10 Reasons Structured On-The-Job Training is a Vital and Necessary System for Any Organization

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.^®

There are many reasons a deliberate, structured on-the-job training system should be a priority consideration for any employer. For decades employers have felt that having an employee take a few classes here and a few online modules there translates directly to improved worker output and performance. But for decades, as well, employers have continued to talk about a continually increasing “skills gap.” Connection? Obviously yes.

A deliberate and documented system to develop workers and maximize the return on worker investment should be a “no-brainer.” Employers expend enormous resources – time, effort, dollars – on efforts to improve efficiencies…in many cases without making an appreciable difference or not reaching the intended goals. Too often the reason was that no comparable resources were expended to deliberately train the workers to efficiently implement the efficiencies. I thought it might be beneficial to just offer symptoms of failed approaches and reasons why any employer should think more seriously about the state of their internal training infrastructure.

Decades of Drift – U.S. employers have drifted from the basics. “Of U.S. hiring decision-makers, 69% said the skills gap is wider than ever. 79% of job seekers said the skills gap is less about a lack of ability and more about employers’ unwillingness to train.” (Express Employment Professionals)

It’s no secret, many employers express frustration that they can’t find skilled labor but fail to try to properly train the ones they have or hire.

Not Much to Show For the Effort – Raced through on-boarding, a new-hire is dropped off at the area supervisor’s door. Introduced to anyone available, the informal “on-the-job training” begins – management and employee hoping for the best. No structure, no strategy, no documentation. Worker panic sets in as the 90-day review approaches with little to validate retention. Should the results be surprising or disappointing?

New-hire, incumbent and cross-training employees employees have no idea what tasks they need to master and the right way to perform them. They are totally reliant on employers to provide the training only they can if they are to meet expectations. But evidence of a persistent disconnect couldn’t be clearer:

• “Only one in four workers say their employer allowed them to grow. Meanwhile, a whopping 77% of employees say they feel like they are “on their own” in terms of career development in their company.” (Business Insider)

• “42% of employees who are looking to find a new job say they feel their company is not maximizing their skills and abilities.” (Deloitte)

• “94% of workers say they would be more likely to stay at a company if it invested in their career.” (LinkedIn)

Employers have come to rely heavily on onboarding and classroom learning as a substitute for deliberate task-based training. And they continue to be disappointed with the results, continue to feel someone else should fix this and are shy about asking for experienced help.

Ignoring the Basics – Learning Is Not Task-based Training. We know:

• Education can, and should, only ensure graduates have a solid core and Industry-general skill base. Each employer has to train workers on its own machinery, processes, products and polices.

• Even graduates of traditional trade training programs need employer-specific training on job-specific tasks before they forget everything relevant they learned.

• Onboarding/post-hire classes are a start, but they convey knowledge. Employees “forget up to 70% of newly learned information within 24 hours if it is not applied; After one week, retention can drop below 10%;”

• Informal OJT is better than nothing, but resident experts as trainers “are so automated and unconscious about what they do that they don’t always remember to tell you. even if they want to– omitting 70% of what’s necessary;”

• Without structure and documentation, workers too often receive informal training on only 30% of the tasks for today’s complete job!

At best, 30% of the learning, 30% of the training for 30% of the tasks – no worker can be driven to excellence and encouraged to stay if not deliberately, properly and completely trained first!

Over Last Few Decades, Employers Came to See Workers as “Costs” – Employers have come to anticipate each worker “investment” becoming the “cost of labor” with marginal ROI. Manufacturers say $32 billion was spent on “training” in 2025. Yet employees and employers remain unsatisfied with the results. “Employee turnover has cost US industries nearly $1 Trillion…And the most astounding part is that most of this damage is ‘self-inflicted.’ (American Machinist). Employers that average 20-30% turnover rate are unnecessarily running out of skilled candidates.

To Those Hoping AI Will Close the “Training Gap,” Not So Fast. – If your “standardized processes” are more in the heads of your resident experts or on notes in lockers, how and what will AI learn? Those who rushed to be first have found that not all hype is worth the noise…especially when experiencing the significant costs, illusive ROI and risks – including “dumbing down” the workers cognitive base. Concerns have emerged over the damage of ‘slopification’ in AI hiring and whether AI hiring efficiency is worth the legal risk. Then there are the continuous improvement changes from engineering, quality and EHS. It is difficult and costly for AI to “unlearn” for constantly revised processes and specifications. Oh, don’t forget the expense of running AI and the risk to intellectual and proprietary property, and patents. The more that is discovered about AI, the more it is being unplugged until we find its proper place and guardrails.

For those who are confused as to what “structured on-the-job training” is, it is deliberate task-based training based based on a thorough job/task analysis, with the data always maintained as the job classification changes due to process improvement and technology advances. Each task is analyzed to capture the “best practice” as performed by the resident expert(s) and validated for high-performance repeatability. It is not just the transfer of knowledge, it is the transfer of expertise, which builds on the prerequisite foundational knowledge and skills, and training to master a procedure applying those attributes and newly acquired knowledge into the performance of a meaningful unit of work. This is, also, the fundamentals of an apprenticeship, but not like the time-based apprenticeships of old. Today, an 8-year apprenticeship can be compressed into 2 1/2 -3 1/2 years, whether registered or not – faster if desired. The secret is the deliberate, structured training and the documentation of tasks mastered no matter how much the employee moves around or technology and processes change.  If a worker is trained for expert performance on every task for which the employer thought it was hiring, that would make a very happy employer and trainee.

The 10 Reasons Structured On-The-Job Training is a Vital and Necessary System for Any Organization are:

1. Opportunity Costs Associated With of Unstructured, Haphazard and Ad Hoc Training:
   1. For every new-hire, the longer it takes to bring the worker up to full capacity (i.e. mastery of each task for which they were hired ) the longer the employer is paying wages of the trainer and trainee to be marginally productive while in training;
   2. For every new-hire and incumbent, the longer both are operating at less then full capacity while in unstructured training the more the employer is paying for unused capacity.
2. No Matter How Much Time and Money is Spent on New-Hire Recruitment and Selection, Without Structured On-the-Job Training The ROI May be Small or Negative:
   1. Without a deliberate, recognizable plan to train new workers, those who have the skills to leave will not stay;
   2. The cost of unnecessary turnover due to perceived insecurity (e.g. lack of opportunity to develop themselves in the job and to increase their value to the employer) leads to unwarranted repetition of recruitment and selection costs.
3. Keeping Wages Low Attracts Candidates With Fewer Transferable Skills; Skills That Need to be Developed or Those Low Wages Yield Low Return:
   1. Workers with less wage negotiating power due to less transferable skills require a deliberate strategy to develop the needed core skills to learn and master the required tasks;
   2. Failure to quickly maximize a worker’s task-based skills, no matter how daunting, means wages paid for little return.
4. One Incident of Non-Compliance With One Process Due to Lack of Proper On-The-Job Training Can Cost Many Times That Worker’s Annual Wage:
   1. The cost of one act of process non-compliance due to inadequate task training can lead to costs 5 to 10 times the investment of that to have trained the worker properly in the first place;
   2. The cost of one act of safety non-compliance due to inadequate task training can lead to costs and liability 10 to 20 times the investment of that to have trained the worker;
   3. Multiply either scenario times the number of employees at risk and it can be a staggering aggregate risk every employer should want to avoid.
5. ISO/IATF/AS and Nadcap Certification Requires Standardized Processes, Training to Match the Processes, Records Showing the Worker Trained to the Process and System to Ensure All Three Stay in Sync:
   1. ISO/IATF/AS and Nadcap certification requires that the certified manufacturer have standardized processes, training of the worker to perform the processes, current documentation that the training has occurred and a system to ensure that it all is kept current to changes in the work;
   2. Although some certifying agencies have offered a lot of latitude when it comes to this provision, one significant incident can expose the inadequacy and put certification at risk;
   3. Having structured on-the-job training and records on each employee’s development supports compliance and will impress any client or prospective client.
6. The Best Way to Retain a Worker is to Keep Them Engaged; Structured On-The-Job Training to Drive All Workers to Full Job Mastery Builds a Career Path and a Means to Progress:
   1. Every worker starts with a fundamental need for the job security that being good at one’s job can provide;
   2. Not given that opportunity can drive skilled workers who feel vulnerable away, and drive those workers that feel they cannot leave to find ways to mask their inadequate value;
   3. Millennials and Gen Zers, especially, need to be challenged by learning new things and improving on their capabilities to stay engaged in their own development;
   4. Without this to offer, workers might assume that the employer is comfortable with perceived lower than reasonable performance.
7. Full Job Mastery = Full Worker Capacity = Full Return of Worker Investment (ROWI):
   1. Employers seek maximization of all equipment, processes and technology, but are often willing to accept what labor can provide;
   2. Implementing stricter metrics for worker performance without ensuring they are capable to deliver is a waste of time and resources, and does not address the fundamental issue;
   3. The best technology or most innovative practices are of little value if the workers are not trained to deliver masterful use of them.
8. Structured On-the-Job Training for All of the Organization’s Job Classifications Makes Cross-Training Easy, Efficient and Certain – Furthering Each Worker’s Value to the Organization:
   1. Once the structured on-the-job training system is set-up and operational, the cost for each additional employee trainee declines (unlike online, onsite or offsite courses which are repetitive costs);
   2. Structured cross-training continues the development of worker value after the initial job is mastered.
9. Efforts Such as Six Sigma, Lean and Kaizen Seek to Improve Process Efficiency That May Not Be Realized if Workers are not Trained on the Updated or New Processes and Metrics:
   1. Often process improvement activities move tasks and equipment around to maximize efficiency;
   2. Without updating the training that trains the workers how to achieve the new efficiency on the new processes and/or equipment, the efforts might not deliver to expectations.
10. It Just Makes Business Sense:
    1. Given the choice between a fully trained worker and a worker who’s level of job mastery is unknown but suspected insufficient, every employer should want the former;
    2. Not having a structure in place to train every worker to the same level of the recognized resident expert leads to a group feeling of having to accept this decline in organization effectiveness without options, which is untrue;
    3. Having a worker training “system” that is unrecognizable, non-measurable and unable to improve with change in a manufacturing facility has to be a barrier to employee and organizational growth;
    4. The Accelerated Transfer of Expertise System™ lowers the employer’s Internal costs of training while increasing worker capacity, work quantity and quality, compliance, employee engagement and morale.

If these issues are important to your firm as they should be, it is probably time to learn about structured OJT and Proactive Technologies’ approach to worker development.

Learn more about the Proactive Technologies Inc. and the PROTECH^©® system of managed human resource development™ and the hybrid approach to worker training. Contact a Proactive Technologies representative today!