Bridging the Gap: How Technology Influences the Modern Manufacturing Frontline Workforce
Standardization has always been a cornerstone of manufacturing to help ensure consistent quality and efficiency across production operations. The industry has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, presenting new challenges that traditional approaches to standardization do not efficiently address when it comes to training a new generation of frontline workers. To improve frontline productivity with new workers, you should embrace a modern training strategy.
Traditionally, workers specialized in a limited number of repetitive tasks and had considerate amounts of tribal knowledge from their years of experience. As current employees age out of the workforce, manufacturers are faced with unprecedented labor challenges pertaining to attracting and retaining the next generation of frontline workers.
Today’s frontline employees are required to perform a wide range of jobs, often switching between them throughout the day. The addition of technology throughout the manufacturing process creates exciting new opportunities to attract younger talent. However, without a modernized training strategy, manufacturers will continue struggling to attract, train, and retain workers.
While conventional training methods relied heavily on employee knowledge, static paper manuals, or time-consuming and resource-heavy training sessions, the next crop of workers had much different expectations. Millennials and GenZ workers have expressed positive views on frontline jobs. Yet, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) research shows that 65% of executives view attracting and retaining talent as their largest business challenge in 2024.
It’s important to note the expectations and differences across generations have a significant impact on job preferences. As this generational shift continues to elevate millennials and GenZ as the majority of the workforce, manufacturers need to note they have grown up in a digital world that has heavily influenced their working styles.
Manufacturers Need to Meet the Expectations of New Tech-Savvy Workers
The incoming generation of workers has grown up immersed in technology and possesses distinct learning styles that diverge significantly from previous generations. Digital natives, as they are often called, are accustomed to accessing information rapidly and seamlessly through various digital channels when looking for information or learning how to complete a task. They thrive on interactive experiences, visual stimulation, and bite-sized multimedia-rich content that can be consumed on demand.
Traditional methods fail to resonate with these learners as they will expect dynamic, engaging training content that caters to their tech-savvy preferences. Manufacturers who rely on outdated knowledge transfer practices to maintain productivity and quality will struggle to deliver training experiences that set the frontline up for success and your organization’s ability to conquer your labor challenges long-term.
To truly engage and empower your new generation of workers, you must adopt new training and instruction methods to align with these evolving learning styles, embracing multimedia-rich and interactive experiences that cater to innate digital fluency. Without interactive visual and multimedia-rich training content, you will struggle to effectively train workers to retain the necessary information and skills for each task.
Digital Work Instructions Help Manufacturers Standardize Procedures and Deliver Engaging Training Programs
To overcome the challenge, manufacturers are increasingly turning to digital work instruction software to provide a centralized platform that documents standard operating procedures (SOPs) in an accessible and scalable format. Instead of relying on paper manuals or time-consuming training sessions, employees can access step-by-step instructions that are complete with interactive elements, videos, and visual aids across devices.
Multimedia-rich digital work instructions not only reinforce standardization across your complex processes but also empower workers to grasp new information and perform tasks with confidence via step-by-step instructions. Standardized digital work instructions also give trainers the ability to onboard, train, reskill, and upskill employees more efficiently by utilizing a skills matrix and learning paths that are personalized for each person.
Skills matrices provide valuable data and insights to track worker progress, identify areas where additional training might be needed, and even analyze the effectiveness of their procedures. Interactive and collaborative digital work instructions bridge the gap between humans and technology to help ensure that your training programs are efficient. They help empower workers to actively participate in the manufacturing process by creating feedback loops to share information, make suggestions, and benefit from real-time feedback. Creating this level of interactivity unlocks a new level of efficiency, quality, and innovation on the shop floor.
Using a data-driven training approach enables continuous improvement that helps to ensure standardization, individualized training paths, and consistent feedback loops for improvement remain a cornerstone of your training program.
Future-Proof your Workforce with Multimedia-Rich Digital Work Instructions
Embracing multimedia-rich digital work instructions is not a luxury; it’s a necessity. By catering to the learning styles of the digital generation with accessible interactive multimedia-rich content, you can efficiently streamline knowledge transfer and foster a connected workforce. Digital work instructions can empower you to overcome modern challenges and unlock new levels of productivity that keep your workers engaged.
Digital work instructions help bridge the gap between standardization and the dynamic qualities of modern manufacturing workers. By implementing the right solution, you can help to ensure consistent quality, drive continuous improvement, and future-proof your frontline workers for the challenges and opportunities ahead.
CDS Mentor is at the forefront of AI-enabled digital work instructions that can help you effectively train the next generation of frontline workers. By creating a multimedia-rich training program with a focus on embracing employee-centered work experiences, you can improve the productivity and efficiency of your frontline workforce.
Contact us today to learn more and see a demo of CDS Mentor for AI-enabled digital work instructions.
