The Worker Development Puzzle… For Many

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

After many years of setting up and providing technical support for employer-based structured on the job training programs, I can say with confidence that most, if not all, employers have significant weaknesses in their worker development process. If pressed, I believe most employers are aware of it, but have become comfortable with the mistaken notion that “it is what it is.,” Some are unaware and frustrated at the lack of results when hiring new workers to maintain or build capacity; accountants show signs of concern when hiring adds labor costs and often results in lower production output. Others in management may be concerned with unsustainable poor output quality or an increase in product or service scrap or rework.

Hiring more workers is not always the answer to the apparent lack of capacity to take on new product lines and new projects. Many employers overlook the fact that there is a tremendous amount of untapped capacity among the existing workers who have never had a chance to be fully trained for the jobs for which they were hired. The reason: most companies have remained in the unstructured, informal, undocumented one-on-one task-based training mode – even though the tasks are often transforming and the skills required for jobs have continued to increase in complexity.

Understanding the “chemistry“ of worker development is key to maximizing the return on worker skills and efficiencies. If an enterprise is struggling to increase output given the current staffing levels, adding new workers to compensate may often yield even less output. The simple reason being that a new person with no demonstrated skills or relevant capabilities is paired with a higher paid subject matter expert who is to transfer their expertise in an unstructured, ad hoc and undocumented manner. For however long this unstructured experience takes, one person who used to be very productive is now training a worker who has little or no productivity, doubling the loss of capacity rather than increasing capacity to increase productive output. As production output falls, the subject matter expert trainer may feel compelled to take up the production slack – putting more distance between them and the trainee. During the probationary period, the new-hire doesn’t know what they don’t know and what is not being trained, so they may feel the only solution is to lay low.

This experience can take 2 to 3 times longer than necessary and the new worker may be trained to only 20% of the required tasks that management and expects. For however long this takes to transfer a full job set of expertise, two people (not one) are drawing pay and underproducing.

The only way to get the subject matter expert back to work so they can continue to produce at the high level previously witnessed and add a fully functional and capable new employee to the aggregate capacity, is to structure the on the job training process. Structured on-the-job training (“SOJT”) is task-based, including all of the critical tasks that make up the job classification. If an operation has standard work instructions, these can be incorporated into the SOJT infrastructure, which helps with ISO/IATF/AS and NADCAP compliance.

In addition, the subject matter experts who played the informal role will continue to be the SOJT trainers and must be trained to be thoughtful, deliberate trainers instead of requiring new hires to just “watch and learn.” New learners come in all forms. Some of them learn fast by watching, some of them need a little bit more assistance to learn, but then can become very proficient employees. Understanding the difference and the adjusting training delivery process can address all developmental issues.

To extend this further, area community colleges and career centers can be a valuable asset in developing the general core skill base of the local workforce upon which an employer can draw if they had the current and accurate job information that only the employers can supply. They can, also, assist individual employers by delivering specific technical skill training that fits the employer’s needs so that once the worker arrives at the workplace, the SOJT can immediately build on that skill base and accelerate the transfer of expertise.

The lack of understanding of what really makes up the job requirements, the process of transferring expertise from the incumbent workers to the new hire workers, and the implications for employers for inadequate and inefficient training strategies, cost employers collectively billions of dollars each year. Added to that, the potential for scrap and rework that adds to the production or service costs can frustrate management into taking drastic measures. This is a shame because often employers are driven by investors to lower-wage offshore labor sources, which may require even more costs, training and monitoring, when the solution is a simple, local one.

W. Edwards Deming said “if you cannot explain what you are doing as a process, you do not know what you’re doing.” Harsh words, but reasonable given the circumstances. Deming saw the inadequacies of manufacturers in standardizing processes and developing workers to perform those processes to a high, sustainable quality level. He often voiced his frustration in his words of caution to the few who would listen.

Proactive Technologies’ helps employers build and implement a structured on-the-job training system approach to expedite each worker’s accelerated path toward full job mastery. 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.