Seems Like Decades Pass and the Top Worker Development Topic Remains the Same

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In a recent article appearing in HR Dive by Carolyn Crist entitled, “Executives and Workers Alike Say Entry-level Workers Seem Unprepared” she starts with, “Although leaders say workers don’t have enough training to be hired, employers also don’t appear to offer adequate training.” “Only 48% of employees and 12% of mid-level executives believe today’s entry-level workers are well-prepared, the report found. The entry-level employee pipeline is broken,” Jourdan Hathaway, chief marketing officer at General Assembly, said in a statement. “Companies must rethink how they source, train and onboard employees. There are evidence-based approaches to improving workforce readiness.”

While the article focuses on recent report findings, the article touched on the crux of the problem; little has changed and very little is done by employers to mitigate the problem of inadequately prepared entry-level workers.  The author pointed out, “At the same time, employers don’t provide enough training, both groups said. A third of executives and more than a quarter of employees said that companies don’t provide enough training to new hires. In fact, those who said entry-level employees seem unprepared were also more likely to work at a company that they felt doesn’t provide enough training.”

This is a two-fold problem; employers say entry-level workers lack preparedness and employees say employers do not provide training. Specifically, regarding preparedness, “One of the top reasons these workers seem unprepared is a lack of soft skills, according to 49% of executives and 37% of employees. About 40% of Gen Z respondents said that lacking soft skills is a major shortcoming among entry-level workers. Both executives and employees also said entry-level workers don’t have the right attitude or technical skills.” This in spite of the billions in education budgets and additional billions in special programs meant to drive those outcomes higher. Digging a little deeper, employers have been reluctant, or unable to, explain to local educational institutions what they precisely need of entry-level candidates and educational institutions are not connected enough to ask the right questions and know if the answers are credible. This gap continues to grow if the job targets continue to change and the conversation does not continue.

Adding to the standoff, it seems like a hollow argument for employers to criticize the quality of entry-level candidates when most employers have no shown little interest in, nor structure or strategy for, taking the candidate from learning to training and onto job mastery. Under-prepared entry-level candidates can become fully trained and competent workers, but there has to be a deliberate strategy to do so and a commitment by management that this is just as mission-critical as investing in new equipment and technology.

This doesn’t have to be complicated and is probably more intuitive to management and incumbent employees than realized but dismissed as “too simple, so we must be already doing this.” It seems that ROI-conscious business leaders would jump on this to ensure and protect the process as vital to yielding the proficient workers they need so they can go back to other, more pressing business decisions.

A simple analogy is a Michelin 3-star restaurant chef-sous chef relationship. Let’s assume, for a moment that the chef represents the CEO of the kitchen. The sous-chef de quisine is like a manager of the kitchen in charge of training new chefs and staff, and making sure the kitchen runs to the chef’s expectations. To receive and maintain 3-star status, the kitchen must exhibit high, consistent standards of quality and service – similar to requirements imposed on manufacturers by ISO/AS/IATF but the auditing practice is more unforgiving (one shot and your next chance is a year from then).

If you have ever watched a reality show such as Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” where he troubleshoots failing restaurants with a whip, you have an idea of how a no-star kitchen can be driven onto a path towards Michelin excellence. Central to any excellent restaurant is an excellent kitchen. Ramsay drives success with 1) making management recognize the problem and eliminating denial no matter if the denial is based on ignorance, negligence or defensiveness; 2) committing to the solution and strategy; 3) training every worker to perform their role to mastery (especially in the kitchen); 4) implementing the plan; and 5) managing, with adjustments to maintain for success. In the majority of the cases, the restaurant owners are saved from ruin after a week of “constructive adjustments.” The ones that don’t sunk back to the old, comfortable status quo that put them behind in the first place.

The same principles can be applied in a manufacturing environment, specifically with workforce development. This is more of an intuitive adjustment, simple in design and implementation, so it is wise to not over-think this:

1. Accurately identify the tasks that make up the job classification and the best practice procedure for each one. From this it is easier to define the general core and industry-technical skills necessary for the job classification. Many employers have not done a thorough job/task analysis of each job classification in decades, if ever. Not knowing your target can guarantee a miss every time.
2. Share the job/task analysis’ general core and industry-technical skills requirements with local educational institutions and workforce development agencies so they can “validate” their programs for job relevancy and make adjustments as necessary to give the employer better fitting candidates;
3. Have a plan to detect the level of which the entry-level candidate has/doesn’t have these foundation skills.
4. Have a plan and the tools, and allocate the time, to remediate a candidate’s(s’) deficient entry-level core skills if critical to structured on-the-job training success so that task-based on-the-job training can build on them;
5. Have a structured on-the-job training program incorporating standardized work processes, quality and engineering standards, safety requirements taught by existing internal trainers as trained/certified trainers.
   1. Document the results and keep records of each person’s journey to full job mastery.
   2. Provide continuous upskilling as the tasks, technology, and mandates change.
6. Continue the close relationship locally with workforce development partners while continuing the employer’s role to train a worker to the level of job mastery wanted and needed.

Every employer can create an effective internal and external process to ensure any worker can be trained quickly and completely WITHOUT adding to the budget or burdening existing staff. There are probably many disjointed and unconnected efforts already underway informally, so redefining them and making them formal should yield efficiencies and higher outcomes that will save the firm a lot of money that has been previously going out the door, empirically unnoticed, but frustrating, nonetheless.

If you recognize these challenges and have shed your fear of even looking for other solutions, check out Proactive Technologies’ turn-key structured on-the-job training system approach to see how it might work at your firm, your family of facilities and your region. Contact a Proactive Technologies representative today to schedule a GoToMeeting videoconference briefing to your computer. This can be followed up with an onsite presentation for you and your colleagues.