Learning, Unfortunately, The Hard Way

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Employers are being tested these days on their ability to respond to a rapidly changing world and maintain operational continuity. Who could have imagined that a pandemic would so disrupt the world’s supply chain, and realign consumer needs and preferences so fast and furiously, that even previously successful business operations would be pushed toward shuttering?

I am sure we all thought that after the Economic Crash of 2008 and its horrible aftermath that we had left those days of extreme reaction behind us. But here we are with another test to see who was paying attention.

For some firms, just-in-time manufacturing and extreme Lean engineering has made it difficult to ride out the economic effects of the pandemic. Without having warehouses of inventory to call up while the supply chains straighten themselves out, the effects are immediate and debilitating. Many firms frantically attempted to reinvent themselves, in some cases in the most extreme way, without a clearly defined market or consumer, while other firms found themselves “checkmated” nearly overnight.

Those that survived had to scramble to stock their shelves, staff and restaff their organizations while reconsidering every aspect of their operation. The economy and its current inflationary effects are straining workers – who might have just been given a raise – once again, who find it increasingly difficult to support themselves. Companies supported by private equity or who are publicly traded find themselves forced to quarterly cut costs – no matter how practical or short-term – to appease their boards of directors. Continuing a decade’s-old practice of denial, of employees being considered a “cost” no matter the employer’s years of investment in developing them nor the wealth of knowledge and skills expertise each represents, are first in line to be discarded.

As pawns in this transformation, workers – some with extreme experience – are vulnerable to being reconsidered out of the equation along with the newly hired. This is primarily because it was not clear prior to the pandemic the range of tasks for which an employee has expertise and what core skills, abilities and competencies those tasks mastered represent and are transferable. Without the base of data to know how existing workers can be retooled for new tasks and new production needs, it is so easy to think that starting over is a better solution. It is not, that is unless an employer post-pandemic has no better worker development “infrastructure” for defining the tasks that currently exist and for the new tasks that will need to be performed as the recollection of supervisors who may be also on their way out.

It does not follow that automating the worker out of the formula is a better, less costly solution either. When you calculate the cost of designing, building and proofing the automation for this disruption plus an estimate of having to do it again for the next disruption, it seems more of a distraction than a solution. Each employer has a tremendous amount of value built into their human assets, but most have no way to identify it, replicate it, or transform it. Even if you were to attempt to automate the work of a worker, have you thoroughly considered the broad range of expertise a deliberately trained worker offers verses the narrow, discrete focus of automation? 

If a structured on the job training infrastructure was in place prior to the pandemic, the response time for a complete overhaul of production needs or service needs could have been accommodated in a couple of weeks. It has been said that “if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” Taking that further, “if you haven’t defined it, you cannot measure or improve it.” You know workers had to pick up how to do things along the way, or your firm would not have an output. But can you explain what each worker can do and how well they do it? If not, you cannot easily transfer that expertise, measure it or improve it, never mind transform it to react quickly to a disruption.

If your workers are not being driven to task mastery on their way toward job mastery, they may have an enormous amount of unused capacity that could be utilized during times of change. Without structure, do you know if they are even doing the things they can do in the most efficient and effective way to meet all of the quality, engineering and customer requirements? If there are these doubts, how can they reach excellence and who will lead them there?

And as you can imagine, how long it takes to reestablish the workforce to at least a 50% capacity level determines how much the company must invest, the costs that will be incurred, the opportunity costs that will be incurred, and the effect on product or service quality and quantity. So it is in the employer’s interest to not take this lightly as they emerge from the pandemic, since we know from enormous experience how long it takes to develop the needed workers without the structure in place to do so.

Employers should look at this as an opportunity to reinvent their worker development strategy so that future disruptions such as the crash of 2008 and this pandemic are just speed bumps on the way to bigger things. In many cases, the availability of state training funds will cover most, if not all, of the investment to set-up, manage and document structured on-the-job training, and Proactive Technologies will help the client apply and manage the grant for this and any related technical instruction being considered.

Proactive Technologies’ helps employers build and implement a structured on-the-job training system approach built specifically to the employer’s job classifications and requirements. to expedite each worker’s accelerated path toward full job mastery. Proactive Technologies provide implementation support and reporting so they client can focus on business. 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.