How Much Would “Full Worker Capacity” Through Full Job Mastery Be Worth to Your Firm?
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
According to Ed Timmons, CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, “ our labor costs in the U.S. are still 20% too high.” If he means that employers may be paying too much for unused or unusable worker capacity, and they should seek methods to develop it, I can agree with that. If he means employers should focus on spending enormous amounts on finding alternatives to labor, or randomly cutting workers, or asking workers to work for less wages and less benefits, I would say “hold on a minute.”
Given the growing discontent by workers who still haven’t recovered from the Crash of 2008 and are still trying to come back to the wage level they once had for the talents they possess as their employer and their shareholders built great profits, workers might want a seat at that discussion. Many families, today, are challenged by rising prices of nearly everything and stagnating or eroding wages. This preoccupation with driving down labor costs, while reporting to Wall Street record quarterly profits, may benefit shareholders in the short-run, but it is surely self-destructive and illusionary in the long-run.
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As recently reported in Industry Week, a group of CEOs from major U.S. corporations, The Business Roundtable, released a statement saying that shareholder value is no longer its primary focus – shifting their practices to line up with their new definition of the “purpose of a corporation.” The new vision emphasizes investing in employees, supporting communities, dealing ethically with suppliers and providing customers with value. “The group signed the Business Roundtable’s new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation. It’s a sea change that moves companies away from the age-old philosophy that companies’ main goal is to look after shareholders.”
Focusing solely on shareholder profits has stunted the long-term viability of many a thriving organization. Under the cover of “making the firm more efficient,” when more profits could not be derived from expanding the market and market penetration, some investors forced cuts on firms that determined a firm’s long-term capability to compete, take advantage of emerging market opportunities, and adapt to changing markets and turbulent economic forces. Read More
Task-Specific Performance Reviews – An Accurate Metric for a Structured On-Job-Training Outcome
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
We have all been through it. For decades this has been the topic of comedy shows and movies…the dreaded annual performance review. And when it is over, we might tell our confidants how non-reflective of reality and unfair it was. We calm down over the next few months and grow more anxious each month as we get closer to the next one thinking we are at its whim.
Why are they used? Are they supposed to be a good measure or performance or just a way to meet a human resources department obligation. More times than not they seem like a justification for not giving a wage increase than guidance on how an employee can continually improve and contribute to the organization.
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It is bewildering why management would spend the time and money, and risk employee morale time and again, on a employee measurement that isn’t.
Conceptually, the performance review has a purpose. It is to measure employee performance during a review period, identify areas of weakness and strength, and offer guidance on how an employee can improve on shortcomings and expand potential. But that is only possible if it is accurate to the job classification against which an individual is measured.
Several decades ago, performance review criteria became a template – one form fits all. In order for that to be possible, the metrics had to become more general, such as whether the individual “works well with others,” “completes projects on time,” “shows initiative.” At best, these types of measures leave the reviewed wondering whose job performance is being discussed. At worst, these subjective measures leave a lot of latitude for the reviewer who sometimes deliberately or inadvertently punishes an otherwise good performing employee.
Studies have shown that performance reviewers rarely have a method to gather performance history for each employee throughout a review period, so they rely on their memory. Read More
Classes Alone Will Not Close the “Skills Gap,” But Structured On-the-Job Training Can…Every Time!
by Proactive Technologies, Inc. Staff
Proactive Technologies. Inc. works with many employers, a large number of them manufacturers, to set up structured on-the-job training programs designed to their exact job classification(s), built to train incumbent and new-hire workers to “full job mastery” – still the most elusive goal most employers face and the key to” closing the “skills gap.” Under-capacity of workers is an enormous source of untapped value and unrealized return on worker investment.
The accelerated transfer of expertise™ approach can help any employer quickly and completely train the skilled workers they need AND realize an increase in worker capacity, work quantity/quality and compliance (ISO/TS/AS, engineering specifications and safety) while reducing the internal costs of training. New-hires and incumbent workers are driven to full job mastery and higher levels of return on worker investment (ROWI). The task-based, structured on-the-job training infrastructure is perfect for apprenticeships; instead of marking the calendar for “time-in-job,” job-relevant tasks are mastered and documented. AND, unlike classroom or online training, the cost per trainee decreases with each added trainee once set up.
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This approach makes a worker’s mastery of the job the focus, integrating into the company’s existing systems and standards by building structure around the loosely arranged worker development activities already in place. By structuring the unstructured worker training to make it work effectively and efficiently, this approach maximizes the use of resources already in place. Read More
Supervisors and First Line Management Need Structured On-The-Job Training, Too
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
It seems every organization is scrambling to “lean” the operation these days. This implies producing the same amount of output, or more, with decreased amount of inputs by fine-tuning logistics, internal work flows and processes. Workers get moved around or out, and processes get reorganized and relocated.
Changes to the operation signal that the workers responsible to implement changes will need to know the new way of doing things. All affected workers, all shifts. Yet, often very little thought is given to the effectiveness of improvements if not everyone is one the same page.
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“One of the supervisors who participated in the program development said with clear certainty, ‘[I wish you had this when I started. When you hired me, I was just shown my desk and told to call HR or the manager if I had any questions. Yes, you had me attend some management classes on leadership, quality and striving for excellence, but I really couldn’t connect what was learned to my job since I had not yet learned what I was supposed to do and how to do that well. Until we completely analyzed all of the tasks that make up my job, I really had no idea which tasks I never have had a chance to learn or even knew I needed to learn them.’ “
What should be an obvious “must,” the notion that increasing worker capacity at all levels through task-based, deliberate, documented, measurable and verifiable structured on-the-job training is often usurped. It is replaced by a policy of hopefulness that workers will learn to perform the tasks of their job on their own or by osmosis or, even less effective and disappointing, attending a class here and there in expectation of closing the “skills gap.” I often discuss this in the context of production or service workers, but this extends to all levels of most organizations. The impact doesn’t go unnoticed by controllers and CEO’s under pressure to increase revenue or lower costs, but measures to correct this imbalance are seldom explored let alone utilized.Invariably, the most target-rich environment for harvesting huge savings and significantly increasing capacity is bypassed – either from a lack of understanding of what it takes to be a “subject matter expert” or entrenched neglect. Ignoring the need for structured on-the-job training is like investing in a state-of-the-art machine, then waiting for it to set-up and program itself. Even artificial intelligence needs someone to train it the first time to do the things expected in the proper way.
When one considers the serious collateral damage caused by underdeveloped or underutilized worker capacity (e.g. scrap, rework, loss of “tribal knowledge” when someone retires or moves on, loss of customer confidence, loss of employee confidence), red flags and alarms should be going off continuously, since all of these are present on a daily basis. Read More
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