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. While we should have been better prepared to weather the Crash of 2008, 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 made it difficult to ride out the economic effects of the Covid-19 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.

Now we are faced with a pending trade war, which has yet to define itself. But at a minimum it presents employers with new challenges that will reveal how it has prepared itself. The employer’s workforce usually the first to be disrupted if hunkering down is required. However, lost in this decision is the amount of investment made to develop the expertise being voluntarily relinquished. Also lost is the cost of replacement and the burden to the organization trying to stabilize itself and grow while struggling with finding, and having to train, quality replacement workers.

Those that survived previous upheavals had to scramble to stock their shelves re-staff 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. Read More

Decision Making While Swimming in Divergent Views

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

It seems like we’re all overwhelmed these days. Bad news, natural, disasters, man-made, disasters, and fears of upcoming meteorites, diseases, hurricanes, and government shenanigans. Even the nightly news has nine stories of current and pending disasters followed by one story of a little boy who found a marble, separated by commercials telling us to “ask our doctor” if this new drug is right for us.

What’s different today is that there is no escape from it. It comes through social media platforms on our phones, our computers, it plays on the radio, network and cable news, it comes from massive industries of political and financial pundits, and paid influencers of many kinds. Second-hand versions of that information come from our coworkers, our neighbors, our friends, and even our clergy.

It is difficult these days to extract the information we need from these sources and make the best, most proper decision in response. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by having to do so, yet that’s what we do both in life and in business; we make decisions based on the information we receive, and hopefully make good ones.

Making it more difficult is the proliferation of paid influencers who have a vested interest in making a believer out of you. These aren’t just the social media types telling you how wonderful their product is, embedded with subliminal messaging to influence your decision to buy based on their representation of their experience. Since the rise of “infotainment,” it has been difficult to separate out fact from fiction, reporting from advocacy and trends from high-pressuring, yet subtle and crafty, marketing.

For example, there are a few people and organizations on the east and west coasts who have made their billions on creating movements in a stock market. Whether it be spreading false narratives on a business in a “short and distort” scheme, creating “hype around a new product or trend to drive their stock holdings value up until they cash out in a “market manipulation scheme” (e.g. Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, a scheme for which she as CEO was sentenced to prison), or a group of companies hitting the speaking circuit to spread their latest “trend,” in which they are all heavily invested– a broader form of market manipulation. The effect is the same, only different in scope but the intended effect is the same. It is meant to confuse people into making decisions that may not be in their interest but is very much so in the interest of the perpetrator. Read More

Apprenticeships: Be Careful Not To Minimize Integrity To Spike The Numbers

by Dr. Dave Just, formally Dean of Corporate and Continuing Education at Community Colleges in MA, OH, PA, SC. Currently President of K&D Consulting 

In December of 2008, the U.S. Department of Labor announced a new rule on apprenticeships provide additional pathways to certification. The final rule specified that program sponsors could offer three different ways for apprentices to complete a registered apprenticeship program:

• Traditional, time-based approach, which requires the apprentice to complete a specific number of on-the-job (OJT) and RTI hours;
• Competency-based approach, which requires the apprentice to demonstrate competency in the defined subject areas and requires OJT and RTI; and
• Hybrid approach, which requires the apprentice to complete a minimum number of OJT and RTI hours and demonstrate competency in the defined subject areas.

The number of apprenticeships began to rise in non-traditional jobs and industries. Manufacturing, which previously could only select from traditional time-based apprenticeships for craft areas hosted by labor unions, saw a welcomed increase. More recently, albeit through periods of economic uncertainty and challenges, the rate of increase in apprenticeships slowed as each state offered its own (sometimes narrowly defined version, often in deference to what they have been doing for years) interpretation of the rule. Some organizations pushed back on the new model choices to protect their own interests. What emerged is a confusing menagerie of derivations of the three model choices and waning employer interest. Read More

Are Private Equity Portfolios and Hedge Funds the New Monopolies? Will They Be the Driver For, or Barrier To, Manufacturing Reshoring to U.S.?

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

As with any journey, remembering how you got there is important to knowing how to get back. Since the 1980’s, Americans have been taken on a wild adventure with the restructuring of the world’s economies and trading relationships. Good paying manufacturing jobs in the U.S. were outsourced to lower wage labor markets and replaced with low-paying service jobs. When workers had questions, they were given answers to reassure them that good times and prosperity will come. After an inordinate amount of patience shown and the experiment seeming to have institutionalized worker’s losses for someone else’s gain, Americans have rightfully become restless as if their and their family’s welfare and future are at stake. On top of everything else the social safety net that Americans pay into and rely upon, which has worked since the Great Depression of 1929 – 39,  is now in the process of being dismantled, maybe privatized. This is a good time for business and government leaders to revisit Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs if they are sincerely having trouble understanding why Americans are distressed.

In college, I attended many economic courses while working on my undergraduate degree. A lot of what I learned was elaborated upon during my pursuit of an MBA, but with a business slant. Many of the economic theories that were espoused then seemed to explain the norms of how the economy worked in the past and was working then, and why certain government interventions, when used sparingly and strategically, were sometimes necessary and later proved appropriate.

Today, it appears that economic norms have been cast aside, and government rules and regulations weakened or not enforced, as the concentration of capital moves entire U.S. and World markets and industries in the direction that benefits the concentrated capital markets. The rest of us seem to be low-level pawns in a life-altering game that we are only allowed to participate in so long as we have money to play. There are brief periods of calm and spotty poor and middle-class well-being, snatched away (along with any gains made) between the roller coaster bottoms, which seem to be cycling increasingly closer. For the vast majority of Americans, economic stability is only a memory and erosion of society, democracy and the capitalist system portend a potential dark future for us all.

“There are many in the U.S. that realize capitalism cannot exist with just producers and servicers. It needs a robust, thriving and stable consumer class as well.”

According to an article in The Atlantic entitled “The Secretive Industry Devouring the U.S. Economy,” “The publicly traded company is disappearing. In 1996, about 8,000 firms were listed in the U.S. stock market. Since then, the national economy has grown by nearly $20 trillion. The population has increased by 70 million people. And yet, today, the number of American public companies stands at fewer than 4,000. How can that be?”

Private Equity, Venture Capital, and Hedge Funds that have been acquiring companies control most of the economy, an estimated 75-80%. Although each area has its own regulations and regulatory authorities, there is a lot of overlap and cooperation among and between them. Since the 1970’s, capitalists have adopted a tenant of Milton Friedman, a supply-side economist from the Chicago School of Economics, that the sole purpose of a firm is to maximize shareholder value (although even Friedman recognized that there were limits to its application), morphing it into the only purpose of a firm. Read More

Read the full April, 2025 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

The Learning “Cost“ Versus Training “Investment“ Paradox

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

This newsletter has written extensively about the inexplicable classification of the training a worker needs to succeed as a “cost“. It has never made much sense, yet it is so entrenched in our business operations that no one gives it a second glance.

Consider, for a moment, a firm’s excitement surrounding the $1 million investment made for new machinery that is meant to increase productivity and output by 50 to 100%. What an accomplishment that would be if that goal is reached.

Now consider that the equipment has arrived, has been installed, and a worker is randomly selected and gifted with a user’s manual loosely translated for another language and told to “figure it out.” This happens more often than we want to admit. A case can be made that the inefficient use of time, dollar resources, and the opportunity costs of underperformance and, possibly, equipment damage during self-training of its functions is truly costly.

Reacting to the Proposed Reversal of Regulations Affecting Human Resources and Safety Can Be Tricky

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

Political winds frequently change direction, sometimes leading to calls to create or unwind existing labor and safety regulations. Currently, major moves to replace agency leadership and disrupt agency staffing to weaken agency mandates and enforcement capability may be a welcome development to some employers who earlier resisted, or were complacent to, compliance but as history has shown us many of the changes might be reversed in the span of an election or two. Enacting and implementing changes to company policies, and disseminating changes to the troops, in response takes more thoughtfulness and planning. Regulations and laws that have evolved over time as the result of events that set them in motion usually have some fundamental rationale that everyone can agree with, or they would have been badly battered during public hearings and public review. The disagreement usually revolves around scope, impact of the law on the non-offenders, and ideological divides.

Congressional changes to labor laws or presidential executive orders usually do not take effect overnight. It may take years for a bill to clear the House and Senate for the president’s signature and/or for the affected agency to make the transition. Changes to laws and enforcement criteria made through Executive Order adds to that process, since the rules, and the authority to make rules, came through Congressional action, and they have a say in the subsequent rule and guidance’s change or survival. There will be many impacted groups waiting to litigate the change and the court process can take years with appeals to higher courts. If shot down in whole or in part, then it will be remanded to the lower court to find a legal solution, before potentially starting another series of legislative activities. Regardless, there is a lengthy period of steps and reviews that could delay the action for some time with an uncertain outcome.

Debt Ceiling, Deficit and National Debt; The Difference and Why it Matters

by Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff

There is a lot of talk and confusion these days about state of the country’s finances. Often one measure is used to conflate and confuse the discussion about how to improve the others. The danger is those most impacted by whatever corrective measure becomes law are usually the same ones who have been sliding backward for the last 4 decades.

It is important to know the difference and add your voice to the discussion.

“The debt ceiling is a limit on the total amount of government borrowing. First put in place by Congress during World War I, it was meant to give blanket authorization for the Treasury Department to borrow money up to a set amount.”

“The U.S. budget deficit is how much more the federal government spends annually than it receives in revenue during that same time period.”

“The national debt of the United States is the total national debt owed by the federal government of the United States to Treasury security holders.

Today’s American Managers Have Evolved Way Past the Musk-DOGE “Management by Tyranny” Style

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Most CEOs and human resource directors are probably watching the DOGE firing’s “shock and awe” spectacle with “shock and horror.” There may be a few frustrated managers who view this nostalgically and look fondly upon a possible return to the labor practices of the early 20^th century, but I bet even they see the incomprehensibility and inhumanity behind the approach and foresee the most likely unproductive, lingering chaos to continue beyond this action.

Apolitically and regardless of what one thinks of Musk as a person, his management practices and actions toward government are antithetical to making improvements and creating efficiencies, though under the guise of doing so. It seems more like an antiquated attempt to demonstrate one’s power and the fragility of the worker. His disdain for the worker is well documented and reflected by his private sector business practices and response to criticism.

But the federal government isn’t a business, should never be thought of as a business and if it was, we all would suffer for it. It doesn’t seek a profit nor is constantly seeking higher returns on shareholder equity. It takes in taxes and provides common services and, in most cases, does so very efficiently and effectively. Can it be run even more efficiently and effectively? Sure, but we would have to demand lobbyists carving out loopholes be barred from accessing members of Congress (who created the agencies by statute and rules that guide them) and insist on campaign finance reform to push out the destructive influence of money on our lawmakers and agency enforcers, which keeps workers from doing their job to the best of their ability.

Read the full March, 2025 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Training The Skilled Labor You Need – An Investment That Keeps on Returning

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In a 2016 Manufacturing Institute-Deloitte survey, 82% of manufacturers surveyed reported encountering a moderate or serious shortage of skilled workers to fill their positions. Over the next decade it is expected 3 ½ million manufacturing jobs will likely need to be filled. Skill gaps are expected to result in 2 million of these jobs remaining unfilled. More than 75% of manufacturers report that the skills shortage has hampered their ability to expand and 69% of manufacturers expect the shortage in skilled production workers to worsen.

In 2021, an IndustryWeek article entitled “The Skilled Labor Shortage Threatens Manufacturing’s Full Recovery, Says Study” stated “…a mix of U.S.-only manufacturers (65%) and multinational manufacturers with a strong U.S. presence (35%). found that finding talent with the right skills has been more difficult.”

IndustryWeek published an article by Glenn Marshall – formally with Newport News Shipbuilding – entitled “Closing the Nation’s Skills Gap,” Marshall discusses a program used during World War II to rapidly develop the skilled workers needed to quickly ramp up U.S. manufacturing to meet the needs of the war effort. Obviously there was a shortage of skilled workers; U.S. manufacturing had never been required to produce at such levels. In many cases workers were using new technology, so skilled workers could not possibly be available. The need was exacerbated by the fact that the world was in crisis.

The program implemented during WWII to remedy this was called TWI – Training Within Industry. Its basis was simple: workers had to be trained very quickly and the workers had to perform the tasks with consistent quality. The method included skills training, employee relations, continuous improvement as well, but at the center of the program was the expedited one-to-one transfer of knowledge from the trainer to the trainee. History will report that the effort was successful and the war effort received the manufacturing output it needed.

This early, but visionary, approach to training workers could easily be a precursor to Proactive Technologies’ concept of the “accelerated transfer of expertise® system”. For the past 30 years this approach has evolved into a structured on-the-job training approach, taking advantage of the latest technology and adapting to improvements in business modeling and quality control. But the concept still holds to this day. In every job classification, and every corner of a facility, one person is training another person to do something. It may be unstructured, haphazard, ad hoc, inconsistent and undocumented, but somehow it has worked. During competitive times this uncontrolled, but critical, process receives intense scrutiny and criticism as the cost of labor becomes a more important factor.

The most effective, efficient and economical training solution is taking this process that has demonstrated it works and formalize it; structure the unstructured and make it a deliberate process with measurable outcomes. It works, but employers are sometimes afraid to go back to solutions that have been staring them in the face for decades, possibly thinking they may be lacking the tools and expertise to approach it. Read More

Put Yourself in a Trainee’s Shoes

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

It is fun to watch a once popular TV show on CBS, now in syndication, called “Undercover Boss – reruns and all.” Watching a CEO or executive of a major corporation slip into disguise and enter the world of their workers is interesting and entertaining. Sometimes they find the organization needs a little “tweaking,” and sometimes it needs major rethinking.

The entertainment value, I suppose, comes from watching these individuals being tossed into a job classification – alien to most of them – and, while cameras are rolling, receiving a crash course in performing various job tasks. Some tasks are performed close to the customer. Not only do leaders get a rare look at what it is like at the lower rungs of the organization, in some cases they get a look at the sub-par performance most of their customers experience and how tenuous the corporation’s existence is – sustained only by the initiative a few loyal, but mostly self-interested, employees. These employees try to make up for the corporation’s shortcomings as if their job and future depend on it…which they do. If the company fails, they lose their job, plain and simple. Some put up with the company’s shortcomings in pursuit of the next opportunity.

It is interesting to see CEO’s marvel at how difficult it is to learn the job tasks they previously thought were inconsequential and not worthy of attention. Previously known only as a word on a report, the fact that how the tasks are performed by these neglected employees are the reason the corporation exists goes unnoticed and unappreciated. Some episodes look like popular television shows of the 50’s and 60’s, “I Love Lucy.”

A typical Undercover Boss episode might reveal: Read More

Explaining Your Process Training to Auditors, Prospects and Clients

by Proactive Technologies, Inc. Staff

How much time, energy and resources are expended by your firm when someone comes to visit and wants to “kick the company’s tires?” When it comes to training your workers to internal and/or company processes, a structured on-the-job training program that operates smoothly and completely in the background may have the answers your clients are looking for.

For most organizations, the general notion is that training is going on in every corner of the organization, for every worker at any time of the day or night. One person is showing another person how to perform a process, operate a piece of equipment or software, fill out a form or, yes, make a copy using the new copy machine just installed. How effective is that informal form of training? Have you ever walked by a copy machine and seen someone standing in front of it, staring at the control panel…then the sky, as if seeking divine intervention. Now, think of the more complex tasks!

When the resident expert masters a task and it becomes routine, there is a tendency for them to marginalize the task as so easy that the next trainee should learn it by osmosis. If not, maybe the new-hire “just doesn’t seem to want to learn.” Somehow, the organization may get by. In this case, like so many, it may sound like an insignificant example of training, but not to the person who needs the copy and who may be judged if a meeting is waiting for it.

Same, too, are the more critical and complex tasks of the job, requiring compliance with so many factors such as engineering specifications, quality control requirements, safety requirements and company policies. Without a deliberate task-based training infrastructure in place, training might be ad hoc, informal, unstructured and rarely documented. Add to this the periodic worker cross-training that allows workers to train in, and master, tasks in multiple job areas and the amount of critical, but undocumented, training can be tremendous. Read More

The Unintended Consequences of Cutting Workers as a First Choice

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Layoffs have often been employer’s “go to” solution during market gyrations. So much so that activist shareholders consider it a normal practice and implement it as a first choice, along with forcing out the most seasoned of management since they are usually the highest paid based on tenure.

Especially since the 1980’s, changes in the financial markets purpose – from sources of needed capital to direct micromanagement of portfolio firms – have turned an infrequent and considered benign practice into a common occurrence. Private equity groups and hedge funds, with just minority positions, rally to send in “change artists” that have a single-mindedness towards cost-cutting to show investors immediate results that make a share price grow. After all, the investment firm may only hold on to the acquisition for a short while until they have gotten all they can, so gutting a holding’s long-term capacity to look more efficient and profitable short-term appears to be just a means to an end. It can also be an effective way to get rid of a brand’s competition by buying them up and breaking them apart in the name of “prudent investment management.”

To the company, layoffs have an often underestimated but always predictable negative ripple effect. As with turnover, layoff cost effects permeate the organization on many levels for an indefinite period of time. The investment in recruitment, selection, training and retention of workers is out the window, leaving behind the opportunity costs of lost capacity and institutional memory to kick in. After an investment group moves on doesn’t mean the shell of a previously profitable company can rebuild itself and continue. Pushed back, perhaps decades, in their development and now bled of its operating capital while the market has moved on, the firm’s challenges to regain its footing can be daunting. There are numerous examples of legacy brands struggling to come back – shuttering stores and factories in a desperate act to save themselves after being forced to cut into the bone and losing their compass.

The ripple continues outside the company’s facility. The turmoil caused to the labor market by such practices is palpable. Workers are reluctant to pursue educational programs that take even a few years for fear those jobs being targeted won’t be there when they graduate but the debt will remain. Families are impacted when the breadwinners can’t keep up with living costs and unexpected expenses. Drive through cities and rural communities and see a growing decay as local discretionary income is diverted from local small business products and services to non-discretionary and necessary expenses often paid to multi-national corporations.

In an article entitled Cutting Too Much: When HR Needs to Pump the Brakes on Layoffs published in Human Resource Executive by Peter Cappelli of Wharton, the author challenges employers on the long-standing practices of “laying off first, determine impact later.” Cappelli cites an example “I suspect that few people know of Stellantis, the holding company that now owns brands like Fiat, Peugeot, Chrysler, Maserati and Alfa Romeo. Read More

Read the full February, 2025 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

So, You Don’t Have Time for Training. Really? 7 Myths Dispelled

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

When meeting with manufacturing leaders, I am often first surprised, then puzzled, by the old standby reactions to the discussion of training workers to maximize each worker’s capacity and return on worker investment (“ROWI”). Whether it is just a reflex action, an unsubstantiated response to a misconception or another way of saying, “why am I in this meeting,” it is worth the time to explore this topic further.

It is a good bet that, in any firm, a worker’s training to perform the work for which they were hired is left to chance and coincidence. It follows then that so would the firm’s collective productivity, collective ROWI and, predictably, the firm’s efficiencies and effectiveness. But it doesn’t stop there. A new-hire worker that walks into an environment with a lack of definition and/or a haphazard, unfocused and undocumented effort to quickly train the worker receives the same reaction as one walking into a cluttered office for the first time. “How does this guy function?” “How can he find anything?’ “What is this guy’s job and would he know it?”

It is true, first impressions are important. But doing nothing to clarify or dispel negative impressions has a compounding destructive add-on effect: 

The Use of AI in Human Resources Could Come with Peril

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

Most everyone will agree that technology has been introduced at an alarmingly increasing rate. So much so that it seems we have little time to become competent in one version before it is replaced by another, impairing the touted “it will make you more productive” claims meant to reassure us. Now we see Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) being pushed onto our phones, out desktop browsers and applications, to mundane equipment we use daily in our lives, robots to replace workers and now human resource department functions to make hiring decisions of humans (but, ironically, not for robots).

On matters concerning technology implementation by the consumer and the effects of technology on consumers, lawmakers have been slow to act or are absent from the discussion. Consequently, decisions on the ethical use, consumer privacy, theft of intellectual property and proprietary information, and cybersecurity in general are decided by the profit-oriented initiators of the technology. And when Wall Street investors latch on, the push to proliferate the new technology to all corners of society are overwhelming…until the next fad comes along that investors can cash in on.

Specifically, with regard to cyber breaches, “there were 2,365 cyberattacks in 2023, with 343,338,964 victims. Around the world, a data breach cost $4.88 million on average in 2024. Business email compromises accounted for over $2.9 billion in losses in 2023.”

New Year’s Resolutions That Can Right This Skills Gap…Thing

by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor and President of the North-Central Ohio Employer-Based Worker Training Partnership

Jessie Potter, Director of the National Institute for Human Relationships, is said to have originated the quote, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten.” For the last 40 years, manufacturing employers have expressed their despair at “not finding the skilled workers they need,” while employees say employers are not doing their share to train workers and educational institutions churn billions of dollars each year doing their best to develop entry-level workers with industry level skills only to find those targeted jobs were sent overseas. With the new year upon us, maybe it is time for all parties to take a step back, face the issue honestly and pragmatically and put an end to the buck passing, the “shell game” and the misplaced expectations to make the American workforce the envy of the world.

There are three important stakeholders in this equation going forward: the employer, the prospective employee and the institutions that make the effort to prepare workers for the employer. Although prospective workers can come from any background and prior experience, it is a relatively linear path to the employer’s front door. What happens next has seems to be a bit of a mystery to the employer and stakeholders in the community, and that ambiguity affects the quality of the inputs preparing potential workers.

The Prospective Employer Needs: Read More

What Makes Proactive Technologies’ Accelerated Transfer of Expertise™ So Effective

by Proactive Technologies, Inc. Staff

There are a lot of buzzwords thrown around these days. “Skills Gap,” Education-Based Apprenticeships, Industry-Recognized Certifications, “STEM and STEAM” – many confusing to those in management whose primary function is to ensure products and services are delivered in the most cost-effective and profitable way. It can be especially confusing to those who are specialists in business operations but unfamiliar with effective worker development strategies.

For anyone unfamiliar with Proactive Technologies’s PROTECH™ system of managed human resource development for the accelerated transfer of expertise™, it might help to clarify what makes this approach to worker development and continuous worker improvement so effective. This unique approach, in practice since 1986 and always improving, was designed by someone who endured the pressures of maintaining the highest quality staff in a world of constant change and pressures to do more with less.

We start by collecting client data about each of their targeted job classifications; data that is all around anyway (e.g. people’s heads, operator’s notes, engineering processes, quality standards, EHS specifications). Usually, we find that this information isn’t readily available or discoverable by new hires and incumbents. This makes learning and mastering the tasks — unpredictable, ineffective, open to interpretation and conflicts (including legal), costly and not conducive of standardization of high performance. And the continual revision of all of these bits of information adds to the challenge and makes process improvement and implementation efforts difficult, at best.

Read the full January, 2025 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Seems Like Decades Pass and the Top Worker Development Topic Remains the Same

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In a recent article appearing in HR Dive by Carolyn Crist entitled, “Executives and Workers Alike Say Entry-level Workers Seem Unprepared” she starts with, “Although leaders say workers don’t have enough training to be hired, employers also don’t appear to offer adequate training.” “Only 48% of employees and 12% of mid-level executives believe today’s entry-level workers are well-prepared, the report found. The entry-level employee pipeline is broken,” Jourdan Hathaway, chief marketing officer at General Assembly, said in a statement. “Companies must rethink how they source, train and onboard employees. There are evidence-based approaches to improving workforce readiness.”

While the article focuses on recent report findings, the article touched on the crux of the problem; little has changed and very little is done by employers to mitigate the problem of inadequately prepared entry-level workers. The author pointed out, “At the same time, employers don’t provide enough training, both groups said. A third of executives and more than a quarter of employees said that companies don’t provide enough training to new hires. In fact, those who said entry-level employees seem unprepared were also more likely to work at a company that they felt doesn’t provide enough training.”

This is a two-fold problem; employers say entry-level workers lack preparedness and employees say employers do not provide training. Specifically, regarding preparedness, “One of the top reasons these workers seem unprepared is a lack of soft skills, according to 49% of executives and 37% of employees. About 40% of Gen Z respondents said that lacking soft skills is a major shortcoming among entry-level workers. Both executives and employees also said entry-level workers don’t have the right attitude or technical skills.” This in spite of the billions in education budgets and additional billions in special programs meant to drive those outcomes higher. Digging a little deeper, employers have been reluctant, or unable to, explain to local educational institutions what they precisely need of entry-level candidates and educational institutions are not connected enough to ask the right questions and know if the answers are credible. This gap continues to grow if the job targets continue to change and the conversation does not continue.

Should Supervisors Be Expected to “Lead” If Not Trained for Their Job AND The Jobs of Those They Lead?

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

Employers are faced with a lot of challenges these days. Corporate structures are putting pressures on local management to extract higher and higher efficiencies and to endlessly lower costs. These directives tend to vacillate with the earnings report seasons, but always assume that the supervisors and managers who are expected to implement these orders have received proper training to do so with, in some cases, fewer and fewer resources. Nearly anyone can master driving a car, but it takes an entirely different skill set to fix it…with disappearing tools and a shrinking budget to replace them.

When it comes to first line supervisors, sometimes they are selected for the ability to “go along and get along.” Others may be selected from among consistently performing workers in the area because of their knowledge, demonstrated expertise and performance of their work. Often when selecting supervisors, managers lack the opportunity to assess other leadership qualities or to provide remediation of areas of weakness. Without benchmarks, tools and standards in place to train workers, a prospective supervisor selected may not become the most fully trained worker upon which to add management responsibilities.

In a more dire situation, a supervisor may be selected with no background or experience with the work or workers performing the work they are assigned to supervise. In both cases, proper training of supervisors would be greatly beneficial and appreciated, including training on the tasks for which they are monitoring workers performance as well as new administrative tasks. The latter includes tasks such as filling out necessary forms, communicating both ways in the chain of command, scheduling and monitoring work and even providing minimum assistance to their workers to help them better perform their tasks given the changing constraints and expectations that often arise.

New Employer-Based Worker Training Partnership Coming to North-Central, Ohio

by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center

Conspicuously absent from worker development strategies has been the employer who says they need the qualified workers. In north-central Ohio, a new partnership has formed that will make a more directed effort of helping to develop the human assets employers need to fuel their business strategy.

Metrics within companies and throughout the nation emphasize the need for a more job-relevant and complete worker development effort; a system connected from per-hire development to post-hire maximization of worker capabilities. Some may might think this sounds like a “European-style model” of apprenticeships, and it does have that philosophical connection. But here in the United States our educational institutions and workforce development agencies are not structurally aligned yet to accommodate that, but a regional alliance could be.

I have lived in Ohio my entire life. I’ve served in the military and witnessed the armed forces way of technical training. I worked in private manufacturing and have been involved in workforce development at the state level and while at The Ohio State University-Alber Enterprise Center and several other educational institutions. Looking at the same challenge from different angles gives one a broader perspective.

Lately, though, I can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu over my déjà vu. Since the 1980s, I have witnessed an ongoing creation, destruction, realignment, reinvention of the landscape of local manufacturing, as well as all the workforce development agencies and providers trying very hard to be relevant and support them. The target hasn’t stopped moving and neither have all of the lagging inputs, but trying, to stay aligned.

Looking to Cut Costs in All the Wrong Places

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

When employers are pressured to desperately seek costs to lower, most tend to overlook the most obvious that stares them in the face every day: the cost of underdeveloped or undeveloped and, therefore, under-utilized worker capacity. In any other case, management would intervene when a major asset requiring an ongoing investment isn’t able to maximize a return simply because the effort to deploy the asset is incomplete. Instead, they select for cutting the one area that has become the norm: labor itself. They mistakenly make the sweeping mistake of cutting labor to make the short-term numbers look better, choosing to push the underlying issue down the road to a time with the same challenge and greater pressures. What is that old adage of “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face?”

In meetings with employers to discuss with them an approach that will quickly develop each worker to “full job mastery” no matter if new-hire, incumbent, a reassignment or just part of cross-training, the reaction is mixed. Many simply have no idea to what degree their longest-term incumbent workers have fully mastered all of the tasks that are assigned to their job classification. Is it 35%? 50%? Surely not 100% since there are no records to prove it. Even if they once had an idea, how many times has the job been changed by new products, new technologies, LEAN process improvements and job redesigns? Remember, these workers become the default trainers of other workers needed.

Read the full December, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Lack of Immediate “Big Win” Puts Improvements in Worker Capacity on Chopping Block…For Short-Term Focused Management Cultures

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Let’s face it, discussing the desperate need for worker training to build consistent performance, increased worker output and compliance, is a hard sell in any boardroom. The first question is usually, “how much is this going to cost us?” Not “what is the investment and how will we realize the return?” Since accountants, who are not trained in any aspect of worker development, have more weight in this type of showdown, guess who wins.

Shareholder gains are measured in terms of quarterly profit margins; try explaining the merits of building a stronger, more resilient and retained workforce and the value of increasing worker capacity, increasing work quantity, quality and compliance over yawns and disinterest. It usually takes decades of unintentional or intentional neglect to weaken a firm’s workforce; it stands to reason the solution won’t bring exciting monetary returns in a quarter.

There is plenty of shared blame for this state of disconnect. Human resource professionals, training and development experts, and education in general have focused their workforce development solutions promotion on products they have – the quick and simple classroom and online products. It simple and familiar to everyone. That is the domain they have the most experience in, having taken classes in college. These products are great for pre-employment core skill development and post-hire core and general technical skill (if properly aligned), but these represent “transfer of knowledge,” not “transfer of task-based expertise.”

Task-Specific Performance Reviews – An Accurate Metric for a Structured On-Job-Training Outcome

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

We have all been through it. For decades this has been the topic of comedy shows and movies…the dreaded annual performance review. And when it is over, we might tell our confidants how non-reflective of reality and unfair it was. We calm down over the next few months and grow more anxious each month as we get closer to the next one thinking we are at its whim.

Why are they used? Are they supposed to be a good measure or performance or just a way to meet a human resources department obligation? More times than not they seem like a justification for not giving a wage increase than guidance on how an employee can continually improve and contribute to the organization.

It is bewildering why management would spend the time and money, and risk employee morale time and again, on an employee measurement that isn’t.

The PROTECH “Plug-n-Play” Solution for Workforce Development

Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff

The PROTECH Approach to Workforce Development Was Designed for Employers and is a Logical “Plug-n-Play” Solution to Bridge Employers with Local Workforce Development Resources.

The PROTECH© system of managed human resource development and the accelerated transfer of expertise™ approach:

• Is designed exactly to the employers’ job classifications – incorporating the employer’s work processes (developing standard processes where not available), engineering specifications, quality specifications and safety requirements;
• Creates a structured on-the-job training infrastructure – ready to train new-hires, cross-train workers AND close incumbent workers training gaps;
• Requires a low and declining per trainee investment;
• Lowers employer’s internal costs of worker development while increasing worker capacity, work quantity and quality, and compliance (i.e. with engineering and safety specifications, as well as quality programs such as AS/AS/IATF and NADCAP);
• Lower worker turnover for employers and with sustained higher worker engagement;

Finding the Balance Between Wages, Entry-Level Skills and Opportunities for Advancement

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

During the path toward recovery after events such as the Crash of 2008 and the Covid-19 shutdowns, many employers that had to lay-off skilled workers tried to find some of those workers (in whom a great investment was made) and bring them back for rehire. Some were not needed, some could not be found, some moved on to what they thought were safer career tracks and some inexplicably “dropped out” of the labor force.

Concurrently, employers initially continued a push to drive wages down. Some of it was rationalized by the swollen labor pool, some of it was to take advantage of the economics of desperation due to job loss and some, it was said, to position the company competitively. Some was because everyone else was doing it, and some of it was because the investors demanded it.

The result is a world in which economic theory no longer supports reality. For example, unemployment is reported at a celebrated low 4.3 percent through September, 2024. Yet wages continue to decline in many areas. Most credible economic theories state that when the supply of labor becomes scarcer, wages tend to increase to reflect that scarcity. This is simply a supply and demand issue.

Read the full November, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Economic Development Opportunities – An Important Incentive in Attracting Companies to Your Region

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

When organizations try to create new jobs in their area – working with companies that are considering moving to, expanding to or expanding within their areas – skilled labor availability for many regional economic development strategies may include an offering that consists of one part skills assessment, one part general skill classes and a sprinkling of worker tax credits or grants. That seems to be what most incentive packages include, but is that because: A) that is what the other offers look like; b) it has been like that for decades; C) it is assumed that is all that is available; or D) all of the above?

For over forty years headlines sounded the alarm that those institutions that were training the workforce of tomorrow were not succeeding in their effort as discussed in, “An Anniversary That You Won’t Want to Celebrate: Years Later and The Skill Gap Grows – Is it Finally Time to Rethink The Nation’s Approach?“). Many skilled workers that are available to work do not have the skills that employers need today. Not completely satisfied with their answer to the inevitable question regarding the region’s skilled labor availability and how workers with specific skill needs will be found or developed, some economic development organizations are exploring other options and opportunities.

“Whether attracting new companies and helping them thrive and expand, or helping existing business to do the same, this approach is an important component of any economic development strategy.”

Increasing Worker Capacity – An Alternative to Cutting Workers for Short-term Cost Savings

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

In business, if you encounter market “softness” and believe that the business level that you were previously operating at is now unsustainable – even if for a limited period – you might be tempted to first cut time for training, then “cut labor costs” to extend short-term cash flow and/or make the balance sheet appear healthier for investors. It often becomes a slippery slope that can lead some organizations struggling to get off. Sometimes the pundits’ forecasts were inaccurate or the recovery is swifter than anticipated. Regardless, what appear as a benign short-term solution can have long-term repercussions as the market recovers and the employer is now struggling to regain the capacity the workers afforded, while watching opportunity slip by.

Sometimes investments are made in machinery and technology during the lulls to get ready for the economic up-turn, but too rarely is any effort made to determine the level of each worker’s current capacity (i.e. what percent of the tasks they were hired to “expertly” perform) relative to the job they are currently in and what could be done to increase it to handle not only existing technology and processes, but the new technology and processes as well. One might even think about cross-training workers to build “reserve capacity.”

Too often, in this age where every quarterly report has to be as good or better than the one before – actually earnings per share – even if the economy currently doesn’t allow it, well-run businesses are pressured to cut into the bone; driving down wages, cutting benefits and ultimately eliminating workers. Investment in worker training isn’t permitted. It doesn’t take an accounting genius to make sweeping, ill-informed cuts, but it does take a pretty savvy leader to recognize and avoid the perilous track or, worse yet, pick up the pieces after these mistakes have been made.

“That is the one point missed in all of the cuts to wages, benefits and staff; the first wave affects those who have no choice, the second wave affects the company as those with choice exercise it and move on.”

Education-Employer Partnerships That Work

by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center

A lot is being said these days about “employer-responsive” worker training programs. I think all educational institutions want to believe they have all the answers to all of the challenges employers face. Although I have found that we had many of the answers for many disciplines, it was important to realize our limitations and either find other resources to fill the gap or be truthful with the client so that they might look elsewhere for those answers and solutions.

While a program manager for The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center, which I worked at since its early beginnings in 1996, I learned the value of listening to the employer and providing them what they needed. The Center was founded on the premise of providing educational and technical consulting services to business enterprises throughout the region to help them grow and prosper. Whether to help them train their workers to the latest in technical skills or train their management on the latest management theories and best practices, the Alber Center assembled an extensive network of institutional and private training providers to meet their needs and continued to expand their network to help employer-clients maintain their competitive best.

While we felt The Center did a good job of providing foundation skills for all levels of an operation, we recognized that an educational institution cannot, and really should not, provide employer-specific, task-based training. It is not economically feasible for The Center to maintain the staff and expertise to service every small, medium and large enterprise in our region on processes that are unique to each. It takes a high level of maintained excellence to perform the necessary job and task analysis, develop the employer-specific training materials, train the employer’s staff to effectively implement structured OJT and mange this “systems approach” to build on the foundation our other programs provide.

WATCH VIDEO INTERVIEW

by Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff

James Ruble. Director of CTE & Student Pathways, Tri-Rivers Career Center & Center for Adult Education and Dean Prigelmeier, Founder and President of Proactive Technologies, Inc. sit down for a 30-minute interview with Kayleigh Aiken, Anchor of “Public Affairs.”

Mr. Ruble discusses Tri-Rivers Career Center’s range of workforce development services to provide employers with prospective employees. The Center develops students with the foundation skills upon which employers can build employer-specific/work-specific skills they need. He elaborates on new school initiatives to help employers and position the Career Center to be more of a partner for economic development.

Mr. Prigelmeier explains the widening training gap he witnessed that drove him to leave manufacturing and develop a software-supported worker development infrastructure and system that provides all of the tools of the human resource development and performance management process. Any change to the job requirements and all of the tools are updated to include it. Proactive Technologies provides infrastructure development and technical implementation support to make sure the investment is maximized and the client employer can focus on business.

“I wanted to make available to small, medium and larger companies the training development infrastructure and support of a Fortune 250 company, except with far greater returns for a tiny fraction of the investment. This approach is efficient, economical and leads to higher worker ROI and clear justification for the effort,” explained Prigelmeier. “By building an infrastructure around what most employers already have – an informal, ad hoc, undocumented and immeasurable one-on-one training experience – this approach cuts the employer’s internal direct and opportunity costs of training and quickly increases each worker’s capacity to full job mastery. Full job mastery means increases in work quantity, work quality and compliance (e.g. ISO, AS, IATF, NADCAP and safety). Each worker’s development – no matter if a new-hire, incumbent or cross-trainee – is driven to the same level of expertise established by the employer’s existing experts, with the progress towards mastery tracked, documented and reported monthly.”

“I like to partner with educational institutions such as Tri-Rivers Career Center whenever possible to better align all of their good work in preparing workers’ foundation skills, industry-general and industry-specific skills with, now, an employer’s internally structured on-the-job training infrastructure,” said Prigelmeier. “That’s how you continue to build upon the foundation laid and give every candidate an opportunity to succeed – a win for the worker, the employer, the community and region.” Watch the Video

Read the full October, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

The Worker Development Puzzle… For Many

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

After many years of setting up and providing technical support for employer-based structured on the job training programs, I can say with confidence that most, if not all, employers have significant weaknesses in their worker development process. If pressed, I believe most employers are aware of it, but have become comfortable with the mistaken notion that “it is what it is.,” Some are unaware and frustrated at the lack of results when hiring new workers to maintain or build capacity; accountants show signs of concern when hiring adds labor costs and often results in lower production output. Others in management may be concerned with unsustainable poor output quality or an increase in product or service scrap or rework.

Hiring more workers is not always the answer to the apparent lack of capacity to take on new product lines and new projects. Many employers overlook the fact that there is a tremendous amount of untapped capacity among the existing workers who have never had a chance to be fully trained for the jobs for which they were hired. The reason: most companies have remained in the unstructured, informal, undocumented one-on-one task-based training mode – even though the tasks are often transforming and the skills required for jobs have continued to increase in complexity.

Understanding the “chemistry“ of worker development is key to maximizing the return on worker skills and efficiencies. If an enterprise is struggling to increase output given the current staffing levels, adding new workers to compensate may often yield even less output. The simple reason being that a new person with no demonstrated skills or relevant capabilities is paired with a higher paid subject matter expert who is to transfer their expertise in an unstructured, ad hoc and undocumented manner. For however long this unstructured experience takes, one person who used to be very productive is now training a worker who has little or no productivity, doubling the loss of capacity rather than increasing capacity to increase productive output. As production output falls, the subject matter expert trainer may feel compelled to take up the production slack – putting more distance between them and the trainee. During the probationary period, the new-hire doesn’t know what they don’t know and what is not being trained, so they may feel the only solution is to lay low.

This experience can take 2 to 3 times longer than necessary and the new worker may be trained to only 20% of the required tasks that management and expects. For however long this takes to transfer a full job set of expertise, two people (not one) are drawing pay and underproducing.

The only way to get the subject matter expert back to work so they can continue to produce at the high level previously witnessed and add a fully functional and capable new employee to the aggregate capacity, is to structure the on-the-job training process. Structured on-the-job training (“SOJT”) is task-based, including all of the critical tasks that make up the job classification. If an operation has standard work instructions, these can be incorporated into the SOJT infrastructure, which helps with ISO/IATF/AS and NADCAP compliance. Read More

Lessen Gen Z Workplace Anxiety – Make Training Deliberate and Engaging

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

In an article in Business Insider entitled, “Gen Z is bringing a whole new vibe to the workplace: anxiety,” author Eve Upton-Clark tried to shed some light on a contemporary topic considered enigmatic by some and over-blown by others; Generation Z and its journey into the workplace.

Understanding generational shifts in behaviors and expectations are a never-ending role of employers and their management. Having a better insight can make the experience a little less challenging for everyone.

In her article she writes, “Anxiety is driven by uncertainty,” Ellen Hendriksen, a clinical psychologist and the author of “How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety,” said. Because they grew up in the digital age with nearly unlimited amounts of information at their fingertips, Hendriksen said, Gen Z has the least experience with uncertainty. “When you need to know where to go, you can pull up Google Maps,” she said. “If you are going to a new restaurant, you can look at the menu ahead of time. There’s a lot of certainty in this world now which didn’t exist before.”

She continues, “But at work, there’s often a lack of certainty — which gets exacerbated in a remote workplace where it is easy to avoid confrontation. “Anxiety is maintained by avoidance,” Henriksen said. “Our first reaction when we are anxious is often to avoid the thing that is making us scared, and so if we are anxious about speaking in a meeting, we might remain silent. If we are anxious about taking phone calls, we’ll let those calls go to voicemail.” Further, “Whether sensing when a presentation has gone on too long or understanding the subtext of what someone is saying, managing how you work is a fundamental skill.”

Whether a Gen Z or Baby Boomer, how we are trained once hired is a crap shoot. The ubiquitous “Bob, this is Julie. Why don’t you show her around” is institutionalized as what most employers call “on-the-job training.” Read More

The Employers Have the Most Advanced Equipment Available for Training

by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center. Currently an Independent Business Consultant

Community and technical colleges, career centers and joint vocational schools have always struggled with how to make a positive difference in workforce training. They often bear the brunt of criticism for the “skills gap” employers report when, in reality, employers share equally in the responsibility. Educational institutions have only the resources and capacity to provide core skill training upon which only employers can then provide on-the-job training to drive trainees to the job mastery needed.

Educational institutions are often tempted to assume more of the employer’s role in worker development but run into budget, feasibility and practicality limitations. This distracts them from their very important role of maintaining perpetually relevant core skill and related technical instruction that a high-quality technical education requires. Trying to provide all things to all employers never was the role of educational institutions so they should not take it too personally when good-intentioned efforts do not reach the expectations for them.

These institutions are often encouraged to use their limited resources to buy equipment or build facilities in order to support “customized, hands-on training.” The employer already has the facility and the latest technology in that community. The hard part has been convincing the employer that the school has a viable strategy that makes the employer want to imbed structured on-the-job training into the onsite natural order of learning the job. It would be even harder to convince them a training program, targeting a specific job of theirs, can be more effective offsite at a training facility than onsite.

Technology shifts so fast these days, and the focus of workforce training is so volatile, that it makes little sense for educational institutions to purchase equipment for training when only a few employers have similar equipment and the equipment may be obsolete before the school gets through the purchasing, installation and instructor training stages let alone before someone completes a 2-year training program. In addition, the company or companies that were targeted for this training might be acquired, closed or moved – leaving before any return on the investment of time, money and facilities are realized. Read More

Keeping Employers Engaged in Regional Workforce Development Projects

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Billions of dollars have been spent on workforce development projects funded by the state and federal governments in the last 20-30 years. However, from the tone of the discussions surrounding workforce development projects and participants today, it seems that the same things that were troubling employers in 1980 are still troubling them today.

Getting an employer to sign up for a grant-funded workforce development project should not be that difficult, if the brands and reputations of the institutions promoting the project are sound, and the project concept appears logical, achievable and will in all likelihood contribute to the employer’s business model. But once the pitch has been made to the employers and the bold outcomes projected, keeping the employers engaged for the duration of the project and beyond can be difficult.

One thing that I have found in setting up and maintaining long-term projects is making sure the person, or people, at the initial meeting are the right ones. “Worker development” seems to fall within the domain of the employer’s human resources department. But not all human resources managers are the same. Some are fresh from college and may not yet have experience with concepts such as meaningful on-the-job training, integration of worker training with ISO/IATF/AS and NADCAP compliance, etc. Some tend to be generalists and may enthusiastically agree with a project concept but are out-of-sync with their production and quality manager’s view of the world. While you may be able to get the human resources manager on-board, the human resources manager may not reflect the interest or concerns of the more influential production or operations management and staff.

Unfortunately, this may not be discovered until months into a project. If the operation’s management and staff were briefed on the project (sometimes they are not), out of deference to the human resources manager the other key stakeholders may not voice concerns or ask pertinent questions that may influence the nature of the project. This may later start to percolate up and bring the organization’s participation in the project to a halt. Read More

Read the full September, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Reluctant to Reshore Due to Apparent Shortage of Skilled Labor? Don’t Be

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

These are relatively uncertain times for some manufacturers with supply chains that transcend borders to countries subject to punitive tariffs, and/or social, political and economic unrest. Knowing where to invest time and precious resources isn’t as clear as it was a couple of decades ago, yet that is the situation many are in.

We all remember how quickly companies relocated part (in some cases all) of their operations, and/or prodded their suppliers to do the same, to lower wage, lower regulation and lower property cost environments – regardless of the transport costs, and risks of regional instability and supply chain disruption. As those economies developed and the associated operational costs increased, those perceived savings continued to erode. And as regional instability rose, many employers started to plan their next move. Once again, the U.S. looks like a viable site alternative.

One over-hyped and inaccurate factor in the U.S. is the shortage of skilled labor, which some workers see as a veiled attempt to justify importing labor who will take the job for significantly less. There are plenty of skilled labor available who were displaced during the Crash of 2008, or displaced by the trade wars, and who had to change career course to feed their families. Many of these workers are still waiting and could be quickly and easily “re-tooled” for today’s manufacturing jobs with a focused structured on-the-job training program. Some are kept from seeking out these opportunities by wages and benefits for the job they once had now offered at 50% – hardly enough to attract skilled candidates back not to mention for retaining a “skilled worker.”

Challenge Employees with Self-Improvement Opportunities to Head-off Burnout

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

Let’s face it. Routine work can be boring. Doing the same work for extended periods can affect an employee’s attitude toward their job, employer and life. There are things employers can do to alleviate the tedium of work they need performed, keeping the incumbent employee interested and engaged and the new-hire curious and open-minded.

Workers of all ages are showing frightening levels of decline in engagement with their work. According to a recent Gallup survey, “The New Challenge of Engaging Younger Workers:”

• “42% of employees who are looking to find a new job say they feel their company is not maximizing their skills and abilities.” (Deloitte)
• Among the reasons for quitting, career development is the most common for employees that leave within their first 90 days in a company. (Work Institute)
• According to LinkedIn research, “94% of workers say they would be more likely to stay at a company if it invested in their career.”

With the natural increase in retirements and the loss of technical expertise, losing workers unnecessarily seems to be risk no one would want to take.

The Challenges of “Team Building” Projects

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

We have all been there. Assigned to a project along with several others and declared “a team.“ Sometimes they work well, sometimes they result in endless meetings, endless meaningless reports, rivalries between team members as some jockey for position to be seen by management, or worse yet, the team is hijacked by that one self-appointed “leader” in the group that is convinced they know everything, but evidence shows quite the contrary…and the more that is pointed out, the more they feel threatened and push back.

Team building is a “collective term for various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams, often involving collaborative tasks.” It is also a management tool to “expose and address interpersonal problems within the group.”

Whenever people join together to work on a common project, no matter if it is two people or 20 people, the organizational dynamics and personality differences, the aspirations of the individuals and each member’s level of dedication and self-motivation will determine the outcome of the project more than the importance of the assignment itself. In cases where that one, perhaps overly ambitious, individual who has learned to control the agenda through intimidation, or the team wanders without direction, other team members (and potential team members for future projects) may react in various ways – some very undesirable. These include:

Replicating Your Best Performers

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

One project I was involved with sought to establish a structured on-the-job training program for a “CNC Operator” position and establish an apprenticeship. It consisted of around 40 different machines; manual and NC-operated of several brands, controller types and purposes. When I perform a job/task analysis on a job classification – task by task – I first contact the resident “subject matter expert.” It is my experience that in lieu of accurate standard process documents that everyone can use when assigned a machine, each operator keeps their own setup and operation notes. They are usually reluctant to share them.

As analysts, we assume that if the subject matter expert is assigned to us, it is a reflection of management’s confidence in the operator’s consistently high level of performance. We also learn a lot about the sub-culture that has arisen at the organization, bordering on “work performance anarchy.” Despite the connotations, this is a useful revelation. This lack of vital information sharing that has been going on can be eliminated. The collective wealth of task-specific information can be screened, validated, standardized and revision-controlled to be shared with all who are asked to perform the tasks.

This highlights several other preexisting issues in addition to the obvious. First, if the company is ISO/AS/IATF certified, an auditor would be appalled and likely “gig” the company for the use of uncontrolled “process documents.” Notes in toolboxes and lunchboxes are not revision controlled. If the company has even questionable process documents that they claim drive their “high level of quality performance” the existence of operator notes are a strong contradiction. A client visiting the site may have serious doubts about the practices, as well.

Read the full August, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Confusion Over What Constitutes “Training” is Stumbling Block to Effective Worker Development Strategies

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

For the anyone searching for information to help them choose a worker development strategy, a web search of “on-the-job training methods” might produce thirty or forty informative, but confusing, charts. The search result is a mixture of domains, methods, philosophies – one seemingly in conflict with the other. A non-practitioner of workforce development strategies can gather from this search result alone why there is a perpetual state of confusion between even “experts,” marked by decades of employer and trainee disappointment in the lack of recognizable strategies and outcomes, which are often devoid of meaningful results.

Over the years, approaches and methods have evolved out of their ineffectiveness, many diverging from the basic principals of workforce development. Markets for products to address these approaches grew and well-funded marketing began to find unaware customers. The notion of “training” morphed into branded versions of “learning,” selected not so much on their basis in logic, but more on the lack of “smart” choices and how well the marketing effort worked.

“A great first step is to clearly differentiate between “learning” and “training.” The strategies, methods of delivery and outcomes for each are very different. Without such clarity, one might mistakenly invest heavily in a strategy to accomplish worker development objectives that, instead, uses up vital resources and scarce opportunity, and sours the organization’s attitude toward training for years to come.”

Employers Say They Struggle With a “Skills Shortage,” Yet They Cut the Training Budget. What Gives?

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

Everywhere you read these days, you find commentary on the “skills gap” that employers seem to face when trying to find the workers they need for their critical job classifications. Either there is a skills gap or there isn’t, and more and more economists are challenging that premise. Some, like Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman, say that if there is such a skills gap creating a shortage of skilled labor, then wages should be skyrocketing for those positions in a capitalistic, free market model.

Some point to the exploitation of loop-holes in the U.S. H-1B visa program, recently highlighted in a CBS 60 Minutes episode entitled “You’re Fired” that allows employers to replace long-time, experienced employees with lower-wage temporary workers (with no benefits) from countries such as India – even requiring the laid off worker to train their replacement or forego severance pay.

Yet other companies, genuinely experiencing a shortage of skilled workers in their region, seem to either accept the skills gap theory as the norm or have made assumptions that the right skilled workers already came through the front door. Some surprise everyone by redirecting training dollars that should be used to make sure each employee can perform the tasks for which they were hired to programs that are meant to improve performance – skipping the obvious. Trying to improve the performance of employees before being certain they can perform each task exactly seems incredibly counter-intuitive. Focusing dollars on LEAN, Kaisan, Six Sigma, etc. before being certain that employees have mastered each required task may be not only be a waste of money but probably will need to be repeated if the employees finally do master each task, since by then they will have forgotten any improvement techniques or how to apply them to the processes they are performing.

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

by Dr. Dave Just, formally Dean of Corporate and Continuing Education at Community Colleges in MA, OH, PA, SC. Currently President of K&D Consulting 

“Jack of all trades, master of none” according to Wikipedia “is a figure of speech used in reference to a person who has dabbled in many skills, rather than gaining expertise by focusing on one.”

The shortened version “a jack of all trades” is often a compliment for a person who is good at figuring out how to fix and do things, and who has a broad knowledge base. These types may be a master of integrating diverse knowledge topics, such as an individual who knows enough from many learned trades and skills to be able to bring them together in a practical manner to perform a task that is a subset of a craft or trade area. This person considered a generalist rather than a specialist.

There are many examples of this. The individual who can do his/her taxes each year, but would not be qualified to do others. Someone who can figure out what is wrong with the dishwasher, but reaches a point where the repair is out of reach. A lawyer who has passed the bar, but failed to specialize in an area of law to be the “go-to” guy for a particular case.

The “master of none” element appears to have been added to the phrase later to augment the meaning of the compliment; making the statement less flattering to the person receiving it. Today, the phrase used in its entirety generally describes a person whose knowledge, while covering a number of areas, is superficial to all of them.

A Simple, Low-investment Solution to Closing Skill Gaps; New-Hires and Incumbents

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Proactive Technologies, Inc. has worked with many employers over the years, establishing and technically supporting cost-effective, task-based structured on-the-job training programs. For each employer, every effort is made to tailor the worker training system to accommodate the employer’s budget, job classifications (even unique training programs for each job classification in each department), business goals and manage the system through all types of change. Unlike some products or services that require the employer to change practices that work in order to utilize them, the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development  is built around what is working for the employer, incorporating established information such as work processes and specifications, safety standards, quality standards, etc. This approach minimizes the need for the employer’s culture to drastically change what works for them, focusing instead on improvements in an area of weakness.

“There is no doubt this approach is effective. After all, what is better: unstructured and haphazard worker training that cannot be explained, measured, improved or understood, or structured on-the-job training for all workers that is easily measured, implemented, improved and explained to auditors?”

The main steps used to build an employer-based structured workforce development system starts with understanding the desired outcome first: Read More

Read the full July, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.