacturing Worker

One UK manufacturing company is bucking the trend.

Domino Printing Sciences, a company that offers industrial printing solutions to commercial customers, says that staff turnover stands at approximately 3.6% - well below the industry average.

What is the company doing that explains such a low staff turnover?

Carl Haycock, UK Operations Director at Domino Printing, recently presented his company’s approach to engaging its workers at Industrial Transformation Network’s Connected Manufacturing conference in London.

Here are five things that Domino Printing does to engage staff and create a high performing connected work culture.

#1: Create Alignment

Do your employees know how they add value to the business? Do they know the customer? Haycock explains that you must explain “the why, the what, and the how” of the business to all workers so that they understand their purpose.

At Domino Group, employees have KPIs and understand how they connect to the strategy.

#2: Make Performance Visible

“As humans, we like to know that what we’re doing makes a difference,” says Haycock.

That’s why at Domino group, KPIs are digitalized so that employees can see how work is progressing on their phones or at their workstations. Workers can track whether processes are in control and intervene early when things start to go awry.

WATCH: The Importance of the Connected Worker in Ensuring Resilience in a Post-Covid World

#3: Enable Improvement

Haycock explains that one of the reasons that people often move on from a job role is a lack of career progression opportunities.

At Domino they mitigate that risk by moving people around to different departments or roles so that they can gain new experience. High performers are offered global roles (the company has plants in UK, US, China, Germany, India, Sweden, and Switzerland) and complex projects.

The company has embraced continuous improvement, which helps people feel like that their ideas make a difference.

Everyone at Domino Printing receives Six Sigma training to the level of white belt to embed a basic understanding of the fundamentals of process improvement and quality control. Most receive yellow belt training, a few green belts and approximately 2% of staff are trained to the level of Black Belt.

Data is digitized so that people can spending time analyzing and drilling into the data instead of gathering it to enable faster improvement. All workers can submit ideas for improvement.

“Once you get the process going, you’ll have more ideas than you know what to do with,” Haycock says.

READ: Five Ways to Build Your Industry 4.0 Workforce

#4: Celebrate Success

The company has a quarterly awards program that celebrates the behaviors and successes that it wants to see. The company hosts an annual bar-b-que every year to get people socializing and reward work.

#5: Make Work a Nice Place to Be

“Make the experience of coming to work a good one so that more people stay,” says Haycock.

At Domino’s facilities in the UK there is a café area to encourage social interaction.

The company has recently increased shift flexibility moving people from a 5 day a week shift to a 4 day a week shift.

Employees can buy extra days of holiday per year - something that most people take up, says Haycock, showing that employees want more than just money.

The company also has a social club that workers can join, which gives them access to monthly bus trips around the country.

There’s no silver bullet to attracting and retaining staff. But most people want to come to work to do a good job. That’s why a well-run operation that treats people with respect and offers them opportunities and progression, will be attractive as the war for talent heats up.

Interested in learning more about this topic? 

Join over 200 industry leaders on November 15-17, 2022 at our Connected Worker conference in Chicago and learn how to build a connected workforce to improve resilience, agility and growth in a recovering economy. Download the agenda here.