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How Mobile Apps Can Increase Employee Engagement in Manufacturing

worker on smartphone in manufThe manufacturing industry is bedeviled by a little-publicized problem — extremely low levels of employee engagement. You may think this isn’t a serious problem, aside from having bored employees. But in fact, it has major implications for manufacturing firms, ranging from lower productivity to high rates of accidents.

But it needn’t be that way. Mobile apps can dramatically increase employee engagement, which increases productivity and improves safety. So writes Bulent Osman, Founder and CEO of StaffConnect, in a Forbes blog post, Reversing Low Employee Engagement In Manufacturing. Following is a brief summary of what he has to say — and his advice for how to use mobile apps to increase engagement.

The post cites a 2017 Gallup report “State of the American Workplace,” which found that that manufacturing workers are the least engaged of all American workers, with 75 percent of them feeling disengaged from their jobs. The blog notes, “Several reasons help explain this, from cost-control pressures to troubles attracting and retaining skilled workers due to a talent shortage. “

How much of a problem is that for manufacturing companies? The blog notes that “Companies with engaged employees outperform those without them by a whopping 202%.” It goes on to say, “Gallup found that when business units had higher engagement they not only outperformed less engaged units but additionally experienced a decrease in absenteeism and turnover — factors that are particularly common in manufacturing.”

Another problem with low employee engagement, particularly relevant to manufacturing, is safety. The blog points to a Gallup report that found that “firms with higher engagement levels reported 70% fewer safety-related incidents.”

Osman says a simple solution is at hand — mobile apps. He explains, “With a mobile engagement app that’s specifically designed for the enterprise, not just for chatting, manufacturing organizations can strategically improve engagement of all workers and give on-site workers and non-desk employees (NDEs) more effective tech tools and resources to have a voice and remain engaged in the organization.”  

Such apps, he says, should allow for information-sharing, and have community-oriented capabilities, and ways to measure employee engagement. The result, he says, will benefit the entire enterprise, not just workers on the manufacturing floor: “When the entire workforce is empowered to collaborate with their managers and peers, businesses can at long last reach down into the heart of engagement to increase employee and customer satisfaction, brand loyalty and shareholder value.”

Manufacturing Solutions that Increase Employee Engagement

To streamline daily work and encourage teamwork, manufacturers need the right partner to build powerful, flexible software solutions. Alpha Software works with manufacturers to understand their work processes, corporate systems, and daily needs. We'll then build a manufacturing solution that fits your requirements and budget. Our solutions enable rapid, accurate data collection, and fast data analysis with custom dashboards. Alpha Software has a range of quality control, quality assurance, and other quality management software solutions. 

Alpha Solutions for Manufacturing

Gemba Walks  •  5S Audits •  Workplace Audits  •  Non-Conformance Reports  • Yellow Sheets  •
Temporary Deviation Authorizations  •  Shortage Sheets •  Supplier Defects Per Unit Reporting  •  ISO Certifications  • 
Work in Progress Tracking  •  Inventory Tracking  •  Workplace Wellness  •  and more

Powerful Solutions for Inspectors, Engineers, Assemblers and Production Teams

 

Further reading:

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About Author

Amy Groden-Morrison
Amy Groden-Morrison

Amy Groden-Morrison has served more than 15 years in marketing communications leadership roles at companies such as TIBCO Software, RSA Security and Ziff-Davis. Most recently she was responsible for developing marketing programs that helped achieve 30%+ annual growth rate for analytics products at a $1Bil, NASDAQ-listed business integration Software Company. Her past accomplishments include establishing the first co-branded technology program with CNN, launching an events company on the NYSE, rebranding a NASDAQ-listed company amid a crisis, and positioning and marketing a Boston-area startup for successful acquisition. Amy currently serves as a Healthbox Accelerator Program Mentor, Marketing Committee Lead for the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge Launch Smart Clinics, and on the organizing team for Boston TechJam. She holds an MBA from Northeastern University.

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The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components. Using the Alpha TransForm no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the Alpha Anywhere low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows (including data collected via Alpha TransForm), and add additional security or authentication requirements to protect corporate data.

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