It Seems Fear of New Private Equity Owners Cause Local Leadership to Forego Deliberate Worker Training

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc^®.

Most employers I talk to say they know their informal on-the-job training programs cannot keep up in an ever-changing world and feel strongly it is affecting their ability to build and retain a qualified workforce. The evidence is in work quality, quantity and issues of compliance with work process and mandated safety. Lets not forget worker satisfaction, focus, loyalty, morale and retention. Yet, even when state training grants are available to reimburse employers up to 100% for upgrading and deliberately training workers for focused and improved outcomes, employers seem more and more reluctant to make the pitch to their corporate management.

While their own performance is measured on overall company performance metrics, it doesn’t seem natural that managers would be afraid to offer a solution which impacts departments and internal systems across the operation and could produce significant improvements, cut costs, boost revenue. Perhaps it is an unawareness that today’s grant programs, in most states, are more efficient, faster, less administrative and generous.

Many employers know that only they can train the workers they need – on their equipment, in their facility on processes unique to their operation by resident experts only available to them. Historically, though, training has been at the bottom of any organization’s list of “things to do.”  As the need for deliberate, documented on-the-job training grew more urgent decade after decade, worker development moved farther and farther down the list. Employer’s resigned themselves to decreasing worker performance and marginal worker capacity. After all, product was being shipped and services were being delivered – often by adding more and more workers with the solution staring them in the face; to train each worker for all of what their job requires, not just on tasks that someone remembered to provide.

In the last two decades, state governments have offered more and more financial reimbursement for serious employer efforts to train their workers internally. However, it seems as companies were being acquired by private equity firms – notoriously focused on “cost cutting” and “asset harvesting” – they were instilling fear in management to adhere to that concept. Good ideas were abandoned for fear of asking the “turn-around expert” for a budget for it, even if it would be recovered through grant reimbursement, fearing it would signal disagreement with the blanket edict, “if it doesn’t directly affect the bottom line, get rid of it.” Advocating for something no matter how logical, self-evident and “affecting the bottom line such as making sure workers know how to perform all the tasks for which they were hired is at odds with preservation of one’s employment. Educating educated people on the need for a logical, sensible training solution is scarier than going along with the herd and deflecting the problem of under-skilled workers to educational institutions, who “aren’t generating the skilled workers they need.”

In an article in CFO.com  entitled CFOs Adjust to Private Equity’s Growing Influence, Dan Niepow reports “Across several industries, PE firms are scooping up more and more businesses. Consider accounting firms, where many CFOs have gotten their start: From 2020 through September 2025, there have been at least 90 private equity-related transactions and firm mergers, according to CPA Trendlines Research. Fifty-two of those occurred in 2025 alone, demonstrating PE’s quickly growing influence in the space.”

He adds, “Many firms tend to bill PE investments or outright ownership as a way to increase access to capital and grow their business. In announcing a minority investment from New Mountain Capital, Milwaukee-based accounting firm Wipfli, for instance, hailed the deal as “a moment to accelerate, scale with purpose and help even more organizations reach their full potential.’” “While an injection of PE money can and often does provide the means to grow staff in the short term, owners are rarely in it for the long haul. That can pit founders’ long-term visions against a private equity firm’s goal to build and quickly sell.”

In an environment like this, the need for worker training becomes more critical if a functional, sustainable state for the next buyer is to be maintained. During a takeover, invariably workers are cut, often indiscriminately, while those that can (usually the most skilled) seek employment elsewhere. The tasks previously performed and vital to the operation still need to be done, but now the expert is no longer around to, albeit informally, train the replacement. Nobody bothered to write the best practice process down. And forget about cross-training if training for one’s job is inadequate.

A well-prepared organization would have analyzed each job classification for best practices, creating structured on-the-job training program incorporating standardized work processes, quality and engineering standards, safety requirements to be taught (where the task is performed) by existing internal trainers elevated to trained/certified trainers to:

• Deliver, document and report monthly results and maintain records of each existing worker’s job transfers and process-based cross-training on a  journey to full job mastery.
• Provide continuous upskilling as the tasks, technology, and mandates change.

If a training system wasn’t established before the acquisition, it surely needs to be built after. All this can be done with existing staff, just mobilized into a deliberate, documented worker training system. Instead of burdening existing staff, this approach is more efficient and effective – lowering the the internal costs of training while increasing worker retention, worker capacity, work quality, work quantity and compliance.

It is true, advocating for a worker training infrastructure post-merger or acquisition is a little more tricky. The obvious question that will come up is, “if this was so urgent, why is it just coming up now?” No one wants to confirm neglect. Luckily, the evidence to make one’s case to the new CFO is so blatantly obvious, the improved outcomes so clearly predictable and measurable, the point that, in addition to the many benefits derived by a structured on-the-job training approach,  the investment to set-up and implement the training can be recovered by state training grants such a “no-brainer” that it only lacks the courage to formulate the pitch, gather the allies and speak logic with justified conviction.

The need for employer-based worker training doesn’t go away with ownership if perpetual success is the common thread. That is why ISO included “Knowledge Capture” to their process training requirements; sustainability no matter who owns the company. Businesses that were acquired surely realize that kicking the training can down the road wasn’t a smart strategy. At least those trying to implement the business strategy of the acquiring investor group learned that.

If you recognize these challenges and have shed your fear of even looking for other solutions, check out Proactive Technologies’ accelerated transfer of expertise system™ approach to see how it might work at your firm, your family of facilities or 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. Proactive Technologies will even draft the client’s state training grant application and manage their reimbursements to ensure maximized outcomes of both the training system and grant.