The manufacturing industry is continually evolving, with new trends and technologies emerging every year. 2023 brings a unique set of challenges for manufacturers who are seeking success in the current economic climate. There is no doubting that manufacturers must prepare for these challenges in the coming years, especially when it comes to sustainability, employee churn and the rapid growth of technological innovations. In this blog post, we’ll discuss these major challenges facing the manufacturing industry in 2023, so you can make informed decisions and adapt your strategies accordingly.
Increased Pressure to Focus on Sustainability
Corporate social responsibility is becoming an increasing concern for all industries around the globe and is even more prevalent in the manufacturing sector. In manufacturing, there is mounting pressures being placed on them for sustainable and carbon-neutral processes including the acquisition and production of materials, and the waste and emissions these processes emit. Sustainability requirements are likely to not only be expected from government and institutional contracts, but also commercial customers.
Let’s learn how Sodales can help to alleviate the pressures of sustainability requirements.
Sodales for Enterprise Health, Safety and Employee Relations improves corporate social responsibility efforts through improved environmental reporting and tracking to create proactive approaches to sustainability and improved human rights through transparent employee relations processes like grievances and disciplines. Through offerings such as return-to-work programs and transparent grievance and disciplines processes, employers can improve their overall approach to corporate social sustainability. Sodales also helps organizations save time and money by expediating otherwise time-consuming processes resulting in a reduction of wasted labor, time, and even improved compliance.
Increased Voluntary Exits
As the pandemic beings to become a distant image in our rear-view mirror, the fallout of pandemic related issues continues to take a toll on the manufacturing industry, like many others. One of these issues has been a steady flow of employees voluntarily leaving their jobs in search of better wages, better working conditions, and an improved work-life balance. According to the 2023 Deloitte manufacturing outlook survey: “voluntary separations continue to outnumber layoffs and discharges, indicating substantial workforce churn.” This forces organizations within the manufacturing sector to adjust their strategies to focus on introducing and enforcing an organizational culture of fair and respectful employee treatment to enhance their overall employee experience. That being said, this study revealed that one in three surveyed executives have retaining high-performing employees as their strategic priority for 2023.
So how can Sodales help reduce employee churn?
Sodales’ features can help improve employee retention by giving employees a greater voice and creating a safe work environment which in turn improves overall employee satisfaction. Sodales provides a streamlined and secure avenue for communication between employee and employer, from filing grievances and discrimination complaints to return to work planning and discipline management.
Additionally, a safe workplace is a workplace that employees will be attracted to. Sodales offers tracking of important metrics, so employers can identify repeat offenders or issues and re-evaluate their strategies and policies as needed, creating the safest work environment possible. This includes everything from hazard and risk assessments to site audits and incident management. Our solution offers organizations in manufacturing a comprehensive solution to proactively manage health and safety, which contributes to employee satisfaction and retention.
Rapid Technological Advancement
Technological advancement remains rapid in the manufacturing industry, and this is only expected to increase in 2023. According to Deloitte, manufacturers have increased their digital investment over the past few years and accelerated the adoption of emerging technologies. Companies who have been quicker to adopt digitally have displayed greater resilience and efficiency. Within the manufacturing industry, digital advancement can help streamline processes through automation, to provide accurate, real-time information, and reduce overall costs. While this technological advancement won’t completely replace the traditional industrial skills that have created this industry and help to shape the items we know today, it will however enable the manufacturing industry to do what they do in new ways.
How is Sodales driving technological innovation for manufacturing?
Sodales provides the manufacturing industry with a single full-suite platform for all things health, safety, and employee relations. This allows organizations to eliminate manual processes with pre-built industry process flows for incidents, grievances, disciplines, inspections, audits and more. With Sodales, your manufacturing organization can be empowered with automated workflows and robust data and analytics for your health, safety, and employee relations processes. This information at your fingertips can make it easier to move your business out of a reactive approach and into a proactive, digitally proficient organization.
A specific example of how Sodales enables the manufacturing industry to improve their efficiency through digitization is through the ability to easily complete regulatory forms such as OSHA, WSIB, WCB, Cnesst, or Worksafe according to local requirements. Users can submit forms directly from Sodales without having to manually enter information. Additionally, Sodales is helping organizations digitally by allowing them to seamlessly integrate with the systems they already depend on, including SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle, Workday and more.
Ready to Learn More?
In 2023, the manufacturing industry is expected to see an increase in sustainability requirements, consistent employee turnover and a continued pressure to evolve digitally. Using Sodales, organization can prepare themselves for these challenges by prioritizing health, safety, and employee relations. This can reduce their exposure to incidents, reputational damage, business disruptions and more while improving employee retention and satisfaction.
At Sodales, we have worked with many trusted organizations in the manufacturing industry including Cargill, Coca Cola, Lockheed Martin, Volvo, Dormakaba, Woodbridge group, Schindler and more. Our industry experience has provided us with valuable insight on the pain points and challenges facing the manufacturing industry to best help your organization. Ready to take the leap? Book an industry specific demonstration today.
