How The Great Resignation is a Great Opportunity for Manufacturers Looking to Recruit

The Great Resignation. The Great Reshuffle. Whatever the phrase, COVID-19 hit the global labor force big, and few industries have been spared. In the US alone, April saw more than four million people quit their jobs, according to a summary from the Department of Labor – the biggest spike on record. The exodus is being driven by Millennials and Generation Z, says an Adobe study, who are more likely to be dissatisfied with their work. In fact, more than half of Gen Z reported planning to seek a new job within the next year.

Why? Because the last eighteen months have allowed everybody to rethink their careers, work conditions, and long-term goals. The top of the list? According to Jessica Schaeffer, vice president of LaSalle Network, a staffing and recruiting firm, more money, better benefits, and flexibility.

Ray Everett, CEO of Reward Solutions, adds that the lack of a clear path in employees’ career progression is one of the most common complaints he hears. The manufacturing sector can win big with Gen Z here, as a key complement to their employee value proposition is a huge trajectory for growth. 

Good News for Manufacturers Hiring Gen Z

â€Ē More Money: The average hourly wage within manufacturing is a few pennies shy of $30, with project managers averaging $47 per hour, or between $92,500 per year and almost $98,000 per year.

â€Ē Better Benefits: Many manufacturers, like auto innovator Tesla, provide health insurance, life insurance and disability protection, vision and dental coverage, a retirement plan, a stock purchase plan, short-term disability pay, long-term disability pay, and general employee assistance programs.

â€Ē Flexibility: Contrary to the decades-long, “dirty hands” stigma, employees come first in today’s manufacturing. For instance, corporations like West Virginia’s Lockheed Martin offer education assistance, paid time off, and even smoking cessation and wellness programs.

â€Ē Trajectory for Growth: A national workforce report has shown that “firms are more likely to promote internal employees for management positions. Overall, firms promoted 8.9 percent of employees.” The Chief Scientific Officer at Nephron says that her company’s culture “values hard work and career advancement. â€Ķ [It’s] a place to start, develop, and succeed in your career.”

Reaching Gen Z

Reaching Gen Z – half of whom are looking to make a career move is priority #1 for American manufacturers today in order to close the skills gap projected to reach 2.4 million unfilled jobs through 2028. 

The National Association of Manufacturers recently took their recruitment show on the road as part of their Creators Wanted initiative, during which kids were visited in key locations to hear – and experience – firsthand the behind-the-scenes innovation and opportunity behind some of the cars they drive, pharmaceuticals they use, and the everyday products that make our world go around. 

Now imagine being able to scale this effort by meeting kids wherever they are, on their phones, at any time of day. According to techjury:

â€Ē There are 3.5 billion smartphone users in the world today

â€Ē Americans spend an average of 5.4 hours on their phone a day

â€Ē American teens spend an average of 9 hours a day in front of screens, and more than 7 of those are spent on mobile phones.

â€Ē Career awareness and pathways can now be gamified, per region, per industry with trackable data not only for industry to recruit from but for states to secure their competitive advantage.

How are you rethinking and innovating your workforce recruiting to reach Gen Z? Share your ideas below with us.

NBC 4 Los Angeles: BeatNic Boulevard Video Game Feature with San Bernardino County Superintendent Ted Alejandre, October 27, 2021

San Bernardino County Superintendent Ted Alejandre – NBC 4 Los Angeles – BeatNic Boulevard Feature

Video game developer Skillsgapp transforms skills and behavioral development into free-to-play mobile gaming technology designed to engage, educate, and entertain middle and high schoolers.

The Tobacco Prevention Toolkit was developed by Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Stanford REACH Lab at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Using free content from the Tobacco Prevention Toolkit, the game was developed to teach students in grades 6-12 basic refusal skills, share important tobacco prevention messaging and encourage activities in their schools and communities that can foster local policy change. This approach would work to address health disparities among vulnerable populations and reduce tobacco and vape use.

Attracting Gen Z to a Career in Skilled Trades: An Insider’s Perspective

Joe Jenkins, a licensed flooring and general contractor in California, and husband of skillsgapp co-founder Cynthia Jenkins, sits down with skillsgapp to discuss his career in the skilled trades.

SKG: When did your journey into the trades start?

JJ: The day after I graduated high school, literally. My parents said, ‘You’re 18 now. Go find your way.’ So I drove to Colorado where a friend was a flooring contractor and started laying carpet.

SKG: Had you any experience or training before that?

JJ: No, I waited tables after school like most of us in those days. But there wasn’t really a future in that for me. Or anywhere, it felt like. I had barely graduated high school due to a learning disability, so I just went where opportunity took me.

SKG: So it was a default.

JJ: Back then construction was always considered a default. If you’re not a doctor, lawyer, or accountant, you’re a laborer. There was no high school curriculum offered in skilled trades back then, so it was clearly a Plan B.

SKG: How did you move from flooring to building?

JJ: I came back to California, got licensed and started my own flooring company with a showroom, crews and an office staff, which I ran for about ten years. And then I found I loved building, so I took classes, got licensed and “started over”, so to speak, and currently run a small, successful residential remodel business in Orange County, CA.

SKG: What would you tell kids who are considering a career in skilled trades?

JJ: Do it! I, personally, can’t find good, new talent and I know I’m not alone. This next generation solves problems differently than mine, they see things we don’t, they leverage resources we can’t, especially digitally. 

SKG: There are a few barriers for this next generation to consider a career in skilled trades – stigmas about compensation, quality of life, trajectory for growth. How would you respond to that?

JJ: Having a skill that the general public doesn’t have, but needs, is a pretty good position to be in. Plumbers, carpenters, and HVAC techs are making $50-$75 an hour to start right now. They can pick and choose their projects. They can go on vacation. There’s no being tethered to a desk in many of the trades. Or you can be in a more traditional office environment as a project manager, if that’s your preference. 

SKG: How would you suggest kids start?

JJ: Just like any career, you need training. Bridges can fall, pipes can burst and roofs can collapse if you don’t. High schools are offering great CTE programs, from CAD to welding to machine shop now. I’d advise trying one of those instead of, maybe, ceramics to fulfill an elective requirement. In my state, BUILD CA also has great resources for apprenticeships, training, and career pathways for those outside of school.

SKG: Last thoughts?

JJ: I married into a family of doctors, lawyers, and accountants with a lot of diplomas on the wall. Who’s the first person they call when they have an electrical, plumbing or foundation issue? Me.

Changing Behavior Through Video Games Comes Down to These Four Things

As mobile video games gain greater reach and sophistication levels that deliver more realistic, entertaining, and challenging experiences, unprecedented narrative is being incorporated into gameplay that influences players’ behavior in meaningful ways. As we leverage this preferred medium to prepare our next generation for meaningful careers in previously stigmatized industries within manufacturing, including life sciences, cyber/IT, aerospace, and auto, many behaviorists agree on incorporating these four disciplines into gameplay to affect change.

Four In-Game Disciplines that Can Change Behavior in Gen Z

1. Motivation

Self-determination theory identifies three primary psychological needs that drive most behaviors: 

â€Ē the need for competence, or a feeling of effectiveness at completing tasks

â€Ē the need for autonomy, or the sense of freedom to choose one’s own behavior

â€Ē the need for relatedness, or of feeling tied to others through relationships and shared values.

These basic needs tend to motivate behavior in an individual, independent of extrinsic rewards. By design, video games check each of these boxes via challenges that can be repurposed with increased difficulty, directly promoting and improving desired skills development, which can make workforce readiness a lot more rewarding…and fun.

2. Reinforcement

In contrast to intrinsic motivation, video games can also use extrinsic rewards to reinforce desired behaviors, including task-noncontingent rewards, and rewards of glory. The former can consist of kudos and likes from other players in the game, or by in-game mentorship from industry and educators, all of which promote feelings of relatedness and autonomy. Rewards of glory consist of points, achievements, badges, or animations, and can support competence needs by providing feedback and shareable bragging rights. 

3. Personalization

Gen Z is more likely to devote cognitive effort and attention toward an activity they perceive to be personally relevant. By tailoring game narrative to align with their values, game designers — and industry — can persuade players in a way other forms of persuasion may not. Creating game characters a player identifies with, or by casting the player themselves as the main character is one way. Another way is to incorporate desired goals into the game narrative. As an example, BeatNic Boulevard is a new simulation-style, free-to-play mobile game where students in San Bernardino County, California — in collaboration with Stanford University’s Tobacco Prevention Toolkit — learn the importance of living a tobacco-free lifestyle. As students play the video game, they learn and recognize the impact of tobacco-use, vaping and how the sale of these products negatively affect schools and communities, eradicating false perceptions perpetuated by the tobacco industry.  

4. Proteus Effect

The Proteus Effect represents the experience of embodying an avatar in a virtual environment, which affects multiple aspects of cognition and behavior of the player. Being in a virtual world allows users to control many aspects of their appearance they cannot easily change in the real world, allowing a player to “try things on” in an arena void of stereotypes. This is especially powerful in breaking down stereotypes within trade-specific careers.

Mobile Gaming is a Viable Skills-Training Medium

The number of active mobile gamers worldwide is over 2.2 billion today. As industry, states, and regions look to grow their workforce-ready talent pools, mobile gaming should be at the top of their list as a proven, customizable training and recruitment tool that can scale to reach this entire next generation.

What skills development or behavioral change would you like to see incorporated into mobile games? Comment below.

Gen Z Busts the Myths of Gaming – 1 of 3

By Beth Ann Townsend, Narrative Designer at skillsgapp //  

Video games build community

Dark basement. Empty chip bags. One guy staring at a bright screen, maniacally pressing buttons on a controller. I don’t know when or how this stereotype got started—much less reinforced—but at some point it came to represent the quintessential “gamer.” Nowadays that perception is changing as old fears are dismissed and more people recognize the value of video games. 

In this blog series, we’ll bust some still lingering gaming myths by exploring and correcting misperceptions about video games and the people who play them, specifically our future workforce, Gen Z. There are already plenty of articles written by professional research teams and scientists detailing how games can improve manual and mental dexterity, teach problem-solving skills and creativity, relieve stress while stimulating the brain, inspire players of all ages, introduce educational topics, and—maybe most importantly—foster community, so I’ll share something only I can: my own experience.

Family game nights: generations of memories

Video games have always been important to the members of my family, even my grandparents. 

My Papa Donald had a squeaky SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System), and sometimes all six of us grandkids could be found piled in his living room squeaking away, collectively trying to beat Donkey Kong Country. It was a similar thing with my Pop Pop and the King’s Quest point-and-click adventures: for years my sister Addie and I spectated his gameplay while consulting the cheat book on his behalf. 

Then there was my dad and Luigi’s Mansion. Terrified of the ghosts, my sister and I solo-played only rooms that my dad had already cleared. But the fun for me didn’t come from saving the day as Luigi; it came from spending time with the two of them.

With my mom, our game was Animal Crossing. She’d catch bugs, I’d fulfill the American dream of paying off a mortgage. We also used to write each other in-game updates despite sitting right next to each other. There was something special about communicating through such a unique medium.

As a kid, I didn’t know that all these little moments with my family would matter—these moments that games created—and yet we were reinforcing our relationships with every press of a button.

Plugging in to stay connected

My sister and I are now 20 and 22, respectively, so we’re on the upper end of Gen Z and have grown up playing games like so many others our age: games on the TV, computer, DS, iPad, and now mobile phone. By gaming, I’ve stayed close to my sister through college to today. She and I bond over video games that champion the story. For example, Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines was our Christmas break go-to, and throughout my last semester of school I played Dishonored for her via Discord’s screen-sharing feature. It’s become clear to me that games are a powerful means of making and preserving memories. They let us stay connected no matter the distance, and that’s been particularly important this past year.

Our story isn’t unique, especially not amongst the younger half of our generation who started early with mobile games. Games have always linked people together, and with the advent and popularity of online and mobile gaming, they’re now able to achieve that person-to-person connection on an even broader scale. Because 90% of Gen Z is engaging with mobile gaming, chances are high a large percentage of your future workforce is playing and connecting right now.

Games, fellowship, and friendship

Gaming isn’t a lonely hobby. I don’t think it was ever intended to be. Game nights are some of the most vivid memories I have with friends, from zooming through Mario Kart Wii in middle school to scrambling around on Overcooked! in college. Yeah, maybe at times we were in a dark basement eating chips, but we were all there with each other, laughing and shouting and building upon our friendships, practicing cooperative skills and making our time together last. Ultimately, it’s not just about the games; it’s about the communities they strengthen.


Do you have a favorite video game from childhood? If so, I would love to hear about it below
!

Beth Ann Townsend recently graduated from Washington & Lee University with a double major in English and Classics, a combination of interests she’s excited to bring to skillsgapp. She’s always loved telling stories, solving problems, studying what has been, and imagining what could be. Now a narrative designer at skillsgapp, she can puzzle out the best ways to marry the “what” and “why” of the game with the “how,” working alongside a team that’s dedicated to uplifting our next workforce generation. 

  • Discover ways to engage with your workforce pipeline earlier
  • Scale career awareness and pathway access, especially for the underserved
  • Gain a competitive advantage for recruitment supported by meaningful data