“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

It is a given that new technology and equipment are dependent on someone learning to either program, service and/or operate them correctly. The incumbent workers, in the job classification before the transition, are the obvious choices for learning. Conceptually, they were doing the work prior to automation with previous version technology and understand the theory and current best practice of the work to be done. These worker’s attained skills will now be tested against the new skill requirements.

Unfortunately, training of current workers for even obvious new technology requirements such as setup, operate and changeover of the equipment, is often overlooked or its significance downplayed. Consequently, often the economic benefits that advances in technology are to provide are marginally, or never, realized despite the costly investment.

Until the processes associated with the new equipment and technology are stabilized for maximum efficiency, learning of the processes – from the each worker’s perspective – is seen as fluid and ambiguous. Even if a noble effort is attempted to indoctrinate the worker in the use of the equipment, the erosion of the worker’s skill base compared to the evolving standard practices and technology is ongoing. Multiply one worker’s learning experience times the number of workers needed to operate the equipment – learning the same tasks in different ways on different shifts from different trainers – the direct costs of training, as well as the opportunity costs of under-utilized “worker capacity,” can be enormous. Calculate this cost for every job classification for which task training is needed and the costs can be “attention-getting.” Read More

“Shadowing” without being able to touch and interact can be done with a DVD at home. Fetching coffee and making sure the break room is stocked with paper plates and napkins do not test the skills developed after 12 years of educational learning and 2 or 4 years of technical and academic study. Do not get me wrong, those who were paid while interns are appreciative for the opportunity and the resume line. However, they all seemed to wish they could have been able to learn and experience more.

Engineering and accounting areas seem to provide more meaningful task-based internship experiences because both have had a long time to standardize some tasks – even proceduralize them in cases – to make it easy for a new person to follow and observe. Other job areas seem to lack standardization of tasks and, to each observer, seem to be seen and understood very differently.

My experience in helping to build “structured on-the-job training” programs from a detailed job and task analysis caused me to reflect on those internship experiences. The structured On-The-Job Training Plan and On-The-Job Training Checklists binders of a Proactive Technologies program seem to help a new-hire and incumbent worker learn. Therefore it is not a stretch that they would help the intern learn, follow and perform a subset of tasks that can be learned during the internship period. It accelerates the process and provides a more deliberate, documented work experience. Read More

We tried a lot of innovative programs for employers in the community within the constraints mentioned, but if I was to be honest we rarely kept up. What we thought we knew of the targeted job classifications and their requirements, and upon which our programs were built and measured, seemed to become increasingly misaligned within just a few years. Not only was advancing technology putting pressure on the content of our learning materials and program design – a constant push toward obsolescence – the employers were continually rethinking the design of their job classifications to meet their business goals and budgets. We were finding less and less similarity in job classifications between employers, by job title and job content.

Inevitably, and not from lack of effort or desire, it was difficult to keep technical curriculum current to within 5-10 years. The “Maintenance” job classification was a perfect example and could be incredibly different from company to company. In the early days, Maintenance was thought of as multi-craft; a maintenance person was responsible for maintaining all aspects of the operation. Some companies tried to hold onto that concept of Multi-Craft Maintenance but, as Multi-Craft Maintenance Technicians were becoming harder to find and therefore required higher pay, more and more companies began to deviate from multi-craft to specialty and single-craft positions that cover only limited areas such as facilities, electrical or mechanical. Some Maintenance positions did not include HVAC, some were primarily focused on servicing machines but not repair. Some employers subcontracted out facility maintenance and instead had their Maintenance employees perform preventative maintenance tasks on everything from manual machines to PLC driven multi-axis machines, to robots and robotic manufacturing machines – leaving the servicing to the warranty and/or contracted OEM experts. Read More

The economic reasons for competitive compensation usually include the scarcity of labor, scarcity of relevantly skilled labor, abundance of job choices yielding migration of the skilled workers with choices, increasing technical nature of jobs, and an expanding economy yielding internal promotions that create openings both above and below current job classifications. These all increase the level of competition for highly skilled workers that leave job openings in its wake.

This perpetual labor volatility is more unique to the United States than to other developed economies. European government and business policies facilitate workforce development efforts based on more accurately predicted labor needs. Economic policies have a purposeful affect on the corporations that thrive, and toward workers and the available jobs today and those to come. Students are exposed to career opportunities starting in grade school which leads to focused interest by middle school school, leading to paid vocational training and apprenticeships before leaving high school. For those wanting to continue college in their chosen profession, apprenticeship training is coordinated with academic learning to promote growth in each and time in both to reinforce each effort.

It is much different here. The U.S. does not believe in long-term planning for the greater good. Many like to believe that this driven by a policy of laissez faire or “let it be” or “let it go.” Other economists claim that this is not a policy as much as it is neglect. Still others see this version of laissez-faire as very selective and that the government does intervene to the betterment of some individuals, companies, and industries to the detriment of others. Read More

Without exception, management expresses shear excitement when showcasing their latest technology and innovations. Equipment that will do what they previously have been doing but now faster, better and cheaper. New and better “best practices” and processes from continuous improvement efforts. Though impressed, I am reminded of the tradeoffs that must be considered in order to take advantage of the latest technology or process, or risk not realizing the improvement’s full potential.

The question is, “what truly takes less time and keeps costs down; throwing two people together and hoping for the best or a thoughtful, structured and deliberate task-based on-the-job training program for the ‘accelerated transfer of expertise^TM?’”

Prior to starting my own company, while working at one major aerospace manufacturer in the quality control department, a department meeting was called to inform us that within the week three $500,000 Zeiss coordinate measurement machines were going to be installed. Of course we were excited – this was truly state of the art at that time. The equipment was delivered, carefully installed and calibrated as advertised and each quality inspector couldn’t wait for their turn to learn how to use it. Read More

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

A typical Undercover Boss episode might reveal:

• Unstructured, inconsistent and incomplete training;
• Uneven and uncertain motivation;
• Conflicting operating orders; Read More

We tried a lot of innovative programs for employers in the community within the constraints mentioned, but if I was to be honest we rarely kept up. What we thought we knew of the targeted job classifications and their requirements, and upon which our programs were built and measured, seemed to become increasingly misaligned within just a few years. Not only was advancing technology putting pressure on the content of our learning materials and program design – a constant push toward obsolescence – the employers were continually rethinking the design of their job classifications to meet their business goals and budgets. We were finding less and less similarity in job classifications between employers, by job title and job content.

Inevitably, and not from lack of effort or desire, it was difficult to keep technical curriculum current to within 5-10 years. The “Maintenance” job classification was a perfect example and could be incredibly different from company to company. In the early days, Maintenance was thought of as multi-craft; a maintenance person was responsible for maintaining all aspects of the operation. Some companies tried to hold onto that concept of Multi-Craft Maintenance but, as Multi-Craft Maintenance Technicians were becoming harder to find and therefore required higher pay, more and more companies began to deviate from multi-craft to specialty and single-craft positions that cover only limited areas such as facilities, electrical or mechanical. Some Maintenance positions did not include HVAC, some were primarily focused on servicing machines but not repair. Some employers subcontracted out facility maintenance and instead had their Maintenance employees perform preventative maintenance tasks on everything from manual machines to PLC driven multi-axis machines, to robots and robotic manufacturing machines – leaving the servicing to the warranty and/or contracted OEM experts. Trying to find the right balance between an effective Maintenance program that gives every employer what they wanted but does not train for skills that one might never have a chance to use and master and most likely would forget, proved increasingly difficult to say the least. 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.

There is clear role for related technical instruction in workforce development, which is to build essential core skills and competencies in trainees so they can learn and master the tasks the employer needs done. But if the employer has a structured on-the-job training infrastructure in place, not only can they accept more prepared candidates they can quickly drive them and incumbent workers to sustained maximum capacity. Even better, they can keep the worker development process going while they wait for their related technical instruction partners to redefine themselves and recover. Employers have the facilities, the equipment, the subject matter experts and the need, so to allow them to be reluctant or timid workforce development partners when they would like to be more aggressive is an unfortunate mistake.

This structured on-the-job training model builds the framework to host internships with task-specific training, and apprenticeships of traditional and non-traditional job classifications – without the bureaucratic headaches associated with apprenticeships of the past, nor the heavy costs of hosting when the return on investment was hard to predict or explain. Read More

All said, two major trends influence my need to add a caveat to my encouragement to pursue higher education. First, be aware of the endless increases to the cost of higher education and, second, be cognizant of the instability of target job classifications and careers that not only renders a two or four-year degree irrelevant but, today, may leave the graduate empty handed and swamped with student loan debt. Even if the graduate is able to find a job it their expected field, the shock of unexpectedly low and flat wages may harness them to an unfulfilling job for life and sliding backward with all-consuming debt.

According to the Huffington Post, the cost of a college degree in the United States has increased “12 fold” over the past 30 years, far outpacing the price inflation of consumer goods, medical expenses and food. Referencing a Bloomberg study, college tuition and fees have increased 1,120 percent since records began in 1978. Using a chart to explain its findings, Bloomberg reports that the rate of increase in college costs has been “four times faster than the increase in the consumer price index.” It also notes that “medical expenses have climbed 601 percent, while the price of food has increased 244 percent over the same period.” Additionally, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, since 2013 the tuition costs continued on its upward path.

While education costs have skyrocketed and with student loan debt reaching $1.5 trillion, wages for graduates have continued to stay flat or decline. While it is still true that advanced degrees have a tendency of leading to higher starting wages and higher wage caps for the field, the number of fields this still holds true for are dwindling as these jobs are redefined, relocated or staffed with foreign workers invited to work for less. This makes working out of student loan debt slow, laborious in itself and often impossible. Read More

As recently 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

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 now see this phenomena repeating itself with the current Covid-19 pandemic. Read More

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

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. Read More

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 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.

Management may try to explain who is trained, who trained them and what exactly the training consisted of by pulling out time cards with training entries, loose training or attendance rosters, an Excel spreadsheet or a pie chart. A smart auditor or concerned client might not be so impressed. Read More

Generally speaking, when we troubleshoot an error in performance, we would like to get to the cause, such as “operator error,” “equipment malfunction,” or “flawed material.” But this is more like isolating the area in which the error happened. We can troubleshoot a machine or send material to the lab for testing, but often the analytical “tools” to dive deeper into the human factor are lacking or inadequate, and the will of management to devote the time soft. The notion of worker “capacity” is a very useful tool that can help a company be proactive in preventing most of the common employee-related errors.

According to the Business Dictionary, “capacity” (in a manufacturing sense) is defined as, “Highest sustainable output rate (maximum number of units per month, quarter, or year) that can be achieved with current resources, maintenance strategies, product specifications, etc.” This is fairly easy to relate to a piece of machinery, a department, or a company. But when applied to a single worker, some loose variables that apply broadly need to be tightened to be useful.

There are several ways a worker can learn to perform. The operator can go through general motions that they saw someone else perform. They can take in the raw information they discover, or are presented, and formulate their own process. These are the most common. Deliberate task-based training is often spotty or non-existent, and is easy to explain away if the infrastructure and tools aren’t in place. On the other hand, structured on-the-job training deliberately trains each worker to perform each task as the resident experts conceived it, repeating the same level of quantity and quality once the task is mastered. Read More

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

It is important to understand that the types of skills that employers are most concerned with – especially employer-specific task-based skills – most likely have not been in the local workforce, nor have any programs been available in local institutions to develop them, simply because these new jobs, with new skill requirements, have never been in the area. The types of skills needed for most modern manufacturing and advanced manufacturing have never been developed because the need was not present nor the data on these jobs available. Even if the need was present, by the time the skill is recognized, a program developed and a worker completed the learning, manufacturers either moved on or moved out. Read More

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.” Read More

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

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

Some modern apprenticeships are so generally focused that it is unclear who they benefit. Including general industry skills and even skills that may become useful in the future is well-intended, but the primary focus should be the mastery of tasks the current or identified future employer needs performed. That is the historic meaning of an apprenticeship. Even as a secondary priority, the hedging of bets that industry-general skills will be needed in the future depends greatly on whether jobs requiring them will materialize and the apprentice will get to apply these skills before they forget them from nonuse. An over-emphasis on predictions can yield students that graduate with irrelevant skills, and employers left with the responsibility to provide more than the task-based training one would expect. Read More

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/TS/AS, etc.) to any operation?  Read More

There are many significant reasons that structured on-the-job training will help any employer really maximize the value of each worker employed with the company, improve operational efficiency and lower the risk of non-compliance (ISO/TS/AS, Safety Mandates, EEOC Mandates). These are not just buzzwords. Here are thirteen reasons (not in any order of importance, since some may be more important to different stakeholders) to consider. Read More

ISO was the basis for first the QS model (automotive industry) that later became the TS16949 model. The TS and AS9100D (aerospace industry) models are similarly structured when it comes to training. During audits, the auditor looks for evidence that all three requirements are met, seeking a pattern of consistency in past records that the system appears to have the attributes that will lead to the same consistency going forward. Customers may use similar techniques to audit vendors and suppliers. The new National Aerospace and Defense Contractor Accreditation Program NADCAP (for prequalifying defense and commercial aerospace industry suppliers to a higher level of consistency) as well as other industry-specific standards developed or being developed have similar requirements for training. The reason that all of these models follow a quality standard for worker training is that it is measurable, unlike the old days when auditors encountered a drawer full of rosters or a partially current Excel spreadsheet – with no real evidence of  the connection between training, the work to be performed and the worker to perform it.

Taking a class on even closely related theory does not prove a worker can perform a process, but it might show the worker has the core knowledge and possibly lower-order skills to learn the unique processes to be performed, which is a good basis upon which to start task-based training. From a quality assurance perspective, documentation showing that process-based on-the-job training was recently delivered (and any process revisions were since conveyed) correlates to the decreased odds of non-conformance for that process. That is the reason quality assurance and control models seek that evidence in an audit. Read More

For those who recognize the need for worker training and try to incorporate it manually while trying to keep up with engineering and technological innovations, it is common to find a training program released well into the last days of the life cycle – just in time to train workers for the things they made and serviced years before. Manual methods just do not keep up anymore, and they haven’t for the last 30 years. This doesn’t mean we should “leap-frog” to Artificial Intelligence or online training. The cost alone would dissuade anyone from utilizing it for this type of task-specific training, never mind the inappropriateness.

The most efficient and effective path to expediting a process from development of the process (including all pertinent aspects) to implementation is displayed. The task should be the central focus, with each stakeholder department contributing its input and metrics of accurate performance. Simply stated, the engineer can draft a process, then the other departments can add their components in order. Once all inputs are in, everyone can review and make changes based on each other’s observations and comments before a final document is released.

Too often departments are the focus of process development and implementation. Each department may contribute, but each department may also have its protocol, maybe even separate software or manual system, and each creating its own support document. A process making its way through this maze – back and forth with revisions and corrections – may take months. Making changes to it, for things learned in implementation, may not make it through the maze before the next request for change is submitted. Read More