The millennials have arrived—now what?

Like it or not, the nature of the workforce is rapidly changing. Fashion solutions for dealing with it, because the last thing you want on your hands are disengaged workers.

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According to research from the Pew Center, 2015 marked the first time that those born after 1980, otherwise known as “millennials,” made up the largest segment of the U.S. workforce. Employers are already facing both opportunities and challenges as they seek to engage and retain talent. What once served as workplace incentives to baby boomers and Generation X will require readjustment to leverage worker interests and skills.

Prevailing misconceptions surrounding industrial occupations present an even greater challenge for manufacturing. Educating today’s workforce, and generations to come, is crucial in today’s fast and highly competitive marketplace. The good news is that there are initiatives to provide young workers with enthusiasm for the industry.

In 2015, the Workforce Develop-ment Solutions Group from the OpX Leadership Network, convened by PMMI, the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, released a report on Workforce Engagement offering an industry insider perspective on today’s workforce and potential strategies for improvement. The document zeroes in on increasing engagement to ensure young manufacturing workers feel invested in a company’s success. Disengaged employees in the U.S. cost an estimated $450 to $550 billion in lost productivity, according to a 2013 Gallup report on the State of the American Workplace.

After more than a quarter-century in training and development at Kraft Nabisco, Nancy Cobb, President and Owner of Partners in Possibilities, Inc., sees a different mindset in today’s young workers.

“Millennials have an entirely different expectation from their employers compared to previous groups,” says Cobb. “Within the past decade, young workers have become much more concerned about the organization’s purpose, and how the culture lines up with their values and expectations—especially when deciding whether to stay with that organization.”

Greg Flickinger, Vice President of Manufacturing and Corporate Engineering, Snyder’s-Lance, and chair of the OpX Leadership Network’s Workforce Development Solutions Group, notes that there has been a generational shift regarding workplace expectations.

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