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New hiring trends in manufacturing |
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 by Thomas R. Cutler
Current trends suggest that Ontario will face a critical shortage of skilled metalworkers over the next decade.
According to a report by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, more than half of the province’s skilled labor force is expected to retire within the next decade while there are too few qualified candidates to fill the void, which means Canada could be short one million workers by the year 2020.
In Canada, over the next 10 years the population of 55-64 year olds will
increase by 50%. The current average retirement age is 62 and by 2010
the oldest boomers will be 63 years of age. At this point there will be
a far greater outflow of older workers than younger workers joining.
To
efficiently fill this employment void hiring practices of manufacturing
metalworking companies are becoming increasingly lean. Former hiring
practices which included advertising, screening, interviewing, hiring,
and training were wasteful; both too expensive and time consuming.
However,
today, better methods are being used. The hiring shift to manufacturing
specific staffing organizations has become increasingly cost-effective
as well as a lean “shortcut” for manufacturers to acquire the right
people, with the right skills, at the right price.
As part of
continued process improvement executives in the metalworking sector are
examining hiring practices, training practices, and poor employee
retention rates as their enterprise wide lean initiatives finally
arrive at the Human Resources department.
The process
implementation is familiar since those organizations are already using
lean technology, and other methodologies including Six Sigma.
Generic
placement or staffing organizations which can place a last-minute
temporary worker are detrimental to the lean hiring process and
actually prove more costly and wasteful than the few staffing
organizations that recognize the specific personnel requirements and
nuances of the metalworking sector.
“Many placement firms are too
generic according to the leading metalworking firms and suppliers down
the supply chain”, according to Julie Maydew, vice president of
ResourceMFG, who is finding great demand for placing highly trained
technicians within the sector.
When a staffing company places people
in unfamiliar environments, the time to learn the expectations of the
industry, company expectations, skills or experience requirements
complicate the recruiting process. When a specialist is used, many of
the delaying factors are eliminated as they are already recruiting in
the right places for similar positions eliminating the “starting from
scratch” syndrome.
Reviewing dozens of placement firms claiming
manufacturing specialty reveal that most were recruiting for
carpenters, plumbers, journeyman electricians, construction,
bookkeepers, file clerks, and a myriad of skills and positions that
were not directly or remotely related to manufacturing companies.
The
Ontario Chamber of Commerce reports that the province’s manufacturing
sector-which pays its employers 22% more than the national average-will
need to fill about 100,000 positions over the next 15 years. According
to the Canadian Tooling and Machining Association, Canada will need
roughly 50,000 positions filled over the next five years.
To enter
most of the skilled trade future metalworkers must apply for an
apprenticeship. Ontario has the largest apprenticeship training system
in Canada. Some of the resources include: Skills Canada - Ontario:
www.skillsontario.com; Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program:
www.oyap.com; Ontario Skills Work: http://skillswork.com; Careers in
Trades: http://careersintrades.ca; Skills Connect:
www.edu.gov.on.ca/skills.html; Tradeability: www.tradeability.ca; and
Canadian Apprenticeship Forum: http://caf-fca.org.
While each of
these organizations assists in developing the projected shortfall of
metalworkers, none offers immediate help to the hiring practices and
staffing requirements today.
The hackneyed practices of expensive
classified advertising, sifting through hundreds of resumes, and
interviewing dozens of unqualified individuals are over and some
organizations attempt to gradually rectify these old techniques
internally; with the extreme shortage of Canadian metalworkers many
more firms are opting to streamline the hiring process by using highly
qualified placement firms with the screening techniques to deliver the
best candidate to achieve immediate productivity.
The compensation
for these skilled professional will only increase and the services of
industry sector specific placement firms comes at a price;
alternatively hiring the wrong person comes at a much higher price.
Thomas
R. Cutler is the President & CEO of Fort Lauderdale, FL-based TR
Cutler, Inc., a firm specializing in marketing for the North American
manufacturing sector. Cutler is the founder of the Manufacturing Media
Consortium of 2,700 journalists and editors writing about trends in
manufacturing. Cutler is also the author of the Manufacturers’ Public
Relations and Media Guide.
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