3 Methods by which HR Technology can help improve productivity among blue-collar workers

By Sumit Sabharwal, CEO, TeamLease HRtech

Blue-collar workers make up the majority of the labor in a manufacturing organisation. Enhancing their effectiveness is advantageous to the organisation as well as to the overall economy of the country. Blue-collar employees make up an estimated 500 million of the workforce in India alone. Giving them more power would be the same as making our nation stronger.

Blue-collar labor has, sadly, had limited to no access to digital tools for productivity for a very long time, making it a technologically underdeveloped group, particularly in the manufacturing sector. Many routine company procedures are being automated and optimised today as a result of the growing use of HR technology. The industrial sector has a fantastic potential to increase the productivity of its blue-collar employees as a result of this wave of revolution.

Mentioned below are a few methods through which technology can help improve productivity amongst blue-collar workers.

1) Upskilling

Most tasks have been automated thanks to technologies like RPA, IoT, AI, and ML as a result of rapid digitalisation. To maintain seamless, effective operations, the blue-collar personnel must be regularly trained to operate the newest equipment. The main obstacle to effective training is frequently the size of the blue-collar workforce, but HR technology makes this obstacle simple to go through.

Companies can use intuitive Learning Management Systems (LMS) to upskill and reskill their workforce using HR digital solutions, ensuring that each employee’s skill set is current. Being accessible through mobile devices guarantees that blue-collar workers may update their knowledge whenever and wherever they choose without needing any additional devices to access their learning modules.

2) Automated Shift Scheduling

Shift employment is common for workers in labor-intensive sectors. Ineffective shift management can damage production and harm employee satisfaction. On the other hand, in the industrial industry, a fair and open shift plan is critical to employee satisfaction.
To arrange the shifts, a scheduling supervisor must take into account hundreds of personnel, numerous locations and sites, compliances, attendance, and many other factors. HR technology can be used in this situation to organise shift management so that work is distributed effectively and that throughput and productivity are increased. Smart HR software products with AI capabilities enable companies to automate shift schedules so that managers can concentrate their efforts on more crucial responsibilities while streamlining processes, better monitoring shifts, and reducing absenteeism.

3) Streamlining Payroll Processing with Modern HCM Platforms

When you have a lot of employees and poor payroll processing technology, payroll becomes laborious and prone to errors. Salary payments are delayed or made in error when payroll computations are done manually using dated Excel files. Blue-collar workers can experience significant unhappiness and attrition even as a result of slight salary issues. In such a situation, having an HCM platform that offers an accurate and effective payroll platform is invaluable. Additionally, the process may be automated, compliant, and scaled up with the help of today’s payroll platforms, which are easily coupled with time and attendance monitoring systems. It saves a lot of time that would have been required for the correction of errors and the resolution of complaints.