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Safety, Skills & Workforce Readiness in Manufacturing 2026

Global pressures, rapid automation, and chronic talent shortages are colliding on the factory floor. The Manufacturing Excellence Council Perspectives report gives HR, Learning, and Talent leaders the research and practitioner insights they need to build a workforce that is safe, skilled, and ready.

Download the full report to explore the insights from manufacturing leaders across the industry.

Research Contributions From Leaders At:
manufacturing

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Why this research matters

Manufacturing is at an inflection point. Accelerating automation, persistent skilled labor shortages, and rising ESG expectations are reshaping what workforce readiness means on the factory floor, and the cost of getting it wrong is immediate and operational.

Many organizations are still relying on episodic training, reactive hiring, and siloed people processes that were not designed for the pace and complexity of smart manufacturing. At the same time, frontline engagement, safety culture, and leadership development at the plant level are proving to be as critical to throughput and quality as any technology investment. This Brandon Hall Group report explores how manufacturing organizations are responding.

Key themes from the research include:

  • Moving safety and compliance from annual checkboxes to continuous, behavior-based systems
  • Closing the skills gap as technical knowledge decays faster than traditional development cycles can address
  • Engaging and retaining a deskless, shift-based workforce that corporate HR tools were not built to serve
  • Developing plant-level leaders intentionally before operational pressure forces promotion by default
  • Integrating workforce planning with supply-chain scenarios and real-time capacity models

Download the report to explore the full analysis and industry insights.

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