The Worker Development Puzzle… For Many

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

After many years of setting up and providing technical support for employer-based structured on the job training programs, I can say with confidence that most, if not all, employers have significant weaknesses in their worker development process. If pressed, I believe most employers are aware of it, but have become comfortable with the mistaken notion that “it is what it is.,” Some are unaware and frustrated at the lack of results when hiring new workers to maintain or build capacity; accountants show signs of concern when hiring adds labor costs and often results in lower production output. Others in management may be concerned with unsustainable poor output quality or an increase in product or service scrap or rework.

Hiring more workers is not always the answer to the apparent lack of capacity to take on new product lines and new projects. Many employers overlook the fact that there is a tremendous amount of untapped capacity among the existing workers who have never had a chance to be fully trained for the jobs for which they were hired. The reason: most companies have remained in the unstructured, informal, undocumented one-on-one task-based training mode – even though the tasks are often transforming and the skills required for jobs have continued to increase in complexity.

Understanding the “chemistry“ of worker development is key to maximizing the return on worker skills and efficiencies. If an enterprise is struggling to increase output given the current staffing levels, adding new workers to compensate may often yield even less output. The simple reason being that a new person with no demonstrated skills or relevant capabilities is paired with a higher paid subject matter expert who is to transfer their expertise in an unstructured, ad hoc and undocumented manner. For however long this unstructured experience takes, one person who used to be very productive is now training a worker who has little or no productivity, doubling the loss of capacity rather than increasing capacity to increase productive output. As production output falls, the subject matter expert trainer may feel compelled to take up the production slack – putting more distance between them and the trainee. During the probationary period, the new-hire doesn’t know what they don’t know and what is not being trained, so they may feel the only solution is to lay low.

This experience can take 2 to 3 times longer than necessary and the new worker may be trained to only 20% of the required tasks that management and expects. For however long this takes to transfer a full job set of expertise, two people (not one) are drawing pay and underproducing.

The only way to get the subject matter expert back to work so they can continue to produce at the high level previously witnessed and add a fully functional and capable new employee to the aggregate capacity, is to structure the on-the-job training process. Structured on-the-job training (“SOJT”) is task-based, including all of the critical tasks that make up the job classification. If an operation has standard work instructions, these can be incorporated into the SOJT infrastructure, which helps with ISO/IATF/AS and NADCAP compliance. Read More

Lessen Gen Z Workplace Anxiety – Make Training Deliberate and Engaging

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In an article in Business Insider entitled, “Gen Z is bringing a whole new vibe to the workplace: anxiety,” author Eve Upton-Clark tried to shed some light on a contemporary topic considered enigmatic by some and over-blown by others; Generation Z and its journey into the workplace.

Understanding generational shifts in behaviors and expectations are a never-ending role of employers and their management. Having a better insight can make the experience a little less challenging for everyone.

In her article she writes, “Anxiety is driven by uncertainty,” Ellen Hendriksen, a clinical psychologist and the author of “How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety,” said. Because they grew up in the digital age with nearly unlimited amounts of information at their fingertips, Hendriksen said, Gen Z has the least experience with uncertainty. “When you need to know where to go, you can pull up Google Maps,” she said. “If you are going to a new restaurant, you can look at the menu ahead of time. There’s a lot of certainty in this world now which didn’t exist before.”

She continues, “But at work, there’s often a lack of certainty — which gets exacerbated in a remote workplace where it is easy to avoid confrontation. “Anxiety is maintained by avoidance,” Henriksen said. “Our first reaction when we are anxious is often to avoid the thing that is making us scared, and so if we are anxious about speaking in a meeting, we might remain silent. If we are anxious about taking phone calls, we’ll let those calls go to voicemail.” Further, “Whether sensing when a presentation has gone on too long or understanding the subtext of what someone is saying, managing how you work is a fundamental skill.”

Whether a Gen Z or Baby Boomer, how we are trained once hired is a crap shoot. The ubiquitous “Bob, this is Julie. Why don’t you show her around” is institutionalized as what most employers call “on-the-job training.” Read More

The Employers Have the Most Advanced Equipment Available for Training

by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center. Currently an Independent Business Consultant

Community and technical colleges, career centers and joint vocational schools have always struggled with how to make a positive difference in workforce training. They often bear the brunt of criticism for the “skills gap” employers report when, in reality, employers share equally in the responsibility. Educational institutions have only the resources and capacity to provide core skill training upon which only employers can then provide on-the-job training to drive trainees to the job mastery needed.

Educational institutions are often tempted to assume more of the employer’s role in worker development but run into budget, feasibility and practicality limitations. This distracts them from their very important role of maintaining perpetually relevant core skill and related technical instruction that a high-quality technical education requires. Trying to provide all things to all employers never was the role of educational institutions so they should not take it too personally when good-intentioned efforts do not reach the expectations for them.

These institutions are often encouraged to use their limited resources to buy equipment or build facilities in order to support “customized, hands-on training.” The employer already has the facility and the latest technology in that community. The hard part has been convincing the employer that the school has a viable strategy that makes the employer want to imbed structured on-the-job training into the onsite natural order of learning the job. It would be even harder to convince them a training program, targeting a specific job of theirs, can be more effective offsite at a training facility than onsite.

Technology shifts so fast these days, and the focus of workforce training is so volatile, that it makes little sense for educational institutions to purchase equipment for training when only a few employers have similar equipment and the equipment may be obsolete before the school gets through the purchasing, installation and instructor training stages let alone before someone completes a 2-year training program. In addition, the company or companies that were targeted for this training might be acquired, closed or moved – leaving before any return on the investment of time, money and facilities are realized. Read More

Keeping Employers Engaged in Regional Workforce Development Projects

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Billions of dollars have been spent on workforce development projects funded by the state and federal governments in the last 20-30 years. However, from the tone of the discussions surrounding workforce development projects and participants today, it seems that the same things that were troubling employers in 1980 are still troubling them today.

Getting an employer to sign up for a grant-funded workforce development project should not be that difficult, if the brands and reputations of the institutions promoting the project are sound, and the project concept appears logical, achievable and will in all likelihood contribute to the employer’s business model. But once the pitch has been made to the employers and the bold outcomes projected, keeping the employers engaged for the duration of the project and beyond can be difficult.

One thing that I have found in setting up and maintaining long-term projects is making sure the person, or people, at the initial meeting are the right ones. “Worker development” seems to fall within the domain of the employer’s human resources department. But not all human resources managers are the same. Some are fresh from college and may not yet have experience with concepts such as meaningful on-the-job training, integration of worker training with ISO/IATF/AS and NADCAP compliance, etc. Some tend to be generalists and may enthusiastically agree with a project concept but are out-of-sync with their production and quality manager’s view of the world. While you may be able to get the human resources manager on-board, the human resources manager may not reflect the interest or concerns of the more influential production or operations management and staff.

Unfortunately, this may not be discovered until months into a project. If the operation’s management and staff were briefed on the project (sometimes they are not), out of deference to the human resources manager the other key stakeholders may not voice concerns or ask pertinent questions that may influence the nature of the project. This may later start to percolate up and bring the organization’s participation in the project to a halt. Read More

Read the full September, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Reluctant to Reshore Due to Apparent Shortage of Skilled Labor? Don’t Be

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

These are relatively uncertain times for some manufacturers with supply chains that transcend borders to countries subject to punitive tariffs, and/or social, political and economic unrest. Knowing where to invest time and precious resources isn’t as clear as it was a couple of decades ago, yet that is the situation many are in.

We all remember how quickly companies relocated part (in some cases all) of their operations, and/or prodded their suppliers to do the same, to lower wage, lower regulation and lower property cost environments – regardless of the transport costs, and risks of regional instability and supply chain disruption. As those economies developed and the associated operational costs increased, those perceived savings continued to erode. And as regional instability rose, many employers started to plan their next move. Once again, the U.S. looks like a viable site alternative.

One over-hyped and inaccurate factor in the U.S. is the shortage of skilled labor, which some workers see as a veiled attempt to justify importing labor who will take the job for significantly less. There are plenty of skilled labor available who were displaced during the Crash of 2008, or displaced by the trade wars, and who had to change career course to feed their families. Many of these workers are still waiting and could be quickly and easily “re-tooled” for today’s manufacturing jobs with a focused structured on-the-job training program. Some are kept from seeking out these opportunities by wages and benefits for the job they once had now offered at 50% – hardly enough to attract skilled candidates back not to mention for retaining a “skilled worker.”

Challenge Employees with Self-Improvement Opportunities to Head-off Burnout

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Let’s face it. Routine work can be boring. Doing the same work for extended periods can affect an employee’s attitude toward their job, employer and life. There are things employers can do to alleviate the tedium of work they need performed, keeping the incumbent employee interested and engaged and the new-hire curious and open-minded.

Workers of all ages are showing frightening levels of decline in engagement with their work. According to a recent Gallup survey, “The New Challenge of Engaging Younger Workers:”

• “42% of employees who are looking to find a new job say they feel their company is not maximizing their skills and abilities.” (Deloitte)
• Among the reasons for quitting, career development is the most common for employees that leave within their first 90 days in a company. (Work Institute)
• According to LinkedIn research, “94% of workers say they would be more likely to stay at a company if it invested in their career.”

With the natural increase in retirements and the loss of technical expertise, losing workers unnecessarily seems to be risk no one would want to take.

The Challenges of “Team Building” Projects

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

We have all been there. Assigned to a project along with several others and declared “a team.“ Sometimes they work well, sometimes they result in endless meetings, endless meaningless reports, rivalries between team members as some jockey for position to be seen by management, or worse yet, the team is hijacked by that one self-appointed “leader” in the group that is convinced they know everything, but evidence shows quite the contrary…and the more that is pointed out, the more they feel threatened and push back.

Team building is a “collective term for various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams, often involving collaborative tasks.” It is also a management tool to “expose and address interpersonal problems within the group.”

Whenever people join together to work on a common project, no matter if it is two people or 20 people, the organizational dynamics and personality differences, the aspirations of the individuals and each member’s level of dedication and self-motivation will determine the outcome of the project more than the importance of the assignment itself. In cases where that one, perhaps overly ambitious, individual who has learned to control the agenda through intimidation, or the team wanders without direction, other team members (and potential team members for future projects) may react in various ways – some very undesirable. These include:

Replicating Your Best Performers

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

One project I was involved with sought to establish a structured on-the-job training program for a “CNC Operator” position and establish an apprenticeship. It consisted of around 40 different machines; manual and NC-operated of several brands, controller types and purposes. When I perform a job/task analysis on a job classification – task by task – I first contact the resident “subject matter expert.” It is my experience that in lieu of accurate standard process documents that everyone can use when assigned a machine, each operator keeps their own setup and operation notes. They are usually reluctant to share them.

As analysts, we assume that if the subject matter expert is assigned to us, it is a reflection of management’s confidence in the operator’s consistently high level of performance. We also learn a lot about the sub-culture that has arisen at the organization, bordering on “work performance anarchy.” Despite the connotations, this is a useful revelation. This lack of vital information sharing that has been going on can be eliminated. The collective wealth of task-specific information can be screened, validated, standardized and revision-controlled to be shared with all who are asked to perform the tasks.

This highlights several other preexisting issues in addition to the obvious. First, if the company is ISO/AS/IATF certified, an auditor would be appalled and likely “gig” the company for the use of uncontrolled “process documents.” Notes in toolboxes and lunchboxes are not revision controlled. If the company has even questionable process documents that they claim drive their “high level of quality performance” the existence of operator notes are a strong contradiction. A client visiting the site may have serious doubts about the practices, as well.

Read the full August, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Confusion Over What Constitutes “Training” is Stumbling Block to Effective Worker Development Strategies

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

For the anyone searching for information to help them choose a worker development strategy, a web search of “on-the-job training methods” might produce thirty or forty informative, but confusing, charts. The search result is a mixture of domains, methods, philosophies – one seemingly in conflict with the other. A non-practitioner of workforce development strategies can gather from this search result alone why there is a perpetual state of confusion between even “experts,” marked by decades of employer and trainee disappointment in the lack of recognizable strategies and outcomes, which are often devoid of meaningful results.

Over the years, approaches and methods have evolved out of their ineffectiveness, many diverging from the basic principals of workforce development. Markets for products to address these approaches grew and well-funded marketing began to find unaware customers. The notion of “training” morphed into branded versions of “learning,” selected not so much on their basis in logic, but more on the lack of “smart” choices and how well the marketing effort worked.

“A great first step is to clearly differentiate between “learning” and “training.” The strategies, methods of delivery and outcomes for each are very different. Without such clarity, one might mistakenly invest heavily in a strategy to accomplish worker development objectives that, instead, uses up vital resources and scarce opportunity, and sours the organization’s attitude toward training for years to come.”

Employers Say They Struggle With a “Skills Shortage,” Yet They Cut the Training Budget. What Gives?

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Everywhere you read these days, you find commentary on the “skills gap” that employers seem to face when trying to find the workers they need for their critical job classifications. Either there is a skills gap or there isn’t, and more and more economists are challenging that premise. Some, like Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman, say that if there is such a skills gap creating a shortage of skilled labor, then wages should be skyrocketing for those positions in a capitalistic, free market model.

Some point to the exploitation of loop-holes in the U.S. H-1B visa program, recently highlighted in a CBS 60 Minutes episode entitled “You’re Fired” that allows employers to replace long-time, experienced employees with lower-wage temporary workers (with no benefits) from countries such as India – even requiring the laid off worker to train their replacement or forego severance pay.

Yet other companies, genuinely experiencing a shortage of skilled workers in their region, seem to either accept the skills gap theory as the norm or have made assumptions that the right skilled workers already came through the front door. Some surprise everyone by redirecting training dollars that should be used to make sure each employee can perform the tasks for which they were hired to programs that are meant to improve performance – skipping the obvious. Trying to improve the performance of employees before being certain they can perform each task exactly seems incredibly counter-intuitive. Focusing dollars on LEAN, Kaisan, Six Sigma, etc. before being certain that employees have mastered each required task may be not only be a waste of money but probably will need to be repeated if the employees finally do master each task, since by then they will have forgotten any improvement techniques or how to apply them to the processes they are performing.

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

by Dr. Dave Just, formally Dean of Corporate and Continuing Education at Community Colleges in MA, OH, PA, SC. Currently President of K&D Consulting 

“Jack of all trades, master of none” according to Wikipedia “is a figure of speech used in reference to a person who has dabbled in many skills, rather than gaining expertise by focusing on one.”

The shortened version “a jack of all trades” is often a compliment for a person who is good at figuring out how to fix and do things, and who has a broad knowledge base. These types may be a master of integrating diverse knowledge topics, such as an individual who knows enough from many learned trades and skills to be able to bring them together in a practical manner to perform a task that is a subset of a craft or trade area. This person considered a generalist rather than a specialist.

There are many examples of this. The individual who can do his/her taxes each year, but would not be qualified to do others. Someone who can figure out what is wrong with the dishwasher, but reaches a point where the repair is out of reach. A lawyer who has passed the bar, but failed to specialize in an area of law to be the “go-to” guy for a particular case.

The “master of none” element appears to have been added to the phrase later to augment the meaning of the compliment; making the statement less flattering to the person receiving it. Today, the phrase used in its entirety generally describes a person whose knowledge, while covering a number of areas, is superficial to all of them.

A Simple, Low-investment Solution to Closing Skill Gaps; New-Hires and Incumbents

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Proactive Technologies, Inc. has worked with many employers over the years, establishing and technically supporting cost-effective, task-based structured on-the-job training programs. For each employer, every effort is made to tailor the worker training system to accommodate the employer’s budget, job classifications (even unique training programs for each job classification in each department), business goals and manage the system through all types of change. Unlike some products or services that require the employer to change practices that work in order to utilize them, the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development  is built around what is working for the employer, incorporating established information such as work processes and specifications, safety standards, quality standards, etc. This approach minimizes the need for the employer’s culture to drastically change what works for them, focusing instead on improvements in an area of weakness.

“There is no doubt this approach is effective. After all, what is better: unstructured and haphazard worker training that cannot be explained, measured, improved or understood, or structured on-the-job training for all workers that is easily measured, implemented, improved and explained to auditors?”

The main steps used to build an employer-based structured workforce development system starts with understanding the desired outcome first: Read More

Read the full July, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Sobering Polling Data That Warns Employer’s to Take Worker Development Seriously

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

FinanceOnline.com published a great compilation of polling results and statistics, along with their source, in “112 Employee Turnover Statistics: 2024 Causes, Cost and Prevention Data” that lists the results of a large number of worker turnover, development and retention polling outcomes – 112 to be exact – to allow the reader to form their own opinion. I have highlighted a few of the points verbatim in this article, but I encourage you to review the complete list. The one common factor is that the employer has not done a good job developing and managing their workers for the outcomes they say they expect and are losing massive amounts of money and opportunity as a result. For die-hard short-term planners, these are short-term challenges with real, significant short-term consequences that compound year after year to become the long-term collective challenges that may become insurmountable.

While we are bombarded by polling statistics today, here is some information to help you decide the relevancy and accuracy of the explanations resultant from polling. What used to be useful guidance explaining current trends or predicting future movements in the economy or society, polls seem to have devolved into a hyper-version of marketing often confusing us with data that conflicts with the reality we experience – leading us to reject data that is relevant and to unwittingly accept data that is engineered.

There are many types of polling. The accuracy is usually determined by the poll size (number of respondents), poll stratification (are all variants of polling targets considered. Example: “Are you better off today than 4 years ago” – answer depends on which end of the economic spectrum the respondent lives, what exactly the question refers to and if seems relevant), the question validity (how well the question was designed. Example: the previous question contains a lot of ambiguity and opens the door for the respondent’s interpretation) and pollster’s bias (is the pollster unbiased in their expectations of the results or looking for results that support a previous held opinion).

“Each resignation can cost a company up to a third of the worker’s annual salary. 67% of which often come from soft costs like reduced productivity but 33% come from hard costs like recruiting, hiring temp workers, and the like.”(SHRM)

Challenges Presented by the Widening Skill Gap

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

There are at least five growing, major challenges to maintaining a skilled national labor force. These forces are causing those organizations who could help to, instead, spend tremendous sums of money on “whack-a-mole” type efforts. Sure, this approach sustains all of the profit and non-profit organizations that sprung up to take advantage of the chaos, but if we are serious about solving this issue that has undermined economic recoveries and stifled economic growth for over 30 years, we need to get serious.

It starts by critically evaluating the challenges that have plagued the U.S. labor force and have been barriers to an employer’s commitment to American labor. Like nearly all challenges, one can choose to target the underlying cause, treat the symptoms, mask the symptoms, define an alternative – but not necessarily relevant – cause and focus on that, or ignore symptoms and cause and hope for divine intervention.

Choice of action matters. Take, for example, the choice to take a prescribed “cholesterol lowering” statin that inhibits the body’s production of lipids – fats and fatty substances, producing a cholesterol number within an acceptable range but at a cost of blocking or impairing other vital body functions and often producing “side-effects.” Your doctor may have good news about your cholesterol level during this visit but soon he might be discussing other, more serious issues with you such as, according to the Mayo Clinic, your muscle pain and damage, liver damage, increased blood sugar and type 2 diabetes, neurological side effects… Choosing to treat a symptom without determining why your body is producing excess lipids in the first place may leave the underlying cause unaffected.

Cross-Training Workers After Lean Efforts Builds Capacity Using Existing Staff

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.  

Lean activities to redesign processes for better efficiency in a department, or between departments, sometimes result in “surplus” workers – partially or in whole units. It is the subjective priority of Lean practitioners since it is a tangible illustration of a successful Lean improvement. Processes that previously needed 3 people to complete may now only need two, if the efficiency were discovered. So what happens to that one person that has valuable acquired expertise, representing a significant investment by the employer? Would the wise outcome of Lean efforts be to just cut that person from the lineup?

The short answer is most likely not. Any efficiency and cost savings brought about by the Lean redesign would be offset by the loss of the expertise for which the investment has already been made. Most likely the reason for the Lean was not in reaction to no return on worker investment, but rather a desire to increase the return on worker investment.

If the worker is reassigned to another department, and no task-based training infrastructure is in place, that reassignment may lower the efficiency there which, again, reduces the gains made by the Lean effort. So part of the Lean effort must be the deliberate cross-training of workers in temporary assignments or longer-term reassignments to other departments that seem to have the need for increased staffing, perhaps as a result of the increased throughput achieved from the Lean effort in the upstream department in the chain.

Supervisors and First Line Management Need Structured On-The-Job Training, Too

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

It seems every organization is scrambling to “lean” the operation these days. This implies producing the same amount of output, or more, with decreased amount of inputs by fine-tuning logistics, internal work flows and processes. Workers get moved around or out, and processes get reorganized and relocated.

Changes to the operation signal that the workers responsible to implement changes will need to know the new way of doing things. All affected workers, all shifts. Yet, often very little thought is given to the effectiveness of improvements if not everyone is one the same page.

“One of the supervisors who participated in the program development said with clear certainty, ‘I wish you had this when I started. When you hired me, I was just shown my desk and told to call HR or the manager if I had any questions. Yes, you had me attend some management classes on leadership, quality and striving for excellence, but I really couldn’t connect what was learned to my job since I had not yet learned what I was supposed to do and how to do that well. Until we completely analyzed all of the tasks that make up my job, I really had no idea which tasks I never have had a chance to learn or even knew I needed to learn them.’ ”

What should be an obvious “must,” the notion that increasing worker capacity at all levels through task-based, deliberate, documented, measurable and verifiable structured on-the-job training is often usurped. It is replaced by a policy of hopefulness that workers will learn to perform the tasks of their job on their own or by osmosis or, even less effective and disappointing, attending a class here and there in expectation of closing the “skills gap.” I often discuss this in the context of production or service workers, but this extends to all levels of most organizations. The impact doesn’t go unnoticed by controllers and CEO’s under pressure to increase revenue or lower costs, but measures to correct this imbalance are seldom explored let alone utilized.

Read the full June, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

“Full Job Mastery” means “Maximum Worker Capacity” – A Verifiable Model for Measuring and Improving Worker Value While Transferring Valuable Expertise

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

It is no secret that with the traditional model of “vocational” education, the burden of the job/task-specific skill development falls on the employer. It is not economically feasible nor practical for educational institutions to focus content on every job area for every employer. So they, instead, focus rightly on core skills and competencies – relying on the employer to deliver the rest. This is where the best efforts of local educational institutions and training providers begin to break down even if highly relevant to the industry sector.

Employers rarely have an internal structure for task-based training of their workers. Even the most aggressive related technical instruction efforts erode against technological advances as every month passes. If core skills and competencies mastered prior to work are not transformed quickly into tasks the worker is expected to perform, the foundation for learning task performance may crumble through loss of memory, loss of relevance or loss of opportunity to apply them.

New workers routinely encounter a non-structured, rarely focused, on-the-job training experience. Typically, the employer’s subject-matter-expert (SME) is asked to “show the new employee around.” While highly regarded by management, the SME (not trained as a task trainer and having no prepared materials) has difficulty remembering the nuances of the tasks when explaining the process to the new employee, since that level of detail was buried in memory long ago. Each SME, on each shift, might have a different version of the “best practice” for processes, confusing the trainee even more – rendering the notion of “standardization” to “buzzword” status.

Is AI the Next IoT? When Considering a Major Shift in Worker Selection and Development Strategy, Haste Might Make Waste

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations, Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the all-consuming topic of the day. The media, as with the Internet of Things (IoT), is the vehicle with which a well-financed marketing campaign is transformed into an illusionary “trend” train that we are all shamed into boarding lest we will be left behind. Whether being left behind is a good or bad thing is yet to be determined.

Potential employees have already been showered with generative AI employment scams, does it really make sense to turnover the recruiting, selection, training and managing responsibilities over to AI as well? The rush to IoT has left the backdoor open to any form of lone wolf or criminal organization to exploit as we are experiencing every day. Without repairing the holes in the existing interconnectivity, does it make sense to add more known risks to it?

Where there is money, there is the “newest trend” to consider. Often not actually a trend, they are more like a well-funded marketing scheme as we have come to know by hedge funds that have amassed trillions and need things to invest in to expand their presence and dominance. AI represents the culminative test of the employer’s ability to read to tea leaves correctly and the most significant challenge to employee’s gainful employment yet.

Companies collectively spent $101.6 billion last year on related technical instruction, most of it informal, unstructured and undocumented on-the-job. Structuring what is already in place to make it deliberate, efficient and documented is a tremendous start and employers do not need AI for that. But it does take incorporating a coherent worker training strategy into the firm’s business model and treating employees as “investments.”

Two Common, Unfortunate Mistakes: The Importance of Setting Up Separate Accounts When Receiving Training Grant Funds

by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center

Two common, unfortunate mistakes that can derail a company’s sincere effort to address the training gap at their firm are easily overcome, but toxic if unaddressed. Getting upper-management on-board with trying to build a deliberate training infrastructure is not easy, as most who have tried have found out. Taking preemptive measures to avoid these land mines seems worth the while.

The first, the champion who took the initiative to create a training strategy, lobby for it and attempted to implement it at their operation fails to establish proper leadership of that effort. W. Edwards Deming often said, “divide responsibility and no one is responsible.“ And something as important as establishing a new, deliberate training program to address the neglect of the past has to be led by someone who recognizes that fact, understands the implications and knows how to lead the effort to successfully reach its goal.

Some firms believe that putting two or three stakeholders in charge, for which none of them have the background and experience, to manage a training strategy is sufficient to lead the effort. This false notion that “political buy-in” outweighs selecting the right leader, or elevating people with time on their hands to something they lack experience for is sufficient, can be a fatal miscalculation. This usually leads to the project falling far short of its goals and/or interest waning as results seem to come up short of expectations. This can lead to those in charge vacillating between taking blame or credit instead of making sure the project succeeds. Another example is when the “leadership group” is lopsided and one, or a few of, the team has more knowledge and experience in setting up and implementing a training strategy but lacks the votes on critical decisions.

“Inflation;” It is More Than the Rate That’s the Problem

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

The main reason the fight over inflation lingers year after year, decade after decade, isn’t just the rate that is reported. That is important, true, but what is more important is what happens after. Once prices rise to an impactful level, do the prices return to a more acceptable level or are they just a step in a long-term plan of inflationary surges that drive the prices higher still?

Prices are, what economists call, “sticky in the upward direction” – a glossy way of saying once prices have risen higher, good luck getting them down. The term sticky was a more legitimate description associated with business cycles of 30 – 40 years ago, when inflation was more determined by consumer demand. Higher prices resulted in lower consumption, causing business analysts to find where the supply and demand curves cross; equilibrium point.

What changed was the concentration of market share, both laterally and vertically. In the past, policymakers took steps to preempt monopolies and oligopolies from forming and operating. Many remember the break-up of AT & T in the 1980s when it was thought it had too much market dominance. Too much market share controlled by one or a small few firms meant that price coordination was easier and competition jeopardized. Since the late 1990s, a new interpretation of classical economic theories for incoming neoliberalism was needed to reexplain U.S. capitalism in a new world context, so new economists were needed to dominate the messaging. We were meant to understand that so many potential competing multinational companies, the odds of monopolies and oligopolies emerging were slim.

Read the full May, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Thinking Holistically About Worker Development

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Every potential worker and incumbent worker possess enormous value, waiting to be first developed then realized. Too often the opportunity is lost at development, and the value remains untapped or marginally realized. Lack of effort, or lack of relevant effort, yields lackluster results.

When an artist approaches a canvas, they see a blank surface waiting only for their effort to turn it into a work of art. They work to utilize every bit of white space to bring out its potential contribution to the overall vision. They, too, are applying developed expertise in the performance of work. If they’re in it for money, they know that an unfinished painting or drawing minimizes the return on the resources utilized. Yet they’re not disappointed with a unfinished piece and do not blame others if they, themself, don’t put in the effort, they continue until they are satisfied that they have done all they can and the piece matches their expectations.

Each potential worker is like a blank canvas. Educators know that it is their responsibility to bring out the best of each student that passes through their classroom. They know that if they fail to present to potential workers new and relevant skills needed for continued educational growth, and/or current opportunities in society, they have produced an unfinished work of art with limited value and future potential.

Have You Captured The Expertise of Your Critical Hourly and Salary Positions?

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Starting in the late 1980’s, employers became increasingly concerned with succession planning; ensuring salary workers were being groomed to replace critical senior employees in the event of retirement or voluntary/involuntary separation. It was realized that the potential disruption – direct and the ripple effects – caused by an unplanned void in the leadership chain might be perceived as a threat to shareholder value. Shareholders, too, wanted assurances that maximizing a firm’s performance was not tied to one or two invaluable people.

Compounding the concern was the realization that the workforce was aging at all levels, and that retirements were a certainty. Prior to the Crash of 2008, employer’s concern over this was amplified by anecdotal reports from other employers already experiencing the impact. A movement toward a remedy began to take shape, and not just for high-ranking salary positions, but technically critical salary positions and even hourly positions that with a loss of one or a few technical experts might disrupt operations and impair a firm’s viability.

For decades prior to the Crash of 2008, Proactive Technologies, Inc. worked with a lot of employers by job/task analyzing their critical job classifications – initially hourly positions but a growing salary class of positions as well. This approach “captured the expertise” of the aging workers to use it to develop the tools which would allow the company to train nearly anyone with a sufficient core skill base, replicating experts as needed.

Tips for Workforce Developers – Partnerships That Matter…and Last

by Dr. Dave Just, formally Dean of Corporate and Continuing Education at Community Colleges in MA, OH, PA, SC. Currently President of K&D Consulting 

Having partnered with Proactive Technologies, Inc. on workforce development projects for the past 20 years, it gave me a chance to innovate and learn what works, what efforts are most appreciated by the employer, trainee and employee, and which projects utilized resources most efficiently and effectively. There are numerous resources available from many sources that can impact a trainee with varying effectiveness, but the secret is selecting those that are appropriate for the project outcome the employer expects.

As Dean of Corporate and Continuing Education at community and technical colleges in Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, at the start of each assignment I had to first learn what resources our school had available for the sectors we were targeting, and how current and relevant the courses, materials and instructors were for the specific skills employers were seeking. To be honest, in some areas our products and services were weaker than expected, so the determination needed to be made whether we had the resources and will to upgrade what we had or develop what we needed. We also had to consider if it would be more economical to strategically partner with outside providers who always had the current technical expertise and already created solutions we could incorporate into our offerings.

Apprenticeships That Make Money? Not as Impossible as it Seems (Part 2 of 2) – Setting Up an Apprenticeship Center

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In the first part of a two-part article entitled “Apprenticeships That Make Money? Not as Impossible as it Seems (part 1 of 2)” appearing in the Proactive Technologies Report, I discussed what seemed to be the obvious differences in European and U.S. apprenticeship models. I suggested that visionary U.S. business leaders consider creating a revenue-generating “apprenticeship center” within the organization to cover the costs of the apprenticeship and, in some cases, make money. How could that be accomplished? In continuing the discussion I would like to offer a possible strategy.

American manufacturers turned to lower wage labor sources, such as Mexico, China and India, during the last 30 years to lower their production costs in the hope that they would be more profitable. It is now understood that with lower wage costs comes additional supply chain costs which can, if uncontrollable, erase some or all of the gains a lower wage level might offer.

But what if some of the services or operations to manufacture products or sub-assemblies that were, or are to be, off-shored could be done internally – at the labor cost of “training wages” as done in Europe – using equipment that would otherwise have to be idled, sold or shipped? What if those training wages could be furthered reduced by state grants? Could employers find that the source of lower wages is in their own back yard?

Although the following approach for determining if an apprenticeship center/cost-reduction center is right for your organization is simple, it should be scalable to any organization with slight modifications: Read More

Read the full April, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Economic Development Opportunities – An Important Incentive in Attracting Companies to Your Region

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

When organizations try to create new jobs in their area – working with companies that are considering moving to, expanding to or expanding within their areas – skilled labor availability for many regional economic development strategies may include an offering that consists of one part skills assessment, one part general skill classes and a sprinkling of worker tax credits or grants. That seems to be what most incentive packages include, but is that because: A) that is what the other offers look like; b) it has been like that for decades; C) it is assumed that is all that is available; or D) all of the above?

For over forty years headlines sounded the alarm that those institutions that were training the workforce of tomorrow were not succeeding in their effort as discussed in, “An Anniversary That You Won’t Want to Celebrate: Years Later and The Skill Gap Grows – Is it Finally Time to Rethink The Nation’s Approach?“). Many skilled workers that are available to work do not have the skills that employers need today. Not completely satisfied with their answer to the inevitable question regarding the region’s skilled labor availability and how workers with specific skill needs will be found or developed, some economic development organizations are exploring other options and opportunities.

“Whether attracting new companies and helping them thrive and expand, or helping existing business to do the same, this approach is an important component of any economic development strategy.”

Assessing Employees With Past Drug Addictions for Work Tricky

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

A prevalent challenge faced by many employers is what to do with job applicants with a record of past drug use. Current drug use detected during screening is more cut and dry, but candidates that are going through, or went through, treatment and have maintained a clean life-style since need more care to avoid running afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

The Americans with Disabilities Act protects employees and job applicants from discrimination based on past drug addiction in most cases. In a article for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) website by Roy Maurer, “The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects employees and job applicants from discrimination based on past drug addiction. These individuals qualify as having a disability if they successfully completed a supervised drug rehabilitation program or are currently participating in such a program and are no longer using prohibited drugs.”

One expert he interviewed, Rayford Irvin, the Houston district director for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), said “Opioid addiction is a disability that is affecting millions across the United States, yet many are regaining control over their lives by participating in supervised rehabilitation programs.” “When a worker has a record of such a disability and is performing his job proficiently, an employer cannot lawfully preclude the worker from employment because he is receiving treatment for his addiction.” Read More

Worker Development Is an Ongoing Commitment, Not a “One and Done” Event

by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center

I have spent many years of my life working in manufacturing and providing consulting services to manufacturers and workforce development groups. While employers like to showcase there ISO, IATF or AS certification symbolizing their commitment to quality, imbedded throughout those certification program requirements are the need to demonstrate a system to develop workers, to maintain records that workers are trained to the company’s processes, show the continuous improvement of the training programs and updating of workers, and the protection of “legacy knowledge” and “tribal wisdom” to ensure sustainability.

Unfortunately, one common thread I find is the employer’s weak focus and commitment to the development of workers. Sure, some employers rise above the rest and there are a lot of core skill and industry-general training programs hosted by community colleges and technical training providers (some seem to make the effort to be relevant with changes in technology and the trajectory of industry). However, too often management rarely stays focused on worker development as they do on other parts of the organization. I don’t often see a “commitment to quality” and “continuous improvement” principles being applied to what the organizations fondly call “training.”

Typically, the conversation changes to classes that are offered before the realization that accounting will see it as a “cost” and veto the idea before it gets off the ground. Or, the manager hands it off to someone…knowing it will probably see the same fate. Even though most states have grant funds available to help employers pay the cost of classes provided locally and specialty training provided elsewhere, states are willing to provide funding to offset most, if not all, of the employer’s investment to implement a true, documented structured on-the-job training program, as well.

Worker training – the “transfer of expertise” – goes on every day, with every worker in every organization. How many companies would you say harness the existence of this phenomenon that grew out of the non-existence of anything formal to “make the best of it?” Informal, unstructured and undocumented on-the-job training (“OJT”) is rampant; the employer’s support and commitment usually isn’t. Worker development seems to be the last thing on the minds of management when things are going well but the first thing to be cut during turbulent times; be it cutting training budgets, severely limiting time devoted to informal OJT, or inadvertently laying off individuals who served as ad hoc, informal OJT trainers because someone had to do it. Read More

Proactive Technologies’ Turnkey Package Offers for Prospective and Returning Clients – Discount Window Now Open, Closing Soon!

Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff

The world has been through a lot in the last few decades. Employers finding themselves making decisions and changing their mind for the most unexpected reasons. Proactive Technologies, Inc.^® wants to accommodate and support those workforce development decisions in the best way it knows how. This introduction for new and returning clients of its turnkey worker development package is one example. The current discount window is open from January 1st – March 15, 2024!

Value comes in many forms. Sometimes value stares us in the face but we may not realize it…or fully realize it. Like a software we purchase but only use 10% of its functions, a car that we seldom drive, or the treadmill that sits in its original packaging. Underutilized value not only represents a minimal return on an investment, it is a lost opportunity to maximize its potential and an inefficient use of capital.

Undeveloped or under-developed worker capacity is a lost opportunity to increase return on worker investment and reduce labor costs. Multiply this experience by the number of employees you have and the loss can be substantial! This is a fact that should be obvious and continually frustrates many a CEO or Operations Manager. It doesn’t have to be that way. Read More

Apprenticeships That Make Money? Not As Impossible as it Seems-Part 1 of 2

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Part 1 of 2: The European Difference

I had dinner with a friend of many years, Günther Hauser, in his hometown of Neckarsulm Germany. I met Günther several years ago when Proactive Technologies, Inc. (“PTI”) was working on a project in South Carolina that required PTI staff to travel to the LÄPPLE manufacturing plant in Heilbronn, Germany where Günther was the manager of the apprenticeship program. During that dinner, our conversation naturally drifted to an area of shared interest; worker training and apprenticeships and the differences in the United States and European systems of workforce development.

LÄPPLE is a worldwide supplier of press parts, autobody shell components, standard parts and rotary tables as well as automation solutions. They employ over 2000 people and provide exclusive, sophisticated solutions in forming and car body technology as well as the engineering and design of automation systems, machines and tools. Some of their customers include many of the automobile manufacturing companies such as Audi, BMW and Volkswagen.

While working on the Heilbronn project, PTI staff performed job/task analysis on several job classifications that were being duplicated at a new joint venture in Union, South Carolina including Press Operator, Press Technician, Maintenance, Quality Control, Assembly Operator and Assembly Technician. Günther was kind enough to take me on a tour of the apprenticeship center at the plant. The center had around 100 apprentices at any one time at various stages of progression. Modeled after the manufacturing plant where it was established, the group of young workers were processing in each of their disciplines of choice; CAD-CAM Engineering, Tool & Die, Quality Control, Machining. It was like a mini-manufacturing facility with the LÄPPLE factory. Read More

Read the full March, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Even the Best Written Work Instruction Is No Replacement for Structured On-the-Job Training

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to assemble a toy or piece of furniture by the included instructions, you’ll appreciate the assessment that many of these instructions seem to be an afterthought, lacking clarity and often causing more confusion than one would think for something considered to be an “assembly instruction.”

You might be aware that many companies create work instructions in a rush attempt to qualify for ISO, IATF or AS certification. Often someone with little or no experience as a technical writer is asked to write a work instruction for others to follow. Sometimes several people, with many backgrounds, are tasked in an effort to quickly prepare the organization for a pre-certification audit. The belief is that the auditor only wants to make sure that the company has work instructions, not critique the quality of the instructions. Often, as well, little thought is given to keeping the documents current and accurate as changes and improvements occur. Soon, any document clarity is reduced to confusion.

Lessen Gen Z Workplace Anxiety – Make Training Deliberate and Engaging

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In an article in Business Insider entitled, “Gen Z is bringing a whole new vibe to the workplace: anxiety,” author Eve Upton-Clark tried to shed some light on a contemporary topic considered enigmatic by some and over-blown by others; Generation Z and its journey into the workplace. Understanding generational shifts in behaviors and expectations are a never-ending role of employers and their management. Having a better insight can make the experience a little less challenging for everyone.

In her article she writes, “Anxiety is driven by uncertainty,” Ellen Hendriksen, a clinical psychologist and the author of “How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety,” said. Because they grew up in the digital age with nearly unlimited amounts of information at their fingertips, Hendriksen said, Gen Z has the least experience with uncertainty. “When you need to know where to go, you can pull up Google Maps,” she said. “If you are going to a new restaurant, you can look at the menu ahead of time. There’s a lot of certainty in this world now which didn’t exist before.”

She continues, “But at work, there’s often a lack of certainty — which gets exacerbated in a remote workplace where it is easy to avoid confrontation. “Anxiety is maintained by avoidance,” Henriksen said. “Our first reaction when we are anxious is often to avoid the thing that is making us scared, and so if we are anxious about speaking in a meeting, we might remain silent. If we are anxious about taking phone calls, we’ll let those calls go to voicemail.” Further, “Whether sensing when a presentation has gone on too long or understanding the subtext of what someone is saying, managing how you work is a fundamental skill.”

Whether a Gen Z or Baby Boomer, how we are trained once hired is a crap shoot. Read More

Proactive Technologies’ Turnkey Package Offers for Prospective and Returning Clients – Discount Window Now Open

by Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff

The world has been through a lot in the last few decades. Employers finding themselves making decisions and changing their mind for the most unexpected reasons. Proactive Technologies, Inc.^® wants to accommodate and support those workforce development decisions in the best way it knows how. This introduction for new and returning clients of its turnkey worker development package is one example. The current discount window is open from January 1st – March 15, 2024! 

Value comes in many forms. Sometimes value stares us in the face but we may not realize it…or fully realize it. Like a software we purchase but only use 10% of its functions, a car that we seldom drive, or the treadmill that sits in its original packaging. Underutilized value not only represents a minimal return on an investment, it is a lost opportunity to maximize its potential and an inefficient use of capital.

Undeveloped or under-developed worker capacity is a lost opportunity to increase return on worker investment and reduce labor costs. Multiply this experience by the number of employees you have and the loss can be substantial! This is a fact that should be obvious and continually frustrates many a CEO or Operations Manager. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Every employer conducts a massive amount of informal, unstructured and undocumented on-the-job, task-based training every year. The significant cost(especially if you have a lot of retiring experts, revolving new-hires and marginally trained residents), as well as the effectiveness, usually goes unmeasured. If you doubt this point, ask yourself one question; Do I know which tasks each of my employees have mastered, and which they have not? If you draw a blank, you are not alone. Read More

Deming Was Right on Training Workers

By Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming, an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant, remembered for his vital role in rebuilding the Japanese manufacturing sector after being destroyed during WWII, said “You have one chance to train a worker, just one, so don’t muck it up.” At the time, his theories on management and manufacturing, quality and business longevity, were dismissed by U.S. manufacturers. After quickly helping move Japan’s manufacturing and economy towards competitive status in a relatively short time, U.S. manufacturers reevaluated his theories and practices and began implementing the parts of them that did not significantly affect short-term profitability.

It is not clear if, by the statement, he had the U.S. vocational education and classroom-based training system in mind, or the informal, haphazard and undocumented one-on-one training a worker receives once hired. Either way, one thing in common was that the accelerating rate of technological advancement – post-WWII to 1980 and beyond (computers entered the scene) -forced continuous revision of the learning and training requirements for employment. Literally, technology was changing the nature of work before their eyes leaving manufacturers flat-footed on what to do and education, already technically lagging the current nature of work, in a perpetual and losing state of “catch-up.”

To set the record straight, this is not a criticism of education itself. But the way education institutions are structured, they literally cannot keep up with academic-led innovation let alone employer-led technological innovation. For example:

Read the full February, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

From Innovation to Implementation – Success Depends on Preparedness of Those Executing

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

How often does a product or service go straight from research and development to service implementation or product production? A skilled, experienced worker may be able to overcome the ambiguity of this hand-off, but it seems there is, today, a shortage of skilled, experienced workers; baby boomers finally decided they can, or have to, retire, or some companies experience high turnover rates of replacements, or most employers say they lack of skilled candidates…or even someone skilled enough to train them.

There are many reasons that this loosely organized hand-off still exists:

Retiring Workers and the Tragic Loss of Intellectual Property and Value

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

The warnings went out over three decades ago. Baby Boomers were soon to retire, taking their accumulated expertise – locked in their brains – with them. But very little was done to address this problem. Call it complacency, lack of awareness of the emerging problem, preoccupation with quarterly performance, disinterest or disbelief, very few companies took action and the Crash of 2008 disrupted any meager efforts that were underway.

Over a decade ago, Steve Minter in an IndustryWeek Magazine article on April 10, 2012 stated, “Only 17% of organizations said they had developed processes to capture institutional memory/organizational knowledge from employees close to retirement.” Who is going to train their replacements once they are gone? Would the learning curve of replacement workers be as long and costly, repeating the same learning mistakes, as the retiree’s learning curve? Would operations be disrupted and, if so, to what level?

“In our new “outsourcing nation,” a widely held belief is that employees are simply costs to be cut and not assets to be valued.” …. “Manufacturing faces a two-sided problem: it not only has thousands of people retiring, but it does not have the training programs to train skilled workers to replace them.”

A Strategy to Capture Tribal Knowledge, IndustryWeek- Michael Collins 5-23-16

Proactive Technologies’ Turnkey Package Offers for Prospective and Returning Clients – Discount Window Now Open!

Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff

The world has been through a lot in the last few decades. Employers finding themselves making decisions and changing their mind for the most unexpected reasons. Proactive Technologies, Inc.^® wants to accommodate and support those workforce development decisions in the best way it knows how. This introduction for new and returning clients of its turnkey worker development package is one example.

Value comes in many forms. Sometimes value stares us in the face but we may not realize it…or fully realize it. Like a software we purchase but only use 10% of its functions, a car that we seldom drive, or the treadmill that sits in its original packaging. Underutilized value not only represents a minimal return on an investment, it is a lost opportunity to maximize its potential and an inefficient use of capital.

Undeveloped or under-developed worker capacity is a lost opportunity to increase return on worker investment and reduce labor costs. Multiply this experience by the number of employees you have and the loss can be substantial! This is a fact that should be obvious and continually frustrates many a CEO or Operations Manager. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Quality Policies and Process Sheets Do Not Replace Training

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

A very common fallacy in business operations is that a description of what should be done listed in a quality policy, such as a quality control policy or a quality assurance plan, that seems to be sufficient for the training component of ISO/IATF/AS certification meets, therefore, the company’s training requirement in general. Perhaps this false equivalency is wrongly supported by the additional fallacy that the existence of standard work instructions is the equivalent of on-the-job training plans. Too often this is used to defend the belief that this replaces formal task-based training.

Sometimes this leads to the rationalization that if the company keeps it simple and barely meets what an ISO/IATF/AS auditor might accept for their certification purposes, the training requirement is covered. But an auditor at that stage is just looking at what the company is intending to do, not how they carry it out. That is discovered later.

This false assumption is challenged when product or services turn up defective, and customers expect an explanation and a corrective action. This is when a weak, or no, connection can be drawn between the policy that guides quality standards, work processes and who trained and certified the employee to perform the task independently is discovered. This is when the records that exist, if any, do not support the assumption that mastery of the task ever occurred. This is when the customer loses faith in the producer or supplier – not just in the task(s) isolated in the one incident, but possibly performance of all tasks on which they depend.

Read the full January, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Tracking Documented Worker Capacity and Value Growth

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

It is difficult for any operations manager to justify investments in worker training to the accounting manager. Without empirical evidence, the institutionalized belief by accountants that training is a “cost“ often prevails over common sense improvements in a company‘s workforce. While only familiar with traditional “classroom learning“ with repetitive seat time costs, accounting departments are swift to challenge any attempt to spend money on classes alone, where no tangible correlation between time spent and improvement in performance is credible.

Structured on-the-job training is different. Employers invest in informal, unstructured, and undocumented one-on-one worker training all of the time; all day, every day for every employee. Once an employee is hired, including the brief training for individuals who do not end up staying past probationary period and periods of cross-training, “Bob” is paired up with “Jim” and a mysterious process begins. No training plan, no documentation, very little accounting for real hours of training or outcomes. If there were, accountants would be strong advocates for long overdue changes in worker development strategies.

Nevertheless, informal on-the-job training produces some positive results for some people or products wouldn’t get shipped nor services delivered. But it doesn’t work well, especially for many who could have been great, loyal workers. The process cannot be explained, measured, improved or accounted for – most likely the reason it is accepted as fact but avoided in process improvement discussions. Yet it is the only thing holding most operations together.

Structured on-the-job training works much better. It provides the infrastructure, the accountability, the documentability, and empirical evidence to justify increases an investment for tangible increases in worker performance. It is not difficult to set-up a structured on-the-job training system if you have the methodology; you just build an infrastructure around the informal on-the-job training that already exists, incorporate all available process, safety and quality documentation available to make training an accurate, deliberate and complete experience. Read More

Put Yourself in a Trainee’s Shoes

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

It is fun to watch a popular TV show on CBS, now in syndication, called “Undercover Boss – reruns and all.” Watching a CEO or executive of a major corporation slip into disguise and enter the world of their workers is interesting and entertaining. Sometimes they find the organization needs a little “tweaking,” and sometimes it needs major rethinking.

The entertainment value, I suppose, comes from watching these individuals being tossed into a job classification – alien to most of them – and, while cameras are rolling, receiving a crash coarse in performing various job tasks. Some tasks are performed close to the customer. Not only do leaders get a rare look at what it is like at the lower rungs of the organization, in some cases they get a look at the sub-par performance most of their customers experience and how tenuous the corporation’s existence is – sustained only by the initiative a few loyal, but mostly self-interested, employees. These employees try to make up for the corporation’s short-comings as if their job and future depend on it…which they do. If the company fails, they lose their job, plain and simple. Some put up with the company’s shortcomings in pursuit of the next opportunity.

It is interesting to see CEO’s marvel at how difficult it is to learn the job tasks they previously thought were inconsequential and not worthy of attention. Previously known only as a word on a report, the fact that how the tasks are performed by these neglected employees are the reason the corporation exists goes unnoticed and unappreciated. Some episodes look like popular television shows of the 50’s and 60’s, “I Love Lucy.”

A typical Undercover Boss episode might reveal:

• Unstructured, inconsistent and incomplete training;
• Uneven and uncertain motivation;
• Conflicting operating orders;
• Unexpectedly outdated or inoperable equipment;
• Unclear standard practices;
• Unexpected lack of leadership at the local level spawned by unexpected lack of leadership at the upper levels;
• Unvarnished displays of workers rising above these organizational inadequacies and their own personal challenges to ensure product gets out the door and services are performed with pride

Focusing on one aspect, in each case the resident expert was selected to train the covert executive. These attempts at unstructured, task-based training give a vivid picture of the limitations, risks, and failures of foregoing a deliberate training strategy. Read More

Pairing Structured On-the-Job Training with Related Technical Instruction Just Makes Sense

by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center

I have for worked with educational institutions for many years, trying to reach out to employers with the latest and best courses and seminars they had. It is what we did with good intentions, but in many cases this was a difficult sale at best. Their products were often already built…before they precisely knew the needs of the employer. If the employer engaged them for our services, when delivered it was more of an underwhelming experience for the customer than I felt comfortable with. Often it didn’t lead to follow-on work.

An employer’s operation is driven by accounting for the bottom line. Accountants are quick to dismiss core and technical instruction as a cost. That is what they were taught in college, and truthfully there is no evidence that attending a course improves work performance in most cases. Sadly, that level of “job relevance” or content validity was considered less important than the power of the institution’s name that was promoting the products or services.

When I became familiar with Structured On-The-Job Training (SOJT), I appreciated SOJT because SOJT built from the bottom up. The training delivery structure was designed around the actual tasks the employee is expected to master, for which the employer hired the individual in the first place. Structuring the best practices into training delivery so that workers can learn faster how to perform each task and to standardize the delivery between each shift’s trainers and each trainee gets to the company’s bottom line. It is seen as an investment that can be defended to accountants, unlike core and technical instruction. Read More

If Your Organization Classifies Your “Greatest Asset” as an “Expense,” You’ll Continue to Have Workforce Issues

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

How often have we heard by an employer that their “greatest asset is their people” or, “we need to invest in our people to continue to grow?“ These are statements affirming the importance of the worker to the overall success of the enterprise. However, actions taken by employers often hollow out these motivating themes, rendering them as repeating platitudes bordering on the disingenuous.

Actions that cast suspicion on her employers sincerity that their workers are at the greatest assets include:

• Cutting the training budget, if one was in place at all, while bragging about the companies, growth and profitability;
• Laying off workers at the first sign of trouble ahead for quarterly report to shareholders;
• Withholding increases in employee wages, cutting of benefits;
• Hiring workers from the outside, instead of training, grooming, and promoting internally.

It is often a sad mistake for employers to remind workers how important they are, while carrying out any of these types of contradictory and potentially counter-productive actions. Especially when companies have seen a steady increase in profits, these acts are self-defeating. Showing shareholders that even if they have had a slight decline in quarterly profits for investing in worker development, causing the shareholders earnings per share to be only slightly affected, might be acceptable to all if the goal is worthy and communicated effectively. And slight decreases in this year’s returns as a result in small investments in training that will lead to an expected increase in next year’s, and the year after that’s, performance seems reasonable and ripe for the asking.

Employees accepted the platitudes for a number of years because they wanted to believe it, thought accepting it was for the greater good or felt they had no choice. The major fact that company profits and CEO wages have continued to rise over the last 30–40 years while the average workers pay has remained flat is good evidence of that. One would think that after 30 to 40 years of benefiting at the expense of the employee and their family that employers would collectively say that they had a good run, and it’s time to share the wealth with the ones who made it possible.

Developing workers, creating opportunity paths to advancement and increases in individual wealth, are not only a good way for an employer to improve overall capacity, promote sustainability and flexibility, but it provides the employer with an empirically proven increase in return on each worker’s investment, and collectively the organization’s return on investment to the operation. Read More

Read the full December, 2023 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.