Aside from Recruitment Efforts, Programs to Retain Your New and Existing Employees Is Just as Critical

• Identifying the skills needed for each position.
• Performing a skills assessment of each team member — skills they use in their job, and skills they have that an employer may not be aware of.
• Meeting with each team member to learn what they would like to do within the company, and the job growth they hope to achieve there.
• Identifying skills the team member needs to learn (or improve) to achieve their goals.
• Providing training opportunities to hone those skills, and cross-training to learn other skills.
• Creating a structured mentorship program is valuable as well. It provides a win-win situation: Younger workers have mentors who can provide guidance, feedback, and reinforcement that they have a voice; and veteran employees feel valued for sharing all the skills and wisdom they’ve amassed.

As your veteran workers age out of the workforce, don’t lose sight that all their knowledge walks out the door with them their last day. Automation investments solve some staffing issues, but we still remain a long way from “lights-out” manufacturing.

(For assistance with HR-related matters, Adriane Harrison can be reached at (412) 259-1707 or email aharrison@printing.org)