How Land O’Lakes Raised the Stakes on Talent

The manufacturing talent market is being reshaped as industries that once targeted different talent pools now directly compete for the same workers.

Gone are the days where a competitive base pay rate alone would get you a steady line of applicants.  And while we need to address current talent trends, we also need to be preparing for the future talent shortage for skilled labor and knowledge workers.

Manufacturers are now competing for talent not just with other manufacturers, but with any business that posts a hiring sign. That logistics company across town wants your maintenance workers and is offering them paid skills training. The new fulfillment center down the road would like your certified forklift operators and is offering sign-on bonuses.  The fast-food chain opening a new location wants your supervisors and is offering them tuition reimbursement.  

It’s time for manufacturers to get creative.  We need to level up our pay practices, and we can’t be solely dependent on last year’s salary surveys.  We need to get precise with our data and insights.  And we need to think broadly beyond pay alone.  Manufacturers need to be prepared with a long-term workforce strategy, as the talent headache in manufacturing isn’t going away any time soon.

What do manufacturers need to do that? Fast data, peer insights and creative total rewards strategies.

Here’s what we’ve been doing at Land O’Lakes to recruit and hire top talent.

Fast Data

Employees aren’t waiting for the annual compensation review process to start a compensation conversation. They’re talking with their friends and peers and even turning to AI to get immediate insights (with varying degrees of accuracy) into their compensation.  And as state and local pay transparency legislation continues to expand in the United States, we’re entering an environment where compensation is a daily conversation. 

Only 3 in 5 manufacturing organizations are confident their pay increases are competitive, according to Payscale’s 2026 Compensation Best Practices Report. The annual salary survey is a great tool to benchmark wages. But to stay competitive, manufacturers need relevant industry data faster. Employees won’t wait for the next survey to come out. They’re going to go to an employer who will pay them today. 

As our employees’ expectations continue to accelerate, so too do our leaders’ expectations.  We’re being asked to be more strategic, more insightful, more specific and more agile. The speed and accuracy of your compensation decisions can be the difference between retaining your top talent and living in a recruiting nightmare.

So what can you do?  Ask your employee survey providers if they have more timely data sources available. Many survey vendors are offering access to peer networks or predictive analytics tools that refresh data on a much more frequent basis (while also complying with safe harbor guidelines).

 Think about utilizing AI and automation in your compensation processes—whether that be in market pricing, data hygiene or in your survey submissions.  Tools like AI agents can assist with job matching, flagging inconsistencies, recommending benchmark cuts, mapping data from your HRIS, performing web scraping, auto-populating survey data fields and more.  Use these tools to get out of the transactional work so you can focus on purposeful activities. 

Peer Insights

You’ve probably gotten this call from a plant manager or a recruiter: “We’re trying to hire operators and we’re struggling.  I know that data you sent us says we’re competitive on pay, but we’re just not getting anyone!”   

Sometimes the survey data in your toolkit doesn’t fully explain what your leaders are experiencing on the ground.  In manufacturing especially, the talent landscape is shaped by forces that don’t always show up in broad compensation data sets.  This is where more focused insights become invaluable. 

Broad-based salary surveys and benchmarks are great tools to have in your toolkit.  But have you ever read a survey that recommended remote work as an employee engagement tool, and wondered how on earth you can do that for your machine operators?  The survey provider is discussing remote work policies and equity compensation, and you’re dealing with shift differentials and pay compression. It’s not that their challenges aren’t real, they’re just not your challenges.

So what can you do?  If you don’t already, consider participating in your local compensation network. These peer networks help you stay current on macro-level trends in your geography and offer a forum for sharing high-level practices and perspectives. For more industry-specific insights, look to companies that can provide aggregated manufacturing peer data.  And last, don’t overlook government labor and economic data.  These sources can offer early signals on issues that matter to employees, like inflation.  Cost of living data is typically published by state and can be used to help you set your annual increase budgets or in setting a Living Wage rate.

Expand Beyond Wages

Pay gets people in the door. But it doesn’t always get people to stay. You have to rely on a solid compensation philosophy as well as robust total rewards (nonmonetary compensation) initiatives like flexibility in scheduling, parental and caregiver leave and employee assistance.

Finding what works can be a challenge because of the nuances, complexity and diversity in your workforce. The workforce of today wants choice, flexibility and mobility. The forklift driver with aging parents wants help with elder care. The mother-of-four supervisor wants the option to have a flexible schedule. And the recent college graduate wants a higher base pay to start chipping away at their student loans.

Remember to involve employees in getting their perspectives so that you can focus your time, effort and budget on programs that deliver the most value to your unique workforce.

Sometimes, having a robust total rewards offering isn’t enough. Flexibility in your offerings can sometimes introduce complexity and require your employees to make difficult choices between healthcare plans, insurance offerings, retirement contributions, etc. If employees don’t understand what’s available to them and the true value of those offerings or if they don’t see their individual needs, they may begin to look elsewhere.  If your total rewards offering isn’t visible or easily understood, it needs to be.

So what can you do? First, you need to understand what your workforce truly values.  If you haven’t already, consider polling your employees. These can be simple questions—e.g., “Would you value optional pet insurance?”—or they can be complex questions that illuminate the perceived value between offerings—e.g., “If given the choice, would you select optional pet insurance or an extra day of PTO?”.  

Once rewards are in place, make sure your employees grasp the totality of your offerings.  A total rewards statement is a concise document or summary letter that shows the full dollar value of the programs you offer your workforce. Highlighting the substantial investment you make in your employees’ wellbeing, it can help get talent in the door and be a proactive measure to drive engagement and retention.    

Last, consider offerings outside of the traditional total rewards package, such as skill development or flexible work.  Land O’Lakes currently has a two-day-per-week in-office hybrid work model for employees at its headquarters. For manufacturing employees, we rolled out a flex work pilot program for part-time workers to choose their own hours.

Manufacturers have been navigating a rapidly shifting labor market, with no signs of it slowing down. The teams thriving today are those investing in faster insights, effectively leveraging their peer networks and building strategies that go beyond pay alone. 

When total rewards leaders bring these three elements together, they create programs that resonate with their workforce and deliver real value to their organization.