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MILWAUKEE – The Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) has drawn from expertise within its organization to focus on five equipment manufacturing trends of note in the coming year.

Organizational culture, employee training, supply chains, alternative power sources and effective communications policies are key 2023 trends, an AEM news release said.

“With so much change taking place in 2022, organizations in many industries, including equipment manufacturing, are being forced to respond by reexamining their business models,” AEM senior director of revenue development and cultural innovation Jaime Vos said in a release.

He added companies will also have to address workforce morale issues as many employees look for new opportunities as they recover from the pandemic.

“Organizations will need to create a shared vision that supports the following areas for its employees: employee values, work/life balance, creativity and collaboration, mental health awareness and support, hybrid telecommuting models and opportunities for career growth,” Vos said.

AEM senior director of workforce and industry initiatives Julie Davis also stressed the importance of workplace issues and said equipment manufacturers should make employee training and development a “top priority in 2023 and beyond.”

“While employee training and development may be a budgetary afterthought for some equipment manufacturers, it’s becoming increasingly clear upskilling, reskilling and new-skilling employees on an ongoing basis is fast becoming the new normal,” Davis said.

Supply chains continue to bedevil equipment manufacturers and other industries and AEM senior vice- president of government and industry relations Kip Eideberg said two driving factors of supply chain issues are workforce shortages and access to intermediate components for production.

He added there is reason for optimism as AEM continues to survey its members to understand how these issues affect them and gather data points to present to legislators and affect change.

“Republicans and Democrats can take immediate action to alleviate these problems by prioritizing an extension of research and development (R&D) expensing, enacting meaningful permitting reform, removing tariffs on a host of critical components, and reaching a bipartisan, long-term agreement on the debt ceiling this year,” Eideberg said.

Jason Malcore, AEM’s senior director of safety and product leadership, pointed to the rise of decarbonization as an important trend to watch along with concurrent regulatory changes aimed at reducing CO2 emissions.

Industry pressures in 2023 will include engine emissions regulation changes in California, implementation of the federal Inflation Reduction Act tax incentives for the electrification of light duty, commercial and heavy-duty vehicles and other federal and state decarbonization initiatives.

AEM senior director of communications Kate Huskin said the pandemic presented unprecedented communications challenges that “required a new playbook for sharing up-to-the-minute information. This has forever changed the way we look at crisis communications, and communications and public relations teams are in a new normal of crisis communications.”

Huskin stressed a renewed focus on internal communications will be vital if organizations wish to be accepted both by current and future employees and the larger marketplace.

AEM represents off-road equipment manufacturers and suppliers and represents more than 1,000 companies.