Five Most Important Ways Structured On-the-Job Training Can Reclaim Wealth For an Employer

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In a Proactive Technologies Report article entitled “10 Reasons Structured On-The-Job Training is a Vital and Necessary System for Any Organization,” a few of the many important reasons that structured on-the-job training – at least Proactive Technologies’ version – were explained that should be part of any organization’s operational strategy. Here are 5 ways this approach to worker development that integrates an organization’s existing systems unlocks tremendous wealth and yields substantial returns – just for doing what every employer says they want anyway but most find a reason to avoid it.

Too many employers still, wrongly, believe that they have little in the way of tools and metrics to develop and measure the value of each worker that comes to the organization. No structured training program in place means no one has analyzed the job for the tasks required to be performed, the compliance criteria, the core skills and knowledge necessary to master the tasks, or why a task resides in a job classification. If there is no structure, there is no way to measure what percent of the job a worker has mastered or, if still in development, how well they are progressing to the expected level of job mastery and performance. If no structure or metrics exist, there is nothing to improve or, at least, notice an improvement. And if something goes wrong and worker malperformance is suspected, there is little from which to draw evidence to support a conclusion and proper course of corrective action.

And then there is the endless number of issues related to how well a worker was developed, on what were they developed, and how well that expertise has been maintained through all of the changes faced in competitive world. Any worker that has been deliberately, or coincidentally, developed to a recognizable high level of job mastery is considered being of “high value,” although the value is not quantifiable. Every employer wants to retain that worker, replicate that worker and relies on that worker to informally share expertise with others. If that worker leaves the organization for any reason, disruption, confusion, chaos and costs can occur.

So, why do so many employers take their role in developing and maintaining each worker’s capacity so lightly? Why do they often embark on proposed solutions that, at face value, seem a stretch? Are they unaware of all the tools out there, or are they relying on voices that may lack the experience and expertise themselves, or have another motive, to propose a credible solution?

When it comes to training workers, there are a lot of ideas floating around – many recycled for decades and no more relevant today than they were back when. Some of the ideas that are backed by a lot of federal and state funding draw a bigger audience and followers who want part of that money. But is the underlying solution credible with all we now know and does it address the true problem? Or is it just a change in packaging, leaving the root problem unchanged? Many of these solutions circulate for 5 – 10 years, then everyone moves on. How much opportunity is lost, costs incurred, companies harmed, lives unimproved and wealth lost or not extracted by this unintentional neglect?

Here are five areas that the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development™ can help any employer extract untapped and under-developed wealth from any worker, any job classification, in any industry. Each has been previously written about and links are provided. They are: 1) The Capture Worker Wisdom and Expertise;  2) The Accelerated the Transfer of Expertise™ and Increased Worker Capacity ; 3) Driving Every Worker to “Full Job Mastery;”  4) The Increase Work Consistency, Quantity, Quality and Compliance;  and 5) The Decreased Internal Costs of Training and Worker Turnover. To summarize each point’s significance:

1) The Capture of Worker Wisdom and Expertise – When a worker reaches “expert” level, it is through the culmination years of knowledge transfer, expertise transfer and practice to become consistently accurate. They have mastered the job, the part that is known, completely. Informally, they train others. However, not everyone is a natural born trainer. More likely they have suppressed the nuances of task performance they needed to learn the tasks and are now operating on “automatic.” When training without structure, their version might be abbreviated, not always in a good way. The trainee doesn’t know what they don’t know, and might be afraid to ask too many questions for fear of being judged as a slow learner. Job/task analysis of the way the expert performs the job details all characteristics of task performance that make it expert level (e.g. procedural accuracy, specification and safety compliance) and now that wealth can be made into tools for training and expertise can be transferred to as many clones as needed. Without it, the effectiveness of each informal training transaction can be justifiably suspect. By capturing expertise and worker wisdom, the wealth comes from a) the value of the documented expertise captured, b) its use in replicating experts quickly and completely; c) in the event of a disruption to the operation, it can be a reference source that will allow the operation to quickly return to normal.

2) The Accelerated the Transfer of Expertise™  – It is in the employer’s interest to expedite the training process. Two people, the trainer who is highly paid and the trainee who is well paid, are not producing much, if any, value for the organization until the trainee can operate independently and correctly and the trainer can go back to his/her original work. The longer it takes, the more the sessions are purely costs. Multiplied by as many people going through training and the number can be staggering. Accelerating the transfer of expertise accelerates the building of worker value, expands the source of wealth, while lowering the costs associated with training and unused capacity.

3) Driving Every Worker to “Full Job Mastery” – Full Job Mastery means an individual can perform all of the required tasks of the job completely and accurately. This means performing each task process in the correct order; completely and consistently in compliance with specified quality, engineering, safety company policy. If a job classification is made up of 100 tasks defined to these terms, and a worker can perform 50 tasks to that level, it is said the worker has 50% capacity. It means an employer is realizing 50% of the value they could be. The only way to raise worker capacity is to continue the training and documentation to drive the worker to full job mastery. This, for nearly all organizations, is the greatest source of unrealized wealth – unused and unverifiable capacity.

4) The Increase in Work Consistency, Quantity, Quality and Compliance – The cost of worker malperformance can be on a scale from minor and insignificant to serious and costly. Repeated malperformance can multiply that cost. Likewise, one act of non-compliance can be insignificant (e.g most employment policy infractions) to severe (e.g. production of non-reworkable scrap product, offensive customer service, significant operator accident resulting in liability for the company and fines from a government agency, and labor law violations). Preventing any of these possibilities through deliberate, structured on-the-job training facilitates the accumulation of wealth and is a means of retaining wealth.

5) The Decreased Internal Costs of Training and Worker Turnover – Items 1-4 describe how the costs of training can be reduced and wealth gained/retained, but the cost of training is exacerbated by a high rate of turnover. The turnover cost per worker varies depending on when in the process the worker is turned over, but average estimates have ranged from $8,000 – $30,000 per person depending on the level of job classification, the complexity of the work to be performed, the disruption to the operation and the value of the work to the overall operation. The need to minimize worker turnover should be obvious. A structured on-the-job training infrastructure not only provides the previous mentioned benefits, it makes it possible for the worker and employer to determine if the new hire is unsuitable earlier in the process, and the reasons more certain. By engaging the worker from the moment of hiring ensures more workers will meet the grade and assuage any uncertainties and insecurities the new-hire brought to the process. Furthermore, by developing each worker to full job mastery quickly will determine if the hiring of additional workers can stop since the necessary level of organizational capacity has been reached. The investment needed to set-up and operate a structured on-the-job training infrastructure for an entire department, for an entire year, may be as little as preventing one turnover. The wealth is gained by the prevention of unnecessary training and turnover costs, which can be substantial for some organizations.

Many companies have been lured into ignoring this enormous source of wealth creation and retention by misinformation coming from the community that the solution to the skills gap is on its way (for the last 35 years), from the industry who limit the only available solutions to the ones that they are using and are not working that well for them, and from training providers who either deliberately or naively do not have the employer’s and employee’s interest at heart. Regardless, these companies are minimizing their return on worker investment and maximizing costs.

Contact a Proactive Technologies representative today to schedule a GoToMeeting videoconference briefing to your computer and find out more about the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development™. This can be followed up with an onsite presentation for you and your colleagues. A 13-minute promo briefing is available at the Proactive Technologies website and provides an overview to get you started and to help you explain it to your staff.