How to Retain Your Experienced Welders

When you do get skilled and experienced welders, just keep them. Reflect those effective and proven ways to perfect your manpower retention strategies.

You may also be interested in:

7 Easy Ways of Motivating Your Welders
6 Sure-Fire Ways of Motivating Your Unskilled Welders

Developing Effective Welding Manpower: Learn from a Successful Model (Part 1)

Now that there need a large number of skilled and experienced welders who can handle well welds and help train and inspire novice welding workers who are expected to make remarkable future contribution to your business. It is important that you hunt out the experienced, complementing your manpower. And it will be more crucial if you can retain them and earn their commitment. Keeping those employees will help prevent the revolving door of welders at the shop-floor and in the field. 

Below are some effective ways that many companies have successfully applied. You can refer to and it will be great if you make some constructive additions to this list. 

1. Regular events for honouring the laborforce

Those events not just help cement relations between employers and employees, and between employees, but free welders’ work stress and concern. They dedicate much time to their job, then there need some time spared for their life entertainment. Those events do help out. If brand-new welding workers often think of dwelling into their work for skilling up and solidifying their career, the experienced, to some extent, prefer a work-life balance. Of course, they will strive for more recognition, much better pay and work advancement. At the same time, they want to have some space to entertain. The workplace include such entertaining events can keep the veteran welders for long.

Regular cookouts or the like will be very effective to foster labor relation and keep experienced welders

These events may include a large workforce event with nicely served food and drink,  games, raffles for gift cards, TVs and cash, and regular party outdoors where the office workers act as the serving lines. 

2. Paid handshakes for welders

Handshakes bring warmth, sincerity, willingness and commitment. Shake your welder's hand and give him worthy encouragement

The company management takes a random walk around the workshop and hand out a bill (ex. $50) to a welder with well organized workspace or demonstration of a significant effort in dealing with a customer. That way will bring out surprising happiness to employees and motivate their contribution. Plus, they will enjoy more job satisfaction, feel more comfortable with their employers, which is more important than pay. Not to mention the fact that bonus is a remarkable motivator of workers.

3. Perks to promote positive welder activity

If welding workers display safe working practices, have their training, certifications updated, or enhance operations through a helpful suggestion, for example, they will be entitled for the perks. Perks here vary by companies. However small or big fringe benefits are, they sure will put a big smile on your welders because you manage to create a culture that your employees want to engage in, be proud of and share in the company growth.

4. Effective training on new technologies, machines, consumables

It is important to offer useful training on state-of-the-art technologies, machines as well as consumables to the company workforce to keep the welders engaged in their work. The employees need feel that they are contributors to an organization’s success. A company’s investment in training its existing welders will be just like assertive words for its commitment to their future, and significantly more cost effective than hiring and training new workers.

5. Safety as the culture

The workplace stressing safety as its culture will be more inviting and enable welders to exert their best efforts. This should cover repetitive  safety training, frequent assessment of working practices, OSHA requirements and safety standards. Also, the employers should allow the welders to involve in open discussions and suggest safe working habits.

Developing a welding fume extraction system may solve ventilation, communicating a message of workforce appreciation. Such a heartfelt care for employees will help contribute to improved retention. 

All in all, an enterprise’s goal is to create and sell products that best serve its customers whilst reaping profitability gains. A strong manpower is pivotal to accomplishing that goal. Strategic recruitment coupled with structure workforce retention efforts will surely go a long way to maintain safety, engagement and productivity of a skilled and experienced workforce.