Have You Captured The Expertise of Your Critical Hourly and Salary Positions?

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Starting in the late 1980’s, employers became increasingly concerned with succession planning; ensuring salary workers were being groomed to replace critical senior employees in the event of retirement or voluntary/involuntary separation. It was realized that the potential disruption – direct and the ripple effects – caused by an unplanned void in the leadership chain might be perceived as a threat to shareholder value. Shareholders, too, wanted assurances that maximizing a firm’s performance was not tied to one or two invaluable people.

Compounding the concern was the realization that the workforce was aging at all levels, and that retirements were a certainty. Prior to the Crash of 2008, employer’s concern over this was amplified by anecdotal reports from other employers already experiencing the impact. A movement toward a remedy began to take shape, and not just for high-ranking salary positions, but technically critical salary positions and even hourly positions that with a loss of one or a few technical experts might disrupt operations and impair a firm’s viability.

For decades prior to the Crash of 2008, Proactive Technologies, Inc. worked with a lot of employers by job/task analyzing their critical job classifications – initially hourly positions but a growing salary class of positions as well. This approach “captured the expertise” of the aging workers to use it to develop the tools which would allow the company to train nearly anyone with a sufficient core skill base, replicating experts as needed.

Then the Crash of 2008 happened and employers found themselves unexpectedly and unwillingly accelerating the loss of technical experts at all levels. For employers late to the game, there was no longer time to capture expertise; it had already left the building. We saw this phenomenon repeating itself with the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a Plant Services 2019 Workforce Survey report, almost 50% of employers surveyed answered that knowledge capture/transfer was one of their “organization’s biggest workforce challenges” – a number rapidly growing. Today, employers have been urgently revisiting the expertise capture idea, and not for just hourly positions such as tool and die, production worker, machine operator, maintenance and quality control, but for critical support positions such as material buyer, office manager, administrative assistant, and metallurgical lab technician – typically in that “gray area” of jobs considered as indispensable… until the resident expert is gone.

Some of this is driven by the need to comply with edicts issued in ISO 9001:2015 and similar requirements in its counterparts – IATF, AS, NADCAP and other quality certifications – regarding “knowledge capture”. But more of it is driven by economic and business reality, as well as risk mitigation.

Employers have looked up the organizational chart to identify technical and management levels for which a loss through retirement, reassignment or turnover could be a set-back. First line supervisors, team leaders, area managers may all be important to maintaining a consistent and competent management force and should be taken seriously.

One easy test anyone can administer to determine where these threats to the organization exist is to isolate a job classification and ask, “what would happen if that person was not there,” or if there are multiple workers in a critical area, “what would happen if we lost one of three of these worker?” If the prospect is concerning, that would be a good case for a job/task analysis to capture, first, a list of each critical task; second, the best practice of each task (using the existing expert as the source); third, “ratifying (content validating) the job data set; and fourth, creating the tools necessary to develop another expert.

Luckily, Proactive Technologies’ expertise is in doing just that. And with its PROTECH© system of managed human resource development software, it can set-up a complete worker selection, training and certification program – with all of the tools of the human resource development process, from today’s job description, Training Plans, Training Checklists, a Procedure Manual and much, much more. It sets up incumbent workers to drive them to full job mastery – if any gaps exist – along with new-hires. Furthermore, once the program is set up, it can be used over and over, or replicated from plant to plant, allowing for local customization.

Proactive Technologies sets-up and manages these programs for the employer so the employer and its staff can focus on business. This human resource development program forms around what already exists and what is already working for the employer, so implementation is familiar and seen as a natural progression to formalization of what was once unstructured, ad hoc and inconsistent.  The result, the accelerated transfer of expertise™.

There really isn’t a good excuse for avoiding the capture of expertise for any level of an employer’s operation. The old excuses of “takes too much time” and “costs too much” are no longer factors, and haven’t been for decades – that is, if you have the right solution for the challenge.

If you recognize these challenges to your organization, check out Proactive Technologies’ structured on-the-job training 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. 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. As always, onsite presentations are available as well.