Manufacturing Wales and Call of the Wild recently teamed up to help manufacturers and academics create stronger links and also take stock of what leadership means in the current environment and what do we need to do to be more resilient?

The day included a session working through some of the challenges faced by leaders in manufacturing, followed by a group walk up the Cribarth in the beautiful Bannau Brycheiniog National Park.

In the session Call of the Wild skilfully asked “Who would want to be led by you?” then explored a range of topics to help us understand the complexities and challenges that modern leaders in manufacturing face.

The context of modern leadership is changing. Leadership in the current climate means manufacturers need to work around mass worker shortages, (estimated 70,000 jobs unfilled across the UK manufacturing sector). Skill shortages came out as the number one priority in our recent survey of members. Whilst many companies talk about hybrid working it’s sobering to note that 60% of jobs in the UK economy cannot be done from home, which of course includes most manufacturing jobs.

As a group we discussed the challenges of staff recruitment and retention, changing attitudes and expectations in the workplace, the impact on production of an aging population, and the future trajectory of AI and automation in Manufacturing.

What does all this mean to manufacturers? The order of the day appears to be resilience, or the new word “bouncebackability”. The Japanese definition of resilience = you get knocked down 8 times but you get up 9. That’s why Manufacturing Wales, with partners, academia and others including Call of the Wild are looking at what this means in practice.

As leaders it is about challenging the norm, high emotional intelligence, constantly being curious and learning, unblocking problems, micro-adaptions, removing waste and being a motivator. Happily, there is also an ISO that helps any business review this. ISO 22316 is the standard for considering how resilient are you? How resilient is your business?  Which is why Manufacturing Wales will be supporting the sector with resilience as a key focus. This is also a core theme of Call of the Wild, creating resilience in our leaders.

The session was followed by a great outdoor session, where members of Manufacturing Wales climbed to the Cribarth trig point that not only created discussion, camaraderie, laughter and teamwork, but above all, resilience!