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 expandShould 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 expandNew 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 expandLooking 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 expandRead the full December, 2024 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.
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