A press operator who worked five days on the floor in 2019 now works four, trading a Friday for family
The jobs and the workers in print operations are not all alike. Each one responds to hybrid scheduling differently. Customer service representatives, estimators, salespeople, prepress technicians, and staff running variable data programming spend most of their day on a computer or phone. They are strong candidates for remote or flexible arrangements. Press operators, bindery technicians, and warehouse crews don't get that option. Their job requires standing in front of a running machine or driving a forklift. Online software platforms won’t help them work from home.
It is a mistake to treat those two groups the same, either by forcing computer-based staff back to a desk or assuming a floor crew has no appetite for flexibility. Both assumptions could cost you to lose good people. Take inventory of which roles in your company genuinely require a physical presence. Then build real flexibility into the rest, and you’ll widen the hiring pool and retain more of your current staff.
Flexibility does not equate to full remote work. It can mean changing some policies to allow a prepress operator to finish proofing a job from home on a Thursday, or building an estimator's schedule around client calls rather than a fixed clock.
The production crew deserves the same creative thinking, just applied differently. Eight hours a day, five days a week isn't the only structure available to a press or bindery job. Workers, particularly younger employees, are placing a high value on working conditions that fit their lifestyles. Four ten-hour shifts, or a rotating on-call pool can reduce absenteeism.
Work schedule adjustments require no new equipment, only managers willing to look at each position on the org chart objectively. Ask if the current schedule matches today’s needs or if someone set the work hours according to a standard adopted years ago.
No discussion about remote work would be complete without addressing the risks.
Every prepress technician and estimator needs the same job management, MIS, and other systems the shop already runs to be accessible from outside the building. Digital presses, print MIS platforms,
Unfortunately, that reach is exactly what makes these systems attractive to intruders. A ransomware attack that freezes an MIS system doesn't just cost you the ransom. It halts every job on the schedule. A data breach has wide-ranging financial, operational, and reputational consequences.
Cybersecurity has not caught up with this exposure at most shops. Keypoint Intelligence's 2024 North American Software Investment Outlook found that only 25% of print service providers named cybersecurity as a significant business concern. It barely made the list of the top ten most-cited issues worrying print service providers. 1
That gap between exposure and attention is a real risk. A shop that hasn't patched its software or locked down remote access to its MIS is more vulnerable now than ever. This is especially true as more employees move to a remote or hybrid work environment. Without proper authentication, a sensitive customer file can sit exposed to anyone with network access.
To hackers, print operations can look like softer targets than the retailers and banks whose data they're printing. Vijay Rathour, a computer forensics specialist quoted in Printweek, put it directly: printers holding personally identifiable data face the same targeting as any other business handling that data, and many carry the added risk of a supply chain attack, where a hacked vendor connected to the shop's logistics or file transfer systems becomes the entry point. 2
None of the infrastructure or data security work matters much without people to run the shop, and that's where print operations face a big challenge. Printing companies discover that production positions are tough to fill. The reason? We’re nearing the end of a generation of skilled operators who are aging out faster than training programs can replace them.
Salary increases may help keep your most valuable employees on board, but pay alone won't solve this problem. The workforce of today has different expectations than the one that filled roles at printing companies a decade or two ago. Gallup's workplace research found U.S. employee engagement sitting at 31% in 2024, its lowest point in ten years, with the sharpest drops among workers under 35. The following year, engagement dropped again. 3
Disengaged employees cost the world economy trillions of dollars a year in lost productivity, according to Gallup's calculation. 4 Younger applicants aren't lazier than the people who came before them. They're just pickier about where they spend forty hours a week. A shop that ignores this cultural change risks losing candidates before the interviews even end.
SHRM's research on why employees stay with their employers found that 60.6% of workers valued professional development opportunities and 56.3% valued a visible path to promotion. 5 A paper from the University of Tennessee's manufacturing extension program cited LinkedIn Learning data showing that 94% of employees say they would stay longer at a company that invested in their professional development. The UT paper recommends a tool that trade schools have used for decades: a documented career ladder tying specific skills to pay ranges. A bindery employee, for instance, can see exactly what separates their pay from a lead operator's 6.
Building career ladders is a documentation exercise. Write down the skills that separate each tier, tie a raise or a title to each rung, and post it where operators can see it.
Flexibility functions almost like a benefit that costs nothing to grant. SHRM found 54.7% of employees would stay with an employer offering flextime, and 68.1% cited work-life balance as a reason to remain in their current jobs 5. For a press operator, flextime might mean shifting a start time by an hour to allow them to drop the kids at school or establishing a compressed schedule instead of the standard 5-day, 40-hour week. Flexible scheduling that still gets the work done costs your shop nothing but a willingness to plan differently.
Here is a short list of moves worth testing, based on what retention research supports:
References
1. Keypoint Intelligence. "The Role of Cybersecurity in Safeguarding Commercial Printing." https://keypointintelligence.com/keypoint-blogs/the-role-of-cybersecurity-in-safeguarding-commercial-printing
2. Printweek. "Sloppy Security Is Making Printing Companies Targets for Cyber Criminals." https://www.printweek.com/content/features/sloppy-security-is-making-printing-companies-targets-for-cyber-criminals
3. Gallup. "U.S. Employee Engagement Sinks to Ten-Year Low." https://www.gallup.com/workplace/654911/employee-engagement-sinks-year-low.aspx
4. Gallup. "Why the World Is 'Quiet Quitting.'" https://www.gallup.com/workplace/507650/why-world-quit-quiet-quitting.aspx
5. SHRM. "Future of Talent Retention Report: Why Employees Leave." https://www.shrm.org/executive-network/insights/future-of-talent-retention-report-why-employees-leave
6. University of Tennessee Manufacturing Extension Partnership. "Workforce Upskilling Working Paper." https://tmep.cis.tennessee.edu/sites/default/files/2025-06/MEP_WP%231%20Workforce%20Upskilling_Final.pdf.pdf
7. iHire. "2024 Talent Retention Report." https://www.ihire.com/resourcecenter/employer/pages/talent-retention-report-2024