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

For most print providers, recruiting people to fill open positions, and retaining the skilled workers they have, ranks as one of the most difficult issues they face. They’re not alone; most manufacturing industries are encountering the same problem. Yet, the printing industry faces the added misconception that it’s a dying industry — which makes it even more difficult to attract younger workers or those from other fields weighing their career options.

Industry recruitment requires a boots on the ground, grassroots-level effort. It means getting involved with local schools and colleges, launching internship programs, and attending job fairs.

Adriane Harrison

Retainment of new hires is just as critical. As Adriane Harrison, vice president of human relations consulting at PRINTING United Alliance, pointed out during a session at the recent thINK Ahead conference for Canon inkjet press users, the No. 1 reason why a Generation Z worker takes a job is the opportunity for career development, and the main reason they leave a job is the lack of career development provided. 

As such, employers should create a personalized career development program for every team member. This requires: 

• 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)