by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
No doubt about it, with the Crash of 2008 and the Covid-19 Crisis of 2020 most businesses have been forced into deep introspection about their products and services, their supply chains, maintaining their current and future workforce needs…even their survival and the evolving needs of an impacted consumer base. Any one of these topics would be plenty, but all at once while against the headwinds of an uncertain, but improving and evolving, economy and society is daunting.
Each one of these topics impacts the others. For example, changing a product or service may require adjustments or changes to the mix of suppliers and logistics, and may even influence decisions to perform tasks in-house or outside. Changing products or services, and potentially the tasks requiring workers to perform them, will determine what skills incumbent and new workers will need. It will require a reassessment of current worker selection practices, core skill development and task-related training. Most operations should consider to:
- Re-determine products/services;
- Determine tasks required to deliver products and services;
- Define task procedures for best practice performance;
- Develop “job performance aids” (e.g. process documents, quality documents);
- For non-process document driven tasks, define the best practice to complete the job data set
- Develop structured on-the-job training materials so they are ready before new processes begin;
- Define related technical instruction to build worker core skills for mastering task-based training;
- Determine which tasks to be performed in-house and which off-site;
- For in-house work, assess current workforce for core skills learned and mastered so the foundation upon which to master tasks is confirmed;
- Remediate deficient levels of core skills;
- Deliver structured on-the-job training for incumbent workers
- Apply same worker development process and standards to new-hire workers
- (For supplier-performed tasks) Supply assessment and structured on-the-job training materials along with engineering and quality documents to dramatically expedite the adjustment to high quality vendor performance
- Monitor, measure performance, continuously improve and maintain data for new changes.
You may be thinking this approach is too daunting to attempt. That is why many businesses get caught flat-footed when disruptions occur. If you might have convinced yourself, or have been convinced by others, that this approach is too time and labor intensive to warrant its consideration, that would be a shame. Ad hoc, disjointed, unfocused and unnecessarily too costly strategies are the only alternative. Anything between is half as effective.
Many employers underestimate the direct and opportunity costs that are not only eating away at profits but stifling innovation and making market shifts and market disruptions a continual threat to their existence.
Those who are unfamiliar with Proactive Technologies, Inc. and the service it provides to employers to set-up their worker development infrastructure, manage and provide technical implementation support and provide record keeping and monthly reporting to track each worker’s progress to full job mastery and full worker capacity, might fall back on outdated stereotypes to talk themselves out of even learning more about this approach. They are probably unaware that Proactive Technologies has been helping employers build and maintain robust workforce development systems since 1986, more often than not defraying the employer’s investment further by helping them find and acquire state worker training funds.
Proactive Technologies uses its PROTECH™ System of Managed Human Resource Development for the accelerated transfer of Expertise™ to help employers cut their internal costs of training while increasing worker capacity, work quality and quantity, and compliance with engineering and quality control requirements as well as ISO/AS/IATF and OSHA.
Using its PROTECH© software, Proactive Technologies can help any employer quickly adapt its workforce to changes and reinvention. Once the jobs have been analyzed, one change updates all materials. Each worker’s task-based records allow PROTECH to compare existing workers to the changes and provide the materials to train them to the new task requirements. It can provide materials and metrics to train local suppliers to ensure they can comply with specifications.
Approaching change in a systematic, methodical way can lower internal costs, accelerate the transition to the updated operations, elevate levels of quality and compliance – maintaining these levels forward – and provide an infrastructure to quickly proliferate adjustments and improvements. Taking a moment to approach these changes deliberately will yield huge paybacks going forward.
If you recognize these challenges and have shed your fear of even looking at other solutions, check out Proactive Technologies’ structured on-the-job training system approach to see how it might work at your firm, your family of facilities or your region. Contact a Proactive Technologies representative today to schedule a GoToMeeting videoconference briefing to your computer. This can be followed up with an onsite presentation for you and your colleagues. A 13-minute promo briefing is available at the Proactive Technologies website and provides an overview to get you started and to help you explain it to your staff. As always, onsite presentations are available as well.
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