6 Steps to Increasing Profit Through Workforce Engagement

A recent Gallup study reveals that employee engagement in manufacturing has reached an 11-year low, with only 30% feeling involved and enthusiastic, largely due to a lack of purpose, recognition, and effective communication, leading to high turnover rates and emphasizing the need for a worker-centric approach to improve retention and productivity.

Improving employee engagement within manufacturing is a global concern. A recent Gallup study found employee engagement is at an 11-year low; only 30% considered themselves involved and enthusiastic about work, which is worse than it was in the “quiet quitting” phase of COVID-19.

Even those who consider employee engagement too soft a measure by itself recognize the dire correlation that low engagement has with decreasing quality, customer satisfaction and profits. Reasons for low engagement include:

• Feeling a lack of purpose and meaning
• Receiving insufficient recognition for creative problem-solving
• Frustration about abundant resource constraints
• Isolation from a perception of poor communication

Companies often struggle with getting constructive insights about how their staff and frontline workers feel. Even when managers and human resources teams utilize pulse surveys – and many don’t – employees can be concerned about the true anonymity of such questionnaires and can be reluctant to share frustrations. Exit interviews always fail to recapture individual employees and still may not give you a full picture of employee experience.

Contrary to headlines about lazy generations, most people want to enjoy their job and be good at it. Motivation is lost when they feel overworked, unsupported or frustrated. This can result in workers seeking other opportunities, contributing to the cycle of high work and low morale for the remaining staff.

This concern is significant, particularly because of the ongoing labor shortage. Manufacturing companies are struggling to fill over 600,000 jobs. Unsatisfied workers typically have alternative job prospects and are attracted to the surface-level flexibility of the gig economy.

Furthermore, when manufacturers finally hire replacements the onboarding process can be long. Sourcing and training new team members is expensive and time-consuming. As a result, manufacturers need to consider employee retention as a priority.

The good news is creating a more engaged and motivated workforce is possible. By prioritizing a worker-centric approach, manufacturers can foster collaboration, motivation and workforce engagement.

Here are 6 steps to consider for your employee engagement strategy.

1. Make Engagement Effortless

Increasing employee engagement is important at all levels of an organization. According to Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace, highly engaged teams have fewer negative outcomes (like 30% fewer quality defects) and more positive outcomes (like 10% higher customer loyalty). Engaged workers also drive better products, services, and innovation, growing the bottom line.

For your top floor to keep a consistent pulse on shop floor engagement both the inputs and analysis have to be natural. Forcing extra checkpoints for the sake of engagement will have a neutral effect at best, and could easily backfire. And the best collection of data will be ignored by leaders when summaries are cumbersome.

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