Kristin Kautz, Impact Washington Resource Provider

In my thirty years working with you all in manufacturing and helping you with workforce development and training, I have constantly heard the concern that finding and keeping talent is one of the biggest challenges you face, whether in times of a more plentiful labor pool or tight labor markets like today.

As the challenge remains constant, one question you might ask yourselves is, “what if we shift our emphasis from “buying” to “building” talent?  What would that look like?

First, training comes to mind:  Could you get better at that?  Could you look at the time and money invested in this arena and find ways to achieve training and upskilling your current employees and new hires “faster, better, and cheaper”? What if you could do that in ½ the time and with better retention results?  Would that impact your bottom line?  What if the training “stuck” and resulted in better quality, less rework, and more throughput?  What if you could measure the difference and bank it?

Second, once you onboard and train employees, what could you do to keep them onboard with you?  Could you create an environment that invites your employees to continue to develop their skills?  Could you create an environment that rewards them for doing so, more than an annual performance review? Statistics about the cost of losing and replacing an employee position run from 20% to estimate as much as 1.5 times the annual salary.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-much-does-it-cost-companies-to-lose-employees/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-much-does-employee-turnover-really-cost_us_587fbaf9e4b0474ad4874fb7

Third, could your hiring practices become more inviting?  What can you do in a highly competitive job market to make your company stand out as a desirable workplace?  How can you attract the position requirements and the right “soft skills”?   What could you do to quickly onboard and engage the new employee so they will want to stay?

Fortunately, we have a historical example of how we might address these things winningly.

Remember Rosie the Riveter and how we, as a nation, quickly replaced and trained thousands of workers in an effort to win the Second World War?   Training Within Industry was the foundational program that achieved excellent results and allowed us to supply our troops and win the war.

Smart Talent, Impact Washington’s systems approach to hiring, training, upskilling, and retaining employees, is based on the principles of Training Within the Industry but has added some modern and more extensive features.