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Next time your local high school marching band asks your business for a financial contribution, make them an offer. Tell them you’ll support their program after they take a plant tour.

Invite a member of your local school board to lunch. Or, identify and support a candidate for your local school board that values—hence would vote to improve funding for—technical education.

The shortage of labor in your manufacturing plants has become a front-burner challenge during an era in which, let’s be honest, there’s no shortage of challenges.

As we seek to solve these challenges, we go to different sources. Sometimes we need experts; other times we are better served by our peers.

That seems to be the case with workforce development. When we gathered in Minneapolis in November, a group of shortline executives launched into a conversation about how they are solving the problem in their own communities.

Some are finding creative ways to attract individual applicants. Others are more focused on community initiatives to raise awareness about manufacturing and right its wrong reputation. Still others are pursuing plant technologies that reduce their dependence on labor.

Each idea during the conversation seemed to build on another. When it was over, everyone had contributed, and everyone walked away with ideas.

We hope to resurrect that conversation in Myrtle Beach in April—this time as part of a general session. And, we need your help. We’d like to line up a few folks to lead the conversation, and we want your suggestions on which companies have enjoyed success in building their workforce.

If you have hit upon a winning formula for your plant but detest the thought of speaking publicly, we can work with that. We will not force you onto a stage. We need your good ideas, not a polished PowerPoint presentation.

The session dedicated to this conversation is Friday morning. Its structure and content will depend on you, but our initial thoughts are that it will be a panel focused on themes mentioned earlier: community partnerships, individual recruiting, and strategies to reduce the need for labor. While panelists will introduce ideas, the goal is a session in which ideas come from every direction.

Among participants will be a representative from the Advanced Manufacturing Center at Horry Georgetown Technical College. The school, which opened in 2017, has been celebrated as helping to close the gap in skilled labor in its region. When the session concludes, attendees who register to participate will make the 30-minute drive to the technical college to see the facility for themselves.

The labor shortage represents a problem we can solve together largely without worry of compromising a competitive advantage. And, our attempt to do so brings out what members say is the very best of the Association: a willingness to strengthen the whole of the industry through our own creativity and collaboration.

If you have ideas you’d like to share, or if you want to suggest a company that you know is doing great things, please get in touch. Contact Kristi Ruggles at Kristi@FarmEquip.org, or (314) 878-2304.