The Chatfield Group is helping TMA strengthen its partnership with Northern Illinois University College of Engineering & Engineering Technology (CEET) in order to support professional technical skills development and to gain access to talented new hires for TMA members. TMA, Illinois’ Premier Tooling & Manufacturing Association, hosted a table at the CEET Spring Job Fair with the support of TMA volunteers Chuck Klingler, Janler VP, and Patsy Svare, President of the Chatfield Group.

Patsy and Chuck spoke with more than 50 students who stopped by with resumes in hand. They talked up TMA as a 1,000-member association with great jobs for engineers. Said Chuck, “Just about anything being manufactured today has some connection to Chicago-area manufacturing companies. The best of those companies are members of TMA.”

The NIU CEET students are on their way to bachelors or masters degrees in the following majors:

• Electrical Engineering
• Industrial & Systems Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering
• Technology

All of them are interested in employment as summer interns or as full-time employees; some expressed interest in jobs that continue through the school year. The students were encouraged to post their resumes on the TMA Job Board (accessible via TMAnet.com). In addition, the entire stack of resumes is available to TMA members electronically.

Businesses must make a commitment to engaging the future workforce. By hiring a new grad or a summer intern, you help a new professional gain practical manufacturing experience that grounds their education in workplace realities. For students who are undecided about going into manufacturing, a positive first work experience can make all the difference.

Just as importantly, your company will gain by investing in the training of our future professionals. Your current employees can serve as an experienced mentor and demonstrate their expertise to an eager new employee. Your current employees can learn some of the latest ideas being taught in engineering school. And, your current employees can adopt a sense of excitement about the future from interacting with a new professional.

Tags: Workforce Planning — Recruiting — Interviewing — Training — Employee Engagement

Dear Workforce:

I have been asked by management to develop a five-year recruitment plan that supports the company’s business plan. What should the proposal cover?

-- Starting from Scratch, services, Singapore

Dear Starting from Scratch:

Consider yourself fortunate. Your management team understands the importance of human resources in driving business strategy. Producing a great strategic staffing plan for human resources further supports your department’s credibility.

Human resources uses the same process to create its strategic plan as do other key departments--from marketing or finance to technology and operations. The human resources plan outlines the company’s people strategy, ensuring that you have the right people with the right competencies in the right jobs at the right time.

Start your plan with a big-picture overview. Then drill down into the tactical-action steps needed to achieve company objectives. Customize and personalize your plan, but remember to include the following main sections:
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Tags: Dear Workforce — Recruiting — Workforce Planning

Dear Workforce:

How exactly do we perform a gap analysis during workforce planning? It’s easy to analyze the current situation, but getting a handle on our future needs is the challenge for me. What analytical model should I use?

--Bridging the Gap

Dear Bridging the Gap:

A gap analysis, typically done as part of workforce planning, helps you decide what steps are needed to address workforce shortages or excess capacity. You start by establishing a future date for the gap analysis, such as 12, 24 or 36 months. Then determine the gap between the workforce you expect to have and the workforce you will need as of that date, based on your assumptions about the future, such as:

• We expect our turnover rate to hold steady for the next 24 months.
• Our workload will increase significantly during the next 24 months, so we will need to increase our nonexempt workforce by 20 percent.
• With 35 percent of our senior executives eligible for retirement, we expect to have a serious shortage of managers ready to assume senior leadership roles.

Since nobody can predict the future with complete accuracy, the quality of your assumptions is a key element in creating a useful gap analysis. Depending on what your analysis shows, you will want to take action to address the needs: typically either strengthening your recruitment and development activities to meet an expected talent shortage or identifying ways to absorb or redeploy excess head count through attrition, retraining or outplacement.

The typical gap analysis incorporates the following key information:
...Read More...

Tags: Dear Workforce — Workforce Planning