Learning, Unfortunately, The Hard Way
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
Employers are being tested these days on their ability to respond to a rapidly changing world and maintain operational continuity. Who could have imagined that a pandemic would so disrupt the world’s supply chain, and realign consumer needs and preferences so fast and furiously, that even previously successful business operations would be pushed toward shuttering?
I am sure we all thought that after the Economic Crash of 2008 and its horrible aftermath that we had left those days behind us. But here we are with another test to see who was paying attention. For some firms, just-in-time manufacturing and extreme Lean engineeringhas made it difficult to ride out the economic effects of the pandemic. Without having warehouses of inventory to call up while the supply chains straighten themselves out, the effects are immediate and debilitating. Many firms frantically attempted to reinvent themselves, in some cases in the most extreme way, without a clearly defined market or consumer, while other firms found themselves checkmated nearly overnight.
click here to expandAs pawns in this transformation, workers – some with extreme experience – are now very vulnerable to being reconsidered out of the equation as with the newly hired. This is primarily because it was not clear prior to the pandemic the range of tasks for which an employee has expertise and what core skills, abilities and competencies those tasks mastered represent and are transferable. Without the base of data to know how existing workers can be retooled for new tasks and new production needs, it is so easy to think that starting over is a better solution. It is not, that is unless an employer post-pandemic has no better worker development “infrastructure” for defining the tasks that currently exist and for the new tasks that will need to be performed as the recollection of supervisors who may be also on their way out.
It does not follow that automating the worker out of the formula is a better, less costly solution when you calculate the cost of designing, building and proofing the automation for this disruption plus an estimate of having to do it again for the next disruption. Each employer has a tremendous amount of value built into their human assets, but most have no way to identify it, replicate it, or transform it. Read More
Things Learned About Human Development at Home During the Pandemic
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
For those of us who have children and were thrust into the new role of being an “adjunct,” at-home teacher during the pandemic shut down, we have come away from the period with new experiences and new understanding of how people learn in a remote environment. I personally have a newfound respect for our teachers and instructors who have spent their days building on my child’s, and other people’s children, skills foundation they will need to succeed in life, further education and careers.
We started the pandemic shut down with very little guidance as to how parents would now play an integral part of their children’s learning – most with no experience in teaching, no support materials or guidance to do so and distractions in our own lives. Some of us experimented with online resources the best we could provided we have had the wireless access to do so. An estimated 14 million people lack access to in this country and another 25 million lack fast enough speeds to access many of the resources available, according to the FCC, with Microsoft placing the combined number at more like 163 million people. We know that, prior to the shutdown of schools, internet access was an important part of a student’s learning in school and homework at home. Still, parents tried to provide the facilitation needed to help our children learn even though our skills in those particular areas might’ve been weekend by many years of nonuse.
click here to expandMy take away from this experience has been that not all online resources have the same quality, of content and delivery, and that not all learners respond well to a two dimensional delivery method. Some need more instructor facilitated engagement in order to make the content stick. Some can watch an online tutorial and immediately pick up the topic. In between these two learning styles parents found themselves with very little experience in human development – other than their parental role in nurturing. We won’t know how much of what was learned is retained until schools reopen and we hand off the children to those better able to assess.
I hope that our leaders and our educational systems look back on this era as a wake up call that we as a country were so grossly ill prepared for disruption. Read More
Workforce Development Realism: Properly Weighing Structured On-The-Job Training and Related Technical Instruction
by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center
With all the distractions caused by COVID-19 pandemic, employers and workforce developers are being forced to reevaluate what they thought were effective workforce development strategies. Work is being redefined, jobs are being redefined, and people are being reassigned to adjust to changing supply chain requirements and to the new realities of work. Unlike any time in history, except perhaps the Crash of 2008 and the Great Depression of 1929, have employers been required to expedite such mass reconsideration of its human assets – all while under a national health threat.
Prior to this pandemic, adult and continuing education was pretty settled in their approaches to training workers for today’s work. Classes and certificates were linked to what they believed were today’s realities, But the paradigm shifted with no indication yet that things will entirely return to that “normal.” Not only are educational institutions redefining themselves, their products and services, and their delivery methods, they are doing so while employers are in the process of redefining themselves to their new operational needs. Both transformations are impacting not only trainees who were currently taking related technical instruction classes at a community college in preparation for employment, what the employer does once they hire the individual in many cases is less defined now then it was poorly defined prior. In short, this is a period of flying blind to a moving target.
click here to expandWhen Education encounters disruptions such as covid-19, institutions shut down, instructors wait at home, training providers are sidelined, and some of these even move on if the opportunity arises. Yet their employer – many left open as essential industries – are continuing to employ, informally train incumbent, new and transferring workers. Those employers that invested in a structured on-the-job training infrastructure were able to adapt and minimize the impact. Even those without a formal structured on-the-job training system were better positioned to continue to deliver training (albeit informal and ad hoc) compared to educational institutions and providers that were essentially shut down waiting for the green light on when and how to reopen.
There is clear role for related technical instruction in workforce development, which is to build essential core skills and competencies in trainees so they can learn and master the tasks the employer needs done. But if the employer has a structured on-the-job training infrastructure in place, not only can they accept more prepared candidates they can quickly drive them and incumbent workers to sustained maximum capacity. Even better, they can keep the worker development process going while they wait for their related technical instruction partners to redefine themselves and recover. Employers have the facilities, the equipment, the subject matter experts and the need, so to allow them to be reluctant or timid workforce development partners when they would like to be more aggressive is an unfortunate mistake. Read More
Celebrating 20 Years With Long-Time Aerospace Industry Client Triumph Thermal Systems LLC and Retirement of its Lead Advocate
by Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff
Since 2000, Proactive Technologies, Inc. has provided technical implementation support for the structured on-the-job training system they were asked to set-up at Triumph Thermal Systems LLC, a division of the global Triumph Group. It is a manufacturer of civilian and military aircraft engine heat exchange systems and a registered F.A.A. repair site.
Initially, Ken Jackson, Human Resources Director’s, who retired in the Fall of 2019, primary concern was the loss of fully trained experts due to approaching retirements (i.e. 40% of the technically trained workforce was scheduled to retire in a 2 year period; 80% over a 6 year period). Triumph, originally “Parker Hannifin United Aircraft Products” when the project started, is located in one of those rare remaining small-town heartland places where workers are hired and stay for their career – often repeated generation to generation. Cross-training allows workers to train in, and master, multiple job areas during their time at Triumph, so opportunities for personal growth abound.
click here to expandRecently, with the changes brought about by ISO 9001:2015 (promulgated toAS 9000 and TS 16949 quality models) concerning the “capture and management of legacy knowledge,” and Nadcapthe company realized that they have been capturing and managing legacy knowledge for the hourly positions all along. Nadcap (formerly NADCAP, the National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program) is a global cooperative accreditation program for aerospace engineering, defense and related industries.
Complying 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 documentation to provide evidence that the gap was found and closed, has been a routine component of the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development. The many tools, reports and benefits ensure the approach to all job classifications, all employees is consistent – even though the jobs and people are not.
The OJT Tasks Mastered Report is proudly posted on the Gemba boards of each department to show ISO/AS auditors, and clients and future clients, not just generalizations of work behavior, but more importantly the level to which each worker is trained to perform, and has mastered, each detailed task of their job classification. Read More
Read the full August, 2020 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.
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