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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Manufacturing

They are talking about this topic: Workforce Trends & Challenges

 

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The quotes below are about this issue:
As in other industries, leaders in the manufacturing industry are concerned about a high percentage of the workforce retiring over the next decade; this is particularly true as they continue to struggle to fill entry-level positions.

Employer Quote Region
"We're really looking for people that want to live somewhere around here, just to be within a commutable distance. Our workforce—we have either people who have been with us less than five years or people who've been here over 20 years. So, in about ten to fifteen years, we will have a number of people leaving. Even with those long-tenured employees, those-long tenured employees were very mechanical but not necessarily good programmers. So, we're really hurting for CNC machinists." Southwest
"I know this is a listening session but—as an HR person— I feel like I have to share with you. There was a company that saw a huge group of employees moving towards the exit door with retirement and nothing to backfill. And we put together a program. It's a two-year program that incorporates the Tooling U, which the employee does outside of their work time. And we package that with 32-hour units in lab experiences with an instructor on some very specific topics. It took us a year to finalize the curriculum. We have a manual machining piece. And so they do roughly—off the top of my head—eight online courses, and then they come in and they work 32-hour lab components to each of those. Probably, the key to the success though is that I then put them on their own little independent internships on the company floor. So, it's not all external. There's an internal component to make sure that these folks are being prepared and groomed to step forward when those openings occur. So, we had our first group go through last year. And, we now have the second group. And the first-year group will now become second year with an emphasis on CNC, while we start a new group on manual. Hopefully, this will self-perpetuate, and they will continue to develop for those positions that there is a need for. This was a very specific program for a particular company in terms of the selection of the coursework that was selected from Tooling U. The lab components—we're working with the company's drawings. So, the students are actually creating in the lab, creating those things that they would run into on the manufacturing floor. It's worked very well. It's a win-win situation." Southwest
"I think we're going to turn over something like 40 percent of our workforce in the next five years—everything from engineers to operators to maintenance technicians to tool makers. We're looking for all kinds of people." Southwest
"Question: Are you concerned on the other side of the spectrum in terms of long-term employees that are closer to retirement? And are you going to be able to replace those skills?

Employer: Very much so. It's a small insular community. Employees are just amazed when I hand out their anniversaries. Some of them have been there longer than I've been alive. It's going to be a real issue when they start leaving; these are the people who can fix everything—they make it work every day, they figure out how to put the peg in the right hole."		 Southwest
"The question was whether I'm concerned that 40 percent of all maintenance, nationwide, is going to retire in the next ten years. The answer is that I'm scared out of my mind. That's why Fit was developed. It was developed so that we could take somebody who has the basic rudimentary wrench-turning skills, and make them into what we need as an organization. MnSCU decided to kind of go away from company-specific programs and make it much more generalized. We're okay with that. I'd like more company-specific, but that's fine. But if the question is: Am I scared that we're about to face the hugest exodus from the labor force in the history of the labor force in America? Absolutely. And there are not enough people in the MnSCU system to fill it. Even if they were able to bump up the recruiting dramatically. There are just not enough people to fill the holes, so we have to get really creative. That's one of the reasons we're looking at automation and robotics. More so than anything else, we just don't think there are going to be people to actually do the jobs or if they'll want to." Southwest
"Talking about retirement, I'm scared. Over 25 percent of my workforce will retire in the next five years." Southwest