2023 looks to be a challenging year for attracting and maintaining qualified labor in print businesses of all sizes. Printing Industries Alliance published a report on these labor challenges titled “Workforce Shortages: Its Effects and Effective Related Practices.” Their research found that nearly 70% of survey respondents said labor shortages had affected their businesses. Employers indicated that, on average, they could not fill 36% of their open positions for more than a year.

Printers are complaining of the lack of qualified candidates and a higher-than-expected amount of turnover. This section of WhatTheyThink is titled Software, but have you noticed I tend to focus more on people than software? The reason is that people are what make your software investments’ ROI. I prefer to think of software as simply potential. Your people apply their effort which is what extracts the value out of the software.

Good people are challenging to find and retain. This impacts your business’ ability to extract value out of your software investments. People make all the difference. One of the scenarios I’ve witnessed from both sides of the equation is the impact on a print business when their Print MIS expert leaves the business. This individual likely did not have the title of “Print MIS Expert,” they typically have a title of production manager or estimator or some other important role. So, the loss of this individual impacts a lot of areas of the business. The forgotten area is the Print MIS software expertise. I have never seen this role actively replaced in a printer. The expertise simply walks out of the building on their last day and the business tends to not take note, until there is a problem.