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.

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