Carolyn Lee

That was even for the early Gen Xs.

But for the younger generations, millennials and the Zs, it's a very different set of influences.

Really honing in on that and talking about what do we need to do to tap into those talent pools, then to train them, and then to skill them, and looking at all of those markets together as far as the total picture was really illuminating to us.

The other thing that I cannot say enough about this project is helping us think about how do we scale the MI has been very much a startup in many ways.

And so you are building things and then you are refining as you go.

So to be able to sit back and to look at the total picture and think, how do we build the most effective process from the get-go to put more people into the funnel and to move that funnel through so we can scale most effectively and ride this wave of attention that is very much front and center in manufacturing, particularly on the production side.

There's many different avenues of flexibility.

It could be that you're changing your start time and end time.

It could be that you're developing part time, that you have people who are working four hours instead of your eight hour shifts.

And that optionality, I think, is critical to help manufacturers.

You could have a portion of your workforce that has a set of options to make it more flexible for them to be able to balance demands in their life.

And in fact, the first thing that we encourage companies to do is to actually pull their workforce as to what kind of flexibility are their employees looking for.

Let them tell you what they're hoping for and then design the system to be able to make that work.

And so if we want to attract and retain the very best talent, we need to provide them with some of those options.

The number one thing that manufacturers should be doing to solve their own biggest challenge is building that talent pool.

And it is actually promoting more of what they do.

It's opening the door and bringing in school groups.

The first Friday of every October is Manufacturing Day.

It's a platform that we are proud to host across North America, in fact.

that we encourage companies to open the door and bring in students, whether that is to tour, if it's to see things hands-on, it's to engage with employees, it's to bring in the teachers, and we encourage companies to bring in parents too because parents are such a big influence on what students pick as their career choices.