Training Workers for a Moving Target
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
In an article in HR Dive entitled “How employers could improve job outcomes for young adults: Certain degree programs and on-the-job training could open access to high-demand jobs,” Anthony Carnevale, the lead author of a recent report and director of Center on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement, “Pathways to good jobs are especially strengthened through comprehensive policy efforts that layer effective interventions on top of one another.”
“Some of these pathway changes involve increasing educational attainment, especially progressing toward attainment of a bachelor’s degree. Others replace or combine classroom learning with on-the-job learning, capitalizing on the growth that occurs when workers gain access to jobs in high-demand fields that equip them with both general and sector-specific skills, competencies, and domain knowledge”
It must be understood that the recent report, and other reports over the last decades attempting to provide guidance for better labor force development, explores solutions from the educator and policymaker’s perspective; using the traditional tools and approaches to education to prepare workers who can enter the labor pool with more to offer employers.
When education talks about “on-the-job training,” they are more likely referring to “on-the-job learning,” which is just a change of venue for traditional class or online learning. While important and necessary for preparing future and returning workers for the labor pool, too little time and discovery is spent on the employer’s role in developing the workers they themselves need to perform unique tasks for their operation. When a trainee’s core and industry-sector skills (industry-specific) are enhanced with task-based structured on-the-job training – by an employer’s subject matter expert delivered one-on-one in a deliberate transfer of expertise – the workers learning efforts prior to employment or concurrent with employment are preserved through direct application, before they erode from non-use.
click here to expandHistorically, employers have provided a tepid interest and response to the training process, relying too much on education to do the job only employers can do and relying on internal, informal, unstructured and undocumented one-on-one training to do the rest. This is partly because so much hype circulates around “new and improved” attempts by education to address the urgent need that employers continually voice. This may be, also, due to many employers’ denial about how weak and often ineffective the employer’s internal method of training new-hires, cross-training incumbent workers and upskilling incumbents for changing processes and technology are. Workers have been caught in a “Ground Hog Day” (I am talking about the Bill Murray movie, not disrespecting the little critter) loop for decades. Read More
Decision Making While Swimming in Divergent Views
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
It seems like we’re all overwhelmed these days. Bad news, natural, disasters, man-made, disasters, and fears of upcoming meteorites, diseases, hurricanes, and government shenanigans. Even the nightly news has nine stories of current and pending disasters followed by one story of a little boy who found a marble, separated by commercials telling us to “ask our doctor” if this new drug is right for us.
What’s different today is that there is no escape from it. It comes through social media platforms on our phones, our computers, it plays on the radio, network and cable news, it comes from massive industries of political and financial pundits, and paid influencers of many kinds. Second-hand versions of the information come from our coworkers, our neighbors, our friends, and even our clergy.
It is difficult these days to extract the information we need from these sources and make the best, most proper decision in response. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by having to do so, yet that’s what we do both in life and in business; we make decisions based on the information we receive, and hopefully make good ones.
Making it more difficult is the proliferation of paid influencers who have a vested interest in making a believer out of you. These aren’t just the social media types telling you how wonderful their product is, embedded with subliminal messaging to influence your decision to buy based on their representation of their experience. Since the rise of “infotainment,” it has been difficult to separate out fact from fiction, reporting from advocacy and trends from high-pressuring, yet subtle and crafty, marketing. Read More
Worker Development Is an Ongoing Commitment, Not a “One and Done” Event
by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center
I have spent many years of my life working in manufacturing and providing consulting services to manufacturers and workforce development groups. While employers like to showcase there ISO, IATF or AS certification symbolizing their commitment to quality, imbedded throughout those certification program requirements are the need to demonstrate a system to develop workers, to maintain records that workers are trained to the company’s processes, show the continuous improvement of the training programs and updating of workers, and the protection of “legacy knowledge” and “tribal wisdom” to ensure sustainability.
Unfortunately, one common thread I find is the employer’s weak focus and commitment to the development of workers. Sure, some employers rise above the rest and there are a lot of core skill and industry-general training programs hosted by community colleges and technical training providers (some seem to make the effort to be relevant with changes in technology and the trajectory of industry). However, too often management rarely stays focused on worker development as they do on other parts of the organization. I don’t often see a “commitment to quality” and “continuous improvement” principles being applied to what the organizations fondly call “training.”
Typically, the conversation changes to classes that are offered before the realization that accounting will see it as a cost and veto the idea before it gets off the ground. Or, the manager hands it off to someone…knowing it will probably see the same fate. Even though most states have grant funds available to help employers pay the cost of classes provided locally and specialty training provided elsewhere, states are willing to provide funding to offset most, if not all, of the employer’s investment to implement a true, documented structured on-the-job training program, as well.
Debt Ceiling, Deficit and National Debt; The Difference and Why it Matters
by President of Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff
There is a lot of talk and confusion these days about state of the country’s finances. Often one measure is used to conflate and confuse the discussion about how to improve the others. The danger is those most impacted by whatever corrective measure becomes law are usually the same ones who have been sliding backward for the last 4 decades.
It is important to know the difference and add your voice to the discussion.
“The debt ceiling is a limit on the total amount of government borrowing. First put in place by Congress during World War I, it was meant to give blanket authorization for the Treasury Department to borrow money up to a set amount.”
“The U.S. budget deficit is how much more the federal government spends annually than it receives in revenue during that same time period.”
click here to expand“The national debt of the United States is the total national debt owed by the federal government of the United States to Treasury security holders. The national debt at any point in time is the face value of the then-outstanding Treasury securities that have been issued by the Treasury and other federal agencies. The terms “national deficit” and “national surplus” usually refer to the federal government budget balance from year to year, not the cumulative amount of debt.”
At the end of the second quarter in 2022, the national debt was about $30.6 trillion. Based on the second-quarter GDP of $24.9 trillion, the debt-to-GDP ratio was about 123%.
Read the full June, 2023 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.
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