As the COVID-19 pandemic begins to subside, manufacturers face challenges on multiple fronts. Issues include the need to jump-start demand, re-ramp production and carefully nurture customer relationships that have become increasingly transactional. At the same time, manufacturers face a retirement-driven exodus of baby boomers, and with it the loss of institutional knowledge and expertise. Revenue, continuity and customer retention: all are under threat.

In 2018, research from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute predicted a deficit of 2 million unfilled positions in manufacturing by 2028. Pew Research concurs, reporting that 3.2 million more baby boomers retired in Q3 2020 than in 2019, putting the manufacturing industry on track to reach 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030.

To secure a positive future for manufacturing, industry leaders must identify how to thrive during unstable times.

As a generation of workers exit the industry, with them goes the knowledge and expertise built over decades of frontline experience, most of which can’t be taught in school. While business leaders are right to be concerned about this dilemma, it shouldn’t be viewed purely as a challenge. A new wave of young talent brings fresh knowledge and experience into the picture.

The new generation has different values; they run their lives differently and expect a workplace that reflects their reality. Manufacturers that adopt a positive approach to this influx have an opportunity to examine workflows and practices which may be ripe for innovation and improvement. In particular, this shift raises the question of how the cutting-edge technology on which this new generation depends in every aspect of their lives might play its role in the workplace.

Attracting New Talent

So how do we appeal to the increasingly sophisticated needs of younger workers? Social responsibility, purpose, diversity, work-life balance and flexibility are essential outward-facing employer attributes. But while these values may play a role in attracting talent, they don’t offer prospective employees the means to improve their personal cachet in the job market.

Those who mentor young talent are keenly aware that the brightest newcomers want access to the best tools available, and the freedom to use those tools to drive meaningful and positive change. That translates directly into highly marketable transferrable skills.

The quality of available technology can serve as a strong draw for young people coming into the workplace. Studies suggest that two-thirds of millennials and their younger Gen Z colleagues consider an organization’s embrace of technology and innovation as important when choosing an employer.

Of course, learning as much as possible from their more experienced colleagues is critical. Institutional knowledge isn’t easily transferred, particularly in distributed workplaces that are dependent on a new level of remote working. Collaboration technology has become essential, enabling workers to tap into the organization’s collective expertise and solve problems remotely, access key information quickly, and encourage meaningful relationships internally and with customers.

Collaboration tools in manufacturing have the potential to unlock more than $100 billion in value, according to McKinsey, but we’ve only scratched the surface of their potential. Naturally, much of the focus on collaborative technology centers on its ability to facilitate interaction. But it can also become a system of record for the knowledge transferred and refined during those interactions. It then becomes a source of metadata around learning which can be applied to enhance learning itself.

Seeing Is Believing

How people learn is equally important. Customers ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies repeatedly report back about the importance of visual communications in the delivery and transfer of knowledge. It’s fast, transcends language barriers, is ideally suited to describing objects, and becomes even more powerful as the complexity of what’s described increases.

The next generation of workers is more visual than ever. Just look at how emojis have become shorthand for complex emotional concepts. Look also at the popularity of Instagram, Snapchat, and, most recently, TikTok — all of which thrive on the power of visual material to deliver bits of information with maximum brevity. These examples underscore the key point about enabling new members of the workforce to behave in ways that make sense to them. They’re natural visual communicators, and they’ve innovated in the manner in which they exchange information in their personal lives. It follows that they’ll do the same in the workplace.

Today we have five generations working together, with as much as 50 years between the youngest and oldest workers. The young are desperate to shake up the status quo and see the workplace evolve. No doubt they have a huge amount to learn from those who have come before, but they also have plenty to teach. There’s little doubt that adaptability and the power to make change work for you, rather than in spite of you, is critical to survival.

There’s evidence that adaptability is already being embraced, especially by startups that prioritize values of empowerment and openness to new tech. They value the insight, the confidence, and the capacity to execute a strategy that proves the need for a move from “how it’s always been done” to “how it can be done better.” Most notably, they trust young people whose vision and potential might exceed their experience and drive high-impact change.

Customers of all sizes, from startups to those with multibillion-dollar valuations, are putting enhanced visual communication and collaboration at the center of their critical workflows, to protect their competitive differentiators of rapid product innovation and unbeatable time to market. Once early adopters start reaping the benefits of an approach that can visualize opportunity where others might only see risk, it’s likely that the industry will be compelled to follow.

What makes the best companies stand out isn’t their immunity to challenges, but the speed and conviction with which those challenges are addressed and overcome.

Pat Hume is chief executive officer of Canvas GFX.