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.

Invariably, the most target-rich environment for harvesting huge savings and significantly increasing capacity is bypassed – either from a lack of understanding of what it takes to be a “subject matter expert” or entrenched neglect. Ignoring the need for structured on-the-job training is like investing in a state-of-the-art machine, then waiting for it to set-up and program itself. Even artificial intelligence needs someone to train it the first time to do the things expected in the proper way.

When one considers the serious collateral damage caused by underdeveloped or underutilized worker capacity (e.g. scrap, rework, loss of “tribal knowledge” when someone retires or moves on, loss of customer confidence, loss of employee confidence), red flags and alarms should be going off continuously, since all of these are present on a daily basis. But distractions and diversions seem to get in the way. Several articles have appeared in the Proactive Technologies Report newsletter that discuss these costs in more detail, including: Estimating the Costs Associated With Skipping Employer-Based Structured On-The-Job Training  and The High Cost of Employee Turnover.

I have come across many examples since 1986 while providing technical consultation to business operations (and even before while working in manufacturing), as I am sure have you. One project that sticks in my mind involved job/task analyzing several supervisory positions at a division of a major automobile manufacturer – using the current “star performers”(subject matter experts) to define each task’s best practice and circulating the collected data for validation. We then developed a top-to-bottom structured on-the-job program; updated job descriptions, training manuals, task-based trainee checklists (for incumbents and new-hires), job/employee-specific performance appraisals and more.

We took inventory of the incumbent supervisors – asking each to initial the tasks of the job we identified in our analysis that they feel they have had a chance to learn, practice and master. We followed up with their manager’s review and validation. This base-lined each incumbent supervisor to the newly defined task inventory to know each incumbent supervisor’s gap. We could then produce customized structured on-the-job training checklists for each supervisor to guide their journey to “full job mastery” through the accelerated transfer of expertise™.

The size of the gaps discovered were not what management expected, but seemed to be what the supervisors felt to be true. Many supervisors commented that this was the first time anyone asked them what they could do for the organization, that they had a chance to explain in detail their value and a path to increasing their value and range of expertise.

At the briefing to upper management of what we developed and the next steps of implementation, there was a quiet moment as managers digested all that was develop and now available to them. 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.”

Another supervisor said it was only at that point, when they could look at the task listing, seeing each task’s best practice, that they knew all that was expected of them – and she had been with the company for 7 years. Several other supervisors nodded their heads. The managers in the room went quiet.

It was easy to see that, at that moment, management’s paradigm for training other managers was being challenged…by the end users. Until then, it was assumed that if human resources and interviewers picked the right person for the job, and they toured their work area, met the employees they would be leading…that someone would certainly show them “the ropes.” What they hadn’t considered was what if those expected to show the new person the ropes only knew their jobs to a limited degree. What if they self-taught themselves the wrong procedures, in the absence of any standard best practice? And what message does this send to the workers that the new supervisor is expected supervise? Often supervisors are given the added responsibility to train the workers in their department to perform the tasks required of them, when (if hired from another department or from outside) they have no idea what the best practice is for that job or their job.

My experience has been is that if a company doesn’t have a structured on-the-job training program for the accelerated transfer of expertise TM for hourly workers, they as often have none for those who will lead them; “the blind leading the blind.” This represents not only a tremendous financial loss to the company representing the unused capacity of each worker and the supervisor, but also for the inability of the supervisor to extract any semblance of excellence from them or themselves.

Structured on-the-job training is not a luxury, it is a vital necessity of a well-run operation. This shouldn’t be hard to understand, but it does take stepping out of one’s paradigm and looking back at the operation they are involved in. Ask if the operation is truly getting the most out of each human resource. If not, ask why would that be acceptable. And isn’t a little hypocritical to demand such precision from the design of ideal processes and practices, then walk away before making sure those asked to carry out the processes or practices knows how to, and is able to, comply with all of the specifications of “best practice performance?” Adding insult to injury, how would a “performance appraisal” actually rate worker and departmental performance; how well they perform their assigned tasks or what level of impaired performance can the company tolerate?

Structured on-the-job training should be a set-up, operated and maintained as a system, not as hodge podge, ad hoc and informal learning. It should be an infrastructure that allows for personal expansion (horizontally and vertically) and inclusion, as well as standardization. It should be understandable, measurable, improvable and documentable to facilitate continuous improvement of the individual. It should lead to compliance with the other systems of the organization and programs, such as ISO/AS/IATF quality programs and safety compliance. If it doesn’t or doesn’t exist, why is it in use pretending to fill a need?

And if anyone still believes unstructured, informal and often non-existent worker learning costs less and achieves enough, and that structured on-the-job training takes too long and gets in the way, they probably will continue cutting costs everywhere else until they discover everything mentioned above rings true. Leaders process challenges with facts, logic and reason. Followers wait for enough leaders to move in a direction to act, or a disaster to react.

For more information, attend a briefing of Proactive Technologies’ PROTECH © system of managed human resource development for the accelerated transfer of expertise™. A 13-minute preview briefing is available online, and free live, online presentations are regularly scheduled – and presentations can be scheduled online and onsite to fit your scheduled. Contact us for more information. Learn how much no structured on-the-job training can cost an organization, how much value goes unrealized every year by nearly all employers, and how easily, quickly and inexpensively all that can change.