Explaining Your Process Training to Auditors, Prospects and Clients

by Proactive Technologies, Inc. Staff

How much time, energy and resources are expended by your firm when someone comes to visit and wants to “kick the company’s tires?” When it comes to training your workers to internal and/or company processes, a structured on-the-job training program that operates smoothly and completely in the background may have the answers your clients are looking for.

For most organizations, the general notion is that training is going on in every corner of the organization, for every worker at any time of the day or night. One person is showing another person how to perform a process, operate a piece of equipment or software, fill out a form or, yes, make a copy using the new copy machine just installed. How effective is that informal form of training? Have you ever walked by a copy machine and seen someone standing in front of it, staring at the control panel…then the sky, as if seeking divine intervention. Now, think of the more complex tasks!

When the resident expert masters a task and it becomes routine, there is a tendency for them to marginalize the task as so easy that the next trainee should learn it by osmosis. If not, maybe the new-hire “just doesn’t seem to want to learn.” Somehow, the organization may get by. In this case, like so many, it may sound like an insignificant example of training, but not to the person who needs the copy and who may be judged if a meeting is waiting for it.

Same, too, are the more critical and complex tasks of the job, requiring compliance with so many factors such as engineering specifications, quality control requirements, safety requirements and company policies. Without a deliberate task-based training infrastructure in place, training might be ad hoc, informal, unstructured and rarely documented. Add to this the periodic worker cross-training that allows workers to train in, and master, tasks in multiple job areas and the amount of critical, but undocumented, training can be tremendous.

In the event of an audit by an internal department, a certifying agency, a client or a prospective client, explaining how a worker is trained to master a task critical to a repeated high level of quality might be difficult to impossible. And answering how a worker, who is thought to have mastered a task, is updated when the process is improved, redesigned, affected by changes in technology, changeover of product line or part of an orchestrated improvement program might be even more difficult.

Management may try to explain who is trained, who trained them and what exactly the training consisted of by pulling out time cards with training entries, loose training or attendance rosters, an Excel spreadsheet or a pie chart. A smart auditor or concerned client might not be so impressed.

This might have been the impetus of the enhanced requirements announced for ISO 9001:2015  (promulgated to AS 9000  and IATF 16949 quality models) concerning the “capture and management of legacy knowledge.” An organization now must comply with the requirements to capture and manage the process knowledge, identify gaps between the job knowledge needed to perform in the job and the employee’s consistent performance of the tasks of the job, and to provide documented evidence that the gap was found and closed.

This has been a routine component of the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development since its creation over 35 years ago. The many tools, reports and benefits ensure that the approach to all job classifications, all employees is consistent – even though the jobs and people are not. The OJT Tasks Mastered Matrix report can be proudly posted on the Gemba boards of each department to show ISO/AS/IATF auditors, and clients and future clients, the level to which each worker is trained to perform the detailed work. By itself, this would be impressive. But additionally, the average worker’s capacity (i.e. percentage of the tasks required of the job that have been mastered and documented) is maintained for each worker, in each department, at much higher levels than normally found in organizations. Task mastery gaps are clearly displayed for the employee and supervisor to see, ensuring that opportunities to drive each incumbent, new-hire and cross-training worker to full job mastery are not missed.

For each “X” representing mastery of that task, a training record is filed to record the event and its link to processes, quality and engineering specifications, as well as mandated safety and legal requirements documented. Unlike traditional environments where data about the job and employee is decentralized (often making incorporating and updating data related to developing workers very difficult if not impossible), the data is centrally focused on the job. Relationships of each department’s data in the role of developing masterful worker performance is certain. Any change in any variable is quickly addressed and all reports are updated at the same time. Promulgating changes to the worker is done quickly and records of updated training maintained.

What happens if a documented technical expert leaves the company through retirement or attrition? The company has the responsibility of training the replacement to the same high standard, but without a deliberate infrastructure a lot of the expertise might be diluted or left out of the training process. Each generation of worker might get a lighter and lighter version of the technical procedure. Expert workers are expert at the tasks for which they were hired to perform, and training is typically an afterthought; not identified as important as the defined tasks. Each new worker will only be as good as the effort the expert is allowed, and supported by management, to make.

This inevitable trap can be avoided if (before the expert retires or voluntarily leaves) the company had a chance extract and transcribe the technical expertise and process wisdom in the expert’s head through a detailed job/task analysis such as that performed by Proactive Technologies. This analysis captures the best practice process for each task from the “expert’s perspective,” which consolidates safety, engineering and quality requirements for each task. Once corroborated by the other experts, the data is entered into Proactive Technologies’ PROTECH© software system, which facilitates the quick and complete collection of job data to cut the analysis time from many months to a few weeks. Periodically, the data is revalidated to ensure its continued accuracy.

From the validated data, Proactive Technologies software also develops all of the tools of the human resource development process, including Job Descriptions, OJT Training Plans, OJT Training Checklists, Technical Procedures and more. These reports and tools are automatically developed in minutes, unlike the costly six months to a year development time for the manual methods still in use today.

This establishes an infrastructure for the accelerated transfer of expertise™ from retiring workers to those who are to replace them. First, the “skill (task-based) gap” for incumbent workers is identified. Then incumbent workers, new-hires and cross-trainees are, and should continue to be, driven to full job mastery. The PROTECH software documents, tracks and reports each worker’s progress. Once job mastery is reached, a Certificate of Job Mastery™ portfolio is conveyed in partnership with a local partner educational institution. This approach works for any job classification, in any industry and at any level of an organization. Every job is treated like an easy-to-administer apprenticeship, whether registered or not, and can be effortlessly extended to support internships.

Jobs change, so too processes, products and mandated requirements. Workers move from job to job, but all changes continue can be accommodated in “real-time.” The PROTECH software system makes such a large scope project not only possible for small and mid-size companies, the investment to set-up and implement a structured on-the-job training system is a fraction of what traditional approaches require.

By focusing on the job, and the development and management of worker capacity, it made it easy to address changes in any variable that affects the job. Explaining this to an auditor or a client is fact-based and document-supported. There is no need to drop everything to get ready for an audit or client visit – the data and documents are readily accessible any time. This allows the company to focus on how to leverage this system to address evolving challenges, maximize its use and provide new opportunities to workers knowing that every task a worker masters increases worker value and the “return on worker investment.”

Proactive Technologies structured on-the-job training infrastructures are built around what already exists, drawing on the existing system and organizational components in place and adding what is missing. Disruptions to an operation that often occurs when introducing a new system or management strategy do not ever materialize with Proactive Technologies’ projects. And typically with Proactive Technologies projects, a worker training arrangement is established with the client company’s Human Resources Department for them to keep doing what they have been doing by selecting and coordinating the delivery of beneficial related technical instruction (but now selected more accurately based on the job/task analysis data, with evidence of completion added to the trainee’s record in the PROTECH database) – all meant to shore up the foundation upon which to build task-mastery performance. Concurrently, Proactive Technologies manages the structured on-the-job training component. There was no need to purchase expensive learning equipment, since the latest models of equipment are on the factory floor…where the work is performed and where the bulk of the training should occur. There is no need to add staff to the Human Resource Department!

Although faced with the same obstacles that other employers face when bringing in a program with “holistic” implications such as this – challenges like economic factors, organizational priorities, production priorities, changing technology and changing processes, changing personnel and an organization’s cultural acceptance – the decision to invest in a structured on-the-job training infrastructure is revalidated each time a challenge emerges and is easily, or has been previously, addressed.

If you would like to know how this approach might work at your firm, and how a pilot project may be the best way to introduce this approach to your organization (lowest initial investment may be seen as lowest risk in case you are not satisfied), contact a Proactive Technologies representative today to schedule a GoToMeeting videoconference briefing to your computer. This can followed up with an onsite presentation for you and your colleagues. A 13-minute promo briefing is available at the Proactive Technologies website and provides an overview to get you started and to help you explain it to your staff.