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

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

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

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

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“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.”

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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.

Did these methods address the workforce development challenges of their time? In 2018, employers are still concerned with the “skills gap” phenomenon. Retirees, many who put off, or came out of, retirement for economic reasons as the cost of living continued to rise and their pensions evaporated, are still in the workforce and their inevitable departure, with all of their technical expertise and job wisdom, still on its way out the door. Read More

Online Resources for the New, Reluctant “Home Schoolers” and “Home Learners”

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

A massive disruption, such as the Covid-19 virus, challenges everyone’s notion of “normal.” It can send us, especially the unprepared, scrambling for short-term solutions when the connections to established institutions and resources are unplugged.

Some workers who had not worked from home try to set-up a space to effectively perform work previously performed onsite if employers support the effort. Some workers either find themselves at home, not necessarily “working” from home, with children who are also restricted to house confinement – children whose education can be at risk if delayed or previous progress is idled for too long. Teachers and parents are painfully aware of the “drop-off” in retention that occurs just over holiday and summer breaks alone. Younger students might see this as an unexpected vacation, older students may see this as a threat to their educational attainment and next phase of their education or employment.

Are Advances in Technology Distracting, Rather Than Assisting, HR From the Fundamentals of Worker Selection and Development?

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

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

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

Nine Scenarios That Would Make You Wish You Had a Structured OJT System

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

I think one can confidently say that most employer’s focus on training the workers they need – to perform the tasks they were meant to perform – has become detrimentally blurry, counterproductive and often non-existent. There are many reasons for that – some legitimate. But without a deliberate, measurable strategy for quickly driving each worker to mastery of the entire job classification, an employer’s labor costs (not just wages, but opportunity costs and undermined return on worker investment as well) can be substantial and act as a drag on an organization’s performance.

Many employers are still waiting for the educational institutions to solve the problem. After all, look at all of the money spent on education directed at “training the workers of tomorrow.” Yet a lot of the institutional strategies appear to include repackaged tools from the past…and not the ones far enough past that seemed to work. For example, the recent comments made by education insiders saying we should have kept the high school vocational programs in place. These were phased out when the push to prepare students for college took priority. 

Read the full May, 2020 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Use Business Disruption Lulls to Develop Unused Worker Capacity: Build Organizational Value and Off-set Unexpected Costs

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

For those of us who remember the shear terror of recent disruptive events, we remember the deep sense of doom they instilled in employers, workers and their families, and government leaders. We knew that these were not the “business cycles” of college textbooks, these were man-made catastrophes that spared no-one in the disruption…though sometimes enriching the architects. Nevertheless, they came and went – varying only in severity and duration.

Recent horrific business disruptions like the Savings & Loan Crash of 1986, the Black Monday Stock Market Crash of 1987, the Dot.com Crash of 2000, the Crash of 2008 (with scandals like the Penny Stock Market, SBA and HUD and recessions woven in between), made lives harder and transformed businesses for better or worse. If seemed that if a business survived these types of  disruptors, it was often because they focused on using the downward part of the cycle to adjust and perfect their operations, build capacity and sharpen focus in preparation of the upward part of the cycle to come. Maintaining as much forward momentum  through adversity as possible is critical in determining the quality of the survival, especially when the time between disruptions continues to grow shorter. Lead times, whether for new product introduction, entering a new market or just resuming normal operations is incredibly important if one considers the next disruption as a “backstop.”

Put Yourself in a Trainee’s Shoes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

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

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

Read the full April, 2020 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Five Most Important Ways Structured On-the-Job Training Can Reclaim Wealth For an Employer

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In a Proactive Technologies Report article entitled “10 Reasons Structured On-The-Job Training is a Vital and Necessary System for Any Organization,” a few of the many important reasons that structured on-the-job training – at least Proactive Technologies’ version – were explained that should be part of any organization’s operational strategy. Here are 5 ways this approach to worker development that integrates an organization’s existing systems unlocks tremendous wealth and yields substantial returns – just for doing what every employer says they want anyway but most find a reason to avoid it.

Too many employers still, wrongly, believe that they have little in the way of tools and metrics to develop and measure the value of each worker that comes to the organization. No structured training program in place means no one has analyzed the job for the tasks required to be performed, the compliance criteria, the core skills and knowledge necessary to master the tasks, or why a task resides in a job classification. If there is no structure, there is no way to measure what percent of the job a worker has mastered or, if still in development, how well they are progressing to the expected level of job mastery and performance. If no structure or metrics exist, there is nothing to improve or, at least, notice an improvement. And if something goes wrong and worker malperformance is suspected, there is little from which to draw evidence to support a conclusion and proper course of corrective action.

Internships of Value – For Employer AND Intern

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

In my college years, a number of my classmates participated in internships in an effort to gain real-world work skills and experiences, and to be able to add a line to their resumes. Over the years when we compared notes, it seems the results varied from company and by job area. But the common sentiment was that the experiences were not as helpful to building workplace skills and personally fulfilling as they could have been.

According to a NACE (“National Association of Colleges and Employers”) 2015 survey entitled “Internship & Co-op Survey,” “The primary focus of most employers’ internship and co-op programs is to convert students into full-time, entry-level employees (70.8 percent and 62.6 percent, respectively).”  So, it appears most employers view internships as a potential recruitment tool and a way of evaluating candidates for employment.

Workforce Development Partnerships with Substance: My Experience

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

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

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

Understanding the Important Difference Between Classroom, Online and On-The-Job Training

Knowing the Difference Can Save Your Organization Time, Money and Disappointment

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In the March, 2017 issue of Proactive Technologies Report article entitled, “Thirteen Good Reasons Why Structured On-The-Job Training Should Be Part of Your Business Strategy” I laid out 13 very important reasons employers should seriously consider adding structured on-the-job training to their business strategy. This is based on the supposition that everyone’s definition of “on-the-job training” is similar if not the same, the difference between “structured” and “unstructured” on-the-job training is clear and recognized, and the vast difference between true structured on-the-job training and “classroom” or “online” learning is unquestioned. It also needs to be understood that structured on-the-job training is not interchangeable with classroom and online learning, but rather the “capstone” of applying core skills developed from the latter into mastering units of work for which an employer is willing to pay wages.

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. Classroom and online learning are pretty well understood as useful delivery methods in developing core skills that will be utilized later in mastering tasks they will be taught on-the-job and required to perform as the main reason for employment. However that is in no way a guarantee that either online learning and classroom learning – alone or combined – leads to mastery performance of a task without proper task training on how to apply those core skills in the performance of a unit of work; the task. If fact, if not correctly selected for  job relevance (as opposed to industry acceptance), online and classroom content may have little impact on task performance and these core skills usually dissipate quickly without immediate and repetitive usage. Read More

Read the full March, 2020 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Certifying and Auditing Workers, Subcontractors

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

When auditors sample worker performance for compliance with process documents and quality standards, they observe the employee perform the steps of the defined process and watch for accuracy. That is necessary for assuring repeatable quality output.

Yet process documents and references to quality standards do not a training strategy make. Technical documents were never intended to be training materials. Depending on the engineer’s style, they may be too technical or too verbose for the average user. Rarely are technical documents tested for readability (against the reading levels of the intended users) let alone repeatability.

Assessing Employees with Past Drug Addictions for Work Tricky

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

A prevalent challenge faced by many employers is what to do with job applicants with a record of past drug use. Current drug use detected during screening is more cut and dry, but candidates that are going through, or went through, treatment and have maintained a clean life-style since need more care to avoid running afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

The Americans with Disabilities Act  protects employees and job applicants from discrimination based on past drug addiction in most cases.  In a article for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) website by Roy Maurer, “The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects employees and job applicants from discrimination based on past drug addiction. These individuals qualify as having a disability if they successfully completed a supervised drug rehabilitation program or are currently participating in such a program and are no longer using prohibited drugs.”

Apprenticeships: Be Careful Not to Minimize Integrity While Spiking The Numbers

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

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

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

Apprenticeships That Make Money? Not as Impossible as it Seems (part 2 of 2) – Setting Up an Apprenticeship Center

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In part one of a two-part article entitled “Apprenticeships That Make Money? Not as Impossible as it Seems,” appearing in the Proactive Technologies Report, I discussed what seemed to be the obvious differences in European and U.S. apprenticeship models.  I suggested that visionary U.S. business leaders consider creating a revenue-generating “apprenticeship center” within the organization to cover the costs of the apprenticeship and, in some cases, make money. How could that be accomplished? In continuing the discussion I would like to offer a possible strategy.

American manufacturers turned to lower wage labor sources, such as Mexico, China and India, during the last 30 years to lower their production costs in the hope that they would be more profitable. It is now understood that with lower wage costs comes additional supply chain costs which can, if uncontrollable, erase some or all of the gains a lower wage level might offer.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?

Read the full February, 2020 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Appreciating the Value of Labor

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

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

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

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

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

In business, if you encounter market “softness” and believe that the business level that you were previously operating at is now unattainable for a limited period, you might first find cost cuts that do not erode the business capacity once held in case your, or the pundit’s, forecast was wrong or the recovery is swifter than anticipated. Sometimes investments are made in machinery and technology during the lulls to get ready for the economic up-turn, but too rarely is any effort made to determine the level of each worker’s current capacity (i.e. what percent of the tasks they were hired to “expertly” perform) relative to the job they are currently in and what could be done to increase it to handle not only existing technology and processes, but the new technology and processes as well. One might even think about cross-training workers to build “reserve capacity.”

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

Your “Resident Expert” May Not Be an Expert Trainer, But Easily Could Be

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

Just because a worker is informally recognized as a “star performer,” it doesn’t necessarily follow that they can be an effective trainer. Employers like to think it is as easy as that, but seldom does it turn out to be the case. However, with a little structure, some tools and a little guidance these resident experts can, and often do, become expert trainers.

If one thinks about how an expert is measured and recognized, it is usually by subjective, mostly anecdotal measures. The worker performs job-related tasks quickly, consistently and completely. This implies few mistakes, performance that is mostly within specifications and standards of performance, and no one can remember anything rejected or returned as scrap or rework.

Apprenticeships That Make Money? Not As Impossible as it Seems – Part 1 of 2: The European Difference

Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

A few years ago, I had dinner with a friend of many years, Günther Hauser, in his hometown of Neckarsulm Germany. I met Günther several years ago when Proactive Technologies, Inc. (“PTI”) was working on a project in South Carolina that required PTI staff to travel to the LÄPPLE manufacturing plant in Heilbronn, Germany where Günther was the manager of the apprenticeship program. During that dinner, our conversation naturally drifted to an area of shared interest; worker training and apprenticeships and the differences in the United States and European systems of workforce development.

LÄPPLE is a worldwide supplier of press parts, autobody shell components, standard parts and rotary tables as well as automation solutions. They employ over 2000 people and provide exclusive, sophisticated solutions in forming and car body technology as well as the engineering and design of automation systems, machines and tools. Some of their customers include many of the automobile manufacturing companies such as Audi, BMW and Volkswagen.

Read the full January, 2020 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

“Full Job Mastery” means “Maximum Worker Capacity” – A Verifiable Model for Measuring and Improving Worker Value While Transferring Valuable Expertise

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

It is no secret that with the traditional model of “vocational” education, the burden of the job/task-specific skill development falls on the employer. It is not economically feasible nor practical for educational institutions to focus content on every job area for every employer. So they, instead, focus rightly on core skills and competencies – relying on the employer to deliver the rest. This is where the best efforts of local educational institutions and training providers begin to break down even if highly relevant to the industry sector.

Employers rarely have an internal structure for task-based training of their workers. Even the most aggressive related technical instruction efforts erode against technological advances as every month passes. If core skills and competencies mastered prior to work are not transformed quickly into tasks the worker is expected to perform, the foundation for learning task performance may crumble through loss of memory, loss of relevance or loss of opportunity to apply them.

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

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

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

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

Tips for Workforce Developers – Partnerships That Matter…and Last

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

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

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

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

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

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

For over thirty years headlines sounded the alarm that those institutions that were training the workforce of tomorrow were not succeeding in their effort as discussed in, “An Anniversary That You Won’t Want to Celebrate: 30 Years Later and The Skill Gap Grows – Is it Finally Time to Rethink The Nation’s Approach?“). Many skilled workers that are available to work do not have the skills that employers need today. Not completely satisfied with their answer to the inevitable question regarding the region’s skilled labor availability and how workers with specific skill needs will be found or developed, some economic development organizations are exploring other options and opportunities.

Proactive Technologies Announces Significant Turnkey Project Discount Program – October 15th – December 20th, 2019!

Read the full December, 2019 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

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

 by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

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

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

Have You Captured The Expertise of Your Critical Hourly and Salary Positions?

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

Starting in the late 1980’s, employers became increasingly concerned with succession planning; ensuring salary workers were being groomed to replace critical senior employees in the event of retirement or voluntary/involuntary separation. It was realized that the potential disruption – direct and the ripple effects – caused by an unplanned void in the leadership chain might be perceived as a threat to shareholder value. Shareholders, too, wanted assurances that maximizing a firm’s performance was not tied to one or two invaluable people.

Compounding the concern was the realization that the workforce was aging at all levels, and that retirements were a certainty. Prior to the Crash of 2008, employer’s concern over this was amplified by anecdotal reports from other employers already experiencing the impact. A movement toward a remedy began to take shape, and not just for high ranking salary positions, but technically critical salary positions and even hourly positions that with a loss of one or a few technical experts might disrupt operations and impair a firm’s viability.

The US DOL Wants States To Expand Apprenticeships. Will, and Can, Community Colleges Support Truly Employer-Focused Apprenticeships?

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

In an article entitled, “A New Breed of Apprenticeships,” several community colleges were celebrated for their vision in expanding apprenticeship programs to non-traditional areas, in this case healthcare.

In reviewing the article’s “Five Key Elements” of an employer-based apprenticeship, I wonder if the understanding exists of what is most important to the employer. Something that isn’t “front-and-center” as an element is the need to ensure that the apprenticeship program, at a minimum, results in a worker who has mastered all of the tasks for the apprenticeship employer host’s job classification. Without that assurance, the employer will be underwhelmed, if not disappointed, and may disband the program leaving current apprentices without a program to finish and those who targeted the program without the special status they were expecting.

Proactive Technologies Announces Significant Turnkey Project Discount Program – October 15th – December 20th, 2019!

“No-Risk” Discount Pilot Program – Witness Approach for One of Your Specific Job Classifications Before You Decide to Expand

by Proactive Technologies, Inc. Staff

Due to the success of our last discount offers, and many requests from companies that could not act before the end of the last discount offer early this year, Proactive Technologies Inc. is once again offering a generous discount offer of up to 40% to employers from October 15th to December 20th, 2019! The accelerated transfer of expertise™ approach is a tremendous offer without the discount but with it, it can help any employer to:

Read the full November, 2019 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Labor Costs Expected to Increase, So Will Challenges to Worker Development

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In an article by David McCann of CFO.com entitled, “Labor Costs Will Skyrocket Over the Next Decade”, the author cited new research from consulting firm Korn Ferry  projecting new challenges for employers in the coming years. “Organizations around the world could add more than $2.5 trillion to their annual labor costs within 12 years as a result of the global shortage of highly skilled workers. The report follows up on the recruiting and workforce management firm’s forecast in May that the talent shortage could cost companies $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenue by 2030.

This is a rolling crisis that started several decades ago – the repercussions are just now being articulated in terms employers can relate. Employer’s awareness of the approaching crisis appeared for retiring baby-boomers and the anticipated loss of expertise and critically unique task-based skills mastered over decades of performance. Add to that the rise of millenials, the continual introduction and evolution of technology and the disruptive effects of the Crash of 2008. Now employers are finding themselves rebuilding their workforce, in many cases with tools and techniques that haven’t evolved all that much and still without really understanding the seriousness of the challenge, let alone the labor and opportunity costs to their operation.

More Employers Finding Ways To Strategically Ensure Fair Pay

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

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

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

Developing the Maintenance and Other Technically Skilled Workers That You Need; To Specification, With Minimal Investment

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

In the March, 2016 Proactive Technologies Report article, “Grow Your Own Multi-Craft Maintenance Technicians – Using a ‘Systems Approach’ to Training” I described how Proactive Technologies, Inc. has often joined forces with universities, community colleges (many were schools for which I lead the customized training and workforce development departments) and other related technical instruction providers to setup and implement the “hybrid model” of worker development.  This approach has proven itself highly effective for technical job classifications such as Maintenance,Chemical Operators, Press Operator, Tool & Die, NC Machine Operator, Quality Control, Supervisor and others.

This “systems approach” to worker development is simple in its structure but includes metrics and quality control points to ensure that worker development outcomes are clearly defined, progress measured and reported monthly, and goals reached – no matter if the job changes or people change jobs. Although this approach can be used for any job classification in any setting, together we have applied this approach effectively for Maintenance and many other critical technical positions, as well as often neglected supervisor and first-line management positions, for many clients over the last 2 decades.

Pre-Employment Physical Ability Tests Can be a Legal Liability If Not Done Right

by Jim Poole, President of Lifetime Learning, LLC

David Sparkman of EHS Today wrote in a July 20, 2018 article entitled “EEOC Cracks Down on Pre-Employment Physical Testing” that “If your company uses pre-employment physical stress tests for job applicants that result in the rejection of female applicants, you could be in a world of hurt if the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) finds out.” He described the story of Hirschbach Motor Lines, “which used a pre-employment back assessment to screen and reject applicants it believed would be unable to work as truck drivers. Applicants were tested for their ability to balance and stand on one leg, touch their toes while standing on one leg, and to crawl… The company eventually agreed to pay $3.2 million to a class of female applicants after the EEOC filed a lawsuit alleging the strength and fitness tests they took impacted women disparately. Earlier this year another case involving physical ability testing required by a police department resulted in a nearly $2.5 million settlement for female applicants.”

EEOC’s aggressive pursuit of cases demonstrates why it is important that employers understand the legal issues surrounding physical ability tests(PATs). Extreme care should be exercised when selecting and validating such tests. Sparkman quotes experienced lawyers representing clients in these types of cases, “’If a PAT has a disparate impact-for example, if women fail the PAT at a statistically significantly higher rate than men-an employer has the burden of demonstrating that use of the PAT is job-related and consistent with business necessity,’ explain attorneys Mallory Stumpf and Sarah Smith Kuehnel of the Ogletree Deakins law firm.”

Explaining Your Process Training to Auditors, Prospects and Clients

by Proactive Technologies, Inc. Staff

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

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

Read the full October, 2019 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

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

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

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

Given the growing discontent by workers who still haven’t recovered from the Crash of 2008 and are still trying to come back to the wage level they once had for the talents they possess as their employer and their shareholders built great profits, workers might want a seat at that discussion. Many families, today, are challenged by rising prices of nearly everything and stagnating or eroding wages. This preoccupation with driving down labor costs, while reporting to Wall Street record quarterly profits, may benefit shareholders in the short-run, but it is surely self-destructive and illusionary in the long-run. 

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

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

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

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

Classes Alone Will Not Close the “Skills Gap,” But Structured On-the-Job Training Can…Every Time!

by Proactive Technologies, Inc. Staff

Proactive Technologies. Inc. works with many employers, a large number of them manufacturers, to set up structured on-the-job training programs designed to their exact job classification(s), built to train incumbent and new-hire workers to “full job mastery” – still the most elusive goal most employers face and the key to” closing the “skills gap.” Under-capacity of workers is an enormous source of untapped value and unrealized return on worker investment. 

The accelerated transfer of expertise™ approach can help any employer quickly and completely train the skilled workers they need AND realize an increase in worker capacity, work quantity/quality and compliance (ISO/TS/AS, engineering specifications and safety) while reducing the internal costs of training. New-hires and incumbent workers are driven to full job mastery and higher levels of return on worker investment (ROWI). The task-based, structured on-the-job training infrastructure is perfect for apprenticeships; instead of marking the calendar for “time-in-job,” job-relevant tasks are mastered and documented. AND, unlike classroom or online training, the cost per trainee decreases with each added trainee once set up. 

Supervisors and First Line Management Need Structured On-The-Job Training, Too

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

It seems every organization is scrambling to “lean” the operation these days. This implies producing the same amount of output, or more, with decreased amount of inputs by fine-tuning logistics, internal work flows and processes. Workers get moved around or out, and processes get reorganized and relocated.

Changes to the operation signal that the workers responsible to implement changes will need to know the new way of doing things. All affected workers, all shifts. Yet, often very little thought is given to the effectiveness of improvements if not everyone is one the same page.

Read the full September, 2019 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.

Thirteen Good Reasons Why Structured On-The-Job Training Should be Part of Your Business Strategy

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Many articles have appeared in the Proactive Technologies Report covering how Proactive Technologies’  PROTECH© System of managed human resource development can address many of the workforce development scenarios; from individualized, customized structured on-the-job training for a specific employer for specific job classification(s), to regional partnerships servicing multiple employers while partnering with regional educational institutions, private training providers, workforce development and economic development agencies to provide the related technical instruction. There are many winners with this approach, but none so important as the employer and the employee.

Several articles have appeared in the newsletter explaining how Proactive Technologies sets up for each client a unique, structured on-the-job training program, provides implementation support to ensure it is running effectively and provides documentation and monthly reporting to drive each employee’s progress toward full job mastery. The most recent article appearing in the February, 2017 issue entitled “Tips for Establishing Your Company’s Training Strategy – Practical, Measurable, Extremely Economical and Scalable“. While the article hints on some of the benefits to the employer-employee stakeholders, it might be more advantageous to focus on the benefits themselves rather than leave them nuanced. More can be found in other articles at the News and Publications page of the Proactive Technologies, Inc. website.

The High Cost of Employee Turnover

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

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

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

Ensuring Worker Training Complies With ISO, AS, TS and Other Quality Mandates

Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff

Each of the quality programs typically modeled by manufacturers and service organizations is rooted in the American National Standards Institute(“ANSI”) program for quality assurance and control that served us up to the 1980’s. What each of the subsequent models tries to achieve is simplicity, standardization and verifiability. Audits are used to ensure these attributes are present.

When compliance with ANSI requirements became inconsistent among manufacturers, International Standards Organization (“ISO”) rewrote the standards to make them more compliable and encouraged an international acceptance of the standards. ISO models allow the host to be certified to a part/process, or to its people performing a process or as an overall facility producing and product(s)/service(s) for export. In any model from a worker’s contribution to the product or service, the fundamental standard is whether there are clear, compliable processes in place to control and measure a repetitive, consistent level of quality. The next standard is whether the host makes a documented effort to train/retrain workers to the processes (when changes occur). The third standard is whether the host has a records system that accurately tracks each worker’s progress toward “mastery” of the processes they are responsible to perform.

From Innovation to Implementation – Success Depends on Preparedness of Those Executing

by Dean Prigelmeier. President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

How often does a product or service go straight from research and development to service implementation or product production? A skilled, experienced worker may be able to overcome the ambiguity of this hand-off, but it seems there is, today, a shortage of skilled, experienced workers; baby boomers finally decided they can, or have to, retire, or some companies experience high turnover rates of replacements, or most employers say they lack of skilled candidates…or even someone skilled enough to train them.

There are many reasons that this loosely organized hand-off still exists:

• Perhaps from a sense of futility, with engineers seeming to have given up on the notion of training workers first to ensure immediate output quantity, quality and consistency;
• Perhaps it is from knowing that the organization lacks a “system” in place to facilitate the transfer;
• Perhaps it is from the belief that, especially in the early stages, the product or service may go through many changes before a coherent, repeatable process settles in and when it does the next product or service has been introduced;
• Perhaps from a sense of superiority, that “I know how to do this [because I designed it] so everyone else should know what to do.”

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

Read the full August, 2019 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.