By Karen Hanna
Companies struggling to find, land and onboard employees can benefit from looking at the role automation and artificial intelligence (AI) play in the HR process.
One New York City-based sales director, who was recently laid off from an East Coast company that supplies the plastics industry, expressed a frustration familiar to anyone who has ever looked for a job: Nineteen years on from the creation of LinkedIn, and 17 years since Indeed.com launched, there still is no one website that provides all employment listings. In fact, the job seeker said he has had better response simply reaching out to relevant companies cold.
Experts suggested ways companies can improve the process — for the benefit of both themselves and job seekers.
Read more on the labor crunch: https://plasticsmachinerymanufacturing.com/21248002/.
Perc Pineda, senior economist for the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS), said companies are exploring ways to hone HR processes and software. IBM, for instance, is looking at resumés that are currently automatically trashed by software programmed to ignore candidates with long employment gaps.
“They’re looking at those now as a pool of qualified candidates, because they’re desperate,” Pineda said. “And we, as an industry, could probably do the same thing.”
Digital tools also deserve a closer look when it comes to onboarding new
DELMIAWorks says its tools can reduce training time by as much as 75 percent. Touch-screen interfaces make accessing and sharing data easy and provide an intuitive process to guide employees through complex tasks.
Louis Columbus, a principal at the company, said technology itself can draw employees to companies.
“By maintaining a commitment to upskill and continually provide additional training and certifications for workers, as well as provide cross-training on specific work processes and systems, plastics manufacturers can attract and retain employees by enriching their jobs and help create a more connected workforce,” he said.
With DELMIAWorks’ offerings, workers and businesses can overcome the unpredictability and rapid changes in the market, the company said.
“The digital workflows can also drastically reduce the time to bring a new employee or temporary worker up to speed — a critical function for the many manufacturers facing chronic labor shortages,” Columbus said.
Karen Hanna, senior staff reporter
Contact:
DELMIAWorks, Paso Robles, Calif., 805-227-1122, www.3ds.com/delmiaworks
Plastics Industry Association, Washington, D.C., 202-974-5200, www.plasticsindustry.org
