• 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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are not many jobs available for which employers are recruiting people who have taken classes, or a lot of classes, as if that is where value lies. If one finds a job like this it is because the employer believes, legitimately or mistakenly, it has a strategy to cultivate those core skills into the performance of work tasks. A task is recognizable by a beginning point, and ending point and a series of steps that, when performed in the right order to the right specification, result in a recognizable and desired outcome. No employer hires people and pays them wages for “being good at math,” “reading exceptionally well,” being aware of safety rules.” Rather they are hoping those skills are current enough, and apply directly enough, to tasks that need to be mastered and work the needs to be done.

To understand the importance of structured on-the-job training, it is important to differentiate between the three main types of learning in the workplace: classroom, online and on-the-job training. Read More

These agreements protected the employer against an employee from leaving the company and going to work for a competitor, bringing all this proprietary information with them. A time limit was specified in the agreement when the terms would “sunset,” and for the most part employees and employers respected the agreement’s spirit and intent.

In recent years, encouraged by state employer councils and opportunistic attorneys, non-compete agreements started to appear in non-traditional roles and atypical industries. Some employers began to see it as a way to keep employees from leaving even if the conditions of employment were untenable. After all, if an employee is particularly skilled in an area useful for employer A, what better way to maintain an employee than to say you can leave but you cannot take your skills with you to a similar job with employer B.

This practice had been quietly taking a toll on some workers until events, such the Covid pandemic and subsequent lockdown caused a lot of reconsideration of what was considered “normal” employment practices. Beyond high-tech manufacturing and technology company use, non-compete agreements have found their way into the hospitality, retail and shipping sectors, to name a few. Studies are being undertaken to see if these agreements are playing a role in the shortage of workers employers say they are encountering. Read More

When Education encounters disruptions such as covid-19, institutions shut down, instructors wait at home, training providers are sidelined, and some of these even move on if the opportunity arises. Yet their employer – many left open as essential industries – are continuing to employ, informally train incumbent, new and transferring workers. Those employers that invested in a structured on-the-job training infrastructure were able to adapt and minimize the impact. Even those without a formal structured on-the-job training system were better positioned to continue to deliver training (albeit informal and ad hoc) compared to educational institutions and providers that were essentially shut down waiting for the green light on when and how to reopen. Read More

When I attended high school, in addition to the classes I and everyone else was required to complete for graduation, we were offered “vocational training program” options. These programs – automotive, electronics, drafting, woodworking, and others – were not seen by all of us as just an alternative to college. These programs were robust and highly rated by employers. I selected a 2 ½ year electronics program. Some of my peers found jobs immediately upon graduation, and some of us used it as a preparatory program for college to further pursue our interests.

It was easy for me to begin a career in manufacturing while pursuing a college education throughout the 1970s and 80s. I guess I took for granted the inherent fairness of the worker/employer relationship then. Sure, some employees had their grievances. But it seemed to me as long as an employee gave the job their best effort and expressed loyalty to the employer, most employers felt inclined, if not obligated, to reciprocate. Today, I do not sense the same general sentiment among employees I encounter or some of the many employers with whom I come in contact. The growing mutual distrust and adversarial relationships, and the tension it creates, is palpable. To understand the inherent terror workers must feel in struggling to find a way to fight back or explore a path to a new career, we must look beyond the present for clues.

In the 1980’s, I noticed things beginning to change. In the years prior, nearly every employer had a competitive wage and benefit package or they had a hard time attracting workers. Probably due to the existence of strong unions(union membership was in the 20% range), many employers were afraid that the workers would become disenchanted and organize a union themselves. So they set their prevailing wage and benefits similar to jobs in local companies with a union bargaining agreement. Since “inflation” or “the consumer price index” used to calculate the annual “cost of living adjustment” to pay rates was calculated under the old, simple formula before it started changing in the 1980s, workers were not as concerned about inflation since wages usually kept pace.

Most employers offered two weeks of paid vacation – available after your first year of employment. Some allowed increased vacation time up to six weeks the longer you stayed employed with the company.

Many employers had paid sick leave, so a sick worker could stay home rather than infect their coworkers because they couldn’t afford not to work. We had paid bereavement, paid time off to vote, and some employers offered sabbaticals to employees who felt the need to “find themselves.” Read More

“There is a way to mitigate the inevitable rising labor costs with higher worker value, and higher worker ROI.”

For decades employers have been laxed in their need to develop the most productivity and work quality 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 a lot of 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

Thinking it through a little further, one might struggle to explain how the expert performer developed these traits. Someone showed them how to perform a task, and repetitive performance developed new, retained skills. They are now operating as a “robot” while performing a task, seldom thinking about the subtleties and nuances of each task (filed in memory long ago), which makes them fast, consistent workers – something the employer can notice an appreciate.

But if we ask “who trained this expert,” “how was he or she trained,” or “what specifications and standards were emphasized,” we come up empty. By just playing the role of a trainee, and allowing one of these experts to train you on a task, will reveal a lot as to what the new-hire or cross-trainee can expect. If we compare this expert’s task performance to other peer experts, we probably will notice slight differences in performance between them, which means workers that each trained may be trained differently on the same task. Sometimes these differences can be subtle and of no consequence, sometimes they become a point of contention, lead to confusion and/or unsafe and incorrect task performance.

Every work environment is less than ideal for learning. Production pressures, personality clashes, learning style and teaching style differences, and departmental boundary incursions do not make it easy for a trainer to train or a trainee to learn without structure and guidance. If any of our experts train the next wave of new-hires or cross-trainees without structure, tools and standards – the building blocks of “best practice” performance – some of the expertise might not transfer and the differences between them become more obvious with each wave. This can often lead to frustrating confrontation between shifts, with one shift declaring the other two shifts as incompetent. Read More

When we began talking with employers and were able to get them to commit to setting up structured on-the-job training programs for one job, maybe two, as a pilot. Inevitably, employers saw the value and expanded the programs to include other jobs critical to their operation and opened the programs up to more employees for training and cross-training.

Many of these manufacturers in South Carolina took the same path and expanded to include other jobs and other employees. They found that it also help them with their compliance issues with ISO 9001:2015, TS 19649, and AS 9001 type of certification programs. These qualities certification programs had a provision that required process based training and documentation to support it and documentation that the employer was serious about the effort and make sure that the job information and employee information is current and accurate. All of these projects worries Lee supported by Proactive Technologies and it’s many ways of reporting this information. Read More

“How an organization prepares for change determines if they will survive it or succumb to it.”

It can be said that if the organization was running efficiently before a cutback, worker expertise must have helped since the numbers now show that output and yield have been reduced. If the organization was not running efficiently before the cutback, and cutting workers has little effect on output and yield, perhaps the reason was there was a lack of expertise in running operations. Either way, developing expertise and preserving it through adversity should be seen as worthy goals by any organization.

Many years ago, CEOs became concerned with “succession planning,” which was limited to only key managerial positions. As organizations made themselves leaner, the number of positions that should be considered for succession planning multiplied but often went unnoticed until a disruption in operations occurred – quickly exposing vulnerabilities and loss of organizational capacity. Read More

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

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

“How would one determine the proper wage rate for the value derived if there is no effort to hire workers accurately to today’s job needs, train workers to all of the required tasks and measure workers for the work they were hired and trained to perform?”

Why doesn’t that same sentiment apply to hiring workers? In a hypothetical, but typical, example an employer has an opening for a job classification that consists of 50 critical tasks that the employer expects the person filling that job classification to perform. Why shouldn’t the employer expect that person to master all 50 tasks? What might happen instead, after what is considered to be the “training period” is completed, the employer notices through anecdotal evidence and whispers that the output from that hired individual is below expectation. As time goes by and dissatisfaction grows, the decision to terminate the employee is made, often not measured against the investment in the employee thus far. If retained, the employee progresses through the wage range with no guarantee that the employee’s output increases. Where is the concern to correct this? Read More

Custom Glass Solutions has been on a rapid growth path. While the more familiar, informal one-on-one training of its workers served its purpose, Custom Glass decided it needed to formalize it by building an infrastructure around what was in place. This standardization makes it possible for the company to accelerate the transfer of worker expertise, document the training progress more accurately, provide metrics to measure and improve outcomes, and provide credentialing opportunities to its employees. Read More

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

The acceleration started around 40 years ago. Prior to that, job classifications did not change much and were relatively simple in structure. Then panic set in over the approaching “skills gaps,” as computers were introduced into every aspect of our lives. Fear of baby boomers nearing retirement, taking their technical expertise with them, added to the challenge. Solutions started to appear out of academia, based on the world they knew and not as much on the world they were trying to improve, as they would have liked to think. Read More

Waiting on general classes or unstructured, ad hoc one-on-one training to improve performance and maximize the investment in each worker usually proves to be futile and disappointing. When a worker masters the work they were hired for, it can now be possible to explain, document, repeat and/or improve performance. When turnover occurs and puts you back to square one – wiping out any gains and wasting your investment – labor costs rise, quality and work consistency decreases and the “gap” skill remains. So why not treat workers as the investment it is and manage it for the outcome you need and expect?

n the event that anyone needs one more way (i.e. in addition to live online presentations, onsite presentations) to gather enough information to decide whether to move forward with structured on-the-job training to boost their training strategy, PTI is resuming onsite presentations. Contact Proactive Technologies to schedule an appointment.  Read More

But what if some of the services or operations to manufacture products or sub-assemblies that were, or are to be, off-shored could be done internally – at the labor cost of “training wages” as done in Europe – using equipment that would otherwise have to be idled, sold or shipped? What if those training wages could be furthered reduced by state grants? Could employers find that the source of lower wages is in their own back yard?

Although the following approach for determining if an apprenticeship center/cost-reduction center is right for your organization is simple, it should be scalable to any organization with slight modifications: Read More

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.

Next, this technology had to rely the applicant knowing the right words and phrases to describe their own pre-hire knowledge, experience, skills and abilities of interest to the employer for the algorithm to recognize a closeness or match. In truth, most candidates even knew less about the difference between a skill and ability, knowledge and a trait, having “experience with” versus being “acquainted with,” or being “fluent” in a topic or having a passing knowledge.

Nevertheless, this technology, with all of its short-comings, stormed the market. Many who lost their jobs in 2008, as with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, had not written a resume or filled in a job application for 20 or 30 years, let alone were aware of how key-word search worked and the need to be precise in describing a life of work in terms used by employers which were evolving and who probably changed their own management line-up and company strategy. No one really knows how many highly skilled and perfect matches have seen their careers derailed by this technology, robbing the worker of the job they wanted and the employer of the worker they needed.

Today, while the matching technology is still in use, more and more employers recognize its shortcomings and have developed “work-arounds” to try to ensure more qualified candidates are fairly and more objectively measured. Some have thrown out the idea of key-word candidate screening but not before the years of damage was done. Read More

Waiting on general classes or unstructured, ad hoc one-on-one training to improve performance and maximize the investment in each worker usually proves to be futile and disappointing. When a worker masters the work they were hired for, it can now be possible to explain, document, repeat and/or improve performance. When turnover occurs and puts you back to square one – wiping out any gains and wasting your investment – labor costs rise, quality and work consistency decreases and the “gap” skill remains. So why not treat workers as the investment it is and manage it for the outcome you need and expect?

n the event that anyone needs one more way (i.e. in addition to live online presentations, onsite presentations) to gather enough information to decide whether to move forward with structured on-the-job training to boost their training strategy, PTI is resuming onsite presentations. Contact Proactive Technologies to schedule an appointment.  Read More

Even when an effort is made to structure the unstructured, there are those that resist the effort for a number of reasons. Some have a vested interest in defending the program that they have struggled with through many years of legitimate effort. Some do not like change. Some fear change will interfere with other important goals, such as production quotas – even though the effort to structure what is loosely already there (which takes much longer with lesser results) should only be seen as a positive development. Some may think they know what they are doing or talking about, but are confused about the major differences between classroom lectures, unstructured one-on-one training and structured on-the-job training.

There are only a few true practitioners(with varying approaches) of structured on-the-job training in the world, but the approach is gaining ground with the reintroduction of conceptually similar approaches such as “Training Within Industry”, an approach developed during WWII to help build a strong manufacturing supply chain,. And with the task-based knowledge capture and task-based training requirements of ISO/AS/TS that employers should literally comply with. It would be wise to follow the direction of whichever expert you bring in to help your firm build and implement your structured on-the-job training program until they are ready to hand it off to your trained staff. A professional firm would try hard to learn your culture and constraints before proceeding with a strategy right for your firm. Read More

While working on the Heilbronn project, PTI staff performed job/task analysis on several job classifications that were being duplicated at a new joint venture in Union, South Carolina including Press Operator, Press Technician, Maintenance, Quality Control, Assembly Operator and Assembly Technician. Günther was kind enough to take me on a tour of the apprenticeship center at the plant. The center had around 100 apprentices at any one time at various stages of progression. Modeled after the manufacturing plant where it was established, the group of young workers were processing in each of their disciplines of choice; CAD-CAM Engineering, Tool & Die, Quality Control, Machining. It was like a mini-manufacturing facility with the LÄPPLE factory.

Those apprentices in their final 2 years of study, I was told, were treated like a part of a Tool & Die Manufacturing center. When an order came in for a die, either from LÄPPLE or one of its customers or suppliers, the process started with designing the die, machining the die components, assembling the die, inspecting the assembly and shipping the die to the customer. Instead of making “key chains and donkey carts” like apprentices are often asked to make in the US as their “hands on” training, these apprentices were producing an actual product that was sometimes priced as high as USD1 million!

Of course, these apprentices were paid while in their program. Much of the wage came from the government, while the company paid for the facility, equipment, instructors. But LÄPPLE, like many European apprenticeship hosts, learned how to leverage the work produced by apprentices in honing their skills for paying for the costs to host the program. And when an apprentice completes the program, LÄPPLE gets first pick of the class. The other apprentices have proved their skills enough to be immediately hired by one of many manufacturing facilities in the area aware of the program and its high standards of apprenticeship. Read More

The Peter Principle, however, was the result of a lot of thoughtful research and deliberation. Its conclusion was that in an organization’s hierarchy, employees tend to be promoted based on success in their prior job or jobs; not necessarily on whether they have the prerequisite skills and relevant experience to succeed in the job to which they are promoted. Eventually, an employee “tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Peter’s Corollary for an organization unchecked progression of The Peter Principle, is: “In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.”

The citation of The Peter Principle might have been dismissed by management in its day as nothing more of a disgruntled employee’s attempt to criticize management after being passed over for promotion in favor of someone who isn’t known or respected for their work performance, relevant experience or social skills. But sometimes the choice might have seemed the most counter-intuitive choice for the position by many in the department –acting as further evidence that management was actually out of touch with what was going on in the daily work performed. Read More

Waiting on general classes or unstructured, ad hoc one-on-one training to improve performance and maximize the investment in each worker usually proves to be futile and disappointing. When a worker masters the work they were hired for, it can now be possible to explain, document, repeat and/or improve performance. When turnover occurs and puts you back to square one – wiping out any gains and wasting your investment – labor costs rise, quality and work consistency decreases and the “gap” skill remains. So why not treat workers as the investment it is and manage it for the outcome you need and expect? Read More

New workers routinely encounter a non-structured, rarely focused, on-the-job training experience. Typically, the employer’s subject-matter-expert (SME) is asked to “show the new employee around.” While highly regarded by management, the SME (not trained as a task trainer and having no prepared materials) has difficulty remembering the nuances of the tasks when explaining the process to the new employee, since that level of detail was buried in memory long ago. Each SME, on each shift, might have a different version of the “best practice” for processes, confusing the trainee even more – rendering the notion of “standardization” to “buzzword” status.

Initially, new employees have difficulty assembling, understanding and translating the disjointed bits of recollection into a coherent process to be replicated. Each comes with their own set and levels of core skills and competencies, and learning styles vary from the self-learner/starter to the slow-learner worker who, with structure to make sure they learn the right best practice, may become loyal, high-quality workers.

The more time the SME spends with the new employee in this unstructured, uncontrolled and undocumented experience, which is the prevailing method of on-the-job training, the more the employer is paying two people to be non or minimally-productive. Adding employees can actually lower short-term productivity and add little to long-term productivity for an organization, but the costs will attract notice internally and may lead management falsely believe the problem is cost related. Read More

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

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

“In our new “outsourcing nation,” a widely held belief is that employees are simply costs to be cut and not assets to be valued.” …. “Manufacturing faces a two-sided problem: it not only has thousands of people retiring, but it does not have the training programs to train skilled workers to replace them.”

A Strategy to Capture Tribal Knowledge IndustryWeek- Michael Collins 5-23-16

In the last few years, it seems an alternative to the concentration of expertise in a few subject matter experts has become to use lower-wage temporary or contract workers who specialize in smaller quantities of processes, and who can be “traded-out” with a minimum amount of disruption. History will tell us just how costly that approach was and if anything was learned.

Many in corporate America have come to view all labor as expendable; easy to swap with a cheaper alternative – disregarding the cumulative asset value of the investment made in each. In the June, 2016 Proactive Technologies Report, in an article entitled “A Strategy to Capture Tribal Knowledge,” author Michael Collins notes, “In our new “outsourcing nation,” a widely held belief is that employees are simply costs to be cut and not assets to be valued.” He goes on to say, “Manufacturing faces a two-sided problem: it not only has thousands of people retiring, but it does not have the training programs to train skilled workers to replace them.” Read More 

Waiting on general classes or unstructured, ad hoc one-on-one training to improve performance and maximize the investment in each worker usually proves to be futile and disappointing. When a worker masters the work they were hired for, it can now be possible to explain, document, repeat and/or improve performance. When turnover occurs and puts you back to square one – wiping out any gains and wasting your investment – labor costs rise, quality and work consistency decreases and the “gap” skill remains. So why not treat workers as the investment it is and manage it for the outcome you need and expect? Read More

The contradictions are alarming, and many times middle managers and upper management of corporate-run or private equity managed enterprises are caught in the middle. They know the risks of neglecting training and they see the results first-hand, but have little say in the matter or are afraid of getting caught up in a “cost v. benefit” discussion with people that seem to live in a different world and have made up their mind before the discussion begins. When capacity deteriorates or the siren’s call of cheaper labor markets prevails, someone makes the decision to move the entire operation to a location where training is even more difficult but can be absorbed due to offsetting wage discounts – that is until wages rise and total cost of ownership is understood.

“The decision to not invest in driving each employee to full job mastery – making sure all company employees have mastered the best practice of every task for which they were hired – is akin to investing in a costly NC machine and using it to sharpen your pencils. The return on the investment is not realized, so it starts to look like pure cost. Magnify this by tens or hundreds of employees and there is no doubt of the folly.”

If employers do decide to host related technical instruction, they tend to gravitate toward classroom or online training solutions since they seem more familiar. They settle on local institutional instruction providers and private vendors by finding what they think is a close fit, yet they and the end-users are often underwhelmed by out-of-date or unrelated content that weakens their credibility and makes them reluctant to ask for permission to host another. It has always been difficult to show how related technical instruction and courses “du jour” translated into improvement in a worker’s performance – expressed by the attendees and those who sent them through the class. Read More