There have been a multitude of surveys done by various organizations to measure and rank exactly what is important to employees in the workplace.
The order of the top 5 employee concerns changes every few years, but the top five are almost always in the same general categories. And employee training is a common theme if you dig a bit below the surface. So let’s dig.
The study summarized below is not a plastic’s industry specific study, but it is instructive for supervisors, managers, executives and rank and file employees in all of the plastics manufacturing 
processes.
There’s no reason to believe that injection molders, extrusion companies, blow molders, thermoformers or any other of the plastic’s manufacturing industries would be vastly different from the results shown here.
The Society for Human Resource Management conducts annual studies such as this. The release of findings from their surveys for years 2002 – 2012 is interesting, Below is the listing (in order of importance) for the year 2012.
- Opportunities to Use Skills/Abilities – 63%
- Job Security – 61%
- Compensation/Benefits – 60%
- Communication Between Employees and Senior Management – 57%
- Relationship with Immediate Supervisor – 54%
Although, all of the top five are ranked within a fairly narrow range (54% to 63%), Compensation/Benefits are middle-of-the pack in importance. That’s always somewhat surprising. It ain’t all about money any more. Hasn’t been for a while. The other 4 items on the list, generally speaking, have to do with workplace issues, being challenged, and opportunity to improve – employee training related factors to an extent.
I can remember the days when it was all about money.
Then manufacturing jobs began leaving the rust belt or worse, leaving the country altogether. It very quickly became more about job security. The Big 3 automakers suddenly were faced with an unfamiliar situation – provide job guarantees over regular pay increases. The unions saw the writing on the wall and needed to protect their members.
So how does this all relate to employee training in the plastic’s industry?
The desire to improve oneself and the need for recognition of this investment in one’s improvement became very obvious to us as a company a while ago. I’m sure other training companies in other industries have seen the same change. For the most part, managers and rank and file plastics manufacturing floor personnel agree on training. Not necessarily, how, how much or how often, but training nonetheless.
Which leads me to an interesting observation that we have seen over the past few years.
Orders for Certificates of Completion and Certification Certificates for our ProMolder 1, ProMolder 2 and, recently, ProMolder 3 Certification Classes, seminars, DVD and online interactive courses, have increased dramatically.
And I am in a position to know because I personally sign every one of them. Thousands of them every year, in fact. 
If your company is going through all the effort to implement a comprehensive training system in your plant, it would be a very good idea to formally recognize the time, effort, and achievement that your employees invest in bettering themselves. I can’t think of anything a company can do that would give them more bang for their “employee satisfaction” buck than recognizing their employees’ accomplishments.
Trust me. It matters. A lot. Study after study has shown this to be true.
Please feel free to contact us (or call 1-800-826-1901 Cindy or Lauren will hook you up) for more information on the best ways we have seen companies recognize their employees’ training accomplishments and reaped the rewards from these programs.
