Training Workers for a Moving Target

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In an article in HR Dive entitled “How employers could improve job outcomes for young adults: Certain degree programs and on-the-job training could open access to high-demand jobs,” Anthony Carnevale, the lead author of a recent report and director of Center on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement, “Pathways to good jobs are especially strengthened through comprehensive policy efforts that layer effective interventions on top of one another.”

“Some of these pathway changes involve increasing educational attainment, especially progressing toward attainment of a bachelor’s degree. Others replace or combine classroom learning with on-the-job learning, capitalizing on the growth that occurs when workers gain access to jobs in high-demand fields that equip them with both general and sector-specific skills, competencies, and domain knowledge”

It must be understood that the recent report, and other reports over the last decades attempting to provide guidance for better labor force development, explores solutions from the educator and policymaker’s perspective; using the traditional tools and approaches to education to prepare workers who can enter the labor pool with more to offer employers.

When education talks about “on-the-job training,” they are more likely referring to “on-the-job learning,” which is just a change of venue for traditional class or online learning. While important and necessary for preparing future and returning workers for the labor pool, too little time and discovery is spent on the employer’s role in developing the workers they themselves need to perform unique tasks for their operation. When a trainee’s core and industry-sector skills (industry-specific) are enhanced with task-based structured on-the-job training – by an employer’s subject matter expert delivered one-on-one in a deliberate transfer of expertise – the workers learning efforts prior to employment or concurrent with employment are preserved through direct application, before they erode from non-use.

Decision Making While Swimming in Divergent Views

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

It seems like we’re all overwhelmed these days. Bad news, natural, disasters, man-made, disasters, and fears of upcoming meteorites, diseases, hurricanes, and government shenanigans. Even the nightly news has nine stories of current and pending disasters followed by one story of a little boy who found a marble, separated by commercials telling us to “ask our doctor” if this new drug is right for us.

What’s different today is that there is no escape from it. It comes through social media platforms on our phones, our computers, it plays on the radio, network and cable news, it comes from massive industries of political and financial pundits, and paid influencers of many kinds. Second-hand versions of the information come from our coworkers, our neighbors, our friends, and even our clergy.

It is difficult these days to extract the information we need from these sources and make the best, most proper decision in response. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by having to do so, yet that’s what we do both in life and in business; we make decisions based on the information we receive, and hopefully make good ones.

Making it more difficult is the proliferation of paid influencers who have a vested interest in making a believer out of you. These aren’t just the social media types telling you how wonderful their product is, embedded with subliminal messaging to influence your decision to buy based on their representation of their experience. Since the rise of “infotainment,” it has been difficult to separate out fact from fiction, reporting from advocacy and trends from high-pressuring, yet subtle and crafty, marketing. 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.

Debt Ceiling, Deficit and National Debt; The Difference and Why it Matters

by President of Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff

There is a lot of talk and confusion these days about state of the country’s finances. Often one measure is used to conflate and confuse the discussion about how to improve the others. The danger is those most impacted by whatever corrective measure becomes law are usually the same ones who have been sliding backward for the last 4 decades.

It is important to know the difference and add your voice to the discussion.

“The debt ceiling is a limit on the total amount of government borrowing. First put in place by Congress during World War I, it was meant to give blanket authorization for the Treasury Department to borrow money up to a set amount.”

“The U.S. budget deficit is how much more the federal government spends annually than it receives in revenue during that same time period.”

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

Nine Scenarios That Would Make You Wish You Had a Structured OJT System

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

I think one can confidently say that most employer’s focus on training the workers they need – to perform the tasks they were meant to perform – has become detrimentally blurry, counterproductive and often non-existent. There are many reasons for that – some legitimate. But without a deliberate, measurable strategy for quickly driving each worker to mastery of the entire job classification, an employer’s labor costs (not just wages, but opportunity costs and undermined return on worker investment as well) can be substantial and act as a drag on an organization’s performance.

Many employers are still waiting for the educational institutions to solve the problem. After all, look at all of the money spent on education directed at “training the workers of tomorrow.” Yet a lot of the institutional strategies appear to include repackaged tools from the past…and not the ones far enough past that seemed to work. For example, the recent comments made by education insiders saying we should have kept the high school vocational programs that were relatively effective until the late 1970’s in place. These were phased out when the push to prepare students for college took priority. Now, there is a push for community colleges to “pump out” more apprentices which, if done only to meet numbers but not emphasizing quality of the general training, could be another waste of scarce resources of time, money and opportunity for the trainee, the employer and communities. Another decade lost.

Still, no matter how well or how poorly institutions prepare the workforce for employers, the employer cannot deny their responsibility to continue the training process and train the worker for the organization’s specific use. The degree to which they take this responsibility seriously will determine the success of the institution’s efforts to prepare workers, how much value the worker adds to the operation, and how well the operation performs in the market. Any apprenticeship that lacks an aggressive structured on-the-job training program cannot be the robust experience it is meant to be. By definition, an apprenticeship without structured on-the-job training really isn’t an apprenticeship.

But the success/failure doesn’t stop there. A successfully and fully trained (to the tasks required) staff prepares, and keeps, the organization prepared to seize opportunities, adjust to disrupters and weather unforeseen forces. Failure at preparing and maintaining each worker’s job mastery, as part of system, can exacerbate an organization’s challenges and, potentially, lead to failure or irrelevance of the organization. Read More

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 two 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.

cording to Steve Minter in an IndustryWeek Magazine article on April 10, 2012, “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

In the last few years, it seems an alternative to the concentration of expertise in a few subject matter experts has become to use lower-wage temporary or contract workers who specialize in smaller quantities of processes, and who can be “traded-out” with a minimum amount of disruption. History will tell us just how costly that approach was and if anything was learned. Read More

The Skills Gap Solution; Employers Are Still Reluctant to Commit to Role Only They Can Fill

by Proactive Technologies, Inc. Staff

Education cannot, and should not be asked to, close the “skills gap” on their own. Employers have been concerned about the “skills gap” since the 1980’s, and the nature and location of the job has continued to change…at an accelerating rate. Employers have convinced themselves to wait for education to close the gap. In the meantime, tremendous resources continue to be expended, but the gap continues to grow.

Educational institutions are not suited, staffed, funded and equipped to train workers for every job, for every employer, nor should they be. Educational institutions do their best work when they build the labor supply with strong, relevant basic and core skills (including STEM), and industry-general skills. Whether those efforts are worthwhile and the resources well-spent depend on two important things: 1) does an employer see value in hiring a graduate, and 2) is there a method in place to ensure those skills are integrated into mastery of the job-tasks the employer needs performed; the value that will influence the employer to retain them.

Only employers can train the worker on tasks they need performed and that affect their bottom line.  They have the need, the facilities, the most current equipment for their operation and the personnel with current expertise. Yet, in reality most employer’s methods amount to hardly more than pairing two people and hoping for the best. This is where the gap is most profound and continues to grow. Read More

Costs Associated With Unstructured, Haphazard Worker Training – Part 2 of 2

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Last month’s issue of Proactive Technologies Report’s Part 1 of “Costs Associated With Unstructured, Haphazard Worker Training,” offered a number of examples of unstructured, haphazard and ineffective worker training that I experienced in my early years in manufacturing. We all have had similar experiences throughout our lives to draw on, I am sure. It is still perplexing that – in view of all of the advanced systems, process controls and metrics that keep an enterprise operating competitively – management would assume that such a “hands-off” approach to developing the critical worker component wouldn’t detract from the other metrics. Why would management expect anything more than skeptical results?

“New equipment that leads to decreased output, more workers added but productivity and capacity falling, or more workers producing product but most of it going into the scrap or rework bin. All of these counter-intuitive outcomes – signs of inadequate or non-existent task-based training – will eventually grab upper management’s attention!”

It is a given that new technology and equipment are dependent on someone learning to either program, service and/or operate them correctly. The incumbent workers, in the job classification before the transition, are the obvious choices for learning. Conceptually, they were doing the work prior to automation with previous version technology and understand the theory and current best practice of the work to be done. These worker’s attained skills will now be tested against the new skill requirements. Unfortunately, training of current workers for even obvious new technology requirements such as setup, operate and changeover of the equipment, is often overlooked or its significance downplayed. Consequently, often the economic benefits that advances in technology are to provide are marginally, or never, realized despite the costly investment.

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

Do You Have Worker KPI Measures in Place? If So, Are You Measuring Anything Useful?

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Recently, I met with the management team of a tier 1 and 2 automobile supplier to discuss the merits of structured on-the-job training (“SOJT”) for their firm. After I had toured their operation and was progressing through my presentation slides to the part dealing with the SOJT metrics and reporting that the PROTECH^® system of managed human resource development^© provides, I was pleasantly surprised by a question I do not often hear in my presentations – especially from anyone in human resources.

This director of human resources asked what may seem like a simple question: “So can this data in these reports be used as KPIs?” After recovering from being startled, I smiled and said, “Yes! Yes, of course. That’s exactly what these reports are for and how they should be used.”

According to Wikipedia, “A performance indicator or key performance indicator (“KPI”) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity (such as projects, programs, products and other initiatives) in which it engages. KPIs provide a focus for strategic and operational improvement, create an analytical basis for decision making and help focus attention on what matters most.”

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: Read More

County Economic Development Hosts Informational Meeting for Area Manufacturing Leaders on the Structured OJT

Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff

On March 7, 2023 The Wyandot County, OH Economic Development office hosted a day of informational presentations for local manufacturing leaders to discuss structured on-the-job training (“SOJT”), and its potential to accelerate the transfer of worker expertise to not only train the new workers an employer needs, but to close the training gaps of incumbent workers who may not have received formal, structured, training on the tasks that their employer expects them to master.

The site/host was chosen due to the close proximity to many other Proactive Technologies, Inc.^® (“PTI”) SOJT training projects with manufacturing employers in the region. In addition to Gregory Moon, Executive Director of the Wyandot County Economic Development and several local manufacturing representatives, in attendance were Greater Ohio Workforce Board – WIOA Area 7 representatives: Carol Kern, Ohio Job and Family Services – Seneca County, Diana Jacoby, Ohio Job and Family Services – Wyandot County, Marcia Frisch, Ohio Job and Family Services – Wyandot County, Kelly Carey, Ohio Job and Family Services – Delaware, Knox, Marion and Morrow Counties. Also attending was Frank Gibson, formally Program Manager for The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center (retired, now an independent Management and Workforce Excellence Advisor).

Costs Associated With Unstructured, Haphazard Worker Training (Part 1 of 2)

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

I have met with many employers, in most industries, since 1987 when providing technical workforce development services. Often, I am led to draw upon my own experiences when I worked in product configuration management, quality assurance, quality control and human resource development positions before starting my own company. After all, it was my frustration with the state of common practices in improving, measuring and managing performance that led me to start my own business. I hoped to help other employers address the issues that I was not allowed to in the positions I held due to interdepartmental friction or strict organizational boundaries associated with larger corporations.

I have many memories from that period, but there is one that continues to perplex me when I see it manifested at companies I visit. Sometimes I get the shivers and a foreboding sense of déjà vu.

Without exception, management expresses shear excitement when showcasing their latest technology and innovations. Equipment that will do what they previously have been doing but now faster, better and cheaper. New and better “best practices” and processes from continuous improvement efforts. Though impressed, I am reminded of the tradeoffs that must be considered in order to take advantage of the latest technology or process, or risk not realizing the improvement’s full potential.

The question is, “what truly takes less time and keeps costs down; throwing two people together and hoping for the best or a thoughtful, structured and deliberate task-based structured on-the-job training program for the ‘accelerated transfer of expertise^TM?’”

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

Lack of Immediate “Big Win” Puts Improvements in Worker Development on Chopping Block…For Short-Term Focused Management Cultures

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Let’s face it, discussing the desperate need for worker training to build consistent performance, increased worker output and compliance, is a hard sell in any boardroom. The first question is usually, “how much is this going to cost us?” Not “what is the investment and how will we realize the return?” Since accountants, who are not trained in any aspect of worker development, have more weight in this type of showdown, guess who wins.

Shareholder gains are measured in terms of quarterly profit margins; try explaining the merits of building a stronger, more resilient and retained workforce and the value of increasing worker capacity, increasing work quantity, quality and compliance over yawns and disinterest. It usually takes decades of unintentional or intentional neglect to weaken a firm’s workforce; it stands to reason the solution won’t bring exciting monetary returns in a quarter.

There is plenty of shared blame for this state of disconnect. Human resource professionals, training and development experts, and education in general have focused their workforce development solutions promotion on products they have – the quick and simple classroom and online products. It makes sense. That is the domain they are strongest. These products are great for pre-employment core skill development and post-hire core and general technical skill (if properly aligned), but these represent transfer of knowledge, not transfer of task-based expertise.

“Quiet Quiting” on a Collision Course with “Quiet Hiring;” How to Make Matters Worse.

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

“Quiet Quitting” and “Quiet Hiring” may be new names, but both phenomena have been around as long as there has been work to perform and someone hired to perform it. The media seems to believe they discovered the trends and named them, like explorers “discovered” new lands…that were inhabited. Like every other impending crisis named, there seems to be manufactured pressure to respond to it – spawning a wave of “expert” opinions that often overshoot the intended target and sometimes complicating matters further.

In an article, What to Do About Quiet Quitting: 3 Ways to Reframe the Narrative, the author comments, “You’ve seen the term splashed across headlines and igniting social media. It isn’t a new phenomenon, but it’s coming into sharper focus – like a bullseye – as employees return to the office. Quiet quitting, or “quitting in place” or, simply, “disengagement,” is the latest viral catchphrase that reminds us of one single, inexorable truth: That the pandemic has left workplaces reimagined and workers forever changed. And it’s a wakeup call for employers.”

Disengagement is defined as “the action or process of withdrawing from involvement in a particular activity, situation, or group,” which can be hidden or overt. It can be a simple difference between a worker minimally doing their job to take home their pay and no more, to someone doing that and harboring growing resentment towards their manager, the company and/or their coworkers but lacking the skills and confidence to move on. If left unchecked, it can poison the work environment and, worse, may lead to workplace confrontations.

Training Issue or Attitude Issue? Understanding the Difference

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

If you spend some time in the Human Resources Department office, you often witness a supervisor or manager trying to explain why the new-hire isn’t working out. “Why do you believe that?” asks the HR Manager. The supervisor thinks a moment and says, “He just doesn’t act like he wants to learn.” The issue seems to be attitudinal. The HR Manager doesn’t bother to ask for any empirical evidence since it usually doesn’t exist, so the decision is made to terminate the new-hire and start all over…again.

Some, more forward thinking, human resources departments concluded that assessing job prospects might reduce the amount of hiring turnover. It certainly does help do that if the job classification was properly analyzed and the assessment instruments were aligned to the data for “job relevance.” However, even with the best screening potentially good employees might be lost. Knowing how to recognize the difference between attitude and training-related issues may save good employees from being lost due to misdiagnosis.

Whether a challenge to learning or performance is attitudinal is not easy to determine. Attitudes fluctuate from day to day, throughout the day. They can be affected by personal issues such as health of the individual, health of a family member, financial issues, relationship difficulties at home and the work culture (e.g. relationship with coworkers, supervisor and company management). Rather than hastily concluding any issue of worker development is attitudinal, I find it easier to eliminate the obvious and more common influence on worker learning and development; whether proper training has been conducted. After all, employee insecurity caused by feeling expendable while a 90-day probationary period clock is ticking can, in itself, affect anyone’s attitude and personality. If proper training is not available or worker development is conducted in an unstructured, haphazard and inconsistent manner, this is a major contributor to worker attitudes toward the company, themselves and others in the workplace.

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.”

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

Contracting? Expanding? Don’t Underestimate the Tremendous Value of Your Worker’s Cumulative Process Expertise

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Paraphrased many times and in many ways, the meaning is the same. “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” W. Edwards Deming put it more succinctly, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t what you are doing.”

How often do you hear an employer critically examining their system of worker selection, development and maximization? Has anyone tried to describe your firm’s strategy for developing new-hires once on board, or developing incumbent workers to something more than a fraction of what everyone expects of them? Does it sometimes seem that all you have to train your workers to be their best once hired is, “Bob, this is Jim. Why don’t you show him around?” Don’t be embarrassed; it is more common than you think.

“Decisions that look good on this quarter’s balance sheet too often are made without realizing that the short-term gain grossly underestimates the long-term losses yet to be realized; reduced capacity, loss of historical expertise that made the business thrive and degradation of work process compliance.”

Thinking Past the Assessment – Unfinished Goals and Unrealized Expectations

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

Literally speaking, an “assessment” is the process of measuring the value, quality and/or quantity of something. There are many types of assessments, and methods for assessing. In theory, it is the process of evaluating one thing against a set of criteria to determine the match/mismatch.

There are assessments for risk, for taxes, vulnerability. There are psychological, health, and political assessments. There is a group of educational assessments that measure a variety of outcomes such as educational attainment – assessments of course content mastery, assessment of grade level attainment, assessments of Scholastic Aptitude Tests (“SAT”) that compare a student to their peers nationally and a variety of college readiness exams.

“Determining that you, indeed, hired the right person for the job will not automatically ensure the person is successful in learning and mastering the job. The most important step in the employment process is seeing to it that the individual’s core knowledge, skills and abilities are applied in learning and mastering the tasks which they were hired to perform. That is where the money is made. “

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

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.

Tips for Establishing Your Company’s Training Strategy – Practical, Measurable, Extremely Economical and Scalable

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

For most companies, an in-house training center doesn’t have to be brick and mortar, and doesn’t necessarily require additional equipment and personnel to support it. It is about focusing the resources already available to develop workers faster and to a much higher level of capacity. This does not happen by throwing dollars or classes at the problem; if that were the case many employers who did so would have solved the “skills gap” problem. It takes a more deliberate approach than that to achieve the outcome that has been out of reach, for many, for decades.

In previous articles, such as in the May, 2016 issue of the Proactive Technologies Report, “A Simple Solution to Skill Gaps – New-Hires and Incumbents” I described a simple, easy to implement strategy for developing new-hires and incumbent workers to full capacity. I emphasized that by focusing on the outcome, the proper inputs become clearer. But by focusing on the inputs, the connection to the outcome may not necessarily be clear. Any use of irrelevant, improper or ineffective worker development inputs means unnecessary costs with low or no return, wasted time and additional opportunity costs.

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

Standardizing “Best Practices”

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

When it comes to the term “best practices” for process-driven tasks, there seems a wide range of understanding of the concept; some better than others. According to Wikipedia, “A best practice is a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark. In addition, a “best” practice can evolve to become better as improvements are discovered…Best practices are used to maintain quality as an alternative to mandatory legislated standards and can be based on self-assessment or benchmarking. Best practice is a feature of accredited management standards such as ISO 9000 and ISO 14001 – the framework for industry quality programs such as AS9000 and IATF16949. ISO 30414 broadened its focus on best practices with its “Human Resource Management – Guidelines for Internal and External Human Capital Reporting” in an effort to secure an organization’s sustainability with regard to worker technical expertise through establishing documented best practices.

This credible definition of the concept is representative of a consensus opinion that I have seen in the field at organizations who strive for high quality performance. However, how many individual interests derive their best practices, or what they display as their best practices, seems often to operate at the edge of the definition yet close enough to claim that best practices have been achieved. In truth, proclaiming a process as a best practice may be soothing to the locals, it may not have the same credibility with clients, potential clients or auditing agencies.

Your “Resident Expert” May Not Be an Expert Trainer, But Easily Could Be

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

Just because a worker is informally recognized as a “star performer,” it doesn’t necessarily follow that they can be an effective trainer. Employers like to think it is as easy as that, but seldom does it turn out to be the case. However, with a little structure, some tools and a little guidance these resident experts can, and often do, become expert trainers.

If one thinks about how an expert is measured and recognized, it is usually by subjective, mostly anecdotal measures. The worker performs job-related tasks quickly, consistently and completely. This implies few mistakes, performance that is mostly within specifications and standards of performance, and no one can remember anything rejected or returned as scrap or rework.

Increasing Worker Capacity – An Alternative to Cutting Workers for Short-term Cost Savings

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

In business, if you encounter market “softness” and believe that the business level that you were previously operating at is now unsustainable – even if for a limited period – you might be tempted to first “cut labor costs” to extend short-term cash flow and/or make the balance sheet appear healthier in pressured by investors. It often becomes a slippery slope that can lead some organizations struggling to get off. Sometimes the pundits’ forecasts were inaccurate or the recovery is swifter than anticipated. Regardless, what appear as a benign short-term solution can have long-term repercussions as the market recovers and the employer is now struggling to regain the capacity the workers afforded, while watching opportunity slip by.

Sometimes investments are made in machinery and technology during the lulls to get ready for the economic up-turn, but too rarely is any effort made to determine the level of each worker’s current capacity (i.e. what percent of the tasks they were hired to “expertly” perform) relative to the job they are currently in and what could be done to increase it to handle not only existing technology and processes, but the new technology and processes as well. One might even think about cross-training workers to build “reserve capacity.”

Enterprise Expansion/Contraction and Worker Development Standardization

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

One challenge faced when expanding, contracting or acquiring an enterprise is adjusting the scale of the workforce development strategy(ies) that already exist(s) to the increase/decrease in the number of workers while maintaining a consistent ratio of output, quality yield, safe performance and process compliance. Contrary to an accountant’s perspective on staffing level adjustment, there should be serious consideration given to the range and depth of each worker’s acquired skills; an “inventory” of each employee prior to the official act of expanding or contracting. We take a physical inventory of product, equipment, parts, etc. to assess value, so why would we treat a human asset any different?

Obviously, an expansion strategy is different than a contraction strategy, but when it comes to determining the value of a worker it is similar for both strategies. How an organization addresses the development, measurement and maintenance of that value may differ widely. Let’s look at both scenarios.

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

Is it Possible to Close the “Skills Gap” if Focused on the Symptom, Not the Cause?

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

There is nothing like the futility of trying to solve a specific problem with a general solution…or treating the symptoms with methods that do not address the underlying problem. No one would use a screwdriver to tighten a nut or bolt. However, in an environment surrounded by a loud, unrelenting and self-interested screwdriver industry “expert” voices there may well be many who try – even those who should know better. Especially if given a “free” screwdriver.

According to the Center for Economic Research, “US Businesses lose approximately $160 billion total every year as the result of the skills gap.” According to a 2017 Training Magazine report, the “Total 2017 U.S. training expenditures [employer] rose significantly, increasing 32.5 percent to $90.6 billion. This dropped slightly to an estimated at 87.6 billion in 2018.” On top of this, in 2018 the US spent $50 million on STEM education (simply putting back what was taken out of education after reforms started in the 1980’s) to “address the skill gap of future employees.” While education and training throughout 2020 -2022 was upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, employers seem to be slowly returning to the informal forms of training. Predominant prior to the crisis, informal on-the-job training is a familiarly better alternative (to the online tools and programs they tried during the Covid slowdowns and shutdowns) for their practicality in developing the employer’s unique task-based skills.

Task-Specific Performance Reviews – An Accurate Metric for a Structured On-Job-Training Outcome

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

We have all been through it. For decades this has been the topic of comedy shows and movies…the dreaded annual performance review. And when it is over, we might tell our confidants how non-reflective of reality and unfair it was. We calm down over the next few months and grow more anxious each month as we get closer to the next one thinking we are at its whim.

Why are they used? Are they supposed to be a good measure or performance or just a way to meet a human resources department obligation. More times than not they seem like a justification for not giving a wage increase than guidance on how an employee can continually improve and contribute to the organization.

Is the “Gainful Employment” Requirement for Education Realistic?

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

In May of 2019, the U.S. Education Department sent out reminders to universities of the July 1, 2019 deadline to update their websites to include specific information to comply with U.S. Obama-era “gainful employment” regulations. On July 1, 2019 it was revealed that the U.S. Department of Education published its final regulation to eliminate the so-called gainful employment rule. However, it may not go away entirely. Proponents of the rule say Congress might later choose to alter the regulation in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA), which would require the department to again address the issue.nly focuses on the “supply-side” of the equation. No matter how much tinkering goes on with the rule, if employers and government policy fail to provide the quality jobs with quality compensation levels for which the focused college learning is directed, gainful employment may remain an unachievable goal.

In the 1990’s, computers and microprocessors began to appear in more and more aspects of a broader range of occupations. The alarms went off that this was going to dramatically and significantly alter the nature of work and the skills required in the future. Education at all levels began to reexamine its learning models and content in an, often, futile attempt to “keep up with change,” never mind get ahead of it.

Learning, Unfortunately, The Hard Way

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Employers are being tested these days on their ability to respond to a rapidly changing world and maintain operational continuity. Who could have imagined that a pandemic would so disrupt the world’s supply chain, and realign consumer needs and preferences so fast and furiously, that even previously successful business operations would be pushed toward shuttering?

I am sure we all thought that after the Economic Crash of 2008 and its horrible aftermath that we had left those days of extreme reaction behind us. But here we are with another test to see who was paying attention.

Read the full December, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

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 analyze a job – 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 might be 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.

What Are You “Turning Over” When You Say You Have “High Turnover?”

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

It is not hard to overhear human resource managers commiserating over the high rate of “employee turnover“ they are encountering and struggling to remedy. In listening a little more closely, it is not entirely clear as to what that phrase, seemingly ubiquitous, means today. Is this a conversation where both parties seem to believe they know what the other is talking about, but underlying each case are different facts?

Not too long ago, turnover meant the rate of loss of employees to replace those who exited the company. It usually referred to those employees in which the employer had made an investment to develop them into an asset. it appears many still see that as a general description, but the source of their struggles seems to address other structural issues.

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

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.

Regional Workforce Development Partnerships That Enhance Economic Development Efforts

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Most area economic development goals are simple; expand the tax base so revenue is available to maintain and sustain the local socio-economic system. Strategies to accomplish this may differ but often include adding to the employment base of the community and/or region, since an effort to expand consumption – mandatory and discretionary – produces a “multiplier effect” as money circulates through the community. This goal can be reached by local and state governments offering tax abatement, cash and/or infrastructure improvements to companies seeking to relocate, or which are in an expansion mode. At lease, that was the simple vision of economists past.

It is fairly a proven fact, however, that in the past three decades the results of these tactics have become mixed as large corporations became larger and used their clout to seek incentives and cheap labor throughout the world. Commitments to local communities providing the incentives often evaporated faster than the ink on the documents dried, and corporations hopped from state to state, country to country, upsetting the stability of local tax bases, economies, communities and regions.

Read the full November, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Nine Scenarios That Would Make You Wish You Had a Structured OJT System

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

I think one can confidently say that most employer’s focus on training the workers they need – to perform the tasks they were meant to perform – has become detrimentally blurry, counterproductive and often non-existent. There are many reasons for that – some legitimate. But without a deliberate, measurable strategy for quickly driving each worker to mastery of the entire job classification, an employer’s labor costs (not just wages, but opportunity costs and undermined return on worker investment as well) can be substantial and act as a drag on an organization’s performance.

Many employers are still waiting for the educational institutions to solve the problem. After all, look at all of the money spent on education directed at “training the workers of tomorrow.” Yet a lot of the institutional strategies appear to include repackaged tools from the past…and not the ones far enough past that seemed to work. For example, the recent comments made by education insiders saying we should have kept the high school vocational programs that were relatively effective until the late 1970’s in place. These were phased out when the push to prepare students for college took priority. Now, there is a push for community colleges to “pump out” more apprentices which, if done only to meet numbers but not emphasizing quality of the general training, could be another waste of scarce resources of time, money and opportunity for the trainee, the employer and communities. Another decade lost.

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.

Grow Your Own Multi-Craft Maintenance Technicians – Using a “Systems Approach” to Training

Do Contemporary Economic Theories Apply to This Version of Capitalism?

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Lately, Americans have been in heightened state of anxiety and distress over confusing messaging. After all of the uproar by employers that they just can’t find skilled workers, now business talk shows are saying that employers are looking at layoffs because the economy is “too hot,” as if shedding the workers they struggled to find is a good thing for profits. Maybe reducing payroll from the balance sheet looks good for this quarter or next, but destroying long-term capacity for a brief illusion seems counter-intuitive.

Rising prices of just about everything are eating away at the meager and long-overdue wage increases employers used to entice candidates to apply and hired workers to stay. It seems like a collision of America’s two economies, which has been on this course for 30 years.

Read the full October, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Who is Responsible for Decisions Regarding Training?

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

We sometimes run into a conundrum when promoting the concept of structured on-the-job training: finding who is responsible and accountable for the decision to provide training within an organization. It doesn’t seem like negligence, but it often feels like every decision-maker is saying it is someone else’s responsibility, sincerely believing the other has this important area covered. But it is also surprising when no one inside the organization asks who is responsible when any of the many symptoms of lack of training shows up.

In this environment that seems like “training anarchy,” it is easy for loud voices and strong personalities to step outside their zone of expertise to tackle, what may appear to be, a simple challenge – only to come up short. Sadly, although the proposed solution wouldn’t rise to that provided by an experienced professional or recognized as “training,” others may not know this. They might vent their disappointment by denigrating the notion of training or seek blame of the trainee saying things like “these workers just don’t want to be trained.” The legitimate role and purpose of training is tarnished, but never the solution’s architect.

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.

Workforce Development Partnerships with Substance: My Experience

By Randy Toscano, Jr., MSHRM, Executive Director of Human Resources, Paris Regional Medical Center

Partnerships between employers and local educational institutions/training providers are a tricky thing. Not every employer knows clearly what they need nor can they articulate the need, and not every educational institution can understand the need, or has products or services available or relevant enough to make a difference. If either of these realities are present, or worse both of them, it can make worker development partnerships difficult to disappointing.

Employers are closest to the work that they need performed by the worker, which is usually very different from the employer down the road. Yet employers rarely bother to document what makes up that work to articulate it in an understandable way to an educational institution or training provider. If you doubt that, take any of your job classifications and try to explain it in enough detail to train from it.

“Our partnership, located in northern Ohio, was the first implementation of the US Metalworking Skill Standards in the country.”

How Much Would “Full Worker Capacity” Through Full Job Mastery Be Worth to Your Firm?

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

According to Ed Timmons, CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, “our labor costs in the U.S. are still 20% too high.” If he means that employers may be paying too much for unused or unusable worker capacity, and they should seek methods to develop it, I can agree with that. If he means employers should focus on spending enormous amounts on finding alternatives to labor, or randomly cutting workers, or asking workers to work for less wages and less benefits, I would say “hold on a minute.”

Given the growing fear and discontent by workers who still haven’t recovered from the Crash of 2008 and now knocked down with the Covid-19 pandemic, they may want a seat at the discussion. These workers will be trying for some time to, once again, regain value in their 401K and other impacted assets and to rise to the wage level they once had for the talents they possess. Many have the perception, wrongly or rightly, that their employer and their shareholders built great profits while workers slid backward. Many families, today, are challenged by rising prices of nearly everything…against eroding wages. This preoccupation with driving down labor costs, while reporting to Wall Street record quarterly profits, may benefit shareholders in the short-run, but it is surely illusionary and self-destructive in the long-run as the Crash of 2008 should have demonstrated, but the Covid-19 pandemic might remind.

Read the full September, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.