Motivating Shop Floor Workers

What you do demonstrates where the standards are set on your shop floor.

Motivating shop floor workers.

Additional advice came later in the session from walt staehle director of manufacturing execution and shop floor information systems at kraft foods northfield ill who was also a speaker at the forum. Workers get frustrated when they feel like their voice isn t being heard. Make employees feel that they are part of the goals that you are trying to achieve on the shop floor and or the company by being transparent about how the work that they perform helps the company reaches particular goals and outcomes. I am sure you have lots of examples from your own experience.

Low productivity can be an insidious problem. Aligning metrics from the top floor to the shop floor helps set and manage priorities across operations. Gallup found in its state of the american workplace report that 25 of manufacturing workers are engaged at work. Something as simple as a suggestion box can go a long way towards improving communication between shop workers and management.

For line workers performing repetitive tasks day to day everyday year after year can sometimes have a lulling effect. Store floor workers are ready to shift to other retail organization if they lack the motivation from their present work place better support employee policy better training and incentives will be the most vital motivating factors for any store floor worker to all who listen to us. One of the best ways to motivate staff is also one of the cheapest and easiest praise. If you re enthusiastic it will encourage them to be enthusiastic too.

After all it is human nature to get used to a certain way of doing things. Improved communication is probably the fastest and easiest path to motivating your employees. Employees who have input into the process metrics and are actively engaged in executing them are likely to understand the desired outcomes better. Work as hard as you can yourself and go above and beyond when you can.

But some of the problems associated with non motivated staff such as working below their potential is a constant that many plants can identify with. Such high paced work environments require that everyone is fully involved and focused on the tasks at hand. The workers in the arsenal of venice mostly ignored official directives. Henry ford initially had a turnover rate of up to 370 meaning they had to rehire the entire shop floor staff every three months.

So how to motivate employees working on the shop floor. And to the adoption of new work practices on the plant floor. Imagine the owner of a chair making facility walking through the shop floor. Yet neither a storied history nor recent gains in the sector have translated into engaged workplace cultures on the factory floor.

Laid off french workers threaten to blow up the factory example from 2009.