In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the scarcity of skilled labor has emerged as a pressing concern across industries. The demand for qualified professionals is outpacing the available talent pool, posing significant challenges to organizations striving to hit production and margin targets.
Amidst this backdrop, the criticality of workforce management software has emerged as a necessity, offering a solution that not only addresses the complexities of skilled labor shortage but also enables seamless planning and real-time adaptability.
Here we’ll explore the critical issue of skilled labor scarcity and delve into how software can digitally transform operations by organizing and maintaining master data and replacing outdated or static tools with accessible, dynamic solutions.
The Challenge of Skilled Labor Shortages
The shortage of skilled labor is a well-documented challenge that has caught the attention of numerous experts. McKinsey’s research has highlighted that “unfilled jobs were a primary reason that seven in ten companies fell behind in scheduled production, leading many industrial leaders to identify labor shortages as a challenge to growth”. This scarcity affects industries ranging from manufacturing to technology.
According to Deloitte’s research “an estimated 2.1 million manufacturing jobs could go unfilled by 2030 and the cost of those missing jobs could potentially total $1 trillion in 2030 alone”. The traditional workforce management approaches are inadequate to address this complex challenge.
Workforce Management Digital Transformation
Further research by Deloitte’s Insights team outlines that “Digital transformation in the manufacturing industry continues its steady progress. Despite a year of historic disruption to work, workforce, and workplace, manufacturers have shared common experiences of accelerating digital adoption to help mitigate some of the pandemic-related disruptions in production environments. In a 2021 Deloitte Global Resilience Study, 57% of manufacturing respondents reported using advanced technologies to redesign job tasks (e.g., automating previously manual tasks).” All emphasize the need for technological innovation and adoption to bridge the skills gap and position organizations to effectively manage through any shortage.
Indeavor’s software aligns with this sentiment by providing a dynamic solution that caters to the changing needs of industries grappling with the shortage. By becoming the central system of record for organizational master data (e.g. Labor standards and employee skills), your leaders get the necessary visibility to attack the problem head-on. With Indeavor, site leadership can derive powerful insights to support more data-driven operational decisions.
For example, in an exercise to assess how labor is enabling or disabling production target achievement, Indeavor aligns the employee base’s skills and expirations with defined optimal labor standards and proactively highlights labor gaps against future production demands. Empowering organizations to proactively address skill gaps and make informed decisions to prevent negative impacts on production or margin (e.g. overtime and agency labor spend).
Data Visibility and Real-Time Adaptability
The significance of real-time data visibility in workforce management is frequently underscored. Combine the scarcity of skilled labor with last-minute production changes, and your line-level leaders are scrambling to pivot without the necessary visibility. Indeavor’s software, with its real-time capabilities and mobile accessibility, aligns with this perspective by providing decision-makers with up-to-the-minute information, ensuring operational continuity even in the face of unforeseen changes.
Once a part of a connected enterprise, Indeavor can take this a step further by receiving that adjusted production plan from your ERP, to enable a full re-planning of labor in a matter of minutes. Preventing delays to production and leveraging your costly resources with the most up-to-date information available.
Overcome Labor Shortages with Indeavor
The labor shortage is a challenge that demands modern solutions and is unlikely to go away any time soon. Indeavor’s workforce management empowers organizations with dynamic planning tools, real-time adaptability, and master data organization. Transforming how industries approach workforce management in the face of these challenges. As industries continue to evolve, having the right tools at hand is paramount.
