How Narrative Software Helps Your Operators Feel Heard

As a plant manager or team lead, you have the essential responsibility of keeping your operators motivated. Helping them gain new perspectives on their work can improve employee engagement and, ultimately, your bottom line. When employees are provided with narrative software resources to see how their contributions make a difference, they become much more interested in putting in a productive day.

In most manufacturing companies, a top-down internal communication strategy exists, meaning management can send information to employees but not the other way around. But in today’s IIoT integrated factories, communication can be improved using narrating software that delivers bottom-up communication.

Not only will it improve internal communication but gives workers the opportunity to express themselves and instils a sense of belonging in your factory. The more employees feel like they’re part of the bigger picture, the more they’ll give back. By leveraging the software as a communication tool, you will get more employees engaged in their work.

Giving Your Operators A Narrative View Of The Floor

Empowering your operators with narrative software allows them the opportunity to describe their activities and provides a human element to the machine’s reason codes for downtime. Employees can add their voice to the digital data by explaining what happens during a typical shift. Is that machine frequently breaking down? Is one machine always testy in the set-up? Does it really take that long to set-up every time?

The narrative software is also an excellent tool for downtime tracking without the need to continuously check-in on progress. Operators can update reports in real-time saying, “waiting on materials” or “maintenance has arrived.” Using an employee dashboard, they can see how their efforts affect others who rely on them to get the job done. When they are aware of that impact, it fosters a sense of teamwork, reduces bottlenecks and positively influences those who might feel isolated or under-engaged.

Helping Your Team Realize Measurable Contributions

Simply paying more doesn’t give employees job satisfaction. Creating greater incentives goes hand and hand with employee engagement. Setting fundamental goals for your operators will help you build a more fulfilled team. You might consider four key objectives:

• Clearly understood goals
• Progress reports
• Achieving goals
• A reward system when goals are met

Using FreePoint’s Shiftworx employee dashboard, you can set meaningful incentive programs that will help boost factory morale, improve internal communication and increase productivity. With our IIoT software, anything is possible. Want to learn more? Contact us today.