Eroding Organizational Capacity: The “Unstructured, 
Haphazard and Ad Hoc Task Training Effect”
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
If you work long enough for a variety of employers, there is one theme that seems to run common to all – the lack of structure to the all important job-based training that one would expect. Often we are shown our workstation, introduced to the area manager and then we wait for some guidance and training for what is expected of us. Sometimes we wait in vain. Sometimes we are subjected to bits and pieces of information and take it upon ourselves to make sense of them rather than wait.
None of our core skill bases and work-based task mastery history are, alone, sufficient enough to substitute for the need to know the best practices for performing the tasks for which the new employer hired us. If an employer hires a new employee not having a structure to quickly transfer job expertise from the incumbent experts to the new-hire, it is fair to say this runs counter to good business practices and economic principals. Yet unstructured, haphazard and ad hoc task training is the norm.
click here to expand“Only 17% of organizations said they had developed processes to capture institutional memory/organizational knowledge from employees close to retirement, while just 13% said they were providing training to upgrade the skills of older workers.”
IndustryWeek Magazine April 10, 2012 by Steve Minter
We all know that inaction to rectify this doesn’t make sense, but many managers dismiss the concern and take comfort in group-thinking, “this phenomenon is the norm, why not apply my efforts elsewhere since I will not be judged on something that appears to others to be beyond my control.” Some see a problem because this deficiency has become the norm. Others see it more critically as a threat to current and future organizational capacity and competitiveness and would be receptive to the following discussion. Read More
Cross-Training Workers After Lean Efforts Builds Capacity Using Existing Staff
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
Lean activities to redesign processes for better efficiencies in a department, or between departments, sometimes result in “surplus” workers – partially or in whole units. It is the subjective priority of Lean practitioners since it is a tangible illustration of a successful Lean improvement. Processes that previously needed 3 people to complete may now only need two, if the efficiencies were discovered. So what happens to that one person that has valuable acquired expertise, representing a significant investment by the employer? Would the wise outcome of Lean efforts be to just cut that person from the lineup?
The short answer is most likely not. Any efficiencies and cost savings brought about by the Lean redesign would be offset by the loss of the expertise for which the investment has already been made. Most likely the reason for the Lean was not in reaction to no return on worker investment, but rather a desire to increase the return on worker investment.
click here to expandIf the worker is reassigned to another department, and no task-based training infrastructure is in place, that reassignment may lower the efficiencies there which, again, reduces the gains made by the Lean effort. So part of the Lean effort must be the deliberate cross-training of workers in temporary assignments or longer-term reassignments to other departments that seem to have the need for increased staffing, perhaps as a result of the increased throughput achieved from the Lean effort in the upstream department in the chain. Read More
Regional Workforce Development Partnerships That Enhance Economic Development Efforts
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
Most area economic development goals are simple; expand the tax base so revenue is available to maintain and sustain the local socio-economic system. Strategies to accomplish this may differ but often include adding to the employment base of the community and/or region, since an effort to expand consumption – mandatory and discretionary – produces a “multiplier effect” as money circulates through the community. This goal can be reached by local and state governments offering tax abatement, cash and/or infrastructure improvements to companies seeking to relocate, or which are in an expansion mode. At least that was the simple vision of economists past.
It is fairly a proven fact, however, that in the past two decades the results of these tactics have become mixed as large corporations became larger and used their clout to seek incentives and cheap labor throughout the world. Commitments to local communities providing the incentives often evaporated faster than the ink on the documents dried, and corporations hopped from state to state, country to country, upsetting the stability of local tax bases, economies, communities and regions.
click here to expandEconomic development agencies and government leaders have always talked about helping locally grown enterprises which create an estimated 70-80% of the new jobs in the country. As they start, grow and expand they would hire more, provide more in taxes and be more likely to stay put. As large corporations gained more control of the policies and policy makers of the states and the federal government, the focus drifted away from local small and mid-size businesses and toward policies and strategies that helped large corporations at great expense. Read More
Vocational Training in High Schools – A Model the United States Should Revisit and a Lesson From the Past
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
I know this dates me, but in high school in the 1970’s I participated in a very good vocational electronics program. It was 2 ½ years in length and was conducted in addition to the traditional high school curriculum. I felt fortunate to attend and complete the program, as did my friends who were enrolled in electronics and the other craft training programs such as automotive, drafting (precursor to CAD-CAM), metalworking, welding and woodworking. Each one of us in the vocational electronics program went on to achieve higher degrees and/or successful careers after receiving our certificate of completion at graduation.
“…my point is this and begs the question every technical school graduate asks themselves even today, ‘How can I be marginally or completely obsolete 2 weeks after graduation”
click here to expand
Looking back, I am still impressed with the quality of the program. It was closer in purpose to the European style of education and apprenticeships. The electronics program was state-of-the-art along with the instructor’s delivery of industry-relevant content supplemented by guest speakers from industry with current topics. Our high school vocational students, as with others in each state, even competed with community college students across their state to test our skills in Vocational Industrial Clubs of America (“VICA”) competitions for the right to represent the state at the national competition. That is how good our high school vocational program was; comparable to community college levels of learning. Since prior to the advent of microprocessors technology advanced at a slower pace, the vocational electronics training programs at that time trained students for local jobs that were currently in industry very well, which was exactly their mission. Read More
Proactive Technologies, Inc.®; PROTECH; Human Resource Management for Tomorrow...Today!® and logo;