Tips for Establishing Your Company’s Training Strategy – Practical, Measurable, Extremely Economical and Scalable
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
For most companies, an in-house training center doesn’t have to be brick and mortar, and doesn’t necessarily require additional equipment and personnel to support it. It is about focusing the resources already available to develop workers faster and to a much higher level of capacity. This does not happen by throwing dollars or classes at the problem; if that were the case many employers who did so would have solved the “skills gap” problem. It takes a more deliberate approach than that to achieve the outcome that has been out of reach, for many, for decades.
In previous articles, such as in the May, 2016 issue of the Proactive Technologies Report, “A Simple Solution to Skill Gaps – New-Hires and Incumbents” I described a simple, easy to implement strategy for developing new-hires and incumbent workers to full capacity. I emphasized that by focusing on the outcome, the proper inputs become clearer. But by focusing on the inputs, the connection to the outcome may not necessarily be clear. Any use of irrelevant, improper or ineffective worker development inputs means unnecessary costs with low or no return, wasted time and additional opportunity costs.
click here to expandOver the years, I have noticed that many employers’ idea of a worker training strategy is a hodge-podge of classroom and online training. This seems to be based on the assumption that all of the right people have been hired, they all have mastered the tasks of the job and that a few classes will drive each worker’s performance to higher levels.
Where does this assumption come from? Why do employers collectively settle for this type of model even though decades of experience and day to day worker performance offer many clues that this model of worker training is not as effective as hoped? Too often the feedback from workers attending classes is, “I don’t know why the company had me attend that class.” “That was a waste of time.” In an informal way, this is a form of “content validation,” or in this case “invalidation.”
“Conceptually, a better overall approach is simple, accurate, efficient and effective. If an employer isn’t including these simple steps in their worker selection, development and performance evaluation strategy the might be wasting company time, money and resources.”
This legacy approach is a comfortable model to explain. Everyone has attended school; some higher education as well. It is what we grew up with and the sentiment has become acceptance from familiarity. Some accept this approach because they are unaware of better alternatives. Some find comfort in being among the “herd.” Most of the employers seemed locked into this model, so it must be the right way to train workers. If this were true and reinforced with evidence, why after 30 years of concentrated application (as technology entered nearly every aspect of worker performance) the “skills gap” we all talk about has not only survived, but has actually grown? Read More
Structured On-The-Job Training Programs for Salaried Personnel
by Stacey Lett, Regional Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
It is not just the hourly workers that, once hired, run into the “Bob, this is Sally. Why don’t you show her around” form of “training.” In environments where no structure exists to deliberately train hourly workers, supervisors and managers are similarly shown their desk and wished “good luck.” Yes, the company may offer a series of management courses that explain contemporary management theories, but often the most overlooked training is for the tasks against which performance is ultimately measured.
We frequently hear anecdotal stories about supervisors who are “thrown into the mix” of not only having to lead their workers to measured levels of performance, but concurrently learn their own job from their surroundings as best they can. Other supervisors and managers may be under the same pressure to focus on output, so they may be rarely available to mentor a new manager. Most likely, nothing was ever written down. Even worse, supervisors or managers who are new to the entire operation may have to learn what it is their employees do by observation before they can attempt to lead them to better performance.
click here to expandSounds familiar? It seems to run contrary to all the other business improvement initiatives, such as Six-Sigma, LEAN, Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, etc. Do companies have to settle for a “seat-of-the-pants” learning experience for their hourly and salary workers? And could this be a major contributing factor in reduced organizational competitiveness? Read More
Reducing an Employer’s Turnover Rate in a Practical, Efficient Way
by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center
I recently attended a local economic development meeting at which one of the structured on-the-job training (“SOJT”) projects I have been following was a subject on the agenda. Two members from Custom Glass Solutions LLC (“CGS”) human resources department presented a short update on the SOJT programs underway at their Fostoria, Ohio and Upper Sandusky, Ohio facilities.
These projects began in the latter part of 2019, right at the beginning of the Covid – 19 experience. Their lead technical consulting company, Proactive Technologies, Inc, focused on setting up for SOJT programs for nine job classifications at the Fostoria facility and 10 job classifications at the Upper Sandusky facility. This included 320 incumbent workers and many more new hires.
click here to expandWhen the project initially began, one of the main concerns of the CGS upper management was the challenging high level of turnover, exacerbated by the Covid – 19 events and aftermath. At times it seemed as if turnover reached the 20 to 25% level.
After the SOJT programs were underway, each incumbent worker’s inventory of tasks mastered was established to baseline each worker for the tasks they have previously been trained on and management and the employee believed they had mastered. Customized SOJT programs were developed for each based on where they were in their development (to avoid wasting time and money training workers on what they could already do) and what was necessary to close the “task mastery gap.”
New-hires were set-up on their own customized SOJT program, starting at a level of zero tasks mastered, and therefore given a complete SOJT checklist binder. Both groups were, and continue to be, driven towards “full job mastery” in what is called an “accelerated transfer of expertise.” Each employee receives certificates of task mastery for reaching the 50% of tasks mastered mark, and certificates of job mastery once they have mastered the entire job classification. Read More
Structured On-The-Job Training for Non-Manufacturing Job Classifications
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
Although the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development was designed for manufacturing and there has extensively proven its effectiveness, the approach is just as effective for jobs in any industry, and level of the organization. Proactive Technologies, Inc.’s job/task analysis methodology is rooted in those used by the U. S. Departments of Defense and Energy – modified for use in the private-sector world with private-sector budgets and time constraints. The development and use of the job data is based on those practices that seemed to be working in human resource management, human resource development, technical writing, quality control and workforce development – modernized to an ever-changing and challenging world.
When it comes to the analysis of the job, which is the center of all instruments and activities developed from it, the common factor of all work is that it can be defined in discrete units called “tasks.” Nobody is ever hired and expected to be very knowledgeable about a subject, or be very aware, or be strong. These attributes do not become useful until applied in the performance of a meaningful recognizable unit of work. If correct performance of the task, the “best practice,” requires these attributes as either a necessary to learning to perform the task or needed in the performance of the task, they become prerequisite, but not the outcome.
click here to expandEvery job classification can be broken into its duties (groups of related tasks), tasks and subtasks. That is where performance is measured and it should be the outcome that is detected and improved. There are individuals who cannot conceptualize this relationship and say something like, “my job is too complicated, it cannot be defined because I am asked to do so many things.” Once they are walked through how they think their way through a series of steps to get to an outcome, they are usually converted. If the analyst cannot get a handle on a job classification, perhaps there really isn’t an underlying job.
Each task and subtask has beginning point and an ending point and a series of steps between called “elements,” process steps” or “procedural steps” that must be performed correctly, in the right order and meeting specifications to get the right, repeatable outcome. Read More
Read the full May, 2022 Proactive Technologies Report newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.
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