How to improve the working environment within your manufacturing business
Unfortunately, as with most sectors, the environment within manufacturing businesses is not always positive; in fact, it is often very negative indeed. This may not be entirely the business’s fault however, there are some very big disadvantages to having a negative workforce, but it can be a mood that is reasonably easy to shift the other way.
· Keep information flowing
It is highly important that information is free-flowing within any business; keeping issues that affect the whole workforce behind closed doors and in meetings with managers only is not an acceptable way of running a business, after all, your employees are investing a lot of their time and effort into your business and most of them rely heavily on the income that it provides.
It is, therefore, not hard to understand that employees are likely to come to their own conclusions and start circulating bad rumors when it looks like business is suffering. These rumors are far from beneficial to any company and to all employees. Holding weekly or biweekly meetings with all your employees to let them know how the order book is looking, what is going to be expected of them in the coming time scale and addressing any issues that have arisen in the past period will help immensely in these situations.
· Cut down on the risks to health
It is no secret that a manufacturing site can be an immensely dangerous place to be especially for the unskilled or uneducated. With so many possible accidents and injuries that could happen it is good practice to make sure that your employees are well trained in the job roles that they are expected to carry out and that they are aware of the dangers of working with the machinery and chemicals that they are in contact with on a daily basis.
However, it is not just down to machinery or chemicals when it comes to injuries within the workforce. One of the most common injuries is manual handling issues. You should definitely provide your employees, and not just the ones on the factory floor, with manual handling training.
You could take this one step further and reduce the amount of manual handling that your employees have to do on a day-to-day basis by installing a conveyor belt system. Using conveyors provided by a reputable business such as fluent conveyors can be used in a variety of different ways and can be designed and bespoke to your business needs and the space that you have available.
· Listen to your employees
You would be surprised by the amount of good, solid information and ideas that can come out of a workforce, whether it is about how to get productivity up or ideas on how you can improve the facilities within your business premises.
Suggestion boxes although a thing very much of the past, can still be beneficial to the business and the workers alike. A worker, for example, will feel worthwhile and appreciated if their idea or suggestion bears fruit, whereas a business could find that their workforce’s morale raises which means that their output increases, rejects lessen, and the working environment goes from being dull to happy.