Seems Like Decades Pass and the Top Worker Development Topic Remains the Same
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
In a recent article appearing in HR Dive by Carolyn Crist entitled, “Executives and Workers Alike Say Entry-level Workers Seem Unprepared” she starts with, “Although leaders say workers don’t have enough training to be hired, employers also don’t appear to offer adequate training.” “Only 48% of employees and 12% of mid-level executives believe today’s entry-level workers are well-prepared, the report found. The entry-level employee pipeline is broken,” Jourdan Hathaway, chief marketing officer at General Assembly, said in a statement. “Companies must rethink how they source, train and onboard employees. There are evidence-based approaches to improving workforce readiness.”
While the article focuses on recent report findings, the article touched on the crux of the problem; little has changed and very little is done by employers to mitigate the problem of inadequately prepared entry-level workers. The author pointed out, “At the same time, employers don’t provide enough training, both groups said. A third of executives and more than a quarter of employees said that companies don’t provide enough training to new hires. In fact, those who said entry-level employees seem unprepared were also more likely to work at a company that they felt doesn’t provide enough training.”
This is a two-fold problem; employers say entry-level workers lack preparedness and employees say employers do not provide training. Specifically, regarding preparedness, “One of the top reasons these workers seem unprepared is a lack of soft skills, according to 49% of executives and 37% of employees. About 40% of Gen Z respondents said that lacking soft skills is a major shortcoming among entry-level workers. Both executives and employees also said entry-level workers don’t have the right attitude or technical skills.” This in spite of the billions in education budgets and additional billions in special programs meant to drive those outcomes higher. Digging a little deeper, employers have been reluctant, or unable to, explain to local educational institutions what they precisely need of entry-level candidates and educational institutions are not connected enough to ask the right questions and know if the answers are credible. This gap continues to grow if the job targets continue to change and the conversation does not continue.
click here to expandOn the other hand, it seems like a hollow argument for employers to criticize the quality of entry-level candidates when most employers have no shown little interest in, nor structure or strategy for, taking the candidate from learning to training and onto job mastery. Under-prepared entry-level candidates can become fully trained and competent workers, but there has to be a deliberate strategy to do so and a commitment by management that this is just as mission-critical as investing in new equipment and technology. Read More
Should Supervisors Be Expected to “Lead” If Not Trained for Their Job AND The Jobs of Those They Lead?
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
Employers are faced with a lot of challenges these days. Corporate structures are putting pressures on local management to extract higher and higher efficiencies and to endlessly lower costs. These directives tend to vacillate with the earnings report seasons, but always assume that the supervisors and managers who are expected to implement these orders have received proper training to do so with, in some cases, fewer and fewer resources. Nearly anyone can master driving a car, but it takes an entirely different skill set to fix it…with disappearing tools and a shrinking budget to replace them.
When it comes to first line supervisors, sometimes they are selected for the ability to “go along and get along.” Others may be selected from among consistently performing workers in the area because of their knowledge, demonstrated expertise and performance of their work. Often when selecting supervisors, managers lack the opportunity to assess other leadership qualities or to provide remediation of areas of weakness. Without benchmarks, tools and standards in place to train workers, a prospective supervisor selected may not become the most fully trained worker upon which to add management responsibilities.
In a more dire situation, a supervisor may be selected with no background or experience with the work or workers performing the work they are assigned to supervise. In both cases, proper training of supervisors would be greatly beneficial and appreciated, including training on the tasks for which they are monitoring workers performance as well as new administrative tasks. The latter includes tasks such as filling out necessary forms, communicating both ways in the chain of command, scheduling and monitoring work and even providing minimum assistance to their workers to help them better perform their tasks given the changing constraints and expectations that often arise.
click here to expandA supervisor or manager that does not have the expertise and knowledge to oversee the work is placed in a precarious, sometimes adversarial, position to receive criticism from their workers and management. Without structure and a framework to fully train supervisors, some may succumb to their vulnerability. Supervising people to perform critical tasks for measured outcomes before receiving proper and complete training can develop symptoms detrimental to the firm’s business model not to mention the notion of teambuilding. Insecurity, incompetence, giving orders to workers who view them as unready and unworthy or, worse, giving orders that would lead workers to malperform can be devastating on many levels. This can cause a potentially good supervisor, or manager, who could be a good leader to spiral out of control and onto a path toward voluntary or imposed separation. Read More
New Employer-Based Worker Training Partnership Coming to North-Central, Ohio
by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center
Conspicuously absent from worker development strategies has been the employer who says they need the qualified workers. In north-central Ohio, a new partnership has formed that will make a more directed effort of helping to develop the human assets employers need to fuel their business strategy.
Metrics within companies and throughout the nation emphasize the need for a more job-relevant and complete worker development effort; a system connected from per-hire development to post-hire maximization of worker capabilities. Some may might think this sounds like a “European-style model” of apprenticeships, and it does have that philosophical connection. But here in the United States our educational institutions and workforce development agencies are not structurally aligned yet to accommodate that, but a regional alliance could be.
I have lived in Ohio my entire life. I’ve served in the military and witnessed the armed forces way of technical training. I worked in private manufacturing and have been involved in workforce development at the state level and while at The Ohio State University-Alber Enterprise Center and several other educational institutions. Looking at the same challenge from different angles gives one a broader perspective.
Lately, though, I can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu over my déjà vu. Since the 1980s, I have witnessed an ongoing creation, destruction, realignment, reinvention of the landscape of local manufacturing, as well as all the workforce development agencies and providers trying very hard to be relevant and support them. The target hasn’t stopped moving and neither have all of the lagging inputs, but trying, to stay aligned.
click here to expandOriginally we were told by business leaders, academics and talk show hosts to call it “creative destruction.“ I see and understand the destruction part, but sometimes struggle to align the word “creative“ with some of it, unless it is to imply a “novel” way to shake things up. Innovation often has a positive impact, but its lingering benefits, often as well, seems to be more limited than advertised. For some of it, perhaps “collateral and unintended destruction” is a better term based on the associated chaos and uncertainty, usually predicted but unheeded, that seems left in the wake. For as difficult as it has been not to jump aboard the latest trend “hype train” before it leaves the station, workforce development, education and employers should always factor the probability of success and unforeseen outcomes into their strategies. Read More
Looking to Cut Costs in All the Wrong Places
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
When employers are pressured to desperately seek costs to lower, most tend to overlook the most obvious that stares them in the face every day: the cost of underdeveloped or undeveloped and, therefore, under-utilized worker capacity. In any other case, management would intervene when a major asset requiring an ongoing investment isn’t able to maximize a return simply because the effort to deploy the asset is incomplete. Instead, they select for cutting the one area that has become the norm: labor itself. They mistakenly make the sweeping mistake of cutting labor to make the short-term numbers look better, choosing to push the underlying issue down the road to a time with the same challenge and greater pressures. What is that old adage of “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face?”
In meetings with employers to discuss with them an approach that will quickly develop each worker to “full job mastery” no matter if new-hire, incumbent, a reassignment or just part of cross-training, the reaction is mixed. Many simply have no idea to what degree their longest-term incumbent workers have fully mastered all of the tasks that are assigned to their job classification. Is it 35%? 50%? Surely not 100% since there are no records to prove it. Even if they once had an idea, how many times has the job been changed by new products, new technologies, LEAN process improvements and job redesigns? Remember, these workers become the default trainers of other workers needed.
click here to expandIn most cases, management has been conditioned to believe they have worker development covered, since products do get out the door and services do get delivered. If numbers fall short, it is the worker attitudes not the development process that is criticized. They truly believe that from the moment a worker comes through the door there is a deliberate effort to transfer the complete set of expertise to the new-hire, or incumbent or cross-trainee for that matter. Employers inherently know how important it is to prioritize consistency and quality of products and services as important to maintaining brand image and consumer loyalty. Why the connection between deliberate worker training, organizational development and organizational excellence doesn’t register may have more to do with the effect irrational cost constraints and being measured to short-term metrics has made them prone to ignore their inner leadership voice. In many ways, American employers have institutionalized an unconscious ambivalence toward achieving full return on their worker investment that would completely and consistently develop each worker as a critical part of their business strategy. This strays greatly from sound management practices that built the biggest and best companies – before the rules changed on how success is measured. Read More
Read the full December, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.
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