How To Support Blue Collar Workers

Many companies are having a hard time finding workers to fill blue-collar positions. According to industry experts, this will continue to be a problem for companies in the transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, mining, and construction industries.

The increasing blue-collar labor scarcity is due to recent economic and educational developments, the most significant of which are demographic and economic changes.

Because of this, enhancing HR policies for businesses with blue-collar workers is more significant than ever. This will lower the ongoing difficulty of employee turnover and make blue-collar jobs seem more attractive to young job applicants. Here are a few ways to keep your blue-collar employees around longer:

Competitive Salary

All labor industries rely on blue-collar workers as their foundation. With the current blue-collar work shortage affecting these sectors, employers should give competitive salaries and benefits that reflect this role.

How much a company pays their employees speaks volumes about how much they think the time and effort of their workers are worth. Therefore, companies should pay significant attention to compensation and benefits to retain employees. Workers will be more inclined to stay with a company if their pay is competitive, as they will feel valued and will not seek other employment opportunities with greater compensation.

Provide Perks

When you're working with a tight budget, and you can't pay higher wages, consider providing non-monetary benefits like:

• Flexible work hours so your team can have more control over their time.
• Paid vacation days to help them stay refreshed and avoid burnout.
• Affordable health insurance to show you care about their well-being.
• Opportunities for career growth to motivate them to stick around long-term.

Non-financial rewards are simple to implement, track and maintain. More significantly, they don't put a strain on the company's budget.

Recognize Employees

Blue-collar workers are the backbone of many workplaces. They do physically and emotionally demanding work day in and day out, often for little recognition. Employers must show their appreciation for blue-collar employees in ways beyond their paycheck—one way to do this is by implementing an employee recognition program.

Employee appreciation programs may be as simple as a note from a supervisor to as formal as a ceremony. One of the most basic, yet most effective methods to recognize employees is to include them in company-wide emails and blogs.

A formal rewards and recognition platform is another approach to showing employee appreciation. This centralizes providing employee incentives and recognition, allowing HR to devote more time to motivating employees through unique advantages and perks. A single platform also makes tracking, measuring, and enhancing the program easier.

Worker Safety

Blue-collar occupations entail some of the most severe and hazardous working conditions. As a result, businesses should focus on establishing good working conditions for blue-collar staff to guarantee their safety and provide employees with a sense of worth. Employees should feel their employer takes the health and safety of them and their coworkers seriously.

Invest in top-notch safety equipment and conduct regular safety training. Even a simple air-conditioned and water-filled break area for workers who are outside in the heat would be greatly appreciated.

Keep Employees In The Loop

Because blue-collar workers are on the frontlines, they have a unique perspective that upper management might not be privy to. This includes pressure points and inefficiencies within the company that can be addressed to help improve the bottom line. This type of insight is invaluable in blue-collar work where margins are often thin.

Other benefits arise when employers include their employees in the decision-making process. If employees feel that their perspectives hold weight, they are more likely to stay with a company for an extended amount of time. By soliciting individual employees' opinions on specific issues, responsibility will be instilled to improve your workplace as a whole.