While the COVID-19 pandemic immediately shifted much of the workforce to be more flexible, that trend is continuing across front-line manufacturing workers, panelists said at the 2024 Women in Manufacturing Conference earlier this month.
Work flexibility can come in all shapes and forms — adding temporary workers during peak season, working overtime or part-time shifts, and adapting to transitions in workers’ lives, such as having children.
One of the pandemic’s lasting effects has been the light it shed on these different needs and how manufacturers can cater to them.
“Before [the COVID-19 pandemic], on the production side, we would hire temps, we bring them in as temps, try them out for a little bit, and then hire them full-time if they were more productive in their roles,” said Susan Wallace, VP of HR at Carlisle Cos., at the conference. “During COVID, that all changed. We could not find temporary workers that we needed.”
The industry lost roughly 1.4 million jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and manufacturers are forecasted to see up to 1.9 million jobs go unfilled if current labor gaps aren’t addressed.
With the changing dynamics of the workforce in the post-pandemic era, flexibility for front-line factory workers can vary widely. Read on for how some manufacturers are bringing more flexibility to their workforces.
Looking at the needs of your workforce
Flexibility often ranks as a top factor in workers’ choice of a manufacturing position. For example, 49% of women leaders say flexibility is one of the top three considerations in job mobility, according to the 2022 Women in the Workforce study by McKinsey.
Additionally, 47% manufacturers in a 2024 Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute report said that flexible work arrangements was the strategy chosen to best retain workers.
During the pandemic, many women in manufacturing stopped working, opting to stay home to care for their kids because it was less expensive than paying for daycare, Marla DeFrank, VP of operations and supply chain at Carlisle Cos., said during the panel.
“There was still somebody that was a great worker, wanted to work. [They] just needed that flexibility for their family,” DeFrank said at the conference.
Additionally, for manufacturing workers that belong to a union, their flexibility schedule needs are a bit different, Sarah Golden, director of HR at Volvo Group Trucks Operations, said at the conference. Unions aim to ensure workers a guaranteed number of working hours, so temporary work isn’t something they’re necessarily interested in.
In fact, flexibility for union workers may be more about having the right skills to use during overtime jobs, Golden said.
“It's more how are we utilizing the resources and the competence that we have in the right way, so that they're more interested in the jobs that they're doing, and that when they're choosing overtime, they're choosing it based on the competence that they have as well,” Golden said.
“A lot of people focus on the title, versus what are the skills that you either want to achieve or what are the skills that you need to be successful in the role?”
Marla DeFrank
VP of Operations and Supply Chain at Carlisle Cos.
The value of a skills-based workforce method
Skill-based hiring may help attract and retain talent by leveraging workers’ interests and strengths, panelists said.
Carlisle Construction Materials, part of Carlisle Cos., started testing a new program to develop a more temporary and flexible labor pool. They opened up roles for people that could work four-hour shifts. The company then trained them and found an unexpected outcome from the experiment.
“Some of the people that came in were actually trying us on as much as we were trying them on,” Wallace said. “They wanted to see what we were like as an employer, and as soon as they understood the role that they were doing and saw that there was the ability to move to a full-time position, some of them did, and that was a great outcome. A lot of them were women who were just coming back into the workforce.”
How companies can implement skills-based hiring
Additionally, companies should have an updated skills matrix that’s reviewed at least annually to help both new employees and operations managers when pairing people with certain jobs, DeFrank said.
“A lot of people focus on the title, versus what are the skills that you either want to achieve or what are the skills that you need to be successful in the role? And the importance of that is you're really breaking it down, and you're challenging yourself too. What do you really need?” DeFrank said.
The skills matrix may help improve upskilling as it increases transparency in regards to what managers are expecting from employees and what skill level workers are at.
“If I talk to somebody and say, ‘Tell me where you want to go next, tell me where you want to go in five years without a title, it's what experiences and skills do you want to have, and how can I help you get those experiences and skills?” DeFrank said. “I would say the same thing for production workers, from an operations leader perspective. I want people that are cross trained. I want people that have skills in multiple areas of the factory.”
