How ERP helps with recruitment and skills shortages
How can ERP help ease skills shortages and other recruitment issues?
Data collected since the pandemic indicates that many workers are leaving their jobs in search of a better work/life balance.
The remote working and flexible work patterns that some experienced during COVID has left many resistant to going back to the daily grind.
Those that missed out on the working from home trend may also be feeling that the grass is greener elsewhere – looking for new pastures with a more forward-thinking company.
However, there are some specific factors that appear to be making this a particularly challenging time for manufacturers – with many experiencing a lack of options when seeking skilled new recruits.
In addition to a general trend towards resignations across the jobs market, manufacturers are having to deal with an aging workforce that are either taking early retirement or struggling to upskill in the face of rapid technological advance.
New software and new tech means the UK labour market is crying out for highly skilled new blood, but unfortunately this is not developing quickly enough – with many businesses’ struggling to fill roles that are integral to success with qualified prospects.
While your business might look towards more flexible work patterns or a strong and supportive culture in response to recruitment challenges, there is an additional route that can help your business stand out from the competition and flourish in challenging conditions – investment in software, specifically ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning).
What is an ERP system?
ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. Used correctly, an ERP system can help run your business from top to bottom. It consists of integrated modules that communicate with each other through shared databases.
In practice, this means that all of a companies’ information relating to finance, HR, sales, procurement, inventory and more can be stored centrally and accessed by those who need it most.
How does ERP help skill shortages?
If skilled workers are in short supply, one solution might be to streamline your business operations and make processes more efficient. With greater efficiencies, fewer staff will be needed to run your business and those staff that are available should benefit from fewer time-consuming, manual tasks.
An ERP system can achieve these efficiencies and help with recruitment and skills shortages in several ways.
Optimizing Your Current Resources
With carefully planned processes, your business can begin to make use of the staff currently at its disposal, rather than looking to the job market to fill holes.
Implementing a modern ERP system gives management a 360 degree view of the business as a whole, helping decision making when it comes to allocating resources.
What’s more, data analytics can be used to provide insight into the current pain points, where they occur and why they’re happening.
With the help of ERP, streamlined business processes, better use of staff numbers and identifying and resolving your companies’ weaknesses can be made into a reality and you can begin to think out of the box when solving staff shortages.
Supporting mobile working
One of the major challenges to manufacturers during the pandemic was an inability for staff to work from home due to systems only being accessible on site.
Thankfully cloud-based systems are now overtaking on-premise solutions and this is slowly allowing manufacturers to catch up to other sectors in offering their staff more flexible work patterns.
What’s more, a quality system should allow staff to carry out jobs that are essential to the business on their mobile phones – meaning far more than simply checking emails.
With the advent of cloud-based servers and mobile capability, ERP should allow your business to support staff in achieving a better work/life balance – without compromising on productivity.
Automating processes and skills shortages
It should come as little surprise that a large proportion of work that staff carry out on a day to day basis is repetitive manual tasks.
With a quality ERP system, you should be able to reduce the burden on the staff that you do have and free up time to do the tasks that matter.
With automatic processes and reports, workers at every phase of the business process, from sales to finance and distribution to production can benefit from timely and accurate notifications that reduce the chance of human error and in some cases remove the need for human intervention altogether.
ERP skills shortages: conclusion
While recruitment challenges are unlikely to go away any time soon, technological advancement is ready and waiting to fill the gap. By investing in ERP, your business can reap the rewards of more efficient processes, automated tasks and a more flexible and rewarding environment for the staff that you already have.
Want to learn more? Contact a CBO consultant here to understand how Epicor Kinetic ERP can be harnessed to ease your skills shortages today.
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