Environmental and Cultural Factors That Undermine a Successful Structured On-the-Job Training Program

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

I’ll start by saying that every worker is a capital investment. It seems to be conceptually obvious, but sometimes overlooked in practice. Just as with all of the collective expertise is intellectual capital, it should be deliberately developed, protected, its use maximized. ISO9001:2015, IATF 16949, AS 9100 and NADCAP emphasize this fact and have sections in their guidelines that pertain to, and require compliance with, this concept.

The saying “can’t see the forest for the trees,“ implies that one is too close to the subject to see it accurately. In the case of worker development, employers have often been marginally successful with the informal, ad hoc, unstructured one-on-one training that seems to gets them what they need, but not as effectively and efficiently as they think or would like.

Even when  an effort is made to structure the unstructured, there are those that resist the effort for a number of reasons. Some have a vested interest in defending the program that they have struggled with through many years of legitimate effort. Some do not like change. Some fear change will interfere with other important goals, such as production quotas – even though the effort to structure what is loosely already there (which takes much longer with lesser results) should only be seen as a positive development. Some may think they know what they are doing or talking about, but are confused about the major differences between classroom lectures, unstructured one-on-one training and structured on-the-job training.

There are only a few true practitioners of structured on-the-job training in the world (with varying approaches), but the approach is gaining ground with the reintroduction of conceptually similar approaches such as “Training Within Industry”, an approach developed during WWII to help build a strong manufacturing supply chain,. And with the task-based knowledge capture and task-based training requirements of ISO/AS/IATF that employers should literally comply with. It would be wise to follow the direction of whichever expert you bring in to help your firm build and implement your structured on-the-job training program until they are ready to hand it off to your trained staff. A professional firm would try hard to learn your culture and constraints before proceeding with a strategy right for your firm.

Whenever Proactive Technologies has been asked to establish a structured on the job training program for an employer, an assessment is made to determine the management culture, the constraints that will effect the pace and scope of the project, and the potential barriers and obstacles to achieving a successful project. Many times a compromise – warranted or not – has to be made to “not draw criticism”, “resistance”, or “negativity” early on that may impede maximizing the potential the structured on the job training program could deliver for the employer, and they need to understand that.

Building the structured on-the-job training infrastructure

In the early stages of building the structured on the job training infrastructure, the quality of the training program depends on the access to, and the availability of, the targeted job classification’s subject matter expert(s). Every effort is made to avoid developing a perception that the job/task analysis will interfere with the ability of the subject matter expert worker to produce. If standard work instructions exist, which instruct a worker to perform a task in a specific way for compliance, those documents will be rounded up and incorporated into the structured training program. Some of the tasks that have no standard work construction will be analyzed through observation and/or subject matter expert interviews to develop a “best practice.”

The job/task analyst is always watching for signs of developing resistance, which may require modifying the approach to gathering all of the data necessary to build a quality structured on the job training program. However, it is fundamental that the level of access to materials and the subject matter expert(s) are critical to determining the quality of the training program to be developed.

One example of a challenge is when “quality time” to review the data collected by the subject matter expert‘s before any of the materials used in the structured on-the-job training program are developed cannot be made available for fear of taking the subject matter expert away from other responsibilities. This is unfortunate, but one way around it is to determine changes, corrections, improvements to the data while the materials are being utilized. One drawback is that some people may be quick to see a flaw in the material and broadcast it as if it was major indicator of the credibility of their training materials, and therefore the whole program becomes suspicious in their minds and in the minds of those they seek confirmation bias with. It also takes more of the consultant’s and subject matter expert’s time. Sometimes there is no choice, but the threat is still there.

Selection and training of structured on a job trainers

Another critical point in developing a successful structured on-the-job training program is the selection of the in-house individuals that will be responsible for using the structured on-the-job training materials to standardize best practice training of workers. Many times these individuals will be the people who are currently trusted with the unstructured training of new hires and cross training of incumbent workers. Often when these trainers, who have gotten by with their own individualized style given all of the constraints of the workplace (many times with little or no guidance in how to be a good on-the-job trainer) are identified, proper time is not allocated by management to develop them into better, more accurate, efficient and effective trainers since it is seen as taking away from their time as a star producer of output. Nevertheless, it is an important management milestone in and supporting the building of the structured on-the-job training infrastructure and the subsequent training delivery.

There might always be a conflict between the pressures that management feels to keep production flowing as forecasted and taking a slight step backwards to develop the expert trainers who will develop the other workers to be as productive and efficient as themselves. It is vital that management understand that this is an investment, like any other capital investment, in developing that the workers that are needed in the fastest and most complete way.

Even when employers encounter high levels of turnover, new-hires may not be given the necessary attention to develop them quickly to the highest level capacity, so that the subject matter expert can either train the next worker or return to their normal production duties. This is not always an “easy sell” to management because they lack the fundamental background and understanding, and sometimes compromises made to appease the accountants impedes progress towards building and implementing a successful training program.

Implementing the structured on the job training

The structured on-the-job training program that Proactive Technologies builds and supports for the employer is meant to avoid interruptions in production by building the structured system around what was already there in the first place. Yet asking management to encourage the development of their workers now that a structured approach is in place is not always intuitive to management who succumb to pressures of perception, not fact. For some reason employers feel that workers cannot be allowed to spend too much time training to become experts in the work that they’re asked to perform, but they expect every worker to be an expert. By minimizing the implementation of structured on-the-job training that has been considerate of management concerns and constraints, management should expect that there will be higher levels of rejects, scrap, rework, missed schedules as even more under-qualified workers performing specific tasks are added to their labor force – especially for employers that are undergoing a lot of change, as well. Still, it is not always easy to convince management that they need to re-assess how they perceive the notion of structured on-the-job training as a more accurate way of doing the less accurate and less distracting informal one-on-one training that that they have tolerated for years.

The level of success of a structured on the job training depends on management taking the time to really embrace the concept that training each worker is a capital investment and should be treated like any other capital investment the company makes to improve efficiencies, output quality and production output. “Junk in, junk out.” A half-hearted effort to develop workers might have worked in the past but translates into hiring workers when the capacity of the existing workers have yet to be developed, and increased overhead costs when they should be decreasing as workers become more proficient at what they were hired to perform. Some new-hires will not stick around if they see no path to becoming a worker that will be retained. In a competitive world such as we have today, that continually changes the nature of work that workers are expected to perform, management should be eagerly embracing improvements to the way workers are developed as they would appreciate the introduction of a more efficient piece of machinery or a better designed process.

Another old saying, “you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make them drink,“ refers to the instance when you can show somebody how to do something right or better, but you can’t make them do what you’ve shown them. Proactive Technologies makes every effort to point out the fastest way to the most improved and efficient structured on-the-job training program. The resulting level of success is codependent on management’s endorsement and support over a system that will benefit them in the accelerated  transfer of expertise of new workers so that the existing workers assigned to train new workers can go back to work with an equal working beside them. Employers can expect to realize improvements in work quality, or quantity, and compliance with quality and safety programs.

Disruptions to a thriving worker development system

Even when a structured on-the-job training program has reached maturity and success, there is always the chance that the internal champions of the project have moved up or moved on, and their replacement does not have the background and understanding to recognize the value of the worker development infrastructure and network of trainers. The company may be bought by a firm or investors that do not want to take the time to understand the effort that has been made and the positive impact the structured on-the-job training program has had on the bottom line.

There is also the possibility of a major external event disrupting an employer’s operations, such as the Crash of 2008 or the recent Covid-19 pandemic. In these cases the structured program might languish for a while or indefinitely at a time when the structured on-the-job training program is needed more than ever. Fortunately for those in this situation, the Proactive Technologies structured on-the-job training program is supported by the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development software and technical support. This allows for the project – with all its job data and structured on-the-job training records – to be held until a time when the firm is ready to restart its training program. All that will be needed is a briefing on the project status, an update to the job data and and update to the active employee list. Not many many training programs can offer a “survivability bonus.”