Recent Supply Chain Disruptions: Re-shoring Work to a Disrupted Workforce the Next Challenge, but Surmountable
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
No doubt about it, with the Crash of 2008 and the Covid-19 Crisis of 2020 most businesses have been forced into deep introspection about their products and services, their supply chains, maintaining their current and future workforce needs…even their survival and the evolving needs of an impacted consumer base. Any one of these topics would be plenty, but all at once while against the headwinds of an uncertain, but improving and evolving, economy and society is daunting.
Each one of these topics impacts the others. For example, changing a product or service may require adjustments or changes to the mix of suppliers and logistics, and may even influence decisions to perform tasks in-house or outside. Changing products or services, and potentially the tasks requiring workers to perform them, will determine what skills incumbent and new workers will need. It will require a reassessment of current worker selection practices, core skill development and task-related training. Most operations should consider to:
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- Re-determine products/services;
- Determine tasks required to deliver products and services;
- Define task procedures for best practice performance;
- Develop “job performance aids” (e.g. process documents, quality documents);
- For non-process document driven tasks, define the best practice to complete the job data set
- Develop structured on-the-job training materials so they are ready before new processes begin;
- Define related technical instruction to build worker core skills for mastering task-based training;
- Determine which tasks to be performed in-house and which off-site;
- For in-house work, assess current workforce for core skills learned and mastered so the foundation upon which to master tasks is confirmed;
- Remediate deficient levels of core skills
- Deliver structured on-the-job training for incumbent workers
- Apply same worker development process and standards to new-hire workers
- (For supplier-performed tasks) Supply assessment and structured on-the-job training materials along with engineering and quality documents to dramatically expedite the adjustment to high quality vendor performance
- Monitor, measure performance, continuously improve and maintain data for new changes.
You may be thinking this approach is too daunting to attempt. That is why many businesses get caught flat-footed when disruptions occur. If you might have convinced yourself, or have been convinced by others, that this approach is too time and labor intensive to warrant its consideration, that would be a shame. Ad hoc, disjointed, unfocused and unnecessarily too costly strategies are the only alternative. Anything between is half as effective.
Many employers underestimate the direct and opportunity costs that are not only eating away at profits but stifling innovation and making market shifts and market disruptions a continual threat to their existence.
Those who are unfamiliar with Proactive Technologies, Inc. and the service it provides to employers to set-up their worker development infrastructure, manage and provide technical implementation support and provide record keeping and monthly reporting to track each worker’s progress to full job mastery and full worker capacity, might fall back on outdated stereotypes to talk themselves out of even learning more about this approach. They are probably unaware that Proactive Technologies has been helping employers build and maintain robust workforce development systems since 1986, more often than not defraying the employer’s investment further by helping them find and acquire state worker training funds. Read More
Returning to Work – Overcoming Short-term Risks to Worker Health and Safety, AND Operations
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
In my article in the Proactive Technologies Report entitled, “Online Resources for the New, Reluctant “Home Schoolers” and “Home Learners”, I identified online resources for parents finding themselves in the position of becoming ad hoc home teachers of their own children as they rode out the Covid-19 crisis. The emphasis was to try to curb the natural erosion of a learner’s skill base from non-use and continue building on those skills to prevent, or at least minimize, the known “summer slide” effects so when schools reopened and students returned to their regular schedules they could hit the ground running.
Employers might not be thinking about it yet – they have plenty on their mind during the shutdown – but the same “summer slide” effect may become apparent in workers currently sidelined as they return to their work. Employers must consider the “start-up” lag that may occur from both memory and muscle atrophy.
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First, muscle atrophy may be occurring during this disruption. Exercise facilities were closed, employees had to remain inside for the most part, diets changed and many will experience the “covid-15” weight gain. For the most part, employees were rendered immobile for several months and the muscles developed for the work previously performed – no matter if standing or sitting for extended periods, lifting with the full body or with arms extended, twisting and turning the body, walking or running for extended distances and even which shift is being worked – may not be functioning as well as when they were maintained by a daily regimen. Even balance can be affected by muscle atrophy or spinal realignment during the days away from work.
Anyone who said yes to a friend who needed help moving remembers the weeks of associated back and muscle pain from using muscles not normally accessed. It is easy to relate to a worker returning to their old jobs, old job with new tasks or, in some cases, new jobs with the same employer. Anyone who has not taken a walk in several weeks realizes how laborious it now is and how stamina has been impacted. It is not that these attributes are gone for good, but they may need to be built up to previous levels that were sufficient to perform the tasks once performed. For older workers, balance and stamina are two important factors in mobility and performance.
Competitive sports enthusiasts are quick to say, “if you don’t use it, you lose it.” Read More
What Makes Proactive Technologies’ Accelerated Transfer of Expertise™ So Effective
by Proactive Technologies, Inc. Staff
There are a lot of buzzwards thrown around these days. “Skills Gap,” Education-Based Apprenticeships, Industry-Recognized Certifications, “STEM” – many confusing to those in management whose primary function is to ensure products and services are delivered in the most cost-effective and profitable way. It can be especially confusing to those who are specialists in business operations but unfamiliar with effective worker development strategies.
For anyone unfamiliar with Proactive Technologies’s PROTECH™ system of managed human resource development for the accelerated transfer of expertise™, it might help to clarify what makes this approach to worker development and continuous improvement so effective. This unique approach, in practice since 1986 and always improving, was designed by someone who endured the pressures of maintaining the highest quality staff in a world of constant change and pressures to do more with less.
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We start by collecting a lot of data for the client about each of their job classifications that is all around anyway (e.g. people’s heads, operator’s notes, engineering processes, quality standards, EHS specifications). Usually we find that when this information isn’t readily available of discoverable, it makes learning and mastering the tasks – for new hires and incumbents – unpredictable, ineffective, open to interpretation and conflicts (including legal), costly and not conducive of standardization of high performance. And the continual revision of all of these bits of information adds to the challenge and makes process improvement and implementation efforts difficult, at best.
Many times we find that tasks are not proceduralized for best practice performance; either not defined at all or defined vaguely as “Perform _____,” leaving it up to each new trainee to guess what was intended. We job/task analyze the missing bits and work with engineering, quality and management to make sure we have the best, best practice before we develop any training or certification tool from it.
Our proprietary software allows us to quickly gather and consolidate the many sources of data for use only when and where needed. Read More
Some Thoughts on a Struggling Workforce
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 has revealed the frailty, inefficiency and ineffectiveness of many U.S. institutions. Firstly, the U.S. healthcare system, made up of a patchwork of non-profit and faux non-profit hospital systems operating under a mix of local, state and federal regulations. As we found out, procuring the necessities such as personal protective equipment (for hospital staff) and ventilators for extremely critical patients was a nightmare, seeing states competing among themselves with a broken supply chain for scarce supplies and paying 5 – 10 times the previously established prices. What should have been aggressively coordinated at a national level – like the other developed economies who saw lower numbers of deaths and a quicker path toward “normal” – was preempted by the same disjointed lack of leadership, confusing guidelines and conflicting mandates that left the citizenry trying to do what was right for themselves and their community while unraveling in their personal lives.
The healthcare insurance system revealed itself to be more on paper than in practice. The federal government had to intervene with taxpayer dollars to guarantee citizens would be cared for while they were losing their jobs and employer-backed health insurance (or an employee’s ability to continue to pay for insurance). Make-shift hospitals, such as those found in lesser developed countries, discovered new found importance even while testing supplies for Covid-19 still remained in dangerously short supply.
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The state-run unemployment insurance programs proved inadequate and underfunded to handle a mass event of over 40 million new unemployment claims in the first 5 months of 2020 – not to mention “gig” workers who found themselves exceptions to nearly every program – until federal government provided short-term intervention to shore up funds.
Federal food assistance programs were unable to keep up with the sudden surge of newly, and unexpectedly, unemployed overwhelmed the system. Community food banks tried to close the gap but quickly ran short themselves.
Employers operating within this broken framework were not immune from the impact of the Covid-19. Read More
Read the full June, 2020 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.
Proactive Technologies, Inc.®; PROTECH; Human Resource Management for Tomorrow...Today!® and logo; br>Accelerated Transfer of Expertise System™; Certificate of Job Mastery Program™, Certificate of Task Mastery Program™ are all trademarks of Proactive Technologies Inc.®;