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Proactive Technologies Report – September, 2022

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Who is Responsible for Decisions Regarding Training?

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

We sometimes run into a conundrum when promoting the concept of structured on-the-job training: finding who is responsible and accountable for the decision to provide training within an organization. It doesn’t seem like negligence, but it often feels like every decision-maker is saying it is someone else’s responsibility, sincerely believing the other has this important area covered. But it is also surprising when no one inside the organization asks who is responsible when any of the many symptoms of lack of training shows up.

In this environment that seems like “training anarchy,” it is easy for loud voices and strong personalities to step outside their zone of expertise to tackle, what may appear to be, a simple challenge – only to come up short. Sadly, although the proposed solution wouldn’t rise to that provided by an experienced professional or recognized as “training,” others may not know this. They might vent their disappointment by denigrating the notion of training or seek blame of the trainee saying things like “these workers just don’t want to be trained.” The legitimate role and purpose of training is tarnished, but never the solution’s architect.

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Enormous amounts of money in direct expenditures, workers and management time, opportunity costs, etc. could be expended, only to wind up at a under-whelming end. At the same time a seasoned expert in worker development would have predicted the failure if someone could coherently explain to them what the plan was. Far too often the training strategy boils down to putting two people together and hoping for the best, with a class here and a class there, a job/safety analysis that is never used, illustrated work processes that quickly grow obsolete and unusable, color-coded pie charts that really don’t say much and/or a policy saying workers will be trained that is ignored. Granted, a few of these strategies combined might provide recognizable progress if aligned and implemented correctly. But often each of these has a different brain behind them, residing in a different department with a different directive and budget – each unaware of the other’s activities. Read More

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.

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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. Read More

Workforce Development Partnerships with Substance: My Experience

By Randy Toscano, Jr., MSHRM, Executive Director of Human Resources, Paris Regional Medical Center

Partnerships between employers and local educational institutions/training providers are a tricky thing. Not every employer knows clearly what they need nor can they articulate the need, and not every educational institution can understand the need, or has products or services available or relevant enough to make a difference. If either of these realities are present, or worse both of them, it can make worker development partnerships difficult to disappointing.

Employers are closest to the work that they need performed by the worker, which is usually very different from the employer down the road. Yet employers rarely bother to document what makes up that work to articulate it in an understandable way to an educational institution or training provider. If you doubt that, take any of your job classifications and try to explain it in enough detail to train from it.

“Our partnership, located in northern Ohio, was the first implementation of the US Metalworking Skill Standards in the country.”

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When in doubt, some employers pull out a sample written process and a few random specifications for compliance to focus the discussion. Seriously, I have been in meetings when an employer pulled out a 15 year old job description, which was a cut-and-paste of a 20 year old job description, and gave it to the community college and said, “we need workers trained for this.” Not surprisingly, they are disappointed and disillusioned when what the community college came up with seems irrelevant when shown to workers currently in the job classification.

There are at least two critically important reasons why current and accurate job data makes or breaks a worker development partnership. First, the education and training provider’s role with related technical instruction is to build each candidate’s core and industry-general skills foundation upon which the employer can train them further for their employer-specific work tasks. If the employer cannot accurately define and express their specific needs for each job area they need workers to the training provider, everyone’s time and money is wasted. When that employer–specific data is unavailable, educational institutions turn to “industry-general” standards, developed by a panel of retired CEO’s and educators over coffee and donuts. It is better than nothing, but not even close to finishing the job of worker development. Read More

How Much Would “Full Worker Capacity” Through Full Job Mastery Be Worth to Your Firm?

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

According to Ed Timmons, CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, “our labor costs in the U.S. are still 20% too high.” If he means that employers may be paying too much for unused or unusable worker capacity, and they should seek methods to develop it, I can agree with that. If he means employers should focus on spending enormous amounts on finding alternatives to labor, or randomly cutting workers, or asking workers to work for less wages and less benefits, I would say “hold on a minute.”

Given the growing fear and discontent by workers who still haven’t recovered from the Crash of 2008 and now knocked down with the Covid-19 pandemic, they may want a seat at the discussion. These workers will be trying for some time to, once again, regain value in their 401K and other impacted assets and to rise to the wage level they once had for the talents they possess. Many have the perception, wrongly or rightly, that their employer and their shareholders built great profits while workers slid backward. Many families, today, are challenged by rising prices of nearly everything…against eroding wages. This preoccupation with driving down labor costs, while reporting to Wall Street record quarterly profits, may benefit shareholders in the short-run, but it is surely illusionary and self-destructive in the long-run as the Crash of 2008 should have demonstrated, but the Covid-19 pandemic might remind.

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As reported in Industry Week, a group of CEOs from major U.S. corporations, The Business Roundtable, released a statement saying that shareholder value is no longer its primary focus – shifting their practices to line up with their new definition of the “purpose of a corporation.” The new vision emphasizes investing in employees, supporting communities, dealing ethically with suppliers and providing customers with value. “The group signed the Business Roundtable’s new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation. It’s a sea change that moves companies away from the age-old philosophy that companies’ main goal is to look after shareholders.”

“There is an effective, proven alternative to cutting labor costs through gutting organizational capacity.”

Focusing solely on shareholder profits has stunted the long-term viability of many a thriving organization. Under the cover of “making the firm more efficient,” when more profits could not be derived from expanding the market and market penetration, some investors forced cuts on firms that determined the firm’s long-term capability to compete, take advantage of emerging market opportunities, and adapt to changing markets and turbulent economic forces. Read More

Read the full September, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

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Proactive Technologies Report – August, 2022

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Piece-Part Incentives Gone Wrong

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Sometimes we are tempted to take the easy route, even though it may cost more in the end, offer much less on the path to the desired outcome or cause us to repeat the effort another way. Shallow analyses and shortcuts often lead to unintended consequences. Changes to weaken metrics to convince us, or others, that progress is better than reality only postpones solutions to the underlying challenge. Too often we are focused on the search for a solution to a symptom and not the problem. The example I am about to share represents all of these tendencies.

As a Quality Control Line Inspector at an aerospace manufacturing facility in my early years, one of my first assignments was to in-process inspect work samples from several rows of NC Lathes, Mills and Grinders. I was assigned there with the implicit instructions to be on the look-out for “problems” identified by management: decreased quality yield, substantially high rates of scrap and rework, which lead to increased worker costs and lower returns. The proposed solution was more rigorous quality inspection of parts in-process before they became a component of an expensive sub-assembly or assembly.

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While making my rounds, meeting the operators and inspecting samples, it seemed I was seeing evidence that management identified the “problem” correctly. I say problem, but my feeling was that I had not gotten to the root cause of what I was observing. I was rejecting parts at nearly every work station, on every pass. I decided to dig a little deeper – get to know the operators a little better to see if I could determine why this was happening.

What I found out was that the operators were, for the most part, experienced and knowledgeable. They knew how to measure their products and should have been able to detect parts drifting out of tolerance. Yet, each station had two barrels – one for scrap and one for rework – as if it were foregone conclusion. And they were working at a very high rate of output with, voluntarily, no breaks or lunch. The effort expended seemed to run counter to the outcome. Read More

How Start-Ups and Joint Ventures Can Benefit from Structured On-The-Job Training

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

A article in a previous issue of the Proactive Technologies Report entitled “Enterprise Expansion/Contraction and Worker Development Standardization” explained the process of standardizing training for expanding, contracting, merging and acquiring enterprises. It discussed how to take inventory of incumbents and new-hires in training, and how to standardize multiple worker development strategies. But what about standardizing tasks that are in design, have just been designed or are evolving in their design? Or the importance of this component in creating an enterprise to perform the tasks meant to lead to profit from an innovation? If the goal is the repeatable high-quality performance of tasks once they have been formalized, then standardizing and documenting the procedural steps is necessary, though often an afterthought.

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Entrepreneurs and engineers that design and fine-tune a production process or service strategy are immersed in it until they feel confident it is ready for scaling. Whether through “expert bias” – the overconfidence that results with satisfaction in discovery leading to the opinion that everyone should understand their innovation – or through mere oversight, a brilliant idea can fail in proliferation during efforts to transfer the processes and techniques without a formal structure. Read More

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.

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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 recently 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.”

Some see this as a sort of hypocrisy; the publicized, frantic search for “skilled” and “talented” workers, while offering these skilled workers less for the job they once held with that employer or a similar employer in the industry. So, for now, many of those workers that are that skilled and talented abandoned the career of their choice for the career that pays the bills.

Unless employers can convince their shareholders that wages and benefits have to go up to attract the workers they prefer, employers will have to accept the candidates that remain of which there are plenty. These are the ones with the college degrees you see working in service positions, just waiting for an opportunity to apply their skills to a job with more substance. Read More

Quality Policies and Process Sheets Do Not Equal Training

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

A very common fallacy in business operations is that a description of what should be done listed in a quality policy, such as a quality control policy or a quality assurance plan, that seems to be sufficient for the training component of ISO/IATF/AS certification meets, therefore, the company’s training requirement in general. Perhaps this false equivalency is wrongly supported by the additional fallacy that the existence of standard work instructions is the equivalent of on-the-job training plans. Too often this is used to defend the belief that this replaces formal task-based training.

Sometimes this leads to the rationalization that if the company keeps it simple and barely meets what an ISO/IATF/AS auditor might accept for their certification purposes, the training requirement is covered. But an auditor at that stage is just looking at what the company is intending to do, not how they carry it out. That is discovered later.

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This false assumption is challenged when product or services turn up defective, and customers expect an explanation and a corrective action. This is when a weak, or no, connection can be drawn between the policy that guides quality standards, work processes and who trained and certified the employee to perform the task independently is discovered. This is when the records that exist, if any, do not support the assumption that mastery of the task ever occurred. This is when the customer loses faith in the producer or supplier – not just in the task(s) isolated in the one incident, but possibly performance of all tasks on which they depend.

From a learning perspective, manufacturing environments present hurdle after hurdle to learning and mastering the work to be performed. Unrelenting production schedules, technology advancements and continuous improvement efforts – all offer little room for deliberate task-based training while changing the task out from under the worker while they are trying to learn and master it. Read More

WELCOME MENNEL MILLING!

by Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff

Proactive Technologies, Inc. is happy to welcome Mennel Milling! Mennel has been milling wheat into flour since 1886. Whether for a restaurant chain or a food company of any size, Mennel can be counted on for all custom flour blend and bakery mix needs, perfecting over 300 recipes.

Mennel operates 13 country grain elevators throughout Ohio, Indiana and Virginia. Mennel has 26 industrial sites throughout the U.S.; 19 of them in Ohio. Thanks to their long-standing commitment to research and development, Mennel has a proven reputation for providing outstanding products. Their team of research scientists identify new applications for their flour and co-products, and as a result develop new or specialty post-milling processes and products.

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Proactive Technologies will be working with Mennel Milling to set-up and implement structured on-the-job training programs for new-hires and incumbent workers for positions such as Maintenance Technicians, Operator, Supervisor and Quality Assurance Technician. Read More

Read the full August, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

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Proactive Technologies Report – July, 2022

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Is It Possible to Improve Worker Performance Without Documented Task Mastery?

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

W. Edwards Deming said, “We are being ruined by the best efforts of people who are doing the wrong thing.” The inefficiencies, discrepancies, affects on morale and potential for adverse incidents would seem to make preventing this a priority. To make improvements given this condition seems to be, at most times, futile.

Often we are lulled into believing this phenomena doesn’t exist when products get produced and shipped, and services are provided. That is where the metrics are pointed – output. But how much is known about the effort, sometime struggle, to get there? Was the effort efficient, accurate and consistent? If we do not have definitive answers to these questions, how to improve performance will likely be as illusive and resources used in the attempt a waste.

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For many organizations, the only way to know the road was bumpy is through negative events; product scrap or rework, lost customers, operator injury or an outcome requiring legal intervention. Perhaps the oversight has been lacking due to a lean or “green” supervisory staff, or a lack of budget for the extra hours or equipment needed to monitor the process, or processes are unsettled and changing rapidly without those individuals performing them being immediately notified.

For any reason, relying on a negative event to prompt scrutiny can be very costly – much more than the investment needed to prevent this. Worse yet, an investigation too narrowly focused resulting in remedies that overlook the obvious reasons for the discrepancy may inject new uncontrolled variables. Many remedies become more disciplinary (e.g. reprimanding or firing the person(s) thought responsible, a complete audit involving all departments and staff, reassigning the process to another department, or delegating the process to one person who knows how to get around the systemic errors and barriers to produce the output expected…until that one person moves to another job or company and that “wisdom” is lost).

To determine to what degree this is an issue with your operation, you need only: Read More

Cross-Training Workers After Lean Efforts Builds Capacity Using Existing Staff

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

Lean activities to redesign processes for better efficiency in a department, or between departments, sometimes result in “surplus” workers – partially or in whole units. It is the subjective priority of Lean practitioners since it is a tangible illustration of a successful Lean improvement. Processes that previously needed 3 people to complete may now only need two, if the efficiency were discovered. So what happens to that one person that has valuable acquired expertise, representing a significant investment by the employer? Would the wise outcome of Lean efforts be to just cut that person from the lineup?

The short answer is most likely not. Any efficiency and cost savings brought about by the Lean redesign would be offset by the loss of the expertise for which the investment has already been made. Most likely the reason for the Lean was not in reaction to no return on worker investment, but rather a desire to increase the return on worker investment.

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If the worker is reassigned to another department, and no task-based training infrastructure is in place, that reassignment may lower the efficiency there which, again, reduces the gains made by the Lean effort. So part of the Lean effort must be the deliberate cross-training of workers in temporary assignments or longer-term reassignments to other departments that seem to have the need for increased staffing, perhaps as a result of the increased throughput achieved from the Lean effort in the upstream department in the chain.

Another outcome of a lean effort may not include moving personnel, but either equipment or processes out of the Leaned department into another department up or downstream, often without structured training to absorb the new activities and maintain efficiency. Here the loss of gains made are similar if no training on how to perform the processes or run the equipment is provided. 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.

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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.

In the event of an audit by an internal department, a certifying agency, a client or a prospective client, explaining how a worker is trained to master a task critical to a repeated high level of quality might be difficult to impossible. And answering how a worker, who is thought to have mastered a task, is updated when the process is improved, redesigned, affected by changes in technology, changeover of product line or part of an orchestrated improvement program might be even more difficult. Read More

Maximizing Worker Capacity Maximizes Shareholder Value…If Done Right

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

To many, “maximizing shareholder value” has become synonymous with layoffs and short-term cuts that will typically have harmful effects on long-term operational capacity. An often overlooked, but more productive, goal is “maximizing worker capacity” and should be a priority for every organization – publicly traded or not. Leaders of an organization are quick to say, “our workers are our greatest asset.” Yet, efforts to maximize returns on this asset are often hard to recognize or understand.

Maximizing a worker’s capacity maximizes worker value. Collectively, maximizing each worker’s capacity maximizes an organization’s value, and that of the shareholders. It is as simple as that.

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Publicly traded companies, and even some privately held companies getting ready to go public, seem preoccupied with increasing quarterly earnings per share above all else. A consistently high level of earnings per share over the long-run no longer seems adequate for some. If the market is slack, an organization might carve costs out of the company from even a lean operation rather than disappoint investors. When labor is viewed as a “cost” rather than an asset, the temptation might be to cut benefits and wages. This may prop-up numbers for the short-term, but a demoralized workforce might not produce the same levels of output and quality yield as before. Sadly, a decision might be made in following quarters to cut benefits and wages even more, followed by workers if needed to make the magic number. All the while, worker and operational capacity, along with enthusiasm and loyalty, are eroding.

How does this erosion happen? When workers are cut, the work they used to perform gets transferred to the remaining workers. If there isn’t a mechanism to quickly “transfer expertise” to the worker expected to take on the new responsibilities, capacity drops until the trainee comes up to speed. For as long as the transfer takes, one well-paid subject matter expert trainer is being paid to train the paid trainee, yet productivity improvement may be negligible. And further complicating the process, perhaps no one thought about capturing the exiting workers expertise before they left the building, so some “reinventing the wheel has to occur.” Multiply this across all affected workers and the labor and opportunity costs may wipe out any anticipated gains by cutting worker payroll.

Proactive Technologies Report has presented many articles about the value of workers, how structured on-the-job training increases the worker’s capacity to perform more tasks to a level of mastery, the high cost of worker turnover, and more. It is a concept we feel strongly about. Yet we are continually surprised how this topic is avoided by company’s accounting departments and upper management when they feel inclined to trim costs here and there, avoiding cultivating the enormous wealth before them – waiting to be harvested. What would be the value of just a 10% increase in worker capacity, operational capacity, quality and quantity of work, and worker compliance (safety, ISO/IATF/AS, etc.) to any operation?

Not to diminish the important role of investors, but there has been a lot written about whether maximizing shareholder value is a destructive rule that needs to be changed. Critic Steve Denning wrote in an article in Forbes published in 2011 entitled “The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value,” “Imagine an NFL coach,” writes Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, in his important new book, Fixing the Game-What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL, “holding a press conference on Wednesday to announce that he predicts a win by 9 points on Sunday, and that bettors should recognize that the current spread of 6 points is too low. Read More

Read the full July, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

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Proactive Technologies Report – June, 2022

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Appreciating the Value of Labor

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

For expanding and improving businesses that have the capital for the investment in new equipment or processes, attempting to become or remain competitive, the level of investment is not as important as the return on that investment. This consistent practice of determining where to best place capital for the highest return should apply to labor. What is “paid” for labor is not as relevant as the value it adds to the operation and, ultimately, profit; the return on worker investment.

The lack of appreciation for the difference between a “training cost” and a “training investment”  is understandable because it is rarely contrasted. The college textbook entitled Financial Accounting: An Introduction to Concepts, Methods and Uses, defines “direct labor cost” as the “Cost of labor (material) applied and assigned directly to a product; contrast this with indirect labor cost.” Indirect labor cost” is defined as, “An indirect cost of labor (material) such as supervisors (supplies).” There is no mention of an expected return on investment. Generations of cost accountants have been taught that there is no good that comes for higher labor costs, which to them is determined by the level of staffing and wage levels. There is no differentiation between strategic labor costs and uncontrolled labor costs.

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The profit from, and value of, most worker’s labor comes from task-based work, so all inputs that drive workers to high-performance, high-capacity output are investments.

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As discussed in many articles in past issues of the Proactive Technologies Report, although labor costs are considered direct costs from an accounting standpoint, they should be more importantly considered as an investment in the operation’s overall level of competitiveness. Operations may vary as to the level of return on investment from labor, but each worker’s cumulative expertise gained while employed becomes an asset to the operation akin to intellectual property and, therefore, wages and compensation paid to develop a worker are an investment. Read More

Have Advances in Technology Distracted HR From the Fundamentals of Worker Selection and Development?

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

Billions of investment dollars are driving the advancements in technology into every corner of our lives, including the selection and development of workers. Predictably, the emphasis often seems more on the technology and the money it can make for investors than the practicality for the end-user or those it effects.

It is not just the refrigerators that talk to your grocery store, or watches that talk to the phone in your pocket. Wall Street, with an accumulating mountain of cash, can drive any idea to fabricate a “trend” that often dissipates as quickly as it emerges, sometimes leaving disruption in the wake but yields a return for investors. For investors it is the means to an end. To many, it may negatively affect their life and their future.

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In the 1990’s, investors started to look at the National Security Agency’s and Central Intelligence Agency’s “key-word search” capabilities used to scan millions of documents from around the world for specific words and phrases to expand their intelligence gathering reach. They saw applications of this technology in the civilian world, including scanning the mounds of resumes and employment applications employers had to filter in order to find a few new-hires. On the surface, this seemed to be a godsend.

Soon employers and employment candidates saw what the developers of this technology did not. The technology first had to count on employers having accurately designed job descriptions in consistent formats, using standardized terms, words and phrases to describe pre-hire knowledge, experience, skills and abilities of interest. The fact was reality couldn’t have been farther from this, with job descriptions written 50 years prior, written precisely for someone the employer wanted to hire (not so reflective of the actual job requirements), or cut & pasted from a handy library resource. Read More

More Employers Finding Ways To Strategically Ensure Fair Pay

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

In an article appearing in IndustryWeek entitled “Trying to Ensure Fair Pay, Employers Are Changing Policies,” it noted that according to a recent employer survey “2018 Getting Compensation Right,” “60% of U.S. employers are planning to take some action this year to prevent bias in hiring and pay decisions.” Further, 53% “are planning on or considering adding a recognition program.”

The report went on, “37% percent are planning on or considering changing criteria for salary increases. Among employers not redesigning their programs, most are making changes to the importance of factors used to set base pay increases.”

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In short, the report led one to believe that employers overall wanted to make pay fairer, but one got the impression that there was no clear path. It is difficult in this environment to talk about raising workers wages without shareholders mounting a revolt. But with the reported shorted of skilled labor, the difficulty in training workers with a lean staff and no structure, strategy or record keeping, etc. an area of compromise has to be reached. If not, skilled workers will not apply, or stay, and the shareholder profits will definitely be affected. It is the “bullet that needs to be bit” to get the economy working like it did so well post World War II when everyone felt they had a chance at doing well for themselves and their family.

One easy-to-set-up, easy-to-implement, low investment/high return strategy for paying workers for the documented value the employee has accumulated has been discussed in previous Proactive Technologies Report articles, most recently “A Pay-for-Value Worker Development Program – Fair to Management and Workers, and Effective Too!” and previously in “Pay-For-Value Employee Programs.”

Developing each worker should be a linear process in spite of inputs from all direction. A person is selected based on closeness of fit with established criterion. The person is then trained on the units of work for which they will be responsible. Once proficient, the person routinely performs these tasks – evaluated at some point based on set criterion for their level of performance and, in some cases, compensation is assigned accordingly. Feedback on how to improve performance is given and additional incentivized development goals can be assigned to drive work performance even higher. Read More

Balancing the Need to Raise Wages with the Need to be Competitive by Increasing Worker Value

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

It is said employers are having a hard time finding workers. It may be due to some workers having time to think during the disruptions of the past few years and may be looking for jobs that are better aligned with their career goals. Some may still fear the status of the Covid-19 cases, and its variants, made confusing by the premature, incomplete and contradictory news reports. Some may want to return to work but are navigating the difficulties of child care and return to school policies that vary from district to district.

It appears employers have accepted that, for the short term at least and quite possibly the long-term, that they will need to reconsider their compensation structures if they are to attract the caliber of worker they need. Some feel that discussion is long overdue. Of course, raising wages and benefits is going to add to the cost of labor associated with production or services. If the shortage of supplies raising the costs of goods accelerate the reshoring of jobs to America, the competition for the best workers could get fierce.

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For decades employers have been laxed in their need to develop the most productivity and worker capacity from their workforce. It became more a hunt for “bodies“ than for developing more skilled workers. Most employers like to think that their in-house programs for training workers, once hired, meets their needs, but scratching the surface in most cases proves that there is very little structure, no plan, there is no documentation, and no sense of purpose. For most employers, people are hired, they are paired up with one of the existing workers and, hopefully, the existing subject matter expert will transfer expertise to the new worker to a level that, one day, might be recognizable.

Some companies that are struggling with high turnover, and/or a surge of growth, see many of these workers can get lost in the shuffle. Some continue to hire more “bodies” who then wait for someone to train them to do something. Workers that could have been star performers are let go because there is no structured way to measure the outcome of the training process to anyone’s satisfaction. Then again, many workers leave employers when they discover that there is no way to improve themselves in the job classification. Read More

WELCOME!

Proactive Technologies, Inc. welcomes SK Food Group, one of North America’s leading custom food manufacturing companies. They operate nine state-of-the-art facilities across the US and Canada, and employ more than 2,000 associates. SK Food Group supplies handcrafted sandwiches, wraps, snacks, flatbreads, burgers, protein snacks and more to the most respected foodservice brands, neighborhood cafes and Fortune 500 companies.

In the US, the company has locations in Phoenix, AZ, Columbus, OH, Reno, NV, Minneapolis, MN, Tupelo, MS. As leaders in the industry, they take an active role in ongoing scientific testing and food production safety, with a commitment to product safety and integrity.

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Proactive Technologies will be working with SK Food Group associates to set-up and implement structured on-the-job training programs for new-hires and incumbent workers for positions such as Maintenance Systems Technicians, Packaging Technicians and Quality Control – many of which to be registered as apprenticeships.

We look forward to working with the associates of SK Food Group!

Read the full June, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Posted in News

Proactive Technologies Report – May, 2022

Posted on by DPrigelmeierpti

Tips for Establishing Your Company’s Training Strategy – Practical, Measurable, Extremely Economical and Scalable

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

For most companies, an in-house training center doesn’t have to be brick and mortar, and doesn’t necessarily require additional equipment and personnel to support it. It is about focusing the resources already available to develop workers faster and to a much higher level of capacity. This does not happen by throwing dollars or classes at the problem; if that were the case many employers who did so would have solved the “skills gap” problem. It takes a more deliberate approach than that to achieve the outcome that has been out of reach, for many, for decades.

In previous articles, such as in the May, 2016 issue of the Proactive Technologies Report, “A Simple Solution to Skill Gaps – New-Hires and Incumbents” I described a simple, easy to implement strategy for developing new-hires and incumbent workers to full capacity. I emphasized that by focusing on the outcome, the proper inputs become clearer. But by focusing on the inputs, the connection to the outcome may not necessarily be clear. Any use of irrelevant, improper or ineffective worker development inputs means unnecessary costs with low or no return, wasted time and additional opportunity costs.

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Over the years, I have noticed that many employers’ idea of a worker training strategy is a hodge-podge of classroom and online training. This seems to be based on the assumption that all of the right people have been hired, they all have mastered the tasks of the job and that a few classes will drive each worker’s performance to higher levels.

Where does this assumption come from? Why do employers collectively settle for this type of model even though decades of experience and day to day worker performance offer many clues that this model of worker training is not as effective as hoped? Too often the feedback from workers attending classes is, “I don’t know why the company had me attend that class.” “That was a waste of time.” In an informal way, this is a form of “content validation,” or in this case “invalidation.”

“Conceptually, a better overall approach is simple, accurate, efficient and effective. If an employer isn’t including these simple steps in their worker selection, development and performance evaluation strategy the might be wasting company time, money and resources.”

This legacy approach is a comfortable model to explain. Everyone has attended school; some higher education as well. It is what we grew up with and the sentiment has become acceptance from familiarity. Some accept this approach because they are unaware of better alternatives. Some find comfort in being among the “herd.” Most of the employers seemed locked into this model, so it must be the right way to train workers. If this were true and reinforced with evidence, why after 30 years of concentrated application (as technology entered nearly every aspect of worker performance) the “skills gap” we all talk about has not only survived, but has actually grown? Read More

Structured On-The-Job Training Programs for Salaried Personnel

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

It is not just the hourly workers that, once hired, run into the “Bob, this is Sally. Why don’t you show her around” form of “training.” In environments where no structure exists to deliberately train hourly workers, supervisors and managers are similarly shown their desk and wished “good luck.” Yes, the company may offer a series of management courses that explain contemporary management theories, but often the most overlooked training is for the tasks against which performance is ultimately measured.

We frequently hear anecdotal stories about supervisors who are “thrown into the mix” of not only having to lead their workers to measured levels of performance, but concurrently learn their own job from their surroundings as best they can. Other supervisors and managers may be under the same pressure to focus on output, so they may be rarely available to mentor a new manager. Most likely, nothing was ever written down. Even worse, supervisors or managers who are new to the entire operation may have to learn what it is their employees do by observation before they can attempt to lead them to better performance.

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Sounds familiar? It seems to run contrary to all the other business improvement initiatives, such as Six-Sigma, LEAN, Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, etc. Do companies have to settle for a “seat-of-the-pants” learning experience for their hourly and salary workers? And could this be a major contributing factor in reduced organizational competitiveness? Read More

Reducing an Employer’s Turnover Rate in a Practical, Efficient Way

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

I recently attended a local economic development meeting at which one of the structured on-the-job training (“SOJT”) projects I have been following was a subject on the agenda. Two members from Custom Glass Solutions LLC (“CGS”) human resources department presented a short update on the SOJT programs underway at their Fostoria, Ohio and Upper Sandusky, Ohio facilities.

These projects began in the latter part of 2019, right at the beginning of the Covid – 19 experience. Their lead technical consulting company, Proactive Technologies, Inc, focused on setting up for SOJT programs for nine job classifications at the Fostoria facility and 10 job classifications at the Upper Sandusky facility. This included 320 incumbent workers and many more new hires.

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When the project initially began, one of the main concerns of the CGS upper management was the challenging high level of turnover, exacerbated by the Covid – 19 events and aftermath. At times it seemed as if turnover reached the 20 to 25% level.

After the SOJT programs were underway, each incumbent worker’s inventory of tasks mastered was established to baseline each worker for the tasks they have previously been trained on and management and the employee believed they had mastered. Customized SOJT programs were developed for each based on where they were in their development (to avoid wasting time and money training workers on what they could already do) and what was necessary to close the “task mastery gap.”

New-hires were set-up on their own customized SOJT program, starting at a level of zero tasks mastered, and therefore given a complete SOJT checklist binder. Both groups were, and continue to be, driven towards “full job mastery” in what is called an “accelerated transfer of expertise.” Each employee receives certificates of task mastery for reaching the 50% of tasks mastered mark, and certificates of job mastery once they have mastered the entire job classification. Read More

Structured On-The-Job Training for Non-Manufacturing Job Classifications

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Although the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development was designed for manufacturing and there has extensively proven its effectiveness, the approach is just as effective for jobs in any industry, and level of the organization. Proactive Technologies, Inc.’s job/task analysis methodology is rooted in those used by the U. S. Departments of Defense and Energy – modified for use in the private-sector world with private-sector budgets and time constraints. The development and use of the job data is based on those practices that seemed to be working in human resource management, human resource development, technical writing, quality control and workforce development – modernized to an ever-changing and challenging world.

When it comes to the analysis of the job, which is the center of all instruments and activities developed from it, the common factor of all work is that it can be defined in discrete units called “tasks.” Nobody is ever hired and expected to be very knowledgeable about a subject, or be very aware, or be strong. These attributes do not become useful until applied in the performance of a meaningful recognizable unit of work. If correct performance of the task, the “best practice,” requires these attributes as either a necessary to learning to perform the task or needed in the performance of the task, they become prerequisite, but not the outcome.

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Every job classification can be broken into its duties (groups of related tasks), tasks and subtasks. That is where performance is measured and it should be the outcome that is detected and improved. There are individuals who cannot conceptualize this relationship and say something like, “my job is too complicated, it cannot be defined because I am asked to do so many things.” Once they are walked through how they think their way through a series of steps to get to an outcome, they are usually converted. If the analyst cannot get a handle on a job classification, perhaps there really isn’t an underlying job.

Each task and subtask has beginning point and an ending point and a series of steps between called “elements,” process steps” or “procedural steps” that must be performed correctly, in the right order and meeting specifications to get the right, repeatable outcome. Read More

Read the full May, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

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Proactive Technologies Report – April, 2022

Posted on by DPrigelmeierpti

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

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

According to Ed Timmons, CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, “our labor costs in the U.S. are still 20% too high.” If he means that employers may be paying too much for unused or unusable worker capacity, and they should seek methods to develop it, I can agree with that. If he means employers should focus on spending enormous amounts on finding alternatives to labor, or randomly cutting workers, or asking workers to work for less wages and less benefits, I would say “hold on a minute.”

Given the growing fear and discontent by workers who still haven’t recovered from the Crash of 2008 and now knocked down with the Covid-19 pandemic, they may want a seat at the discussion. These workers will be trying for some time to, once again, regain value in their 401K and other impacted assets and to rise to the wage level they once had for the talents they possess. Many have the perception, wrongly or rightly, that their employer and their shareholders built great profits while workers slid backward. Many families, today, are challenged by rising prices of nearly everything…against eroding wages. This preoccupation with driving down labor costs, while reporting to Wall Street record quarterly profits, may benefit shareholders in the short-run, but it is surely illusionary and self-destructive in the long-run as the Crash of 2008 should have demonstrated, but the Covid-19 pandemic might remind.

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As reported in Industry Week, a group of CEOs from major U.S. corporations, The Business Roundtable, released a statement saying that shareholder value is no longer its primary focus – shifting their practices to line up with their new definition of the “purpose of a corporation.” The new vision emphasizes investing in employees, supporting communities, dealing ethically with suppliers and providing customers with value. “The group signed the Business Roundtable’s new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation. It’s a sea change that moves companies away from the age-old philosophy that companies’ main goal is to look after shareholders.”

“There is an effective, proven alternative to cutting labor costs through gutting organizational capacity.“

Focusing solely on shareholder profits has stunted the long-term viability of many a thriving organization. Under the cover of “making the firm more efficient,” when more profits could not be derived from expanding the market and market penetration, some investors forced cuts on firms that determined the firm’s long-term capability to compete, take advantage of emerging market opportunities, and adapt to changing markets and turbulent economic forces. Read More

Algorithms for Hiring, Credit…What Next? Perhaps Caution Should be Exercised

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

We are pushed from all sides to embrace advancing technology meant to impact every aspect of our lives. Peer pressure – from friends, family, colleagues, industry “experts” drive us to consider embracing “our future” – often explaining away the disruptions it causes to our present. Sometimes naïve, but always enthusiastic, media compete to be the first to break the news, bombard us with everything from subtle shaming to industry-driven pushes to accept and use technology – even if lacking thorough testing or proper consideration of all ramifications from its usage. If the technology causes damage, shoulders are shrugged and the horizon is scanned for the next.

Driven by massive amounts of marketing cash –often to create the illusion of trends when market acceptance is tepid – who is helped and who is hurt by the innovation is a distant afterthought. The damage can be done and those promoting the technology push to broaden its acceptance. If press coverage is too harsh when its promise comes up short and shareholder interest wanes, abandon it and move on to fabricate the next “trend.”

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Take, for example, the recent examples of Apple and Goldman Sachs credit cards, which it appears issued lower credit limits to spouses of husbands who shared the same credit score. “A tech entrepreneur, David Heinemeier Hansson, first raised the issue when he tweeted that the Apple Card’s algorithms discriminated against his wife, giving him 20 times the credit limit it had given to her.” His wife’s credit score was much better than his own. This, also, happened to the spouses of Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and other prominent figures.

Some banking algorithms utilize around 400 attributes in its determination of creditworthiness. And that might be made up of many we wouldn’t expect, but we will never know since it is considered a “trade secret.” But, as in most cases of machine learning, a lot of trust and faith is afforded the technological advancement which is only rocked when something tragic, abnormal or, in this case anti-social and potentially illegal, is discovered. Read More

Tips for Workforce Developers – Partnerships That Matter…and Last

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

Having partnered with Proactive Technologies, Inc. on workforce development projects for the past 20 years, it gave me a chance to innovate and learn what works, what efforts are most appreciated by the employer, trainee and employee, and which projects utilized resources most efficiently and effectively. There are numerous resources available from many sources that can impact a trainee with varying effectiveness, but the secret is selecting those that are appropriate for the project outcome the employer expects.

As Dean of Corporate and Continuing Education at community and technical colleges in Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, at the start of each assignment I had to first learn what resources our school had available for the sectors we were targeting, and how current and relevant the courses, materials and instructors were for the specific skills employers were seeking. To be honest, in some areas our products and services were weaker than expected, so the determination needed to be made whether we had the resources and will to upgrade what we had or develop what we needed. We also had to consider if it would be more economical to strategically partner with outside providers who always had the current technical expertise and already created solutions we could incorporate into our offerings.

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Too often there was internal resistance and a lack of understanding of how important being relevant was to workforce development. Many institutions grew complacent to change or were discouraged by shrinking budgets or misaligned priorities from innovation. Always feeling a sense of urgency to overcome the ubiquitous “skills gap” that cast a shadow on all education and workforce development efforts, there are some important steps that I developed for myself to help me better assess each employer’s need and provide solutions client employers appreciated. This is the reason most employers we worked with kept us engaged year after year. We earned, and maintained, their respect and gave them confidence in our solutions, which ensured our continued role in their business model. This provided a continued revenue stream for the school to continue, improve and expand those efforts. Read More

 

Read the full April, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Posted in News

Proactive Technologies Report – March, 2022

Posted on by DPrigelmeierpti

Recent Supply Chain Disruptions: Re-shoring Work to a Disrupted Workforce the Next Challenge, but Surmountable

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

No doubt about it, with the Crash of 2008 and the Covid-19 Crisis of 2020 most businesses have been forced into deep introspection about their products and services, their supply chains, maintaining their current and future workforce needs…even their survival and the evolving needs of an impacted consumer base. Any one of these topics would be plenty, but all at once while against the headwinds of an uncertain, but improving and evolving, economy and society is daunting.

Each one of these topics impacts the others. For example, changing a product or service may require adjustments or changes to the mix of suppliers and logistics, and may even influence decisions to perform tasks in-house or outside. Changing products or services, and potentially the tasks requiring workers to perform them, will determine what skills incumbent and new workers will need. It will require a reassessment of current worker selection practices, core skill development and task-related training. Most operations should consider to:

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  • Re-determine products/services;
  • Determine tasks required to deliver products and services;
  • Define task procedures for best practice performance;
  • Develop “job performance aids” (e.g. process documents, quality documents);
  • For non-process document driven tasks, define the best practice to complete the job data set
  • Develop structured on-the-job training materials so they are ready before new processes begin;
  • Define related technical instruction to build worker core skills for mastering task-based training;
  • Determine which tasks to be performed in-house and which off-site;
  • For in-house work, assess current workforce for core skills learned and mastered so the foundation upon which to master tasks is confirmed;
  • Remediate deficient levels of core skills;
  • Deliver structured on-the-job training for incumbent workers
  • Apply same worker development process and standards to new-hire workers
  • (For supplier-performed tasks) Supply assessment and structured on-the-job training materials along with engineering and quality documents to dramatically expedite the adjustment to high quality vendor performance
  • Monitor, measure performance, continuously improve and maintain data for new changes.

You may be thinking this approach is too daunting to attempt. That is why many businesses get caught flat-footed when disruptions occur. If you might have convinced yourself, or have been convinced by others, that this approach is too time and labor intensive to warrant its consideration, that would be a shame. Ad hoc, disjointed, unfocused and unnecessarily too costly strategies are the only alternative. Anything between is half as effective. Read More

Thinking Past the Assessment – Unfinished Goals and Unrealized Expectations

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

Literally speaking, an “assessment” is the process of measuring the value, quality and/or quantity of something. There are many types of assessments, and methods for assessing. In theory, it is the process of evaluating one thing against a set of criteria to determine the match/mismatch.

There are assessments for risk, for taxes, vulnerability. There are psychological, health, and political assessments. There is a group of educational assessments that measure a variety of outcomes such as educational attainment – assessments of course content mastery, assessment of grade level attainment, assessments of Scholastic Aptitude Tests (“SAT”) that compare a student to their peers nationally and a variety of college readiness exams.

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“Determining that you, indeed, hired the right person for the job will not automatically ensure the person is successful in learning and mastering the job. The most important step in the employment process is seeing to it that the individual’s core knowledge, skills and abilities are applied in learning and mastering the tasks which they were hired to perform. That is where the money is made. “

Educational assessments have been adapted for use in workforce development and employment, used to assess a prospective employee’s suitability for a job opening. They often measure more of what, if anything, a student learned and retained before graduating than how they match the employer’s actual job opening. Psychological assessments have been adapted to measure a prospective employee’s sociability to the workplace, morphing into a new category called “psychometric assessments.”

We have seen a growth in the employment assessment industry over the past 2 decades – particularly after 9-11. There are assessments for cognitive tests, physical abilities, “trustworthiness,” credit history, personality, criminal background and more. When used improperly, the methods have been challenged in court for their appropriateness and intent. Read More

Pairing Structured On-the-Job Training with Related Technical Instruction Just Makes Sense

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

I have for worked with educational institutions for many years, trying to reach out to employers with the latest and best courses and seminars they had. It is what we did with good intentions, but in many cases this was a difficult sale at best. Their products were often already built…before they precisely knew the needs of the employer. If the employer engaged them for our services, when delivered it was more of an underwhelming experience for the customer than I felt comfortable with. Often it didn’t lead to follow-on work.

An employer’s operation is driven by accounting for the bottom line. Accountants are quick to dismiss core and technical instruction as a cost. That is what they were taught in college, and truthfully there is no evidence that attending a course improves work performance in most cases. Sadly, that level of “job relevance” or content validity was considered less important than the power of the institution’s name that was promoting the products or services.

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When I became familiar with Structured On-The-Job Training (SOJT), I appreciated SOJT because SOJT built from the bottom up. The training delivery structure was designed around the actual tasks the employee is expected to master, for which the employer hired the individual in the first place. Structuring the best practices into training delivery so that workers can learn faster how to perform each task and to standardize the delivery between each shift’s trainers and each trainee gets to the company’s bottom line. It is seen as an investment that can be defended to accountants, unlike core and technical instruction. Read More

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 analyze a job – 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.

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This highlights several other preexisting issues in addition to the obvious. First, if the company is ISO/AS/AITF 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.

The next issue is, “what role do these notes play in the training of new-hires and cross-training incumbents?” Does the trainee even know these are available? My experience has been that each trainee is on their own to create their own notes…if they even think it is necessary. So now we have multiple sets of notes for each machine, seldom compared and standardized, AND the company’s process documents if they exist. This is a recipe for incidents of scrap, rework and equipment damage at a minimum.

It also appears that each trainee is on their own to learn the safe performance of each task. It is not enough to provide general safety knowledge learning. When a trainee is taught a task for the first time, that is when they should be shown how to apply the general safety knowledge to the safe performance of that task. Once a pattern is established, the trainee will be able to better apply the safety knowledge to the safe performance of all tasks. If ways to avoid a safety incident are known, shouldn’t that knowledge be shared with each trainee so that no one has to be hurt when the odds of an incident are known and avoidable? Read More

Read the full March, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Posted in News

Proactive Technologies Report – February, 2022

Posted on by DPrigelmeierpti

Technique is Important to Successful Task-based Training

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Generally speaking, the most prevalent form of worker training – for any job classification, any industry – is informal, unstructured on-the-job training. That unmeasurable, unimprovable and undocumented one-on-one experience when one person who knows how shows someone who doesn’t how to perform tasks required of the job classification. This seems to work in lieu of anything else, since products are produced and services are being delivered…until they are not, or are but now not as timely, efficiently, consistently and/or as compliant with requirements as expected.

In an economic shake-up, these deficiencies become more pronounced and more threatening to an operation’s survival. During mass disruptions such as the Crash of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic, good performers left the organization or were released – with all of their technical wisdom and expertise – along with marginal performers, leaving the employer to rebuild from scratch in some cases. Consequently, any chance of training workers to build back the organization, at a minimum, just got tougher.

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While, indeed, informal, ad hoc, unstructured and undocumented training is better than no training, this ambiguous approach can lead to unexpected consequences and inconsistent outcomes. The easy solution is to build a structure around this to make the informal formal.

The structured on-the-job training process approach is one in which the informal aspect of task-based training is structured in a way to standardize both the process of performing the task and the delivery of the training itself. The implementation “accelerates the transfer of expertise” to ensure each trainee – new-hires and incumbent workers – master the tasks of a job quickly and completely.

Much can be lost in interpretation of what a trainee hears and sees being displayed in an informal training experience. Read More

Challenges Presented by the Widening Skill Gap

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

There are at least five growing, major challenges to maintaining a skilled national labor force. These forces are causing those organizations who could help to, instead, spend tremendous sums of money on “whack-a-mole” type efforts. Sure, this approach sustains all of the profit and non-profit organizations that sprung up to take advantage of the chaos, but if we are serious about solving this issue that has undermined economic recoveries and stifled economic growth for over 30 years, we need to get serious.

It starts by critically evaluating the challenges that have plagued the U.S. labor force and have been barriers to an employer’s commitment to American labor. Like nearly all challenges, one can choose to target the underlying cause, treat the symptoms, mask the symptoms, define an alternative – but not necessarily relevant – cause and focus on that, or ignore symptoms and cause and hope for divine intervention.

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Choice of action matters. Take, for example, the choice to take a prescribed “cholesterol lowering” statin that inhibits the body’s production of lipids – fats and fatty substances, producing a cholesterol number within an acceptable range but at a cost of blocking or impairing other vital body functions and often producing “side-effects.” Your doctor may have good news about your cholesterol level during this visit but soon he might be discussing other, more serious issues with you such as, according to the Mayo Clinic, your muscle pain and damage, liver damage, increased blood sugar and type 2 diabetes, neurological side effects… Choosing to treat a symptom without determining why your body is producing excess lipids in the first place may leave the underlying cause unaffected.

Similarly, focusing resources on symptoms and ignoring the underlying cause of a non-systems approach to worker development may lead (and one could say may have already lead) to depleted resources and lost opportunity. Continuing to turn out graduates, some with outdated or non-essential skills which are bolstered by marginally relevant credentials, may lead to a feeling of action but yet the skill gap widens. Unless each of the following five major challenges are addressed, it is unlikely that the skill gap will move towards closing, and any effort to bring back the generations of lost workers into meaningful employment prohibitively difficult.

Jobs have become a moving target. Read More

Apprenticeships: Be Careful Not to Minimize Integrity While Spiking 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 a Community College Daily News article, “Drawing Lines on Apprenticeships,” business and industry representatives seemed to have expressed to their congressional leaders the changes they would like to see in apprenticeships before they would consider participating. The opening statements from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chair Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tennessee) and ranking minority member Sen. Patty Murray (Washington) set the debate, with “Alexander arguing that registered apprenticeships limit creativity and flexibility that employers seek because of cumbersome administrative red tape. More companies want less-formal, industry-recognized apprenticeships that allow them to work on specific skill sets, he said, adding they also are more appealing to industries such as health care and information technology that don’t traditionally offer apprenticeships.”

Ranking Member Pat Murray (Washington) rebutted this claim, “…registered apprenticeships ensure rigor and program quality. She said GOP efforts to encourage more nonregistered programs is designed to ‘weaken and water down’ programs and to open the training market to for-profit institutions.” Most people actively involved with apprenticeships know that much can be done to make apprenticeships more attractive, practical, fulfilling and feasible to employers and more attractive, achievable and valuable to apprentices. And that there is a role for for-profit training providers when the non-profit and institutional related technical instruction in the area is weak, has not been kept up-to-date or is non-existent.

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There is no denying that the iconic apprenticeships of old were hard for employers to embrace. An 8-10 year apprenticeship program for, in many cases, 1 apprentice was a non-starter. And with developments in the last 30 years – massive relocation of jobs off-shore, instability of employment even before the Crash of 2008 but more so after (employees not able to continue in a job classification for 3 years let alone 10 year apprenticeship), the stagnation and decline of wages and continual introduction of newer technology that redesigns the nature of jobs – everyone involved including community colleges felt they were playing a seemingly never ending shell game. Add to that a period of uncertainty such as the current trade and tariff action exchanges and the only thing certain is an uncertain workforce development target. Read More

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?”

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

  1. Determine the Employer’s Need and Agree on Strategy: How has the client been (or not been) training workers until now; what are the current and projected staffing levels for incumbents and new-hires along with attrition rate and reassignments; is the culture supportive of training workers and see it as vital to competitiveness; are any task-based documents available and are they in use (e.g. work processes, quality standards, safety standards); which jobs are targeted and why; is the company following any quality mandates, such as ISO/TS/AS and do they have any quality programs underway such as LEAN, Six Sigma; what is the budget for setting up the structured on-the-job training program and implementation. A strategy encompassing all of these points is prepared for the employer before an agreement and timetable is confirmed
  2. Job/Task Analyze the Target Job Classifications: The analysis is always performed using the employer’s subject matter experts to develop task lists of each targeted job classification, then each task is analyzed further for the best practice; also identified are relevant components that lead a trainee to reach “task mastery;” a review of data by subject matter experts is held to find reach concurrence on data; materials to structure the on-the-job training are created (the PROTECH© software system accelerates the data collection process and automatically generates all of the tools of the human resource development process from the data – materials are ready in minutes not years…at a fraction of the cost of manual development. One change updates all reports.). Read More

Read the full February, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Posted in News

Proactive Technologies Report – January, 2022

Posted on by DPrigelmeierpti

Preparing for the New Workforce Reality

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

My experience in helping employers with their worker development programs for decades has led me to make a generalization that I believe to be true. Many employers have very little idea of how much capacity and value each worker contributes to their organization’s operation. For companies that make critical cost-benefit decisions daily, when it comes to harnessing worker value, what may seem to them as “penny-wise,” more often winds up being “pound-foolish.”

In these organizations you might find poorly written, or no longer job-relevant, job descriptions that shed light on how little is known about each job classification for which they are trying to find new-hires that have the right core skill base. Scratch a little deeper and you might find little in the way of a training strategy or infrastructure to identify and close any gap. Analyze the sum of your findings and you might conclude that this weakness makes it difficult, nearly impossible, to measure and improve individual worker performance – something that, when asked, each employer continues to dream of, but believes they are forced to forego.

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A well-run company might know how many parts an investment in equipment should be able to produce down to the hour or minute. When it comes to the employees that run the equipment, employers admit to knowing very little. They have sketchy, if any, data as to which tasks the employee can perform expertly, which tasks they cannot and which tasks no one ever bothered to train them on. Employers talk about their “investment in their workforce” without fully realizing the importance of that statement.

There are many reasons for this. It was easy for employers to look the other way when business was good and output was generating the returns they expected. Short-term upper management strategies facilitate a myopia by focusing on the bottom line, and not so much on how it was reached or how it can be maintained.

When it comes to staffing, job descriptions, in many cases, are photocopies of a template that somebody created for a job that the writer thought they were familiar with. Because the job title was similar, and the requirements innocuous, it seemed to be “close enough.” Read More

“Realistic Job Previews” Can Be a Useful Tool for Measuring a Prospective Employee’s Transferable Task-based Skills

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

The hiring process can be difficult for both the employer and the prospective employee. A wrong decision can cost each party a lot of time, money and opportunity. It seems reasonable to believe that some of the “hasty turnover” currently being experienced by employers – new-hires quitting in the first few days of employment – may be due to the shock of discovering the real nature, culture, requirements and environment of the job. An unwanted outcome based on the employer not providing an accurate picture of the job, work environment and work expected to be performed can be avoided with a “Realistic Job Preview.” (“RJP”).

Wikipedia points out that “Empirical research suggests a fairly small effect size, even for properly designed RJPs (d = .12), with estimates that they can improve job survival rates ranging from 3–10%. For large organizations in retail or transportation that do mass hiring and experience new hire turnover above 200% in a large population, a 3–10% difference can translate to significant monetary savings. Some experts (e.g., Roth; Martin, 1996) estimate that RJPs screen out between 15% and 36% of applicants.”

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When RJPs are less effective, “according to researchers there are four issues that challenge RJP:

1. Recruiters do not share RJPs during interviews. (Rynes, 1991)

2. The nature of “realistic” information shared (in lab research or in the field) is unclear (Breaugh & Billings, 1988)

3. Not asking the right questions.

4. Applicants consistently report desiring more specific, job-relevant information than they commonly receive (Barber & Roehling, 1993; Maurer, Howe, & Lee,1992)”

In addition to this there is a chance for realistic job preview to become more effective in order to eliminate turnovers. The presentation format and timing of the RJP can be improved whether the real information is provided early on or later in the recruitment factor. Consequently, more specific topic should be addressed and information sources used (e.g. incumbent subject matter expert currently in the job classification versus human resource staff person).”

RJPs come in many forms; Read More

Decreasing the Cost of Turnover WHILE Increasing Worker Capacity, Work Quality and Compliance…With One Approach!

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

One of the blowbacks of persistently low compensation (i.e. hourly wage rate plus benefits and opportunity for advancement) is the corresponding high rates of employee turnover. The cost of turnover these days can be burdensome for any organization, and most encountering it express that they would like to minimize it.

In a previous article entitled “The High Cost of Employee Turnover” the causes, the costs and solutions were discussed. A handy way to estimate the cost of turnover to the organization was expressed. The Aspen Institute released a “Cost of Turnover” estimate tool of their own to assign a dollar figure to a firm’s level of turnover, to understand to what degree it is currently impacting operations and to explain to how turnover presents barriers to expansion or market adjustments.

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Organizationally, things can be done to add window dressing that will attract candidates, but only a worker perceiving job stability and income sufficiency will stay away from actively seeking a better opportunity. Additional education and job-specific training opportunities may keep the worker from dwelling on the inadequate compensation for a while, but not adjusting compensation for the earned skills and value can fuel resentment.

One need only to revisit the Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs of college lectures to understand the powerful influence income instability or insufficiency can have on an individual’s decision making. The Crash of 2008 drove most of the workforce to despair from higher tiers down to the fundamental first tier of Maslow’s pyramid. Jobs were lost, homes were lost, dignity and self-worth were stolen and to this day few have felt that they gained that back. Read More

What is So Radical About Workers Asking for a Return of What was Taken From Them? Part 2 of 2

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In the Part 1 of this article, I reminisced about the better times for workers several decades ago from my own experience as a young man entering the labor force via manufacturing. If you ask others who were around then, or did a little research, you must have found it was not a fantasy, but the life of a normal American middle-class worker.

Manufacturing was seen as a prestigious position, especially among the lower and middle classes. Someone was fortunate to have a job in manufacturing and could expect hard work but a comfortable life.

click here to expand

Before many employers, especially those listed on Wall Street Exchanges, began to follow neoliberal economics (not to be confused with “liberalism” – which ” is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law“), companies like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, General Electric, as well as their suppliers, were the “gold standard” of employers. Although the steel industry started moving off-shore in the 1970’s, the movement of jobs and decimation of communities seemed to be an isolated occurrence.

Then a series of consequential events set the United States on a path of economic and societal decline for the vast majority of its citizens.

The 1980’s and the War on Labor Unions

The PATCO Air Traffic Controller Strike of 1981 ushered in an unrelenting pattern of legal rulings and legislation that eroded the strength of the labor movement, removing a potent alternative to unprincipled employers. Corporations were emboldened by an infamous 1970 New York Times magazine article in which the Chicago school economist Milton Friedman argued that “businesses’ sole purpose is to generate profit for shareholders. Moreover, he maintained, companies that did adopt “responsible” attitudes would be faced with more binding constraints than companies that did not, rendering them less competitive.”

Supported by right-wing groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC),  the Heritage Foundation, The Koch Brothers  and the US Chamber of Commerce, a number of states became “right to work” states, passing laws prohibiting or making it very difficult for labor to organize. Today, 27 states are right to work states, encouraging employers to move their operations there to take advantage of the “pro-business” environment.

According to USA Facts, labor unions declined in strength to 14.3 million, or 10.8%, of US employees in private employment in 2020 – over half of the 20.1% in 1983, when there were 17.7 million employed waged and salaried workers in unions. The number of unionized employees in public sector unions remained relatively constant, at around 35%. Currently there are movements afoot to unionize more of both public and private sector employment, but there are many decades of anti-labor laws in place to overcome. Read More

Read the full January, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Posted in News

Proactive Technologies Report – December, 2021

Posted on by DPrigelmeierpti

We Have Enough Evidence: Without Employer-Based Structured OJT, Worker Development Falls Way Short

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

As a nation, we have become accustomed to kicking the can down the road. Maybe not deliberately, we appear to be locked into that mode with regard to worker development. It is not for lack of resources – billions are spent each year by federal programs, state governments and employers. If one backs away and looks at the big picture, the will is there but it seems more that the resources just are not properly aligned and focused.

Employers have been struggling with the “skills gap” since the 1980’s. Every manner of solution has been tried, but the gap seems to linger and grow. This is due, in large part, to disproportionately more emphasis being placed on preparing future workers for work and not enough on the employer’s vital role in providing the task-specific training once hired, and “upskilling” them through change.

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Employers have been led to believe that the solution lies solely with education. While laying the strong foundation upon which to build strong workers is an important part of the solution, if the employer does not immediately begin building on the foundation, the foundation degrades relative to the continually evolving job requirements, and the opportunity is lost.

For nearly all firms, training a worker for the tasks they were hired to perform, once hired, is a mixture of uncoordinated efforts. Read More

The High Cost of Employee Turnover

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

Most companies are dealing with uncomfortably high levels of turnover. When one separates out those employers that facilitated high turnovers to lower labor costs, there are many reasons for this. However, there is no denying the many costs associated with this that exist and the effects that often compound. These costs are often unknown and unmeasured, but all employers should keep an eye on this challenge and explore its full impact on the organization.

It seems counter-intuitive, but there are some who even recently promoted a business strategy that encouraged employee turnover. In a July 21, 2015 Forbes article entitled “Rethinking Employee Turnover,”  author Edward E. Lawler III, “Indeed, the turnover of some employees may end up saving an organization more money than it would cost to replace that employee. The obvious point is that not all turnover should be avoided—some should be sought.” The question is how to determine which ones to keep and which to encourage to leave. Without accurate measures of costs and values of a worker, good employees may be pushed out along with the “bad” and then the true costs of this action realized by the employer after it is too late.

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Last year, Christina Merhar of ZaneBenefits wrote in her blog entitled “Employee Retention – The Real Cost of Losing an Employee,”  “Happy employees help businesses thrive. Frequent voluntary turnover has a negative impact on employee morale, productivity, and company revenue. Recruiting and training a new employee requires staff time and money. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, turnover is highest in industries such as trade and utilities, construction, retail, customer service, hospitality, and service.”

“For the costs associated with the loss of 1 or 2 employees, the company can establish a holistic approach to worker selection, development and retention that will significantly lower both turnover rates and turnover costs, AND increase the value of all employees in that job classification.”

“Studies on the cost of employee turnover are all over the board. Some studies (such as SHRM) predict that every time a business replaces a salaried employee, it costs 6 to 9 months’ salary on average. For a manager making $40,000 a year, that’s $20,000 to $30,000 in recruiting and training expenses. Read More

Cross-Training Workers After Lean Efforts Builds Capacity Using Existing Staff

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

Lean activities to redesign processes for better efficiency in a department, or between departments, sometimes result in “surplus” workers – partially or in whole units. It is the subjective priority of Lean practitioners since it is a tangible illustration of a successful Lean improvement. Processes that previously needed 3 people to complete may now only need two, if the efficiency were discovered. So what happens to that one person that has valuable acquired expertise, representing a significant investment by the employer? Would the wise outcome of Lean efforts be to just cut that person from the lineup?

The short answer is most likely not. Any efficiency and cost savings brought about by the Lean redesign would be offset by the loss of the expertise for which the investment has already been made. Most likely the reason for the Lean was not in reaction to no return on worker investment, but rather a desire to increase the return on worker investment.

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If the worker is reassigned to another department, and no task-based training infrastructure is in place, that reassignment may lower the efficiency there which, again, reduces the gains made by the Lean effort. So part of the Lean effort must be the deliberate cross-training of workers in temporary assignments or longer-term reassignments to other departments that seem to have the need for increased staffing, perhaps as a result of the increased throughput achieved from the Lean effort in the upstream department in the chain.

Another outcome of a lean effort may not include moving personnel, but either equipment or processes out of the Leaned department into another department up or downstream, often without structured training to absorb the new activities and maintain efficiency. Here the loss of gains made are similar if no training on how to perform the processes or run the equipment is provided. Read More

What is So Radical About Workers Asking for a Return of What was Taken From Them? Part 2 of 2

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In the Part 1 of this article, I reminisced about the better times for workers several decades ago from my own experience as a young man entering the labor force via manufacturing. If you ask others who were around then, or did a little research, you must have found it was not a fantasy, but the life of a normal American middle-class worker.

Manufacturing was seen as a prestigious position, especially among the lower and middle classes. Someone was fortunate to have a job in manufacturing and could expect hard work but a comfortable life.

click here to expand

Before many employers, especially those listed on Wall Street Exchanges, began to follow neoliberal economics (not to be confused with “liberalism” – which ” is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law“), companies like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, General Electric, as well as their suppliers, were the “gold standard” of employers. Although the steel industry started moving off-shore in the 1970’s, the movement of jobs and decimation of communities seemed to be an isolated occurrence.

Then a series of consequential events set the United States on a path of economic and societal decline for the vast majority of its citizens.

The 1980’s and the War on Labor Unions

The PATCO Air Traffic Controller Strike of 1981 ushered in an unrelenting pattern of legal rulings and legislation that eroded the strength of the labor movement, removing a potent alternative to unprincipled employers. Corporations were emboldened by an infamous 1970 New York Times magazine article in which the Chicago school economist Milton Friedman argued that “businesses’ sole purpose is to generate profit for shareholders. Moreover, he maintained, companies that did adopt “responsible” attitudes would be faced with more binding constraints than companies that did not, rendering them less competitive.”

Supported by right-wing groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC),  the Heritage Foundation, The Koch Brothers  and the US Chamber of Commerce, a number of states became “right to work” states, passing laws prohibiting or making it very difficult for labor to organize. Today, 27 states are right to work states, encouraging employers to move their operations there to take advantage of the “pro-business” environment.

According to USA Facts, labor unions declined in strength to 14.3 million, or 10.8%, of US employees in private employment in 2020 – over half of the 20.1% in 1983, when there were 17.7 million employed waged and salaried workers in unions. The number of unionized employees in public sector unions remained relatively constant, at around 35%. Currently there are movements afoot to unionize more of both public and private sector employment, but there are many decades of anti-labor laws in place to overcome. Read More

Read the full December, 2021 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Posted in News

Upcoming Live Online Presentations

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  • PTI1004 – If You Can’t Find Skilled Workers, Develop Your Own

    7:00 am-7:45 am
    2024-05-08
    Dean Prigelmeier

    Click Here to Schedule

    (Mountain Time) This briefing explains the philosophy behind, and development/implementation of, structured on-the-job training; how any employer can benefit from the PROTECH© system of human resource development in more than just the training area. This model provides the lacking support employers, who want to be able to easily and cost-effectively create the workers they require right now, need. Program supports ISO/AS/IATF compliance requirements for “knowledge(expertise)” capture, and process-based training and record keeping.  Approx 45 minutes.


  • PTI1006 – Building a Regional Workforce Development Infrastructure: Employer-Specific for Maximum Effectiveness and Lowest Investment

    11:00 am-11:45 am
    2024-05-08
    Dean Prigelmeier

    Click Here to Schedule

    (Mountain Time) The philosophy behind, and development/implementation of, structured on-the-job training; how any employer can benefit from the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development in more that just the training area; building related technical instruction/structured on-the-job training partnerships for employers across all industries one-by-one. How this can become a cost-effective, cost-efficient and highly credible workforce development strategy – easy scale up by just plugging each new employer into the system. When partnering with economic development agencies, and public and private career and technical colleges and universities for the related technical instruction, this provides the most productive use of available grant funds and gives employers-employees/trainees and the project partners the biggest win for all. This model provides the support sorely needed by employers who want to partner in the development of the workforce but too often feel the efforts will not improve the workforce they need. Approx. 45 minutes


  • PTI1005 – Adding Employer-Specific Structured On-The-Job Training to Your Apprenticeships

    1:00 pm-1:45 pm
    2024-05-08
    Dean Prigelmeier

    Click Here to Schedule

    (Mountain Time) The philosophy behind, and development/implementation of, structured on-the-job training; how any employer can benefit from the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development in more than just the training area; building related technical instruction/structured on-the-job training partnerships for employers across all industries and how it can become an cost-effective, cost-efficient and highly credible apprenticeship. Program supports ISO/AS/IATF compliance requirements for “knowledge(expertise)” capture, and process-based training and record keeping. When partnering with economic development agencies, public and private career and technical colleges and universities, this provides the most productive use of available grant funds and gives employers-employees/trainees and the project partners the biggest win for all. This model provides the lacking support needed to employers who want to easily and cost-effectively host an apprenticeship.  Approx. 45 minutes

9101112
1314


  • PTI1002 – Building a Low-Cost, Highly Effective Worker Training System

    7:00 am-7:45 am
    2024-05-14
    Dean Prigelmeier

    Click Here to Schedule

    (Mountain Time) The philosophy behind, and development/implementation of, structured on-the-job training; the many benefits the employer can realize from the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development in more than just the training area; examples of projects across all industries, including manufacturing and manufacturing support companies. Program supports ISO/AS/IATF compliance requirements for “knowledge(expertise)” capture, and process-based training and record keeping. When combined with related technical instruction, this approach has been easily registered as an apprenticeship-focusing the structured on-the-job training on exactly what are the required tasks of the job. Registered or not, this approach is the most effective way to train workers to full capacity in the shortest amount of time –cutting internal costs of training while increasing worker capacity, productivity, work quality and quantity, and compliance.  Approx 45 minutes.


  • PTI1003 – Adding Employer-Specific Structured OJT to Your Training Support Strategy

    9:00 am-9:45 am
    2024-05-14
    Dean Prigelmeier

    Click Here to Schedule

    (Mountain Time) The philosophy behind, and development/implementation of, structured on-the-job training; how any employer can benefit from the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development in more than just the training area; building related technical instruction/structured on-the-job training partnerships for employers in across all industries. When partnering with economic development agencies, public and private career and technical colleges and universities, this provides the most productive use of available grant funds and gives employers-employees/trainees and the project partners the biggest win for all. Program supports ISO/AS/IATF compliance requirements for “knowledge(expertise)” capture, and process-based training and record keeping. This model provides the lacking support needed to employers who want to easily and cost-effectively host an apprenticeship.  Approx 45 minutes.


  • PTI1006 – Building a Regional Workforce Development Infrastructure: Employer-Specific for Maximum Effectiveness and Lowest Investment

    1:00 pm-1:45 pm
    2024-05-14
    Dean Prigelmeier

    Click Here to Schedule

    (Mountain Time) The philosophy behind, and development/implementation of, structured on-the-job training; how any employer can benefit from the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development in more that just the training area; building related technical instruction/structured on-the-job training partnerships for employers across all industries one-by-one. How this can become a cost-effective, cost-efficient and highly credible workforce development strategy – easy scale up by just plugging each new employer into the system. When partnering with economic development agencies, and public and private career and technical colleges and universities for the related technical instruction, this provides the most productive use of available grant funds and gives employers-employees/trainees and the project partners the biggest win for all. This model provides the support sorely needed by employers who want to partner in the development of the workforce but too often feel the efforts will not improve the workforce they need. Approx. 45 minutes

1516


  • PTI1003 – Adding Employer-Specific Structured OJT to Your Training Support Strategy

    7:00 am-7:45 am
    2024-05-16
    Dean Prigelmeier

    Click Here to Schedule

    (Mountain Time) The philosophy behind, and development/implementation of, structured on-the-job training; how any employer can benefit from the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development in more than just the training area; building related technical instruction/structured on-the-job training partnerships for employers in across all industries. When partnering with economic development agencies, public and private career and technical colleges and universities, this provides the most productive use of available grant funds and gives employers-employees/trainees and the project partners the biggest win for all. This model provides the lacking support needed to employers who want to easily and cost-effectively host an apprenticeship.  Approx 45 minutes.


  • PTI1004 – If You Can’t Find Skilled Workers, Develop Your Own

    9:00 am-9:45 am
    2024-05-16
    Dean Prigelmeier

    Click Here to Schedule

    (Mountain Time) This briefing explains the philosophy behind, and development/implementation of, structured on-the-job training; how any employer can benefit from the PROTECH© system of human resource development in more than just the training area. This model provides the lacking support employers, who want to be able to easily and cost-effectively create the workers they require right now, need. Program supports ISO/AS/IATF compliance requirements for “knowledge(expertise)” capture, and process-based training and record keeping.  Approx 45 minutes.


  • PTI1005 – Adding Employer-Specific Structured On-The-Job Training to Your Apprenticeships

    1:00 pm-1:45 pm
    2024-05-16
    Dean Prigelmeier

    Click Here to Schedule

    (Mountain Time) The philosophy behind, and development/implementation of, structured on-the-job training; how any employer can benefit from the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development in more than just the training area; building related technical instruction/structured on-the-job training partnerships for employers across all industries and how it can become an cost-effective, cost-efficient and highly credible apprenticeship. Program supports ISO/AS/IATF compliance requirements for “knowledge(expertise)” capture, and process-based training and record keeping. When partnering with economic development agencies, public and private career and technical colleges and universities, this provides the most productive use of available grant funds and gives employers-employees/trainees and the project partners the biggest win for all. This model provides the lacking support needed to employers who want to easily and cost-effectively host an apprenticeship.  Approx. 45 minutes

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