January 23, 2025
Fix Tomorrow’s Labor Shortage Today

Transcript
To Fix the Labor Crisis, Manufacturing Must Attract A New Workforce
If manufacturers are going to weather the coming labor crisis, they are going to need to look at the human potential for manufacturing in the same way that we’ve looked at the potential for new materials and technologies. And that means thinking outside the box when it comes to training and hiring new labor. But what does it really take to attract, train, and grow a workforce that includes millennials and workers from a diversity of backgrounds? And what can manufacturers do today to make sure we’re ready for that labor market of tomorrow? Mariana Cogan is a former SVP at PTC and the current head of Marketing at Hexagon America. From her vantage point as a winner of Forrester’s Program of the Year and Full Circle Insights Greatest Overhaul Award, Mariana Cogan is ready to tell us passionately about how we can engage a new, diverse generation of workers in manufacturing and technology.
What is the Labor Problem? Why is the Risk so Big for Manufacturing?
Mariana Cogan: I think that you’re spot on by starting the conversation with what is the challenge that we’re facing. Number one is the fact that we have about 600,000 job openings currently. The second challenge is that we have about 2.8 million skilled workers coming very close to retirement. So we have all these jobs that are going to be opening.
Labor Crisis by the Numbers
- 600,000 manufacturing job openings today
- 2.8 million skilled workers close to retirement
Mariana Cogan: But then we also have a branding problem. We have an industry that is really known as dirty, dull, and dangerous. So there is a rebranding that needs to happen for manufacturing to be able to fill its current and future openings. I think that we all are talking about the challenge, but we need to commit more resources to fixing the problem. And I like talking about three components. Number one is really the rebranding of the industry. It has nothing to do with dirty, dull, dangerous. It is high-tech by now. I mean, half of what we do is almost like being in a video game. It doesn’t really require muscles anymore. There’s a lot of technology and it has a variety of roles. So we have to invest much more in the rebranding of the industry. Secondly, we have to continue partnering with schools. At Hexagon we’re very committed to partnering all the way from high school. It has to start at a very early age and then continue through universities so that we can really expand that reach of how cool it is working in manufacturing. And then thirdly we have to continue investing in new training for new technologies. There’s a new generation of Gen-Zers who are learning in a very different way. So we have to have much more immersive learning experiences to continue that upscaling of the workforce.
What Type of Labor is Manufacturing Attracting Now?
Leah Archibald: So when you think about the image of the manufacturing industry that needs to be rebranded, what type of labor is being attracted to the manufacturing industry now? And what type of labor do you hope would be attracted to manufacturing?
Mariana Cogan: Historically, Manufacturing is an industry that is dominated by white males. We don’t have enough people in that bucket anymore. We have over 2 million females who are currently unemployed and looking for work. And with this much more modern way of manufacturing, it really means that we could have many more females, Gen-zers, and a diversity of workers joining the manufacturing workforce.
Leah Archibald: When I think of rebranding, I think of the marketing function of an organization. But is it more than marketing? I wonder what does it really take for a manufacturing organization to be a place where millennials and women and Gen-zers really want to train and take jobs?
Mariana Cogan: I think that you hit the nail on the head about marketing. Manufacturing is an industry that is heavily invested in bringing new technologies, new processes, new materials, and innovation into the manufacturing process. But that component of innovation in the marketing function is not treated as equally appreciated. In manufacturing, we tend to believe historically that the marketing function is setting up a booth at a trade show, bringing some swag, and then maybe sending some emails. But today that is not enough. Today you’re really talking about the humanization of a brand. You’re really talking about storytelling — not just about the features and the functions of a machine — but telling a story that connects with your buyers, with your customers, and also with your prospect employees.
What Story Can Manufacturing Tell to Attract New Talent?
Leah Archibald: Can you invite us into a vision of a story that Manufacturing can tell that skips a huge crisis in labor and gets us towards a labor solution?
Mariana Cogan: It will be a story of innovation and a story about having a purpose. You’re going to be working with a digital twin. You’re going to be talking about sustainability. You’re going to be talking about driving the future, and it’s a story that you want to be part of.
I get excited about making the impossible possible.
What’s the Role of Mentorship in Attracting and Retaining Workers?
Mariana Cogan: I am very committed to mentorship, sponsorship, and everything that comes after. Because once we bring people into the workforce, how do we help more of a diverse population not only to get jobs, but to have careers?
You need to give visibility to people so that they can see that people who look like them, who behave like them, are getting into higher level positions. It’s taking time and commitment to say: we’re going to continue training you; we’re going to continue exposing you to bigger projects and more exciting projects. Because people want purpose. And it goes back to what is humanizing as a brand. It’s being a company that is committed to both people and technology so that many more people in the organization are able to work on some of the cutting-edge projects that we do.
Leah Archibald: You talk about training and retention and the human-to-human element, which I think is an aspect that’s been left out of conversations about the labor crisis. Often when we talk about the problem of labor, we imagine that there’s just one labor pool, like it’s one monolithic problem that we’re trying to solve the same way that we’re trying to solve copper sourcing. But really labor is made up of individual humans who want a human touch point. I think that’s what you’re getting at when you say: let’s tell human stories, let’s reach out human to human, let’s make this industry a place where individual people can be welcomed and feel like they can have a purpose and a career.
Mariana Cogan: Exactly. And it means that we’re going to be going through a transformation. Even thinking about your podcast, not so long ago we would have said: manufacturing likes brochures. But today you have 40,000 subscribers on a podcast! It’s because people want to hear information in a form that is modern and it’s exciting. And it’s the same when we think about the labor problem. It’s not just that labor is a statistic that belongs in the Department of Labor. It is really those 2.72 million unemployed women who should have places in our workforce, if we can transform.
