Keeping employees organized and productive is a challenge in any industry, and there is a lot of confusion about what matters most: Employee satisfaction? Employee engagement? Or the employee experience?
For an update on the difference between these HR-related terms, DecisionWise has a nice article. But the basic definition of employee satisfaction is a subjective short-term measure of how an employee feels about their job, while employee engagement measures how invested an employee is in their job. Both measures are impacted by the overall employee experience.
The good news for manufacturers is that you have the keys to change all three of these areas for the better by using your ERP data to empower and motivate your employees.
Clear Expectations Help Engage Employees
Manufacturing employees appreciate clearly defined expectations and easy to see results. Whether it is production, warehouse, or sales, your ERP has the data to tell them and you how they are doing. The key is to identify the right data and present it to them on a regular basis.
Imagine the increase in productivity if your employees can see what jobs they need to work on and when they are due…and report them as completed in real time. White boards are a tried and true basic way to do this, but engagement increased dramatically by making the data interactive on a touchscreen at Nortek, Inc.
Adding real-time feedback on the production line improved communication between manager and employee and increased both employee productivity and engagement as the employee could be confident that what they were working on was the highest priority job at all times.
Empower with Intelligence
A recent study found that 61% of salespeople feel selling is harder or much harder than five years ago. Triple Helix client, Koster Keunen, harnessed ERP data to help make the sales team’s job easier with a sales portal with special views and data analysis.
The sales portal provides sales forecasts for each customer showing order frequency and volume over a rolling 12-month period. While the forecasts can be used at the individual customer level to identify problems or opportunities, the portal includes a notifications report that shows all customers whose recent orders do not match the forecast amount allowing the sales team to react faster and avoid feeling like they were “operating in the dark.”
Triple Helix has worked with manufacturers of all sizes over the years to assess opportunities in Information Management, Data Visibility, Data-Driven Processes, and Information Security. Contact us if you would like to schedule a risk-free consultation to see if Triple Helix can help your company better organize, access, and analyze your data.
