Thirteen Good Reasons Why Structured On-The-Job Training Should be Part of Your Business Strategy
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
Many articles have appeared in the Proactive Technologies Report covering how Proactive Technologies’ PROTECH© System of managed human resource development can address many of the workforce development scenarios; from individualized, customized structured on-the-job training for a specific employer for specific job classification(s), to regional partnerships servicing multiple employers while partnering with regional educational institutions, private training providers, workforce development and economic development agencies to provide the related technical instruction. There are many winners with this approach, but none so important as the employer and the employee.
Several articles have appeared in the newsletter explaining how Proactive Technologies sets up for each client a unique, structured on-the-job training program, provides implementation support to ensure it is running effectively and provides documentation and monthly reporting to drive each employee’s progress toward full job mastery. The most recent article appearing in the February, 2017 issue entitled “Tips for Establishing Your Company’s Training Strategy – Practical, Measurable, Extremely Economical and Scalable“. While the article hints on some of the benefits to the employer-employee stakeholders, it might be more advantageous to focus on the benefits themselves rather than leave them nuanced. More can be found in other articles at the News and Publications page of the Proactive Technologies, Inc. website.
click here to expandThere are many significant reasons that structured on-the-job training will help any employer really maximize the value of each worker employed with the company, improve operational efficiency and lower the risk of non-compliance (ISO/TS/AS, Safety Mandates, EEOC Mandates). These are not just buzzwords. Here are thirteen reasons (not in any order of importance, since some may be more important to different stakeholders) to consider. Read More
The High Cost of Employee Turnover
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
Most companies are dealing with uncomfortably high levels of turnover. When one separates out those employers that facilitated high turnovers to lower labor costs, there are many reasons for this. However, there is no denying the many costs associated with this that exist and the effects that often compound. These costs are often unknown and unmeasured, but all employers should keep an eye on this challenge and explore its full impact on the organization.
It seems counter-intuitive, but there are some who even recently promoted a business strategy that encouraged employee turnover. In a July 21, 2015 Forbes article entitled “Rethinking Employee Turnover,” author Edward E. Lawler III, “Indeed, the turnover of some employees may end up saving an organization more money than it would cost to replace that employee. The obvious point is that not all turnover should be avoided-some should be sought.” The question is how to determine which ones to keep and which to encourage to leave. Without accurate measures of costs and values of a worker, good employees may be pushed out along with the “bad” and then the true costs of this action realized by the employer after it is too late.
click here to expandLast year, Christina Merhar of ZaneBenefits wrote in her blog entitled “Employee Retention – The Real Cost of Losing an Employee,” “Happy employees help businesses thrive. Frequent voluntary turnover has a negative impact on employee morale, productivity, and company revenue. Recruiting and training a new employee requires staff time and money. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, turnover is highest in industries such as trade and utilities, construction, retail, customer service, hospitality, and service.”
“For the costs associated with the loss of 1 or 2 employees, the company can establish a holistic approach to worker selection, development and retention that will significantly lower both turnover rates and turnover costs, AND increase the value of all employees in that job classification.”
“Studies on the cost of employee turnover are all over the board. Some studies (such as SHRM) predict that every time a business replaces a salaried employee, it costs 6 to 9 months’ salary on average. For a manager making $40,000 a year, that’s $20,000 to $30,000 in recruiting and training expenses. Read More
Ensuring Worker Training Complies With ISO, AS, TS and Other Quality Mandates
Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff
Each of the quality programs typically modeled by manufacturers and service organizations is rooted in the American National Standards Institute(“ANSI”) program for quality assurance and control that served us up to the 1980’s. What each of the subsequent models tries to achieve is simplicity, standardization and verifiability. Audits are used to ensure these attributes are present.
When compliance with ANSI requirements became inconsistent among manufacturers, International Standards Organization (“ISO”) rewrote the standards to make them more compliable and encouraged an international acceptance of the standards. ISO models allow the host to be certified to a part/process, or to its people performing a process or as an overall facility producing and product(s)/service(s) for export. In any model from a worker’s contribution to the product or service, the fundamental standard is whether there are clear, compliable processes in place to control and measure a repetitive, consistent level of quality. The next standard is whether the host makes a documented effort to train/retrain workers to the processes (when changes occur). The third standard is whether the host has a records system that accurately tracks each worker’s progress toward “mastery” of the processes they are responsible to perform.
click here to expandISO was the basis for first the QS model (automotive industry) that later became the TS16949 model. The TS and AS9100D (aerospace industry) models are similarly structured when it comes to training. During audits, the auditor looks for evidence that all three requirements are met, seeking a pattern of consistency in past records that the system appears to have the attributes that will lead to the same consistency going forward. Customers may use similar techniques to audit vendors and suppliers. The new National Aerospace and Defense Contractor Accreditation Program NADCAP (for prequalifying defense and commercial aerospace industry suppliers to a higher level of consistency) as well as other industry-specific standards developed or being developed have similar requirements for training. The reason that all of these models follow a quality standard for worker training is that it is measurable, unlike the old days when auditors encountered a drawer full of rosters or a partially current Excel spreadsheet – with no real evidence of the connection between training, the work to be performed and the worker to perform it.
Taking a class on even closely related theory does not prove a worker can perform a process, but it might show the worker has the core knowledge and possibly lower-order skills to learn the unique processes to be performed, which is a good basis upon which to start task-based training. From a quality assurance perspective, documentation showing that process-based on-the-job training was recently delivered (and any process revisions were since conveyed) correlates to the decreased odds of non-conformance for that process. That is the reason quality assurance and control models seek that evidence in an audit. Read More
From Innovation to Implementation – Success Depends on Preparedness of Those Executing
by Dean Prigelmeier. President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
How often does a product or service go straight from research and development to service implementation or product production? A skilled, experienced worker may be able to overcome the ambiguity of this hand-off, but it seems there is, today, a shortage of skilled, experienced workers; baby boomers finally decided they can, or have to, retire, or some companies experience high turnover rates of replacements, or most employers say they lack of skilled candidates…or even someone skilled enough to train them.
There are many reasons that this loosely organized hand-off still exists:
click here to expand- Perhaps from a sense of futility, with engineers seeming to have given up on the notion of training workers first to ensure immediate output quantity, quality and consistency;
- Perhaps it is from knowing that the organization lacks a “system” in place to facilitate the transfer;
- Perhaps it is from the belief that, especially in the early stages, the product or service may go through many changes before a coherent, repeatable process settles in and when it does the next product or service has been introduced;
- Perhaps from a sense of superiority, that “I know how to do this [because I designed it] so everyone else should know what to do.”
For those who recognize the need for worker training and try to incorporate it manually while trying to keep up with engineering and technological innovations, it is common to find a training program released well into the last days of the life cycle – just in time to train workers for the things they made and serviced years before. Manual methods just do not keep up anymore, and they haven’t for the last 30 years. This doesn’t mean we should “leap-frog” to Artificial Intelligence or online training. The cost alone would dissuade anyone from utilizing it for this type of task-specific training, never mind the inappropriateness.
The most efficient and effective path to expediting a process from development of the process (including all pertinent aspects) to implementation is displayed. The task should be the central focus, with each stakeholder department contributing its input and metrics of accurate performance. Simply stated, the engineer can draft a process, then the other departments can add their components in order. Once all inputs are in, everyone can review and make changes based on each other’s observations and comments before a final document is released.
Too often departments are the focus of process development and implementation. Each department may contribute, but each department may also have its protocol, maybe even separate software or manual system, and each creating its own support document. A process making its way through this maze – back and forth with revisions and corrections – may take months. Making changes to it, for things learned in implementation, may not make it through the maze before the next request for change is submitted. Read More
Read the full August, 2019 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.
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