10 Reasons Structured On-The-Job Training is a Vital and Necessary System for Any Organization
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.®
There are many reasons a deliberate, structured on-the-job training system should be a priority consideration for any employer. For decades employers have felt that having an employee take a few classes here and a few online modules there translates directly to improved worker output and performance. But for decades, as well, employers have continued to talk about a continually increasing “skills gap.” Connection? Obviously yes.
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 many cases without making an appreciable difference or not reaching the intended goals. Too often the reason was that no comparable resources were expended to deliberately train the workers to efficiently implement the efficiencies. 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.
Decades of Drift – U.S. employers have drifted from the basics. “Of U.S. hiring decision-makers, 69% said the skills gap is wider than ever. 79% of job seekers said the skills gap is less about a lack of ability and more about employers’ unwillingness to train.” (Express Employment Professionals).
It’s no secret, many employers express frustration that they can’t find skilled labor but fail to try to properly train the ones they have or hire.
Not Much to Show For the Effort – Raced through on-boarding, a new-hire is dropped off at the area supervisor’s door. Introduced to anyone available, the informal “on-the-job training” begins – management and employee hoping for the best. No structure, no strategy, no documentation. Worker panic sets in as the 90-day review approaches with little to validate retention. Should the results be surprising or disappointing?
New-hire, incumbent and cross-training employees employees have no idea what tasks they need to master and the right way to perform them. They are totally reliant on employers to provide the training only they can if they are to meet expectations. But evidence of a persistent disconnect couldn’t be clearer: Read More
Do We Want to Further Degrade the Skills of the Workforce We Previously Complained Lacked Skills?
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.®
The media likes to fan the AI flames with bombastic predictions of how we all have to get on board with the AI train or be left behind. My guess it is to support the AI investors who may have a stake in their media group. But reality is increasingly contradicting the lofty projections. AI will have a place as a tool for the toolbox like most over-hyped technology advancements. But in the meantime, the world is in a state of chaos while trying to find its place in the manufactured stampede.
We are told we have to hurry the implementation of AI into all corners of life so “China doesn’t get ahead of us.” Ahead of us on what? Realizing AI’s true potential, risks and dangers? The public backlash over data centers near urban settings and the potential loss of property value, the potential increases in water and electricity prices for consumers, the depletion of scarce water resources, the environmental impacts (e.g. noise, destruction of habitats) all need to be addressed if AI data centers want to find a home, as will the many open questions of the role of humans in this AI world data centers are meant to support.
What was the point of STEM and STEAM in education if we take away the need for the learning skills these programs are meant to impart to a future workforce?
Daily, questions arise as to the truthful advantage of AI and the many risks and cautions revealed as people have time to consider applications; trying to implement AI is a better solution than what existed, There will be a “settling out” at some point, just in time for the next disruption forced on us by those who stand to massively, financially benefit.
But where is all of this leading us? How will it affect our current and future workers? Do we really know? Is this a risk we want to chance? Read More
Is Your Firm Still Reliant on Onboarding and Classroom-style Learning for Your Process-based Training?
Proactive Technologies, Inc.® – Staff
Is you firm still reliant on onboarding and classroom-style learning for your process-based training? You should know, “…workers forget up to 70% of newly learned information within 24 hours if it is not applied. After one week, retention can drop below 10%.”
If you are hoping AI will close the gap, think about it. If your “standardized processes” are more in the heads of your resident experts and on notes in lunch boxes than documented for all, how and what will AI learn? And then there is the continuous improvement changes…
When it exists, the most prevalent form of process-based training is informal, unstructured and undocumented one-on-one training. It can’t be explained, measured, audited or improved, but miraculously products and services get delivered…until they don’t or don’t get delivered right. Hardly what you would call “world-class.”
Few workers can train themselves. But why would anyone want them to? No one would load parts into a machine and “hope for the best.” Like any investment, you can hope for a Return on Worker Investment or you can maximize it.
Your firm can grow and retain all of the skilled workers it needs, and finish any incomplete training of incumbents, just by focusing the disconnected pieces you already have in place!
“Back to Basics:” The Best Approach – Easiest, Cheapest, Proven – Employers have been paying wages for two people, tied-up for however long it takes, with unknown results and calling it “training.”. Let Proactive Technologies, Inc. structure your informal, unstructured and undocumented on-the-job training into a system and provide implementation support to your team, including monthly worker development KPIs, until you are ready to take over. Your team can focus on business while PTI upgrades and transforms your informal worker training to: Read More
“Corporate Capture:” Big Tech Drives AI Into Education and Workforce Development Before Cost, Risks, Societal
Benefits/Harm Are Understood
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.®
Do you remember the days when we could purchase a standalone license for computer software? Pay once and done, until someday you might choose to upgrade. In recent years, everything has moved to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Now you pay a licensing fee every year (price bound to go up each year). If you do not pay the annual licensing fee, your software is turned off as is access to all of your work in their restrictive file format. Moving your files, or accessing them from a compatible product under a different brand, is difficult even if you can find an alternative still around.
SaaS has become the norm for the display and apps on your car dashboard, apps on your phone, apps on your television…it is a ubiquitous guarantee of annually increasing profits for corporations. As product competition is gobbled up to the delight of shareholders, a loss is felt by comparative shoppers and the consumer who feels like a hostage. This marketing practice started spreading in other forms decades ago, such as providing “free” genetically-modified crop seeds to developing countries knowing in time they will need to buy tractors, fertilizers, other farm implements and, yes, next year’s seeds since the free ones are patented and will only grow for one year. Or giving a user “free play” on gambling applications to get them started, then charging for additional tokens to keep playing once hooked. Or selling computer printers cheaply knowing the expensive ink or toner cartridges (filled sparingly) will need to be replaced over and over again. Even Artificial Intelligence (AI) use is priced in “token usage” billed monthly based on usage, with the same conditions of continued AI usage. These are all a form of something called “corporate capture.”
One vivid example of corporate capture, Microsoft has encountered the growing resistance to its efforts to force consumers to migrate from Windows 10 to 11, and all the costs associated with needed hardware upgrades and software compatibility issues. The move is financially crippling to small and mid-size business operations worn down by previous pushes. Nearly a billion users, as of December 2025, have resisted, and Microsoft ended up extending their technical support of Windows 10 until October, 2027.
Related to corporate capture is “planned obsolescence,” explained as “the concept of policies planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain predetermined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function, or might be perceived as unfashionable.” Everyone has experienced this with electronics, appliances, automobiles and parts, and even clothing with probably no longer a thought. Ten states have enacted “right to repair” laws in response to complaints by a growing amount of aware consumers, burdened by the cost and inconvenience of premature and unnecessary failures of needed and expensive “durable goods.”
When vested interests are allowed to embed advocacy of their products in our educational system, I think most of us would agree that is worrisome at best. When Pharma, a term to describe the pharmaceutical industry and their lobbying wing, mounted a broad effort to rewrite the medical school textbooks, red flags should have gone up. Students were diverted from learning more about holistic and preventative medicine, natural cures and alternatives, and were nudged toward “a pill for every symptom” approach – with all of the known and unknown side-effects and pills to take care of those side-effects. The cost of going to medical school has risen dramatically, but speaking engagements, advocacy of pills and products in journals and commissions for writing prescriptions after graduation offered new ways to pay off student loans. The practice grew to medical device manufacturers and the growth in “specialists,” the exorbitant fees to access the equipment, the fees for referrals and high prices demanded for specialist services. Read More
Read the full October, 2026 Proactive Technologies Report™ newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.
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