Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

How can employee productivity be increased to peak performance with digitalization?

It is the production employees who carry out the work in production. It is their productivity that determines the success or failure of a company. The more they produce and the lower their costs, the more profit is available to the company.

This means that employee productivity is a central problem and increasing this productivity is an important task. There are various approaches to this, but they all basically boil down to the same thing. The individual employee in production is no longer simply an employee. Nor is he or she simply a team member. Instead, they are themselves a system.

Production employees perform a variety of tasks. To carry them out, they need information. They also need to communicate in order to coordinate their work with others. This all boils down to individual employees being digitally networked.

What does the digitally networked employee look like?

The digital networking of employees means that personal interactions are less necessary. Printed documents can also be dispensed with. Instead, the flow of information is maintained digitally. This means that problems can be addressed and resolved remotely in real time. Employees can be trained, they receive important documents and they can write their reports. All of this saves time and, of course, costs.

Digital apps make it possible to simplify collaboration. Increasingly complex systems in particular require increasingly highly qualified workers. However, these are not available in the same numbers as other workers. Thanks to digital networking, however, they are easier to reach and always available "on site", even if they are actually located many kilometers away.

What is the result of the digital networking of production employees?

In this way, a large knowledge and experience base of highly qualified employees is made available to a larger number of employees. The highly qualified employees make this information available to a larger number of employees. Networking also allows faster access to important information. Need to operate equipment and have a question? The answer is in the app. Quality control measurements need to be taken and the specifications are missing, the app has the answer.

Not only does networking through apps make it possible to keep more information available, share it and work together, they also make employees more knowledgeable overall. Instead of carrying around heavy folders with documents, which of course hardly anyone does in reality, they have all their knowledge available digitally. This allows them to use this knowledge and absorb it more quickly.

What are the benefits of digital networking for production employees?

It is not simply the fact that employees are provided with the knowledge and use it, but that they have quick access to it. This puts them in a position to tackle problems to which they previously had no answer. In other words, they become more flexible in their deployment. With the expertise available, they also become more committed and proactive. It is simply motivating when individual employees know what they are working for and what overall result they are contributing to and in what form.

Conversely, the apps allow employees to generate their own input. This means they can contribute their ideas and even back them up with pictures and videos. The result is that processes can be optimized even further.

What about training and further education?

The same apps also provide training material. This allows employees to train themselves directly. For committed employees in particular, this significantly reduces the time they spend on training courses.

Particularly with regard to training and further education, it is clear that these are a very good qualification measure, but at the same time they are also very disruptive. Production employees learn new skills and gain important knowledge. At the same time, however, they do not spend their time carrying out their actual tasks, but rather sitting in the training program.

Apps, on the other hand, allow knowledge and skills to be acquired on the job. This means that individual employees are better prepared for further training measures and can complete them in less time. In addition, there are independent and digital training courses that are offered in the apps and can be completed independently by the employees. This means that they not only determine their skill level, but also when and how they acquire these skills.

Does this mean that knowledge is acquired more quickly?

This makes it possible to significantly reduce the time spent in training rooms. There is also less need for so-called job shadowing, where an experienced employee looks over the shoulder of the new production worker. Instead, employees receive lessons in the form of short videos and can take an online exam at the end of a course. This allows them to directly demonstrate their new skills.

These Form of training also allows the teaching content "Just in time" available. So instead of learning everything at once as part of training or further education, employees only use the courses that are tailored to the tasks they are actually assigned. In this way, skills are expanded in line with practical requirements and not simply scattered across the board.

Not only do such short videos as lessons allow employees to become the managers of their own training. They also allow important tips to be conveyed and the individual lessons to be repeated by employees in a timely manner before they tackle a new task.

Just as the individual teaching sections of a training course can now be specifically selected, employees can also use the documents they need in a targeted manner. They don't have to trawl through hundreds of pages to find hidden information. Instead, they can use search functions to find the exact section of the documents they need for the task at hand. This also makes documents much easier and therefore more frequently used, which promotes work according to defined standards.

This search function can be enhanced even further. Production employees can scan a barcode using their smartphone or tablet and immediately receive all the necessary instructions for the work or the required checklists. This makes it much easier to access important documents and employees are more motivated to use them.

How can problems be solved together?

Downtime is a real problem in production. Avoiding or minimizing this helps to save costs. However, this requires experts on site who can provide advice and assistance immediately in the event of malfunctions, for example. With an app, these experts are available even when they are not at the location. This is a great help, especially during night and weekend shifts.

The app can be used to report problems and immediately connect with employees who can help solve them. The reporting employees can take a photo or video of the problem and upload it. The assisting employees can then help with advice and link videos that explain how to fix the problem step by step.

Several experts can also be notified at the same time. They can then help together. They can post instructions, make comments, link videos or even create videos themselves.

Especially in times of a shortage of skilled workers, the few skilled workers become problem solvers, while the other employees perform simpler, everyday tasks. The skilled workers are available around the clock, but their working time is not wasted on everyday tasks.

Conclusion

Thanks to digitalization, today's production employees are not just employees and not just members of a team, they are a system themselves. In return, they have digital access to important information and the ability to communicate digitally. This means that experts can be reached at any time in the event of malfunctions and they do not have to be deployed on site for day-to-day work. Digital access to documents and the use of search functions and barcodes also increases the motivation to work with these documents. This in turn ensures better compliance with standards at work.