Proactive Technologies Report – November, 2018

The contradictions are alarming, and many times middle managers and upper management of corporate-run or private equity managed enterprises are caught in the middle. They know the risks of neglecting training and they see the results first-hand, but have little say in the matter or are afraid of getting caught up in a “cost v. benefit” discussion with people that seem to live in a different world and have made up their mind before the discussion begins. When capacity deteriorates or the siren’s call of cheaper labor markets prevails, someone makes the decision to move the entire operation to a location where training is even more difficult but can be absorbed due to offsetting wage discounts – that is until wages rise and total cost of ownenership is understood.

“The decision to not invest in driving each employee to full job mastery – making sure all company employees have mastered the best practice of every task for which they were hired – is akin to deciding to buy a Corvette in your middle-years to impress your friends then skimping on the gas to drive it. The return on the investment is not realized, so it starts to look like pure cost. Magnify this by tens or hundreds of employees and there is no doubt of the folly.”

If employers do decide to host related technical instruction, they tend to gravitate toward classroom or online training solutions since they seem more familiar. They settle on local institutional instruction providers and private vendors by finding what they think is a close fit, yet they and the end-users are often underwhelmed by out-of-date or unrelated content that weakens their credibility and makes them reluctant to ask for permission to host another. It has always been difficult to show how related technical instruction and courses “du jour” translated into improvement in a worker’s performance – expressed by the attendees and those who sent them through the class.

Employers are buoyed by the belief that on-the-job, task-based training seems to be going on in one form or another all around them – even if they cannot explain it, measure it, document it and improve it. To a degree they are right; work gets done and products and services reach the customer. In an age of tight budgets and cynical accountants and shareholders, getting it wrong again is not an option. So the temptation is to accept this reality as the only choice, not ask for additional resources (from individuals who discourage the mere request) to maximize worker potential and, in doing so, the bottom line.

If designed and implemented right, structured on-the-job training, especially Proactive Technologies’ accelerated transfer of expertise™, is the easiest to justify by ease of implementation, by the potential increase in worker capacity, work quality and quantity, by the effortless increase in compliance with ISO/AS/TS and OSHA, by the measurable and documented return on worker investment and by the declining cost per trainee.

A structured on-the-job training infrastructure is easier to set up and implement than might by thought if done right. Many of the components are already there, so structuring the unstructured builds on what is familiar and useful. If ad hoc and informal on-the-job training was going on anyway, then structuring it to make it more accurate, efficient and purposeful has to be a return on investment from the “get-go.” Having structure to accelerate, document, measure and improve the transfer of worker expertise adds to the returns. Providing documentation to support compliance with ISO/AS./TS quality programs and OSHA mitigates the risk of noncompliance and litigation – even more return. And if you have similar job classifications across multiple locations, the returns due to “customized standardization” escalate.

If you want to have a better shot at pitching to management and accountants why training will have a better outcome this time, what deficiencies it will address and what returns on investment can be expected, then seriously consider the structured on-the-job training, systems approach. Discussing academic theory to hardened managers has become very difficult since many have turned out to be just that; academic theory. Drilling down on real-world examples of waste and under-utilization of workers with a solution that seems directly suited to affect this has a better chance for a successful decision and outcomes that reinforce the choice made.

Michael Collins wrote about it in an article in IndustryWeek entitled “How Financialization Is Starving Manufacturing” that short-termism has made manufacturing companies focus an inordinate amount of time, attention and resources on immediate gains at the expense of long-term, sustainable growth. This applies to worker development, too. Read More 

A deliberate and documented system to develop workers and maximize the return on worker investment should be a “no-brainer.” Employers expend enormous resources – time, effort, dollars – on efforts to improve efficiencies…in some cases without making an appreciable difference or reaching the intended goals. But rather than a philosophical discussion comparing approaches to training, I thought it might be beneficial to just offer symptoms of failed approaches and reasons why any employer should think more seriously about the state of their internal training infrastructure. According to a Training Magazine article entitled, ” Bridging the Skills Gap” by Lorri Freifeld, these revealing points were extracted:

• 49 percent of U.S. employers are experiencing difficulty filling mission-critical positions within their organizations. (ManpowerGroup’s seventh annual Talent Shortage Survey; 1,300 U.S. employers surveyed; positions most difficult to fill: skilled trades, engineers, and IT staff)

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