Market Daily

4 Ways to Close the Skills Gap in Your Organization

Hiring the “right” person for the job has become a time-consuming and often fruitless endeavor. A Goldman Sachs study found that two-thirds of job listings were posted in the last 90 days. But even with more listings than before the pandemic, monthly vacancies filled were at an all-time low in March of 2022. Even with a relaxed set of requirements, finding people with needed skills is like looking for just the right Christmas tree: no one candidate has everything. If they do, chances are you will lose your potential hire to a better offer. Rather than lament the loss, change tactics. Here are some tips on how.

Identify Your Skills Gaps

Rather than listing out what you might be missing like a grocery list, use self-assessment surveys and customer feedback to find skills gaps. Map your business goals to skills, objectives, and the skills associated with each position across teams, and the organization as a whole. Make sure the metrics you choose are clear and consistent. Otherwise, your gap data will not truly represent deficiencies.

Upskill Your Current Employees

Once you have a clear list of the skills you know you need to strengthen, take a look at what you already have available in your employee pool rather than hiring in. This is why 46% of respondents to a survey conducted by talent management experts LHH plan to close their skills gap by training high potential existing employees. Upskilling existing employees saves time in that recruiting isn’t necessary. Offering training to employees lets them know that the organization values their presence and is willing to invest in the people that work there. Hiring and onboarding new people is expensive, and they may not work out. Existing employees have already proven that they want to be there, and upskilling increases their reason to stay.

Adjust Your Recruitment Strategy

Rather than looking at degrees, current employment, and experience, look at the skills a candidate has to offer your company. Skills-based evaluation is becoming the most prominent recruitment tool in the hiring toolbox. According to the CEO of LinkedIn in an article from the Harvard Business Review, businesses are listing skills and responsibilities instead of qualifications and requirements. This approach deepens the talent pool and extends corporate resilience. If a key person does leave, there is always someone able to step up.

Monitor Their Progress

Do you already have a learning program with a tailored curriculum for employees? If so, monitor which courses are most popular and the skills evaluations at the end. Compared to the previous evaluation period, your skills gaps should be decreasing. If they aren’t at a level you believe they should be, consider partnering with an outside learning and development company to design a better program that engages your workforce around the competencies you want to cultivate. The metrics provided by a learning and development system gives management at all levels a window into the information needed to keep your skills improvement program on track. According to a study quoted on Protocal, measuring employee impacts on retention, morale, and productivity, gives you a long-term way to track the return on investment of your program. The study found that by providing learning and development programs, at the end of three years there was a 7.46 x ROI.

Training and education programs are like gardens. As conditions change with the seasons, trimming, fertilizing, and guiding growth are necessary to increase productivity. Hiring based on skills increases the likelihood of finding a hire that adds exactly what you are looking for in a candidate. Between the two, keeping skills and competencies at the forefront and providing ways to keep employees engaged and interested creates an environment that not only boosts morale and increases employee retention, but encourages others to join and grow.

Dr. Harvey’s Plant Expansion Includes State-of-the-Art Dust Collection System with Explosion Protection

A leader in fine health foods for companion animals for 30 years, Dr. Harvey’s recently relocated to a larger facility to enable the company to meet order demands. Mixing, blending and packaging the fine organic ingredients used to make Dr. Harvey’s products generates large amounts of dust that create health, liability and maintenance concerns, including potential fire and explosion hazards, unsafe breathing conditions, and a dust-covered work environment that requires time-consuming plant cleanup after each shift. 

The Opportunity

Dr. Harvey’s contracted Clean Air Company to design and install a dust collection system to capture fugitive dust generated by Dr. Harvey’s manufacturing operations. Mixing and blending stations required customized hoods to control plumes of dust generated during dumping operations. Customized hoods were also needed at the packaging stations to protect employees from inhaling dust. A dust hazard analysis revealed that the dust was explosive, requiring a dust collection system incorporating fire and explosion protection into its design.

The Solution

To address the safety and maintenance issues posed by the excessive quantity of dust generated in the plant, Clean Air Company designed an industrial ventilation system capable of capturing fugitive dust generated at mixing and blending locations and on the packaging lines. Clean Air Company designed a duct system delivering 15,000 CFM powered by a 50-horsepower high-pressure blower. The dust collection system was engineered for the proper air-to-cloth ratio to handle the grain loading that occurs during the work shift. A self-cleaning filter system monitors when the filters are dirty and activates a cleaning cycle. The collected dust would then drop into the collection hopper for periodic maintenance removal. 

Explosion relief panels were installed on the dust collector to address the explosion risk posed by the dust. Clean Air Company also installed isolation gates in the duct on the inlet and outlet of the dust collector to prevent a deflagration event from entering the building.  

Finally, a secondary safety after-filter was installed on the return air duct to ensure sub-micron particles could not re-enter the building. 

Satisfied Client

Dr. Harvey’s reports that they are pleased with the project’s outcome for several reasons. First, the dust collection system that Clean Air Company designed and installed eliminated the time-consuming process of plant cleanup, which provided considerably more production time and reduced overhead expenses. The dust collection system eliminated liability from unsafe air conditions and potential dust explosions and resulted in increased employee morale and reduced sick time. Dr. Harvey’s has also seen energy savings from conditioned air being returned to the plant. 

About Clean Air Company

Since 1976, Clean Air Company has been designing and installing dust collection systems customized to the needs of each facility. Their dust collection systems help their clients adhere to OSHA exposure limit threshold values, protect employees’ health, and help reduce liability exposure by capturing potentially toxic and combustible dust and other hazardous contaminants before they circulate in the duct system or air. Clean Air Company’s dust collection systems keep facilities clean, improve product quality, reduce manufacturing equipment downtime, extend manufacturing equipment life, and reduce energy usage. 

The ventilation expertise of the Clean Air team has made them the supplier of vehicle exhaust extraction and dust collection systems preferred across a wide range of industries, including pharmaceutical companies, chemical manufacturing plants, cosmetics companies, warehouses, auto garages, heavy equipment and rental companies, vocational schools, transportation services, military installations, fleet maintenance shops, engineering firms, educational institutions, vocational schools, auto dealerships, utility companies, and fire and EMS departments. The industrial ventilation specialists at Clean Air’s Woodbridge, NJ facility engineer, install, maintain and service high-quality dust-collection and vehicle exhaust extraction systems to improve indoor air quality for companies in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, New York and New York City, including Manhattan, Long Island, Staten Island, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. 

Clean Air Company offers service and maintenance contracts tailored to each facility’s needs to ensure its dust collection system runs efficiently and extends its life. Clean Air’s maintenance agreements feature an annual 52-point checkup that keeps the vehicle exhaust extraction system running smoothly and prevents costly and disruptive shutdowns. With access to a large selection of top brands, Clean Air can also provide and install replacement parts for an existing vehicle exhaust ventilation or dust collection system.