Tracking Documented Worker Capacity and Value Growth
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
It is difficult for any operations manager to justify investments in worker training to the accounting manager. Without empirical evidence, the institutionalized belief by accountants that training is a “cost“ often prevails over common sense improvements in a company‘s workforce. While only familiar with traditional “classroom learning“ with repetitive seat time costs, accounting departments are swift to challenge any attempt to spend money on classes alone, where no tangible correlation between time spent and improvement in performance is credible.
Structured on-the-job training is different. Employers invest in informal, unstructured, and undocumented one-on-one worker training all of the time; all day, every day for every employee. Once an employee is hired, including the brief training for individuals who do not end up staying past probationary period and periods of cross-training, “Bob” is paired up with “Jim” and a mysterious process begins. No training plan, no documentation, very little accounting for real hours of training or outcomes. If there were, accountants would be strong advocates for long overdue changes in worker development strategies.
Nevertheless, informal on-the-job training produces some positive results for some people or products wouldn’t get shipped nor services delivered. But it doesn’t work well, especially for many who could have been great, loyal workers. The process cannot be explained, measured, improved or accounted for – most likely the reason it is accepted as fact but avoided in process improvement discussions. Yet it is the only thing holding most operations together.
Structured on-the-job training works much better. It provides the infrastructure, the accountability, the documentability, and empirical evidence to justify increases an investment for tangible increases in worker performance. It is not difficult to set-up a structured on-the-job training system if you have the methodology; you just build an infrastructure around the informal on-the-job training that already exists, incorporate all available process, safety and quality documentation available to make training an accurate, deliberate and complete experience. Read More
Put Yourself in a Trainee’s Shoes
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
It is fun to watch a popular TV show on CBS, now in syndication, called “Undercover Boss – reruns and all.” Watching a CEO or executive of a major corporation slip into disguise and enter the world of their workers is interesting and entertaining. Sometimes they find the organization needs a little “tweaking,” and sometimes it needs major rethinking.
The entertainment value, I suppose, comes from watching these individuals being tossed into a job classification – alien to most of them – and, while cameras are rolling, receiving a crash coarse in performing various job tasks. Some tasks are performed close to the customer. Not only do leaders get a rare look at what it is like at the lower rungs of the organization, in some cases they get a look at the sub-par performance most of their customers experience and how tenuous the corporation’s existence is – sustained only by the initiative a few loyal, but mostly self-interested, employees. These employees try to make up for the corporation’s short-comings as if their job and future depend on it…which they do. If the company fails, they lose their job, plain and simple. Some put up with the company’s shortcomings in pursuit of the next opportunity.
It is interesting to see CEO’s marvel at how difficult it is to learn the job tasks they previously thought were inconsequential and not worthy of attention. Previously known only as a word on a report, the fact that how the tasks are performed by these neglected employees are the reason the corporation exists goes unnoticed and unappreciated. Some episodes look like popular television shows of the 50’s and 60’s, “I Love Lucy.”
A typical Undercover Boss episode might reveal:
- Unstructured, inconsistent and incomplete training;
- Uneven and uncertain motivation;
- Conflicting operating orders;
- Unexpectedly outdated or inoperable equipment;
- Unclear standard practices;
- Unexpected lack of leadership at the local level spawned by unexpected lack of leadership at the upper levels;
- Unvarnished displays of workers rising above these organizational inadequacies and their own personal challenges to ensure product gets out the door and services are performed with pride
Focusing on one aspect, in each case the resident expert was selected to train the covert executive. These attempts at unstructured, task-based training give a vivid picture of the limitations, risks, and failures of foregoing a deliberate training strategy. Read More
Pairing Structured On-the-Job Training with Related Technical Instruction Just Makes Sense
by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center
I have for worked with educational institutions for many years, trying to reach out to employers with the latest and best courses and seminars they had. It is what we did with good intentions, but in many cases this was a difficult sale at best. Their products were often already built…before they precisely knew the needs of the employer. If the employer engaged them for our services, when delivered it was more of an underwhelming experience for the customer than I felt comfortable with. Often it didn’t lead to follow-on work.
An employer’s operation is driven by accounting for the bottom line. Accountants are quick to dismiss core and technical instruction as a cost. That is what they were taught in college, and truthfully there is no evidence that attending a course improves work performance in most cases. Sadly, that level of “job relevance” or content validity was considered less important than the power of the institution’s name that was promoting the products or services.
When I became familiar with Structured On-The-Job Training (SOJT), I appreciated SOJT because SOJT built from the bottom up. The training delivery structure was designed around the actual tasks the employee is expected to master, for which the employer hired the individual in the first place. Structuring the best practices into training delivery so that workers can learn faster how to perform each task and to standardize the delivery between each shift’s trainers and each trainee gets to the company’s bottom line. It is seen as an investment that can be defended to accountants, unlike core and technical instruction. Read More
If Your Organization Classifies Your “Greatest Asset” as an “Expense,” You’ll Continue to Have Workforce Issues
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
How often have we heard by an employer that their “greatest asset is their people” or, “we need to invest in our people to continue to grow?“ These are statements affirming the importance of the worker to the overall success of the enterprise. However, actions taken by employers often hollow out these motivating themes, rendering them as repeating platitudes bordering on the disingenuous.
Actions that cast suspicion on her employers sincerity that their workers are at the greatest assets include:
- Cutting the training budget, if one was in place at all, while bragging about the companies, growth and profitability;
- Laying off workers at the first sign of trouble ahead for quarterly report to shareholders;
- Withholding increases in employee wages, cutting of benefits;
- Hiring workers from the outside, instead of training, grooming, and promoting internally.
It is often a sad mistake for employers to remind workers how important they are, while carrying out any of these types of contradictory and potentially counter-productive actions. Especially when companies have seen a steady increase in profits, these acts are self-defeating. Showing shareholders that even if they have had a slight decline in quarterly profits for investing in worker development, causing the shareholders earnings per share to be only slightly affected, might be acceptable to all if the goal is worthy and communicated effectively. And slight decreases in this year’s returns as a result in small investments in training that will lead to an expected increase in next year’s, and the year after that’s, performance seems reasonable and ripe for the asking.
Employees accepted the platitudes for a number of years because they wanted to believe it, thought accepting it was for the greater good or felt they had no choice. The major fact that company profits and CEO wages have continued to rise over the last 30–40 years while the average workers pay has remained flat is good evidence of that. One would think that after 30 to 40 years of benefiting at the expense of the employee and their family that employers would collectively say that they had a good run, and it’s time to share the wealth with the ones who made it possible.
Developing workers, creating opportunity paths to advancement and increases in individual wealth, are not only a good way for an employer to improve overall capacity, promote sustainability and flexibility, but it provides the employer with an empirically proven increase in return on each worker’s investment, and collectively the organization’s return on investment to the operation. Read More
Read the full December, 2023 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.
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