In food manufacturing, operational success hinges not just on cutting-edge technology but on the efficiency of your workforce. As the sector faces a skills crisis, unlock value from your incumbent team before reaching for recruitment...
Improving performance – more important now than ever?
Food and drink is the UK’s largest manufacturing sector by turnover, yet has recently seen an 11 per cent decline in employment. A government review suggests this is because of individuals in their 50s and 60s leaving the labour market and Brexit reducing the number of available EU workers. Yet the industry continues to grow, with the food and drink sector reporting the fastest output growth and new orders in a recent report. How do we square the circle of increased demand, yet fewer workers?
Leaders should be simultaneously building a skills pipeline and working to improve the performance of their existing food manufacturing workforce. In this blog, we look at the latter: how you can ensure your current workforce is fulfilling its full potential.
Three pillars of an optimised food manufacturing workforce:
1. Training
A recent study conducted in Belgium revealed the marginal product of a trained worker is on average 23 per cent higher than that of an untrained worker. Your team could become almost a quarter more productive through the strategic deployment of professional development.
However, the majority of food manufacturers in the UK are SMEs, and therefore ambitious, multi-million-pound upskilling programmes like those recently enacted by Danone might not always be feasible. This is where peer mentorship can help; consider facilitating cross-training in your team and enabling different team members to jump into different roles. In an example from the catering industry, Moe’s Original BBQ in the US managed to increase sales by 60 per cent without having to change its staffing levels, by cross-training team members – building in flexibility in high-demand periods.
On-the-job training is currently the most popular form of upskilling staff in manufacturing, and can be a cost-effective way of driving higher performance. It can achieve the same professional development pay off as expensive courses, as long as it is tracked carefully and tied to each individual’s career journey. Investing in a continuous performance management solution like Performance & Talent allows you to underpin more informal training with agile goal setting and tracked personal development conversations.
2. Communication
68 per cent of manufacturers have experienced higher production costs caused by communication delays. In food manufacturing, it is vital that different parts of the production line can fully communicate with each other – especially when it comes to any potential threats to food safety. Walking between stations, trying to find individual’s contact numbers, reaching the wrong person and a lack of knowledge of organisational structure can all stand in the way of getting the job done. There can also be issues when it comes to connection between desk-based and frontline workers, exacerbated by the uptake of flexible and remote working. When desk-based workers choose to operate from home, they potentially create a disjunct between themselves and colleagues on the factory and warehouse floor.
Luckily, some seemingly small changes can elevate communication in your food manufacturing outfit. On the plant floor, technologies like two-way radios and communication headsets can be a relatively low-cost investment that allow different production stations to speak to each other more easily. When it comes to improving discussion between the desk-based and frontline teams, real-time cloud software solutions are the answer. By choosing software that is accessible on multiple devices, operational managers can ensure those at home and those in the factory can both log-in to the same system, whether via a personal computer, workplace PC or handheld device. A solution like Time & Attendance streamlines communication when it comes to workforce planning, as employees can use a self-serve programme to communicate availability and absences, and operational managers can log into this same system to make rostering decisions and plan shifts. Instigate efficient channels for communication and educate your workforce on using them, making best practice crystal clear.
3. Automation
It has long been common belief in the manufacturing industry that automation technology holds the potential to improve productivity, without taking on more people. However, this does not necessarily mean robots replacing humans as assemblers or quality control! Automation on an operational level saves your workers from time-consuming, manual tasks. 23 per cent of UK workers spend the equivalent of more than half their working year on manual, computer-based jobs that could be automated – wasted time for manufacturing workers that could be reinvested in production.
Quality control and food safety might seem too mission critical to outsource to automation yet – but by automating basic HR processes, your employees have more time for these high-stakes tasks that require a human touch. For example, using Time & Attendance for workforce management automates repetitive tasks like time tracking, freeing up your employees for jobs that require human responsibility and adaptability.
In a sector beset by difficulties sourcing adequate numbers of workers, it is vital to not waste the people resources you do have. Maximising the potential of your food manufacturing workforce requires a holistic approach that encompasses training, communication and automation. Take care not to leap to recruiting before you have thoroughly audited your workforce and identified opportunities for improvement and easy wins.
How OneAdvanced can help
Training
- Performance & Talent enables agile goal setting – ensuring that any training programme is rooted in accountability and tracked at an employee level.
- With a strong Time & Attendance solution, you can update where newly-acquired skills have enriched your workforce and feed this data into your scheduling, allowing you to fully reap the benefits of your upskilled people resources.
Communication
- OneAdvanced’s Time & Attendance, Payroll and Performance & Talent solutions are all available via the cloud – facilitating communication between employees in real-time, regardless of if they are desk-based or onsite.
- Performance & Talent facilitates high quality, regular performance conversations and increases the amount of contact between managers and their employees.
Automation
- Automated time tracking through Time & Attendance makes it simpler for employees, managers and HR teams to submit, track and manage attendance and worked hours.
- Payroll frees your team from the burden of manual input, saving time through automation.
Want to learn more about the challenges and opportunities related to managing your desk-free workers, like machine operators and production line staff? Check out our latest guide: Desk-free workers: The asset businesses cannot afford to lose