By Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.®
It is no secret that with the traditional model of worker development, the burden of the job/task-specific skill development falls on the employer. It is not economically feasible nor practical for educational institutions to focus content on every job area for every employer, purchase the equipment and find currently relevant instructors to deliver it. So they, instead, focus rightly on core skills and competencies – relying on the employer to deliver the rest. This is where the best efforts of local educational institutions and training providers begin to break down even if highly relevant to the industry sector.
Employers rely heavily on onboarding “learning” in lieu of focused, deliberate “training.” Onboarding and pre/post-hire classes convey knowledge, but employees “forget up to 70% of newly learned information within 24 hours if it is not applied; After one week, retention can drop below 10%;“
Employers rarely have an internal structure for task-based training of their workers. Even the most aggressive related technical instruction efforts erode against technological advances as every month passes. If core skills and competencies mastered prior to work are not transformed quickly into mastered tasks the worker is expected to perform, the foundation for learning task performance may crumble through loss of memory, loss of relevance or loss of opportunity to apply them.
New workers routinely encounter a non-structured, rarely focused, on-the-job training experience. It is better than nothing, but in some cases not by much. Typically, the employer’s subject-matter-expert (SME) is asked to “show the new employee around.” While highly regarded by management, the SME (not trained as a task trainer and having no prepared materials) has difficulty remembering the nuances of the tasks when explaining the process to the new employee by up to 70% by some estimates, since that level of detail was buried in memory long ago. Each SME, on each shift, might have a different version of the “best practice” for processes, confusing the trainee even more – rendering the notion of “standardization” to “buzzword” status.
The more time the SME spends with the new employee in this unstructured, uncontrolled and undocumented experience, which is the prevailing method of on-the-job training, the more the employer is paying two people to be non or minimally-productive – turning an “investment” to maximize into a “cost.” Adding employees given the lack of infrastructure to train can actually lower short-term productivity and add little to long-term productivity for an organization, but the costs will attract notice internally and may lead management to falsely believe the problem is cost related.
Initially, new employees have difficulty assembling, understanding and translating the disjointed bits of recollection into a coherent process to be replicated on their own. But they try, if that is all that is left, because they want the job. Each comes with their own set and levels of core skills and competencies, and learning styles vary from the self-learner/starter to the slow-learner worker who, with structure to make sure they learn the right best practice, may become loyal, high-quality workers.
Unfortunately, this only describes the unfortunate reality of inadequate new-hire training. What about the incumbents who made it through the process and are part of the staff? Does anyone know which tasks have been mastered? Probably not? No structured on-the-job training system in place implies no records of task mastery nor metrics of worker capacity, therefore no methods for improving worker performance.
When Proactive Technologies, Inc. sets up a structured OJT infrastructure for the employer, once the job has been analyzed and the data approved by client, each incumbent worker is assessed for the tasks of the job classification mastered by their and their supervisor’s consensus, setting the baseline and establishing “the gap” to close. We typically find the average task mastery of incumbent workers to be at around 30%, meaning the employer has been paying for the unused 70% capacity! Multiply that undeveloped, unused capacity by the number of incumbent workers, adding new-hires that start at zero capacity, and you can get a feel for the drag the informal or missing training approach can put on any organization.
Proactive Technologies’ accelerated transfer of expertise™ workforce development model utilizes the employer’s facility and existing SMEs in the learning process, but in a structured, documented and verifiable way that will cut the employer’s internal costs of training and quicken the employer’s realization of a “return on investment” for new-hires and incumbent employees. By structuring the informal on-the-job learning experience, this new model of workforce development focuses on improving “worker capacity” through driving new-hires, incumbents and cross-trainees toward “full job mastery.” The goal is the speedy replication of subject matter experts.
Some of its tenants include:
• Proactive Technologies’ use of a streamlined, but comprehensive, approach to analyzing the job to quickly break it down into “task” units, defining the tasks in a “best practice” while capturing information for many uses such as safety, quality, engineering specifications and historical information or problems that might arise and preemptive remedies. If work processes exist and are in use, they are incorporated into the data set to ensure training reinforces compliance, sometimes “cleaning them up” in the process;
• This information is processed with the PROTECH©® software system, which automatically creates a thorough, verifiable and structured on-the-job training-based worker development model, with training and certification materials, as well as all of the rest of the tools of the human resource development process. One job change and all reports are updated at once;
• This systematic approach accomplishes the certification/recertification of employees against best practices and procedures – even in a dynamic environment;
• The implementation of each job training program includes managing it for change, with the availability to integrate it with other safety, quality (PROTECH supports ISO/AS/IATF and Nadcap models), process improvement and manufacturing system requirements;
• This system effortlessly sets up a robust apprenticeship system, registered or not, as well as correlated internship system, that is easy to implement and shortens the apprenticeship time from the traditional 6-8 years to 2-4 years, providing complete documentation for credentialing;
• Organizations can expect decreased internal costs of training, improvements in productivity, worker safety, product/service quality and worker engagement… all while reducing the time required for mastering tasks and increasing “ROWI” (return on worker investment);
• All of this is accomplished without the need to add additional staff or burden production scheduling!
This approach was originally designed for manufacturing, but has been proven applicable to any industry, any job classification no matter if hourly or salary. Unlike other approaches that were adapted from academic learning and have little relevance to task mastery, this approach focuses specifically on the structured on-the-job training and the mastery of each task of the job classification on a path to full job mastery. And by clearly defining the outcome of full job mastery, the data for selecting related technical instruction is complete and detailed to make selection of classroom and online content and delivery more accurate and relevant. This keeps related technical instruction costs low and can also transform classroom and online content delivery from a cost to an investment.
Learn more about the PROTECH©® system of managed human resource development™ and the accelerated transfer of expertise system™. Contact a Proactive Technologies representative today!
Proactive Technologies, Inc.®; PROTECH®; Human Resource Management for Tomorrow...Today!® and logo; PROTECH©® System of Managed Human Resource Development™; Accelerated Transfer of Expertise System™; Certificate of Job Mastery Program™, Certificate of Task Mastery Program™ are all trademarks of Proactive Technologies Inc.®;