Embrace the mess
"It’s something that’s come to my attention recently, people keep ‘banging the drum’ that manufacturing isn’t a dirty job and that we should be moving to a future with zero mess etc. to attract new talent.
Whilst I’m of the opinion that we should definitely endeavour to be as clean and as safe as possible, creating a fantastic work environment, the fact is, manufacturing is not a ‘spotless’ environment.
Surely, it comes down to personal preferences, after all, there are so many diagnostic tools for personality profiling and we are constantly told we are all different, so we need many industries to suit the many people.
Think of it like this:
- Some kids love being mucky and sticky, some don’t;
- Some people love being sat at a desk, some don’t;
- Some people get on well at school with a teacher talking at them; some don’t and would rather be doing something physical at the same time as learning.
It wouldn’t suit for us all to be the same, we need all sorts of jobs to suit all sorts of people;
- Childcare - Some love it and all the snotty kids; not a chance would I ever have considered it!
- Chippy - It's fast-paced, very hot and you're constantly dealing with the public - not for me!
- Accountant - I was never clever enough & it always seemed too clean and desk-like for me.
- Doctors/Nurses - I'm way too squeamish for this!
- Plumbers - On their knees a lot, very messy job at times! If it wasn't for my knees, I'd give this a go!
Here at MPM, we place a huge focus on Right First Time quality, sustainability and cleanliness of the shop floor. Of course, we still need people to sit at desks within our business - we'd struggle to do what we do without our admin, finance and marketing teams, however, we're not afraid of getting our hands dirty and there's always going to be people out there looking for a job where they can get 'hands-on' and get a bit messy, you only have to look at our team videos here to see the variety of people within our team and their contentment with being a little bit messy!
There's definitely a place for all types of people within the manufacturing industry - people who want to be sat a desk, people who want to be hands-on, people who want to be developing systems and processes that drive us forward, however, it's about finding a balance and stopping pretending that manufacturing will ever be 'zero mess', it's just never going to be the case."
