Build Your Future Workforce
Randy Wolken, President &CEO

Recently, MACNY received a $6 million US DOL grant to assist manufacturers in hiring and training 800 Registered Apprentices over the next four years. This grant recognizes a widening gap in the need for skilled labor and its lack of availability. MACNY members tell us that significant skills gaps exist in many manufacturing industries.

In 2022, Ernst and Young (EY) and The Manufacturing Institute collaborated with national manufacturing industry leaders to learn more about this gap. This study identified that leaders strongly agreed on the following:

• 74% said that the skills needed for manufacturing jobs are rapidly changing.
• 65% indicated that the skills needed for manufacturing jobs are changing faster than the skill level of the workforce.
• 65% said their organization struggles to fill job openings due to the quickly changing skills required for industry.
• 82% indicated that their organizations are seeking new and innovative ways to invest in the careers of their employees.

We see the same sentiments within our membership as well.

Furthermore, this same study identified five primary and three additional manufacturing skills required for individuals and organizations to prepare for the upcoming transformation. The five primary skills are:

1. Analytical Acumen – The ability to understand current efforts and apply data-driven and lean decision-making to improve efficiency and solve problems.
2. Business Acumen – Having a firm understanding of business goals and operations.
3. Creative Reasoning – Being able to solve problems with creative solutions.
4. Learning Agility – The ability to understand and learn effectively.
5. Resilience – The ability to recover quickly from setbacks.

The three additional adaptive skills relevant to manufacturing include:

1. Root Cause Analysis – The ability to identify underlying conditions creating issues with a machine, process, or system.
2. Social and Emotional Intelligence – The ability to effectively manage interpersonal relations and connect with others to achieve positive outcomes.
3. Systems Thinking – The ability to break complexity down into the interrelationships between the parts that allow for isolating and identifying challenges and opportunities.

These skills make up the basis for creating a workforce of the future. However, what is the best way to build your strategy for a future workforce? The study concluded that four strategies are paramount. The first strategy is to infuse the organization’s critical skills into its overall talent strategy. Second, each company must create new career pathways vital to future opportunities and challenges. Third, the study encourages companies to develop an adaptive organizational culture with a common purpose and leverage leaders and influencers to bring about identified changes. And finally, they must invest heavily in development opportunities for each employee that focus on collaborative learning and trades skills acquisition.

Now more than ever, every company needs to place an increased effort on skills acquisition and development among their existing and future workforce. At MACNY, we are a national leader in helping companies create customized strategies to fill workforce skills gaps and build apprenticeship and certification approaches. Check out what we are already doing for hundreds of companies at www.macny.org and nysapprenticeship.org. Then, please get in touch with us so we can begin working with you.