auditors can tell if you lack skilled labor

by Desiree Schnoor

If you are a manufacturing plant manager, you have no doubt seen the effects that a lack of skilled labor is having on all aspects of your company. Terry Grayson-Caprio is familiar with them too. She has over 20 years’ experience as a managing partner and senior manager, and is skilled in external audit, accounting, and advisory services.

Terry is an expert who not only sees a consistent need for companies she serves to have skilled labor, but she quantifies the negative impacts unskilled labor has on companies, financially. Terry frequently sees higher direct and indirect costs for automotive and other industrial based companies associated with lack of skilled labor showing up in heavy turnover statistics and higher costs associated with logistics, storage, re-work, and overtime.

The hardest hit companies take, related to a lack of skilled labor is in training and travel costs, she says. When a company is going through significant training (sending employees to train or bringing in management onsite to train) it gets expensive. Many of her clients send their employees for training or re-training to an offsite location where they spend 6-8 weeks training, often overseas, incurring high training and travel costs. But that’s not all. A downstream cost is workforce downtime and slowed production, because of retrofitting employees’ skills.

So, just how much are these traditional ways of training costing employers? Terry says it’s “Not unusual to see an uptick of 20-25% increase in a period of change”. When asked if she thinks Video Work Instructions can help save companies money, Terry said, “There would be opportunities for video training. It might reduce time away from the workforce. It’s intriguing”.