Lacking a standardized format between departments, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in 2017 announced that they were looking to modernize the handling of employee records. One proposed solution is the creation of the federal employee digital record that would enable a continued, secure exchange of information on the “life cycle of employees.” Without knowing the types, limits and sources of collected data, it is unclear as to who will be helped and hurt by this practice.

Also in 2017, Sony announced that is was working to digitize education records using blockchain technology to track each citizen’s educational achievement throughout their life. Again, the devil is in the details.

In 2018, in an article appearing in Material Handling & Logistcs entitled “Will Amazons Worker Tracking Wristbands Cross the Privacy Line?,” it was reported that Amazon announced a new technology to track workers that has drawn many privacy group’s concern. “…a recent patent acquired by Amazon that would require employees to wear devices on their wrists which would track their every move has sounded alarm bells as to whether this new foray into advanced technology comes up against the need for privacy.”

Where is all of this leading? Lori Andrews, a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law said, “Employers are increasingly treating their employees like robots,” Andrews said. And this tracking could extend deeper than merely recording movement related to warehouse operations. Maroitti [Ally Maroitti-Chicago Tribune] also spoke with Paula Brantner, senior adviser at employee rights organization Workplace Fairness who said that the “technology could lead to discrimination. Even if the wristbands don’t use GPS tracking, they could tell a company if a woman is taking longer bathroom breaks than co-workers or whether a disabled employee is moving more slowly, which could reflect negatively on their job performance.”

Data is good. Employers need data to monitor efficiency and track the results of improvement efforts. But when does too much data cloud the underlying issue being measured? Can employers micro-manage itself into bad decisions and operational paralysis? And as companies continue to aggregate and sell collected data, what dangers does this pose to employees and consumers privacy – something difficult to nearly impossible to remedy once affected? Read More

Same too are the more critical and complex tasks of the job, requiring compliance with so many factors such as engineering specifications, quality control requirements, safety requirements and company policies. Without a deliberate task-based training infrastructure in place, training might be ad hoc, informal, unstructured and rarely documented. Add to this the periodic worker cross-training that allows workers to train in, and master, tasks in multiple job areas and the amount of critical, but undocumented, training can be tremendous.

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

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

This might have been the impetus of the enhanced requirements announced for ISO 9001:2015  (promulgated to AS 9000  and TS 16949 quality models) concerning the “capture and management of legacy knowledge.” An organization now must comply with the requirements to capture and manage the process knowledge, identify gaps between the job knowledge needed to perform in the job and the employee’s consistent performance of the tasks of the job, and to provide documented evidence that the gap was found and closed.

This has been a routine component of the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development since its creation over 35 years ago. The many tools, reports and benefits ensure that the approach to all job classifications, all employees is consistent – even though the jobs and people are not. The OJT Tasks Mastered Report can be proudly posted on the Gemba boards of each department to show ISO/AS/TS auditors, and clients and future clients, the level to which each worker is trained to perform the detailed work. By itself, this would be impressive. But additionally, the average worker’s capacity (i.e. percentage of the tasks required of the job that have been mastered and documented) is maintained for each worker, in each department, at much higher levels than normally found in organizations. Task mastery gaps are clearly displayed for the employee and supervisor to see, ensuring that opportunities to drive each incumbent, new-hire and cross-training worker to full job mastery are not missed.

For each “X” representing mastery of that task, a training record is filed to record the event and Read More

This movement is reminiscent of the 1990’s and early 2000’s single-mindedness of educational institutions and states that assessments were the cure for deficient workforce skills. As with core skills represented by STEM, assessments are only on part of a workforce development process. In this case, it was to identify skill deficiencies. Solutions like this are not meant to be delivered randomly out of sequence, nor are they meant to the focal point of all available resources and efforts.

Certainly, a logical process starts with developing the core skills. This is the foundation upon which the higher order core skills can be developed and eventually task-based skills (that only the employer can deliver) are developed. Assessments can be used either prior to developing core skills to understand which STEM areas need emphasis, or after core skill development and prior to employment to see if any STEM areas were missed or need additional remediation. But keep in mind these STEM areas selected are industry-general, not employer-specific. If an assessment was designed based on a thorough job/task analysis for a specific employer, it can further screen and qualify candidates for training and mastery of tasks a company needs performed

However, the process doesn’t, and shouldn’t, end there. Each step of a workforce development process should never be considered the end of the journey; only one rung of a ladder. Just because one stage has a higher platform, bigger megaphone and, therefore, access to state and federal funds to sweeten their offer (while overstating their significance) shouldn’t cloud any employer’s vision of what they need this process to produce. And workforce development efforts compensating for falling short of an effective outcome by leading STEM graduates to an “apprenticeship” that looks very much like a 2-year associates degree program – with just an employer’s name attached to lend plausibility – doesn’t seem like a departure from the past at all; just different curtains on the same window.

Employer’s who think that putting all hopes on the STEM graduates to find the skilled workers they need will be grossly disappointed. Read More

And then there is the endless number of issues related to how well a worker was developed, on what were they developed, and how well that expertise has been maintained through all of the changes faced in competitive world. Any worker that has been deliberately, or coincidentally, developed to a recognizable high level of job mastery is considered being of “high value,” although the value is not quantifiable. Every employer wants to retain that worker, replicate that worker and relies on that worker to informally share expertise with others. If that worker leaves the organization for any reason, disruption, confusion, chaos and costs can occur.

So, why do so many employers take their role in developing and maintaining each worker’s capacity so lightly? Why do they often embark on proposed solutions that, at face value, seem a stretch? Are they unaware of all the tools out there, or are they relying on voices that may lack the experience and expertise themselves, or have another motive, to propose a credible solution?

When it comes to training workers, there are a lot of ideas floating around – many recycled for decades and no more relevant today than they were back when. Some of the ideas that are backed by a lot of federal and state funding draw a bigger audience and followers who want part of that money. But is the underlying solution credible with all we now know and does it address the true problem? Or is it just a change in packaging, leaving the root problem unchanged? Many of these solutions circulate for 5 – 10 years, then everyone moves on. How much opportunity is lost, costs incurred, companies harmed, lives unimproved and wealth lost or not extracted by this unintentional neglect?

Here are five areas that the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development can help any employer extract untapped and under-developed wealth from any worker, any job classification, in any industry. Each has been previously written about and links are provided. They are: 1) The Capture Worker Wisdom and Expertise;  2) The Accelerated the Transfer of Expertise™ and Increased Worker Capacity ; 3) Driving Every Worker to “Full Job Mastery;”  4) The Increase Work Consistency, Quantity, Quality and Compliance;  and 5) The Decreased Internal Costs of Training and Worker Turnover. To summarize each point’s significance: Read More

Still, no matter how well or how poorly institutions prepare the workforce for employers, the employer cannot deny their responsibility to continue the training process and train the worker for the organization’s specific use. The degree to which they take this responsibility seriously will determine the success of the institution’s efforts to prepare workers, how much value the worker adds to the operation, and how well the operation performs in the market. Any apprenticeship that lacks an aggressive structured on-the-job training program cannot be the robust experience it is meant to be. By definition, an apprenticeship without structured on-the-job training really isn’t an apprenticeship.

But the success/failure doesn’t stop there. A successfully and fully trained (to the tasks required) staff prepares, and keeps, the organization prepared to seize opportunities, adjust to disrupters and weather unforeseen forces. Failure at preparing and maintaining each worker’s job mastery, as part of system, can exacerbate an organization’s challenges and, potentially, lead to failure or irrelevance of the organization.

Having a structured on-the-job training infrastructure in place not only allows the organization to adapt and evolve, if built correctly it can align the training of workers with the other systems of the organization and facilitate a higher level of compliance. Without it, there is nothing to ensure a worker’s mastery performance of a process to engineering, quality and safety specifications.

Increased work quality and quantity, compliance, adaptability, worker capacity and return on worker investment…while decreasing the internal costs of training, scrap, rework and operator error. It sounds like a robust solution to me.

Eight, of the many, scenarios should make any employer wish they had structured on-the-job training for each of their critical job classifications. Several are intertwined, which explains why the lack of structured on-the-job training hobbles an organization more than realized if training is viewed as an isolated process:

1. Opportunities to Expand Market – opportunities rarely announce themselves way in advance, and if an organization is incapable of scaling fast enough the opportunity might pass, or pass to a competitor. A staff trained to full capacity usually can quickly adapt, increase capacity and utilize unused capacity by accommodating additional task training for new products and services. 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

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

In the past, worker development resided in a Training Department of the Human Resources Department (if the organization could afford a formal worker training department). But as technology advanced from the 1980’s on (with the proliferation of microprocessors that changed the nature of work) and the need for more focused and effective training approaches became more vital for both retaining (“up-skilling”) incumbent workers and training new-hires, mysteriously training departments were disbanded and the responsibility passed to anyone who had a plan, had a budget and were allowed time to experiment. While at the time this “laisse faire” approach to training might have been justified since no one at the time had an adequate solution, it was unfortunate that the training profession continued to apply outdated solutions to evolving needs and a perpetual lag grew only greater as time and technology advanced. Read More

The result is a world in which economic theory no longer supports reality. For example, unemployment is reported at a celebrated low 4.1 percent through December, 2017. Yet wages continue to decline in many areas. Most credible economic theories state that when the supply of labor becomes scarcer, wages tend to increase to reflect that scarcity. This is simply a supply and demand issue.

The nature of the employment is important to understanding its effect on the worker. We hear employers report on the “skill gap,” saying “we just can’t find the skilled workers we need.” You have seen, heard and read that for years. But what does that mean?  Read More

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

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

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

It is the basis of apprenticeships and has survived for centuries. Today, it is considered more of an inconvenience to be avoided and an investment whose value is grossly misunderstood. In today’s world deliberate one-on-one training is marginalized to the status of a guilty pleasure rather than part of a business strategy as it should be. A simplistic, but good, analogy from the IT world is appropriate when “programming” masterful work performance in a worker; “junk in, junk out.” Read More

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

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

Jobs have become a moving target. Accuracy of on-the-job training has to be sharper. It should be supplied by the employer (on equipment equipment and to employer processes), and is more urgent and accuracy-dependent than existing employers have prepared themselves. Educational institutions can have any meaningful impact if focused and relevant. Workforce development efforts and resources need to be applied in a way to facilitate these adjustments, not distract from them.

Threat 1: Workforce development efforts stuck in the past – 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

A deliberate and documented system to develop workers and maximize the return on worker investment should be a “no-brainer.” Employers expend enormous resources – time, effort, dollars – on efforts to improve efficiencies in some cases without making an appreciable difference or reaching the intended goals. But rather than a philosophical discussion comparing approaches to training, I thought it might be beneficial to just offer symptoms of failed approaches and reasons why any employer should think more seriously about the state of their internal training infrastructure.

According to a Training Magazine article entitled, “Bridging the Skills Gap” by Lorri Freifeld, these revealing points were extracted:

· 49 percent of U.S. employers are experiencing difficulty filling mission-critical positions within their organizations. (ManpowerGroup’s seventh annual Talent Shortage Survey; 1,300 U.S. employers surveyed; positions most difficult to fill: skilled trades, engineers, and IT staff).

· Only 1 in 10 organizations has the skills needed to utilize advanced technologies such as cloud and mobile computing, social business, and business analytics. (2012 IBM Tech Trends Report; 1,200 professionals who make technology decisions for their organizations, 250 academics, and 450 students). Read More

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

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

It is in the employer’s and employee’s interest that the job, and all of its required tasks, are mastered as quickly and completely as possible. But the spoils go to those employees who possess the core skills and necessary abilities to assimilate what they see around them and successfully self-teach themselves. Unfortunately, employers find those people hard to find and are reluctant to pay them accordingly to keep them.

A well-run manufacturing operation is an integration of subsystems that all contribute to the overall objectives and goals of the organization. Many of these are well known and routine to implement. Engineers design products or services, then design the sub-assemblies and sub-components that go into the final product/service. Engineering drawings or flow-charts provide structure and specifications standardize the output at a high level of quality.

Quality Engineers develop policies that frame and define the level of quality for inputs into the production of the product/service and the final output that the customer receives. Manufacturing Engineers, in some cases, write up standard work instructions (i.e. standard operating procedures) for some of the more critical tasks performed along the way. These instructions may vary in style, content, depth and quality by engineer. If these documents are not tested with readability and repeatability studies, these documents may be ticking time bombs, waiting for a misinterpretation or missed steps. Even if these documents are exceptional, a really good work instruction is poor substitute for an on-the-job (task-based) training plan. Not from lack of effort, but these two instruments have very different purposes and audiences, and designed for such. Read More

Some graduates bring that notion of independence, self-sufficiency and in some cases prideful superiority to the workplace, where they find the tradition has been institutionalized. Quality meetings are held separate from engineering meetings, and accounting and human resources are seldom invited. When a clear mission and strong leadership is lacking to encourage and enforce cooperation and communication, rigid departmental lines can emerge; hampering listening and communication, and leading to entrenched cynicism, misunderstandings of intentions and covert, then overt, conflict.

Some of the best leaders spend time in each discipline to experience what the role is and what cooperation looks like. The informed leader likely walks away with an understanding of potential barriers to communication and the benefits of cooperation.

One of Proactive Technologies’ clients, which started as a family run company and grew into a fortune 500 company, has strict rules for instilling this awareness in its youngest family members who wanted to join the company. First, they must graduate from college. Next, they have to start literally at the bottom of the organization sweeping floors, followed by a stint in each department with successful performance before reaching their final destination; the process taking 2 years minimum. These days, that type of organizational and cultural development is rare.

” The level of accuracy of the worker training/continuous training program at any business operation determines how efficiently the organization can run, how adaptable the organization can be to changes in technology, processes, standards and organizational structure, and how scalable an organization is when new opportunities emerge. Leaders ensure that training isn’t an afterthought, but it is built into every operational objective.”

Without this “cross-department” experience, programmed biases are left unchecked. Each discipline becomes rigid in their view of the world, which can narrow to include only their perspective; concerned only with solutions that affect them directly and originate from them. Legitimizing that single-mindedness by allowing it can fuel misperceptions and misunderstandings that grow to be barriers and meaningless conflict.

When it comes to worker development, this phenomenon manifests itself as “Monday Morning Quarterbacking,” “Back-Seat Driving,” obstruction, blatant neglect and denial. But this assumes an effort is being made at worker development that can be subject to criticism. While worker training is reduced to “step-child” status, it is vulnerable from all directions. If no effort is made, then this takes care of that nuisance…right? Sadly, I have been told on many occasions by managers who should know better, “We do not want to be too structured in our training, because that can attract more opportunities for an auditor to find something wrong.” Wow, really? That is like saying we shouldn’t make an effort to maintain accurate accounting because the auditor might find an error.

“Training sounds so simple. Put two people together and have one train the other to do what they do…as fast and as good as the trainer. But we all know, from our own experiences, this is a crap shoot. The trainer may not want to share what they have learned for any number of reasons. Even if they do, they have repressed the nuances of learning the proper task procedure…The trainee doesn’t know what they are not learning, and are totally dependent on what the trainer demonstrates, what they think they see and what they hear. They wouldn’t know if anything was left out or taught incorrectly, and may be afraid to ask for fear of being judged…Especially for employers who have depressed wages for technical skills, a lower offered wage attracts more workers who need extra help in mastering the tasks, or live with the consequences.” 

Manufacturing is not an operation that runs well in an insular mode. A company is series of connected systems that succeed or fail collectively based on how well they cooperate. Read More

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

A typical Undercover Boss episode might display:

• Unstructured, inconsistent and incomplete training;

• Uneven and uncertain motivation;

• Conflicting operating orders;

• Unexpectedly outdated or inoperable equipment;

• Unclear standard practices;

• Unexpected lack of leadership at the local level spawned by unexpected lack of leadership at the upper levels;

• Unvarnished displays of workers rising above these organizational inadequacies and their own personal challenges to ensure product gets out the door and services are performed with pride.

Focusing on one aspect, in each case the resident expert was selected to train the covert executive. These attempts at unstructured, task-based training give a vivid picture of the limitations, risks, and failures of foregoing a deliberate training strategy. CEOs, who previously were told that the corporate training programs proliferated to each facility were “state of the art” and “working quite well” are now exposed to the end-users perspective. In a typical episode, if you look past the entertainment factor, one can easily detect: Read More

At the other end of the spectrum, training is focused on tasks routinely required of the worker – this becomes the focus of mastery of specific tasks of the job area. This is what an employer values and which make workers valuable. Knowledge conveyed at the point of utilizing it in the task, coupled with the convergence of core skills and core abilities, followed by repetitive practice of precise procedural steps develops trade-specific, higher-order skills. These skills yield a meaningful unit of work that is marketable to an employer in the industry. While one can say that occupations at the other end of the spectrum perform units of work as well, the type of work performed is more “situational” and less repetitive the higher up the organizational chart.

Leading up to the 1970’s, this was understood. In fact, many high schools around the country had very effective “vocational” programs, in many cases as good and relevant as the local community colleges. Competitions for students to show off their trade skills were held in each state and nationally by the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America, which was replaced in the 1990’s by SkillsUSA. But as the movement that “everyone needs to go to college” grew, schools cut these vocational programs from the budgets and education systems pushed more of the responsibility for these programs on the community college that served high school graduates, the transition lasting from the 1980’s through the early 2000’s. In some states, “Regional Career Centers” were established in an attempt to provide a bridge of access for high schoolers to vocational education for “paying” member school districts.

The 1990’s emphasis on “college education for all,” lead to a K-12 education focus on coursework to prepare students for college entry. The “No Child Left Behind of 2001” and similar measures emphasized standardized testing in K-12 as preparation for college entrance examinations. Community colleges tried to fill the void in vocational instruction with their packaged programs that had not changed all that much since the 1970s. The repeated criticisms during this time of radical technological advancement (e.g. computers and microprocessors changing all aspects of work, trade agreements changing the availability of jobs for which these programs were training workers, Wall Street’s insistence on increasing shareholder value – driving constant cost-cutting leading to perpetual changes to job requirements) was that “continuing education,” “adult education” and “customized training” programs were out-of-date, instructors were ill-prepared, and community colleges were ill-staffed and under-funded to meet the constantly changing needs of employers. Most institutions turned inward and back to what they new; “credit courses” for college preparation and relied more on marketing their vocational programs than the quality and effectiveness of the content.

Trades have long been associated with apprenticeships but need not be, and apprenticeships that train workers generally for the industry but not enough for the employer paying the wages fell out of favor. While institutions were trying to find their role in workforce development, employers – often not clear themselves on what they needed in skilled workers and that have cited the “skills gap” as a major concern since the early warnings in the 1980’s – cut their internal budgets for the task training that only they can provide. The hope is that the educational system will find their way in time to provide them the workers they need, ready on day one to be 100% productive.

So, it makes sense that some semblance of a movement is appearing to take us back to a clear dichotomy between vocational training and traditional education. But it is important to re-institutionalize the difference, allowing for overlaps only to the degree they are relevant. It doesn’t mean institutions, employers and agencies shouldn’t cooperate; they should. But cooperation should never lose sight of each player’s strengths and honestly weed out the weaknesses.

We should Read More

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

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

As many operation managers have found out, drastic moves like reducing the wage rates by 20%, 30% or more, while expecting to maintain the same output quantity and quality, chases off the workers with the gained technical expertise…because they can leave. The investment is lost and so are any returns. Furthermore, it is difficult to find new candidates who are willing and able to “hit the ground running” for an unreasonably low wage rate. And if a good candidate for employment is found and selected, bringing their productive capacity up may be delayed or hindered by the fact that the remaining “subject matter experts” are not as capable of transferring expertise as the technical experts that were driven away.

Scores of competitively run global corporations in the past few decades have withered away chasing short-term numbers to appease shareholders and activist investors, which in the longer run undermined their capacity, purpose, level of service and brand. Read More

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

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

Employee selection has become so competitive today (from both the job-seeker’s and the employer’s perspective) it would seem desirable that if for a little effort a lot of peace of mind can be gained. Knowing that everything has been done to mitigate risk with a simple confirmation before use of proven and documented “job relevance.” Still employees may be turned away from a dish washing job because they lack proficiency in math, or a NC machine operator is denied employment because they tested low in verbal skills when their job is performed in relative isolation form others. Or someone is denied a promotion to management because they scored low on a commercial test that did not seem to have anything in common with the management job at that company.

In Part 1 of my article of the same name,  I discussed the importance of “content validation” of any instrument that is meant to assess, test, qualify or preclude candidates from hiring, participation in a program, promotion, a raise in pay and/or career expansion has to be based on objective fact, not elaborate branding or herd acceptance. Many employers select or create, and then implement tests for such activities – often without realizing the significance of what they do and the vulnerabilities and risks to business it presents. One embittered victim and/or one opportunistic human resources attorney can clarify the risk in a hurry. And, when one practice is found to violate EEOC requirements, all similar practices become suspect.

I and my company, Lifetime Learning LLC,  have partnered with Proactive Technologies, Inc.  on several projects. The data I receive from the Proactive Technologies Job Profile Summary and Job Profile Analysis Reports, among others, provides a wealth of information from which to legitimize for use (or de-legitimize for removal) criteria in assessments and customized tests I suggest and use for clients. Content validation is established with an undeniable link between the test item and the Duty-Task-Subtask-Procedural step where the item is relevant. It is hard to create a stronger case for content validation. 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.

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

It also appears that each trainee is on their own to learn the safe performance of each task. It is not enough to provide general safety knowledge learning. When a trainee is taught a task for the first time, that is when they should be shown how to apply the general safety knowledge to the safe performance of that task.  Read More

The new generation of high school graduates will encounter the same challenge, but unfortunately have less content to draw upon. But from the moment they enter the workforce they are adding value to their personal portfolio for every seminar they attend and every job for which they obtain and apply new skills and master new tasks. For every type of worker this “accounting” represents their value to their current and future employer and vital to maintaining their place in the economy.

For many, they have yet to take an inventory of their personal worth and “intellectual capital,” and have failed to clearly detail it for anyone else to accurately sense the same value. Many have never even thought about it until pushed to take an inventory or explain their worth through job loss? Read More

What should be an obvious “must,” the notion that increasing worker capacity at all levels through task-based, deliberate, documented, measurable and verifiable structured on-the-job training is often usurped. It is replaced by a policy of hopefulness that workers will learn to perform the tasks of their job on their own or by osmosis or, even less effective and disappointing, attending a class here and there in expectation of closing the “skills gap.” I often discuss this in the context of production or service workers, but this extends to all levels of most organizations. The impact doesn’t go unnoticed by controllers and CEO’s under pressure to increase revenue or lower costs, but measures to correct this imbalance are seldom explored let alone utilized.

Invariably, the most target-rich environment for harvesting huge savings and significantly increasing capacity is bypassed – either from a lack of understanding of what it takes to be a “subject matter expert” or entrenched neglect. Ignoring the need for structured on-the-job training is like investing in a state-of-the-art machine, then waiting for it to set-up and program itself. Even artificial intelligence needs someone to train it the first time to do the things expected in the proper way.

When one considers the serious collateral damage caused by underdeveloped or underutilized worker capacity (e.g. scrap, rework, loss of “tribal knowledge” when someone retires or moves on, loss of customer confidence, loss of employee confidence), red flags and alarms should be going off continuously, since all of these are present on a daily basis. But distractions and diversions seem to get in the way. Several articles have appeared in the Proactive Technologies Report newsletter that discuss these costs in more detail, including: Estimating the Costs Associated With Skipping Employer-Based Structured On-The-Job Training  and The High Cost of Employee Turnover.

I have come across many examples since 1986 while providing technical consultation to business operations (and even before while working in manufacturing), as I am sure have you. One project that sticks in my mind involved job/task analyzing several supervisory positions at a division of a major automobile manufacturer – using the current “star performers”(subject matter experts) to define each task’s best practice and circulating the collected data for validation. We then developed a top-to-bottom structured on-the-job program; updated job descriptions, training manuals, task-based trainee checklists (for incumbents and new-hires), job/employee-specific performance appraisals and more. Read More

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

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

RJPs come in many forms; from the very simple for less-complex job classifications and areas and responsibilities to sophisticated RJPs for the highly technical job classifications with high levels of responsibility. An RJP consists of both positive and negative information regarding the position in order to give individuals a realistic view of employment with the company. Companies that employ realistic job previews provide information so that job candidates can make an informed decision about a position. If it is structured to do so, the RJP can help provide the employer with a wealth of information about whether the candidate is suitable for the work environment, work culture, and has the core skills as well as any transferable task-based skills that would expedite bringing a new-hire “up to speed.” Read More

The approach is unique in that it sets-up for its clients the task-based structured on-the-job training programs. There is no “cut and paste;” each job/task analysis is specific to that job classification, for that company, and incorporates already established process documents and specifications to ensure compliance with quality programs such as ISO/TS/AS and safety requirements.  Proactive Technologies provides the technical implementation support and accurately reports progress for each trainee’s individual pursuit of “job mastery” – allowing the business client to focus on its business while we ensure the employer gets the skilled staff they need, when they need them. As a bonus, incumbent workers are base-lined to the structured on-the-job training program requirements and a customized path is established to drive them, along with the new-hires, to full job mastery.

Like most community college or university executives, I felt compelled to promote products and services we already had on the shelf – even if I new from industry experience that the product only resembled the client’s targeted job by name. I began to worry about the cost to my reputation for recommending a solution that wasted everyone’s time and resources, and left the trainee and employer short.

Some schools think that “industry” has the answers. But some of their own organizational development courses teach that “the farther away from the actual work, the less that person knows about the job.” For the last 30 years we collectively built strategies based on “industry input” and yet the skills gap grew larger.

Although uncomfortable for most educators, we listened to each manufacturer that would open up. Even if they seemed to not know precisely what they needed, we listened for what they expected to accomplish, what resources they had that could be used in training workers for their needs, and if they were committed to a different approach if it brought them what they said they were looking for. For example: Read More

“That is the one point missed in all of the cuts to wages, benefits and staff; the first wave affects those who have no choice, the second wave affects the company as those with choice exercise it.”

its capacity, heads roll, more cuts are made and finally the investors pull out – leaving the previously well-run company impaired or near collapse. No good has come from this, and why it is allowed to continue makes no sense – except that it takes little thought to order, gives Wall Street the appearance of something good happening and something to report. That is why stocks rise when layoffs are announced – even in the face of predictable long-term effects of what the cost cutting means. That and the media’s cheering section that naively extols a short-term bump that may turn into a long-term fumble.

Worker capacity will be needed once the economy resumes, and the prudent businessman would not want to miss the recovery while spending too much time rebuilding the organizational capacity, part of which is finding “talent” to the replace the ones encouraged to leave and part trying to encourage the ones currently employed to stay. Additionally overlooked, employee and management morale suffers during wholesale cuts and irrational cost-cutting acts. The workers needed to sustain a recovery and regain market share are affected by what they see happening around them, and those most talented keep one eye on the door because they have the skills other employers might appreciate and always have the option to leave. That is the one point missed in all of the cuts to wages, benefits and staff; the first wave affects those who have no choice, the second wave affects the company as those with choice exercise it.

An alternative to knee-jerk cuts to workers is to assess each worker’s capacity (i.e. what percentage of the tasks of the job they have had a chance to learn and master), then use business “lulls” to raise it to full job mastery. Read More

“No one would ride in a plane flown by a pilot with only classes and simulator time, have surgery by a surgeon that hasn’t yet operated on a live human, or receive a root canal from a dentist with no “live-patient” time. Certified mastery of the tasks that define each of these jobs is what makes the ‘license to practice’ credible. And there is a difference between ‘a pilot” and ‘the pilot.’ Having a pilot license certifies you to fly planes, not a specific plane; you still have to have training and be certified to apply your craft to flying that plane. With the hybrid approach to apprenticeships, both are accomplished at the same time.”

The term “apprenticeship” has taken on many new meanings in the rush to increase the number of apprentices in the United States. Some 2-year community college programs that have been around a while have been re-branded in an effort to give new life to the same programs of worker development. Some have been thrown together to position an organization for the anticipated flood of grant dollars to find apprentices. Many of these are less “employer-centric” and more “industry-friendly” in spirit. Yet, it is important to remember that the ultimate beneficiaries of an apprenticeship should be the apprentice, the employer, the community, the industry and then the workforce development community, in that order. This should always be the focus and priority.

The process of gaining a “certificate of apprenticeship completion” level status can be an important milestone in an apprentice’s life. Achieving it can be accelerated by the focus and relevancy of related technical instruction and implementing employer-based structured on-the-job training, the latter for which mastery is also the measure of accomplishment for the apprentice and employer. Both components are critical to the quality of the program. Shortening the time without focusing these two components can weaken the program’s credibility and legitimacy. That is why many states require the employer to perform a job/task analysis on the job targeted for registration to ensure the structure, content and process is in place to document and explain what job-tasks have been mastered. That is what is most important to the current employer and any future employers.

These two requisite components were established in the middle-ages, albeit modernized for today’s needs, and have served us well when implemented properly. The United States Department of Labor – Bureau of Apprenticeships describes an apprenticeship as this: “It is a unique, flexible training system that combines job related technical instruction with structured on-the-job learning experiences.” The Bureau of Apprenticeships offers 3 models it accepts; the traditional Time-Based, the Competency and the Hybrid models. Read More

Now, there is another reason for capturing best practice task performance and all of its related knowledge and compliance specifications. The new standard ISO 9001: 2015 took effect September 15th, 2015. A transition period of three years will allow affected departments to make the necessary adjustments, but Quality Management Certificates issued under the old standard, ISO 9001: 2008, will have to include the new date.

Re-certification audit planning for the new standard must be performed at least 90 days prior to expiration, in other words by September 14, 2018, and the last audit day cannot exceed the deadline or a full, initial audit must be performed. The new standard includes a couple of changes that make the new standard easier to implement with other management systems, and focuses more on management commitment and performance and less on prescriptive measures.

The new standard includes a couple of changes that make the new standard easier to implement with other management systems, and focuses more on management commitment and performance and less on prescriptive measures. The standard has a new structure called a “High Level Structure” and introduces the concept of “risk-based thinking.” The emphasis is on organizations identifying risks to standardize quality performance and taking measures to “ensure their management system can achieve its intended outcomes, prevent or reduce undesired effects and achieve continual improvement.” The revised standard also puts increased emphasis on achieving value for the organization and its customers; in other words “output matters.”

The process approach introduced in 2000 as the desired model for quality management systems will become an explicit requirement of ISO 9001: 2015. The standard requires understanding the needs of the clients or customers, end users, suppliers and regulators and the words “document” and “record” were replaced by “documented information,” acknowledging the need to broaden the concept in recognition of the advancement in information handling technology.

The new standard has more emphasis on requirements for competent performance of personnel, competence meaning “being able to apply knowledge and skill to achieve intended results.” The important role that structured on-the-job training has played so far in ISO/AS/TS compliance now becomes even more critical.

Those companies that already have the Proactive Technologies PROTECH© system of managed human resource development  in place already in place already meet the requirements structurally with regard to personnel competency, but management may need to show more commitment and understanding of the important role this plays in quality control. Those who have not addressed the earlier requirements for process-driven training in all the major models of quality management – ISO/TS/AS – should begin now to build the infrastructure if they want to meet that requirement under the new standard. Read More

We start by collecting a lot of data about each job classification that is all around anyway (e.g. people’s heads, operator’s notes, engineering processes, quality standards, EHS specifications). This spread of information, that isn’t readily available, makes learning and mastering the tasks – for new hires and incumbents – unpredictable, ineffective, open to conflicts (including legal), costly and not conducive of standardization of high performance. And the continual revision of all of these bits of information adds to the challenge and makes process improvement and implementation efforts difficult, at best.

Many times we find that tasks are not proceduralized for best practice performance; either not defined at all or defined vaguely as “Perform _____,” leaving it up to each new trainee to guess what was intended. We job/task analyze the missing bits and work with engineering, quality and management to make sure we have the best, best practice before we develop any training or certification tool from it. 

Our proprietary software allows us to quickly gather and consolidate the many sources of data for use only when and where needed. Our technical support, 12 months (renewable) included in every project, allows your organization to focus on business while we set the programs up and manage them for you. Our software automatically generates all of the tools of the human resource development process to allow for big-scale projects at a small-scale investment; from today’s job description and entry level tests, to structured on-the-job training materials and checklists, to technical procedures and performance appraisals. One revision updates all of the tools! The system keeps track of each trainee’s training progress and provides detailed reports.

We build structured on-the-job training programs to ensure each new-hire and incumbent worker has an accelerated path to job mastery through mastery of each best-practice task – with content-valid assessments for more accurate and compliant selection and legally-defensible assessments to measure progress toward, and achievement of, job mastery. Each structured on-the-job training program we set-up can, and has been, easily registered as an apprenticeship (an option for your firm) that adds little-to-no cost.