Empowering
Global
Talent
MG Consulting Group
Industrial companies are investing heavily in automation, advanced manufacturing, digital systems and new production capacity. Yet many are discovering that the hardest part of expansion is not necessarily the machinery.
It is finding people who can operate, maintain, improve and lead it.
According to ManpowerGroup’s latest manufacturing research, 72% of manufacturers globally report difficulty finding the skilled workers they need
Similarly, Deloitte research with the Manufacturing Institute points to persistent applicant shortages and skills gaps across the manufacturing workforce.
An industrial employer can increase job advertisements, raise recruitment budgets and work with more recruiters — and still struggle to fill critical positions.
The problem increasingly sits at the intersection of employer brand, workforce strategy, skills development, employee experience and access to specialised talent.
So what can industrial employers actually do about it?
Industrial Employers Aren’t Just Facing a Labour Shortage
It is tempting to describe the situation simply as a manufacturing or industrial labour shortage.
But that explanation is incomplete.
Industrial employers are dealing with several overlapping problems:
In other words, there are two questions industrial employers need to answer:
Can we find enough people?
And:
Do enough of the right people actually want to work here?
The second question is where employer branding becomes particularly important.
Why Industrial Employer Brands Struggle to Attract Skilled Talent
Employer branding is sometimes treated as a communications exercise: improve the careers page, publish employee testimonials and post more frequently on LinkedIn.
For industrial employers, that is rarely enough.
The real employer brand is created by the total experience a worker associates with the organisation — from the first job advertisement to the interview, onboarding, shift schedule, manager relationship, workplace safety, compensation, development opportunities and eventual career progression.
1. Industrial careers can have an outdated image
Many industrial employers are competing against an image of manufacturing that no longer accurately reflects the work being done.
Modern factories increasingly involve automation, robotics, sensors, data systems, AI and sophisticated production technologies.
Yet potential candidates may still associate manufacturing primarily with physically demanding, repetitive work and limited career progression.
That creates a communication problem — but also a strategic opportunity.
Deloitte’s research into smart manufacturing found that 85% of respondents believe smart manufacturing initiatives can help attract new talent by making the industry a more vibrant and viable career path.
Industrial employers therefore need to communicate not only what the job is, but what the job is becoming.
A maintenance role, for example, may increasingly involve predictive maintenance systems, industrial IoT and data analysis.
An operator may increasingly work alongside robotics and automated production systems.
An engineer may be involved in AI-enabled optimisation, digital twins or advanced analytics.
The employer brand needs to make that future visible.
2. The employee value proposition is often too narrow
Salary remains important. Industrial workers know the value of their skills, and competition for scarce technical capabilities can put upward pressure on compensation.
But compensation alone does not explain why people stay.
PwC’s research identifies safety, purpose, recognition and personal growth among the factors frontline workers value most, suggesting that retention depends on more than compensation alone.
This creates a broader definition of the industrial employee value proposition.
It can include:
That is why strategies built around non-monetary rewards for employee motivation can be relevant to industrial employers, particularly when organisations are competing for workers who have several employment options.
3. The recruitment experience can undermine the employer brand
An employer can have a strong reputation and still lose candidates through a poor recruitment process.
Consider a technically skilled candidate who sees an interesting position but encounters:
The employer has already begun creating an impression before the candidate walks through the factory gate.
Industrial employers should therefore treat candidate experience as part of employer branding.
The easier it is for qualified candidates to understand the opportunity and move through the hiring process, the less likely the recruitment process itself is to become a source of talent loss.
4. Frontline managers are part of the employer brand
There is another factor that organisations sometimes overlook.
Employees experience the company through their managers.
A sophisticated employer brand campaign cannot compensate for a frontline manager who communicates poorly, ignores employee concerns or provides little support for development.
This means industrial employer branding cannot belong exclusively to HR or communications.
Operations has a role in employer brand too.
The Skills Shortage Is Changing What Good Recruitment Looks Like
One of the biggest mistakes industrial employers can make is defining candidates too narrowly.
A traditional recruitment process might specify:
Five years of experience + specific certification + exact industry experience + specific technical system.
That can be useful when the capability is genuinely non-negotiable.
But when talent is scarce, rigid requirements can eliminate candidates who could become highly effective employees with targeted training.
Deloitte recommends a more skills-based approach to workforce planning and deployment, including identifying transferable capabilities that employees can use across multiple roles.
For example, an employee who already possesses most of the capabilities required for several adjacent roles may be a stronger internal development opportunity than an organisation initially assumes.
The same principle can be applied externally.
Instead of asking only:
“Does this candidate have every skill we need today?”
employers should sometimes ask:
“Does this candidate have enough of the right capabilities to become what we need?”
That changes the talent pool.
It makes trainability, adaptability, adjacent skills and learning ability more important.
And it allows organisations to recruit from a wider range of candidates without lowering standards.
How Industrial Employers Can Turn the Talent Problem Around
Solving the industrial talent challenge requires more than increasing recruitment activity.
The better approach is to work through the entire talent system.
1. Audit the employer brand from the worker’s perspective
Before changing the careers page, ask employees and candidates what they actually experience.
Look at:
Regular employee feedback can reveal problems that recruitment metrics alone cannot.
PwC’s latest manufacturing research suggests that many employers still have room to strengthen how they understand and support their frontline workforce.
The implication is straightforward:
You cannot effectively improve an employee experience you rarely measure.
2. Redesign the employee value proposition
The EVP should answer a simple question:
Why should a skilled person choose this industrial employer over another?
The answer should be specific.
Instead of: “We offer exciting career opportunities.”
Say what those opportunities actually mean.
For example:
The strongest EVPs connect promises to actual experiences.
3. Recruit for potential, not just experience
Skills-based hiring can significantly expand the available talent pool.
This does not mean abandoning technical standards.
It means distinguishing between:
Skills that must exist on day one and skills that can realistically be developed.
That distinction is particularly valuable when hiring for rapidly changing technical roles.
Industrial employers can use skills assessments, practical evaluations and structured interviews to identify candidates with the underlying capabilities needed to succeed.
4. Build talent instead of always searching for finished talent
When the market cannot supply enough fully qualified workers, employers need another mechanism.
Build.
That means investing in:
Deloitte recommends using skills matrices and workforce planning to identify gaps and determine where upskilling existing employees can address future requirements.
This can also improve retention.
An employee who can see a credible path from technician to senior technician, supervisor or specialist has a reason to imagine a longer future with the organisation.
5. Make technology part of the employer brand
Technology should not only be presented as a productivity tool.
It can also become a talent attraction asset.
Industrial employers can demonstrate how AI, automation, robotics, analytics and digital systems are changing the work employees will perform.
This is particularly important when competing for younger technical and digital talent.
In the GCC, where industrial transformation is increasingly connected to broader economic diversification, the ability to work with advanced technologies can become part of the career proposition itself.
For organisations navigating this shift, understanding the wider context of AI adoption in GCC companies can help connect workforce planning with the technological transformation taking place across the region.
6. Remove unnecessary recruitment friction
Industrial employers should examine the hiring journey as carefully as they examine their production processes.
Where possible:
This matters particularly for scarce technical workers.
The more employable a candidate is, the more likely they are to have alternatives.
A slow hiring process can therefore become a competitive disadvantage.
7. Treat retention as a recruitment strategy
The easiest skilled employee to recruit is often the one you already have.
PwC reports that a positive employee experience significantly reduces attrition rose from 66% in 2024 to 82% in 2025, suggesting that improving the day-to-day experience of frontline workers is becoming an increasingly important part of retention strategy.
That makes retention inseparable from recruitment.
Every employee who leaves creates another vacancy.
Every vacancy increases recruitment pressure.
And repeated turnover can damage morale among the employees who remain.
Industrial employers should therefore track:
This is where HR KPIs in the GCC can provide a useful framework for connecting workforce activity to measurable business outcomes.
What the Industrial Talent Challenge Looks Like in the GCC
What the Industrial Talent Challenge Looks Like in the GCC
The industrial talent problem takes on additional complexity in the Gulf.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other GCC economies are simultaneously pursuing industrial expansion, economic diversification, technological transformation and national workforce participation.
That creates a two-sided talent requirement.
Companies need to develop and retain local talent while also accessing specialised capabilities that may not yet exist in sufficient supply locally.
Saudi Arabia provides a useful example.
The country’s industrial and economic transformation has increased demand for technical, digital and operational capabilities, while localisation policies are simultaneously changing how organisations build their workforce.
That means companies cannot treat localisation and talent acquisition as separate issues.
They need an integrated workforce strategy.
The GCC talent strategy needs two tracks
A practical approach is to build two complementary talent pipelines.
Track one: Develop
Identify roles where local talent can be developed through training, apprenticeships, graduate programmes, mentoring and internal mobility.
Track two: Access
For highly specialised or immediately critical capabilities, access experienced talent from wider regional and international markets.
Neither approach is sufficient on its own.
Trying to develop every capability internally can take too long.
Trying to recruit every capability externally can become expensive and unsustainable.
The objective is to determine which capabilities should be built, bought or borrowed.
Steps for Industrial Talent Turnaround
Industrial employers do not necessarily need to wait for a long-term workforce transformation programme before making improvements.
A practical turnaround can begin in three phases.
Step 1: Diagnose
Identify where the talent problem actually sits.
Analyse:
Then interview employees and hiring managers.
The goal is to distinguish between an attraction problem, selection problem, development problem and retention problem.
Steps 2: Improve attraction
Start fixing the most visible weaknesses.
This can include:
The objective is not to make the employer look better than it is.
It is to make the real strengths of the organisation easier for candidates to understand.
Step 3: Build resilience
Once immediate recruitment issues are addressed, shift toward workforce resilience.
Identify:
The organisation moves from reactive hiring toward planned talent supply.
Build, Buy or Borrow: Knowing When External Recruitment Makes Sense
There is an important limit to internal development.
Some capabilities simply cannot be developed quickly enough.
If a role is business-critical, highly specialised and creating immediate operational risk, waiting for an internal employee to develop the necessary capability may be the wrong decision.
This is where the Build → Buy → Borrow framework becomes useful.
Build when the capability can reasonably be developed internally.
Buy when the organisation needs a permanent specialist who already possesses the required capability.
Borrow when the capability is needed quickly, temporarily or flexibly.
For example, an industrial organisation may decide to:
The key is that external recruitment should not be viewed as a failure of internal workforce development.
It is one component of a broader workforce strategy.
When critical industrial roles remain difficult to fill despite improvements to the employer proposition and recruitment process, specialised staffing solutions can provide another route to accessing talent.
For permanent capability gaps, permanent placement can similarly complement an organisation’s internal development strategy rather than compete with it.
Conclusion
For industrial employers, employer branding is ultimately about the experience behind the promise.
A strong careers page cannot compensate for poor management. A higher salary cannot replace meaningful career progression. And better recruitment technology cannot fix a workforce strategy that does not address why people join, develop and stay.
The strongest industrial employers therefore build their talent strategy from the inside out: creating better employee experiences, developing scarce skills, making career paths visible and knowing when to build talent internally or access it externally.
The question is no longer simply, “How do we attract more workers?”
It is “How do we become an organisation that skilled people want to join, grow with and stay with?”
Frequently Asked Questions
How can industrial companies improve employer branding?
They can improve employer branding by strengthening the employee value proposition, improving candidate experience, communicating career opportunities, developing frontline managers, investing in employee experience and ensuring that the actual workplace experience matches recruitment promises.
What is skills-based hiring in manufacturing?
Skills-based hiring evaluates candidates according to the capabilities they possess or can realistically develop rather than relying exclusively on traditional requirements such as specific degrees, job titles or years of experience.
Should industrial companies hire externally or develop talent internally?
Both approaches can be appropriate. Employers should build capabilities internally when skills can be developed within a reasonable timeframe, recruit permanent specialists when immediate expertise is required, and use flexible staffing when capability is needed temporarily or urgently.
How can manufacturers retain skilled employees?
Manufacturers can improve retention through competitive compensation, safe working conditions, career development, recognition, mentoring, better frontline management, appropriate scheduling flexibility and opportunities for internal mobility.
How can GCC industrial companies address skilled talent shortages?
GCC employers can combine local talent development with targeted access to specialised regional and international talent. Workforce planning should account for localisation requirements, emerging technical capabilities, industrial expansion and the changing structure of work across the region.