New Year’s Resolutions That Can Right This Skills Gap…Thing

by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor and President of the North-Central Ohio Employer-Based Worker Training Partnership

Jessie Potter, Director of the National Institute for Human Relationships, is said to have originated the quote, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten.” For the last 40 years, manufacturing employers have expressed their despair at “not finding the skilled workers they need,” while employees say employers are not doing their share to train workers and educational institutions churn billions of dollars each year doing their best to develop entry-level workers with industry level skills only to find those targeted jobs were sent overseas. With the new year upon us, maybe it is time for all parties to take a step back, face the issue honestly and pragmatically and put an end to the buck passing, the “shell game” and the misplaced expectations to make the American workforce the envy of the world.

There are three important stakeholders in this equation going forward: the employer, the prospective employee and the institutions that make the effort to prepare workers for the employer. Although prospective workers can come from any background, it is a relatively linear path to the employer’s front door. What happens next has seemed to be a bit of a mystery to the employer and stakeholders in the community, and that ambiguity affects the quality of the inputs preparing potential workers.

The Prospective Employer Needs:

• To have a long-range plan in mind when you have a serious discussion about the type of workers that will help you succeed in that plan.
• To critically assess your firm’s internal worker training program. Is there one? Follow a typical new worker from hiring to job mastery or there abouts. Is the process defined, deliverable, measurable, adaptable and improvable?
• To create a system and documentation to track every worker’s progress to full capacity. Informal on-the-job training is far more costly and ineffective – with questionable outcomes – than a deliberate strategy to accelerate the training. Once the system is in place, assess the incumbent workers for any training they might have missed and set them on the path to close their unique gap. Do these things with every job classification you have staffed and they will be completely made up of star performers.
• To work towards standardization and consistency. Process documents are a good “Job Performance Aid” but not a replacement for structured on-the-job training to first drive a worker to task mastery. Job Performance Aids refreshes someone’s memory when too much time has elapsed since the last performance to trust one’s memory.
• Consider worker training as “continuous improvement” that should not stop once their current job has been mastered.
• To view every worker as an asset. As with any, an asset becomes a cost when not developed and utilized completely and correctly. Add these under- and undeveloped assets up and the cost clearly warrants deliberate attention on training.

 The Prospective Employee Needs:

• To seek out companies that clearly have a worker training strategy and have made an investment in ensuring your success with their firm. This demonstrates an employer with an eye on the horizon, not the weekend.
• To reciprocate. Show the employer you want to learn and expand your skill base.
• To apply newly achieved skills in the job. Show the employer a return on their investment in you.
• To diversify your task mastery skill base. If opportunities to cross-train are available, utilize them to broaden your value to the firm and to yourself.

The Workforce Development System; K-12, Career and Technical Education and Support Agencies Need:

• To probe employers to determine what they really need and listen intently. Many employers do not have a clear understanding of what they need, so walk the factory floor and talk to the incumbent workers to learn what they need and are lacking to become the best version of themselves.
• To resist the urge to promote only the products you have on the shelf. You have one shot to impress an employer as a client, so don’t squander it on pushing products you know to be questionable or most likely not what the employer needs.
• To be open to updating your curriculum and develop new products. There is an inherent time lag from identifying a training need, developing a solution and implementing it with a prospective worker. Expedite the process so employers start to experience a positive outcome, not a never-ending process with no improvements to show their corporate executives.
• Adopt an attitude that every employer-client is precious and that their success is your success. Dissatisfaction spreads among local managers through their contacts with peers and suppliers. Value your institutions reputation and guard it against unnecessary, self-inflicted tarnish.
• Support agencies, force the issue to ensure employers are getting what they need, not just what is lying around or the latest fad sweeping the country…this time.

It is long past time for serious introspection and self-assessment – employer-by-employer, stakeholder-by-stakeholder. How serious has your firm been with yourself on its internal worker training efforts? Is it structured, task-based and documented to lead new-hire and incumbent workers to master your jobs?  Can you say your firm has communicated a long-term strategy and workforce core-skill needs to local workforce development resources, and kept the channels of communication open?

Educational institutions, how serious have you been in pressing employers for concrete data, not just generalities and ambiguities that reflect more on what the employer doesn’t know than what they do about what would be of the greatest benefit to their organization’s workforce need? If you have received concrete data, have you aligned yourself with their needs and updated your course offerings and content accordingly?

If we don’t make serious changes, we may lose another decade to confusion and delusion. We will continue to get what we’ve always gotten!

Frank Gibson retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center, putting into use his manufacturing, education and workforce development experience to help regional manufacturers with their workforce development needs. He is now a Workforce Development Advisor and President of the North-Central Ohio Employer-Based Worker Training Partnership. Contact Frank for more information.