This project aims to survey Australian manufacturing workers to understand their perceptions of job quality, capabilities and capacities in the context of technological advancements in manufacturing. Manufacturing is a strategically important industry sector that drives innovation and productivity growth and employs over 880,000 workers in Australia. Technological advances including collaborative robotics provide opportunities to bolster manufacturing capability. However, government and industry initiatives to grow the sector are hampered by workforce issues such as skills shortages, changing skills needs, and attraction and retention of workers. Insights will benefit manufacturing organisations, researchers, and policy stakeholders through improved understanding of the manufacturing workforce.

This project fits within the work of the Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Collaborative Robotics in Advanced Manufacturing (Australian Cobotics Centre’s) Human-Robot Workforce Research Program. This project is guided by the overarching research question: How do manufacturing workers perceive the quality of the working environment and skills needs in the context of changing technology and how are these perceptions influenced by demographic characteristics? The survey draws on an existing scale (the OECD Job Quality Framework).