Considering the U.S. has been warning about the “skills gap” for over 30 years, the amount of money lost – spent on accommodating, or wrongly addressing, the symptom – the total cumulative loss could be in the significant trillions of dollars…not to mention the resources misapplied. And millions of workers who want, and wanted, to work in a career and employers that could/could have employed them were, both, left empty.

This history has led some to suggest the skills gap is a farce . Even if your concerns aren’t that extreme, one has to wonder why with all of the money spent, the resources applied and the employers and trainees impacted, we seem to still be struggling with a skills gap that started to reveal itself in the 1980’s. 

The fact of the matter is that employers have been just as unfocused and ambivalent about defining the problem as government has been zealous about being the only “solution.” While employers say they need and expect workers that can “hit the ground running,” “think outside the box,” “have skills for the jobs of tomorrow” and all of the other buzzwords and phrases circulating, what they really need is workers that can perform their unique tasks and processes, on their unique equipment, in their unique environment within their unique pay structure in a world of change. Not only do employers lack a clear definition of the job as it exists today, internal and external forces never allow a job to fully materialize before it is significantly changed by design or by changes in technology, or relocated out of the education system’s service area.

“We, as a nation, have been in sort of a “skills gap limbo” for years because even though employers typically have no structured, measurable, improvable and documented method of training workers once hired, miraculously workers appear to master enough of a job for work to get done. Yet if asked, many employers have a difficult time explaining how it happened, which employees can do which tasks and, when the tasks change, which employees on which shifts mastered the new procedure – that is, until something bad happens. They admit frustration in trying to improve performance, but also admit that they do not know which employees are capable of improving or how they would know. This condition deserves swift action to resolve it, not repackaged and rebranded failures of the past.”

Employees and workforce developers, relying on this input, always see the institution’s products first as the solution. Classroom education is familiar to everyone, and the institutions have built themselves stronger with every prolonged fear of the incessant skills gap and the funding that flows from it. Still, graduates too often find themselves unemployable and burdened with debt. Employers continue to complain that they just cannot find skilled workers. 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

“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

“Unfortunately, however, figures on productivity in the United States do not help improve productivity in the United States.”

W. Edwards Deming

Another example is the preoccupation with what is referred to as “inflation,” which is based on the consumer price index (“CPI”). A “basket of consumer goods” was selected and periodic measurements of their retail prices are taken to see, primarily, if any inflationary forces exerted pressure on prices upward or downward during the period that might require an adjustment in central bank monetary policy. First, it is important to know which goods make up the basket. Read More

There has been an extensive global effort to create standards for the voluntary gathering and reporting of human capital metrics, organized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which have been released. And there seems to be a case to be made why companies should not ignore their importance.

Many quality professionals were exposed to the new requirements for a systematic approach to human resources in ISO 9001:2015. These new requirements are based on the principles considered by ISO to be essential to quality management success. But some quality professionals may not be aware of new ways that they can bring added value to their organizations by implementing the spirit and intention of these new requirements.

“If the firm has not defined the job classifications of workers in clear, procedural terms, they have little to measure, report on and use to improve performance.”   

In a recent article in CFO.com entitled, “Human Capital Reporting Standards Finally Arrive,” David McCann writes, “Depending on the extent to which companies voluntarily adopt the new standards, stakeholders – investors, analysts, customers, and current and prospective employees – would have a new category of data with which to assess organizational value and the prospects for financial and non-financial returns from investments in human capital.” 

Conversations regarding ISO 30414 human capital reporting have changed in the last few years, perhaps related to the awareness that the public is asking more and more that corporations be good corporate “citizens” since given that standing in recent Supreme Court rulings such as Citizen’s United. 

The institutional investor community, including the Human Capital Management Coalition with aggregate assets of $3 trillion dollars and is lead by the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, has expressed strong support. They went as far as petitioning the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2017 to require public companies to disclose information on their human capital management. The Commission accepted the petition and is currently considering it.  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

This approach makes a worker’s mastery of the job the focus, incorporating the company’s existing systems, documents and standards by building structure around the loosely arranged worker development activities already in place – structuring the unstructured worker training to make it work effectively and efficiently.

Proactive Technologies offers two ways to help prospective clients be absolutely certain that this strategic approach to worker development is right for them. First, Proactive Technologies is offering a free, no obligation, up-to-three-hours session offsite by videoconference, or onsite (by appointment), to develop a Job Hierarchy (detailed task listing) of the prospective client’s targeted job classification. This involves the prospective client’s designated incumbent “subject matter expert” and will illustrate for the prospective management the direction and detail of this approach’s methodology. It will, also,  reveal whether the subject matter expert’s coworkers have mastered all of the tasks required of the job for which they were hired. Read More

The systems approach to training, if built correctly for your company, forms the infrastructure of a highly effective, low cost apprenticeship (registered or not) model. This model can quickly and cost-effectively produce the multi-craft maintenance technicians you need, who will be qualified to perform the tasks required at your facility. Based on detailed job/task analysis data – collected by Proactive Technologies’ experts using your internal subject matter experts who have the final review – worker development materials are generated by Proactive Technologies’ PROTECH™ software system for immediate use. Most importantly, technical support to the project includes project implementation management, so you can focus on running your business.

This “systems approach to worker development” is effective. To establish the foundation: Read More 

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

“To assume a new worker with no background in the tasks or skills a job requires can acquire them by osmosis is decision that will come back to haunt one day.”

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

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

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

1. Recruiters do not share RJPs during interviews. (Rynes, 1991)
2. The nature of “realistic” information shared (in lab research or in the field) is unclear (Breaugh & Billings, 1988)
3. Not asking the right questions.
4. Applicants consistently report desiring more specific, job-relevant information than they commonly receive (Barber & Roehling, 1993; Maurer, Howe, & Lee,1992)

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

This approach makes a worker’s mastery of the job the focus, incorporating the company’s existing systems, documents and standards by building structure around the loosely arranged worker development activities already in place – structuring the unstructured worker training to make it work effectively and efficiently.

Proactive Technologies offers two ways to help prospective clients be absolutely certain that this strategic approach to worker development is right for them. First, Proactive Technologies is offering a free, no obligation, up-to-three-hours session offsite by videoconference, or onsite (by appointment), to develop a Job Hierarchy (detailed task listing) of the prospective client’s targeted job classification. This involves the prospective client’s designated incumbent “subject matter expert” and will illustrate for the prospective management the direction and detail of this approach’s methodology. It will, also,  reveal whether the subject matter expert’s coworkers have mastered all of the tasks required of the job for which they were hired. 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. Did these methods address the workforce development challenges of their time? In 2018, employers are still concerned with the “skills gap” phenomenon. 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.

In any event, this version of capitalism often yields wild gyrations dotted with cataclysmic events. Read More

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

In the past, the criteria apprentices had to meet to reach journeyman status was ambiguous. Read More 

Sometimes more diligent workers make up for document inadequacy or lack of process documents by keeping notes in their lunchbox or, more precariously yet, in their head. Heaven forbid this is discovered during an audit. These notes not only are uncontrolled and unofficial, but they represent a wealth of “tribal knowledge” that is not routinely shared with new-hires. Mistakes that are known to have happened, and can be avoided if shared, are repeated with each trainee to everyone’s detriment. The fact that each employee feels the need to keep their own notes is a sign of some problem with process documentation and should investigated.

Stepping back to get a better view of learning patterns of a typical worker may be helpful. It varies from organization to organization, job classification to job classification. If an organization has been trying to hire based predominantly on wage level, they often find the lower the wage level the lower the inventory of prerequisite skills for not only the tasks to be learned, but also the ability to learn. And most organizations that focus on lower wage levels do not have a budget for remediation of deficient core skills to improve the process of learning.

It is here that organizations sometimes try to make up for the deficit by expending time and money to illustrate the technical materials, thinking “pictures speak a thousand words.”  Read More

In the 1990’s an attempt was made to return, somewhat, to developing skills that industries said they needed, and the United States Departments or Labor and Education’s National Skill Standards programs were born. I participated in developing skill standards and finding ways to integrate standards into worker training, since education could only take these so far. But it became clear, to me, that standardizing skills for a rapidly evolving industry using old fashioned tools posed more challenges for the employer, showed little return and standards eroded rather quickly with no defined responsibility or budget to maintain and revalidate them.

Meanwhile, the average United States SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) test scores between 2000 and 2016 showed a slight decline, but certainly no improvement through this period. After adjustments to scoring algorithms didn’t improve scores, it was decided in 2016 that the SAT test again needed to be re-designed. As with so many instances in the U.S. when statistics do not show the results expected, some lean toward finding a way to show improvement without making improvements.

When these efforts did not appear to solve the college preparation issues or meet the needs of employers, an effort grew to address “skills employers say they need.” Today, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) learning in K-12 is education’s focus – things that everyone expected were taught in K-12 anyway. But both these efforts still leave the employer to develop the higher order skills and task mastery they need even if the employer does not, or wishes not to, recognize this requirement. Billions of dollars were spent in the last 4 decades and generations of workers completed these programs, yet workforce development still seems in its infancy.

How is the US doing compared to world’s developed and developing countries? The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD)  published the results of their 2015 PISA tests  and it shows the U.S. has a lot of work ahead of it. Read More 

Only employers can train the worker on tasks they need performed and that affect their bottom line. They have the need, the facilities, the most current equipment for their operation and the personnel with current expertise. Yet, in reality most employer’s methods amount to hardly more than pairing two people and hoping for the best. This is where the gap is most profound and continues to grow. Read More

One expert he interviewed, Rayford Irvin, the Houston district director for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), said “Opioid addiction is a disability that is affecting millions across the United States, yet many are regaining control over their lives by participating in supervised rehabilitation programs.” “When a worker has a record of such a disability and is performing his job proficiently, an employer cannot lawfully preclude the worker from employment because he is receiving treatment for his addiction.”

Lawyers interviewed for the article suggested that employers amend their policy manuals regarding drugs and specify exclusions in line with the ADA and reasonable accommodation provisions issued by the EEOC.

Aside from the practices used in the recruitment, interviewing and selection process which Mr. Maurer outlined fairly well, any defenses for not accommodating an individual with prior drug use, but who has completed or is currently participating in a treatment program, or decisions on what that reasonable accommodation would look like would have to be made based on data from a credible and thorough job/task analysis. Read More

Employers need to seriously consider the human factors, not ignore them and focus on everything but this. After decades of neglect, supported by workforce development institutions that have no tools to address this stage of worker development and often unknowingly promulgate distractions in their efforts to claim they do, management has come to simplify the human factor into a cost that can be easily eliminated or replaced by a lower cost alternative in another location. Lacking in this reaction is the underlying fact that moving operations to lower-wage labor markets with even more need for training (e.g. new challenges such as language, culture) only appears to be adding to profits short-term; the same problems exist, but the lower cost of labor makes it more tolerable even if greater challenges to worker performance now exist. As wages rise, these challenges become more pronounced and management becomes more critical.

Total Cost of Ownership formulas, such as the one used by the Reshoring Iniative, try to capture the hidden and overlooked costs of off-shoring operations, with labor challenges being one factor considered. But even so, the factor’s significance is understated.

Here is a simple formula for estimating the cost/benefit of a worker’s contribution to the organization for consideration: Read More

The report continues, “The crisis is not something that’s far off in the future. Even in 2020, the U.S. wage premium is expected to reach $296 billion. By 2025, the gap will total $400 billion, according to the report.” What can companies do to mitigate the trend and minimize the effect? “Employers will need to concentrate on reskilling lower-level workers,” Thompson (author of the report) notes. “That involves identifying those who are adaptable and flexible enough to be successful in the new world of work and putting in place robust training and workforce plans.”

Since 1986, Proactive Technologies, Inc. has repeatedly sounded the alarm in presentations, conferences and employer visits. For some, the urgency and magnitude of the challenge seemed not to register even though they were confronted by symptoms daily. Worker development is not everyone’s forte, and many had several “other fish to fry.” Developing workers and maintaining high performance slipped to the back burner. Numerous pieces appeared in this newsletter, attempting to draw attention to the challenge and things that needed to be done, and could be (should be) done, such as: 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

The EEOC announced last year in its Strategic Enforcement Plan (SEP) that for the next several years, it will continue to focus on class-based recruitment and hiring practices that discriminate.

PATs can be useful in pre-employment assessments, but employers need to make sure they are constructed and utilized correctly. A credible approach is:

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

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

If there is a requirement for employer contributions (in-kind and/or cash) to the project, lack of support from the operational management and staff may allow concerned accountants to cause the organization to withdraw. 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 out of touch with what was actually going on in the daily work performed.

Upon reexamination, The Peter Principle does describe a phenomenon still around today. Read More

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

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

1) Listen carefully to the employer’s description of the need – not every employer has a clear grasp of their need, but if you listen to their frustration in the context of your experience gained from concerns of other employers facing similar symptoms, you can help the employer discover the root cause. Then a solution that makes sense can be developed; Read More 

Despite the low unemployment numbers, the percentage of working-age Americans who are employed today is actually lower than in 2008, with 1.3 percent fewer jobs waiting for college graduates compared to last year.

Any economist, not paid to tell you otherwise, would admit that one of the more puzzling aspects of the reported low unemployment is that it is missing the accompanying higher wages. If the demand for skilled labor increases, the supply of skilled labor declines. A shrinking supply brings higher prices…at least that is how it has worked.

Wages grew at a 2.6 percent rate – hardly able to erase the years of wage stagnation. The reported inflation rate for 2017 was 2.1 percent. Gas prices have risen on average $ .50 since last year, and many economists estimate the additional cost of fuel will wipe out any gains from the tax cut earlier this year.

The cost of necessities has continued to go up. Housing, healthcare costs – insurance, out-of-pocket costs, prescription drugs – still eroding consumer discretionary spending. At the same time government considers cutting support for Medicaid, food support and housing subsidies for the poorest among us. In many states, citizens have to pay a toll to travel on taxpayer-built highways to/from work. When they arrive at the job, they then have to pay $20 a day to park!

It is no wonder that, in the poll, only 32 percent of the country say this country is headed in the right direction; 52 percent say its on the wrong track.

The United States is a consumer-driven economy, and business leaders are rightfully concerned when more and more of the demand for their supply is on life support. So even if the reported unemployment rate was believable, many still wonder “why the hoopla?” Yes, things are better now than following 2008, but for many it doesn’t feel like pre-2008 levels, nor has it made up for what was lost in the years after 2008. Are the nearly 330 million Americans expected to accept this as the “new normal?” Who benefits when the media repeats the reported low unemployment rate, as if everyone’s worries are over, to an increasingly cynical audience? What good is the monthly University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey if inaccurate or overly optimistic news stories sway the results?

Many are wondering who calculates unemployment and how is unemployment determined? According to the United States Department of Labor – Bureau of Labor Statistics website: Read More

relevant core knowledge + relevant abilities + relevant core skill competencies = capability to learn new tasks

capability to learn new tasks + (new task instruction + repeated successful practice) leads to expertise in a practice or process.

This is the basis of apprenticeships from the birth of crafts and trades. While knowing about a process is important, and being physically (e.g. vision clarity, finger dexterity, hearing acuity) and psychologically (e.g. ability to tolerate low lighting, able to withstand heights, tolerance of interpersonal relationships) capable of learning a process is necessary, being skilled implies the synthesis of these components plus requisite core-skills for the task (e.g. trigonometry, reading to appropriate level, basic manual lathe operation). Add new task knowledge with practice to achieve a higher order skill of benefit to an employer or customer.

It is for this reason that apprenticeships in the middle ages lasted a lifetime for some trades. It was felt that some higher order skills were so technically difficult that only a lifetime of practice could allow someone to become an expert. In modern time, until 2008 apprenticeships lasted more in the neighborhood of 6-8 years. Given the fact that it is widely recognized today that most employees transition from one job to another several times in 3-4 years, it became more difficult to complete an apprenticeship if part of an employment opportunity. Finding employers to host apprenticeships was even more difficult for this reason, citing the high cost and low return of doing so. 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.

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.