Struggling with High Turnover in Manufacturing: How Can We Keep New Workers Engaged?

Employee Retention Challenges in a Manufacturing Unit

I am working with a manufacturing unit consisting of approximately 850 employees. I am facing a problem where recently joined workers leave very frequently, while the older ones do not leave as often. A survey conducted last year revealed that older workers prefer to stay with us because our salary distribution date is fixed, and we never go beyond the 7th of each month.

My primary concern lies with the new workers who leave the job within one month of joining, along with a high rate of absenteeism among all workers. We are paying the minimum wages required by law to all our employees.

A recent study I conducted on the workers who left from January 2014 until now showed that out of 257 who left, 60 departed within the first fifteen days of joining, 50 were terminated due to absenteeism, 5 were terminated due to misconduct, 27 left due to personal reasons, 6 started their own businesses, 5 joined elsewhere, and 75 left without providing information. The remaining left due to miscellaneous reasons.

Please guide me on how to address and improve retention among my workforce. This matter is urgent for me.

Regards

You have not specified what type of manufacturing unit you have. A note of self-satisfaction is evident in your statement regarding the payment of minimum wages and the disbursement of the same within the stipulated date. These are the reasons found in your 'survey' for the older employees sticking to your company. Since the beginning of the year, about 30% of the workforce has left the company, and this percentage mostly comprises recently-joined employees. I think yours should be a labor-intensive industry requiring unskilled workers in large numbers, likely on a casual basis.

In my experience, I have found that an abundance of unskilled labor is available in industrially concentrated areas, and they prefer to work in companies where, apart from minimum wages and continuity of employment throughout the year, more overtime work and subsidized canteen facilities are available. So, ascertain the wages and other benefits given to workers in similar industries in your area and suggest to your management slightly higher wages and reasonable overtime work or a productivity-linked incentive scheme, coupled with better and subsidized canteen facilities. Instill the hope that they would be made permanent in due course, depending on their continued attendance.

Thank you for your valuable views, and I will try to execute the same. We are in the 100% export business along with manufacturing. Another reason, I guess, can be our disciplinary approach. In our unit, PPE usage and wearing shoes are compulsory. Chewing tobacco in any form, cigarette smoking, and bringing mobile phones onto the factory premises are not allowed, as per the requirements of our international clients. Social compliance is followed. The reason for the longer stability of older workers could be that they do not prefer to take risks at this stage of life. We hire all employees on a permanent basis from the very first day. Workers are allowed to take leaves but with prior information unless there is an emergency. We pay an attendance bonus per month for 100% attendance with no late arrivals.

We have a canteen where workers can sit and have lunch brought from home as we do not provide food in the canteen. Recently, I have introduced a new questionnaire to be filled out by the worker at the time of joining so that they can be selected for the right job relevant to their previous experience. It is true that the majority of the labor we hire are in the unskilled category. We have also implemented an induction program starting this month. Induction feedback forms and feedback questionnaires after one week and after a month of joining have also been introduced so that we can track the worker's performance.

I invite more suggestions from seniors to improve the system.

Regards,
Attribution: https://www.citehr.com/468268-why-do...#ixzz34tYonvo0