Understanding the Resistance to Training: Part 2, Meeting the Challenge

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In part 1 of this series entitled, “Understanding the Resistance to Training: The Challenge,” I started the discussion of how an organization that is based on systems has difficulty in, and an entrenched aversion to, conceptualizing the need for a systematic approach to worker development. It is a pervasive problem and it lies at the root of the seemingly insurmountable “skills gap” that has flourished over 30 years and seems unique to U.S. employers. Other developed economies, such as those in Europe, seem to have no trouble developing the workers they need. In fact, many of those trained for technically skilled job classifications in Europe wind up working or training others in developing or developed countries around the world.

Training sounds so simple. Put two people together and have one train the other to do what they do…as fast and as good as the trainer. But we all know, from our own experiences, this is a crap shoot. The trainer may not want to share what they have learned for any number of reasons. Even if they do, they have repressed the nuances of learning the proper task procedure and are now operating on “automatic” – what the employer wants. This manifests itself as displaying shortcuts that only they understand and may not be acceptable, demonstrating incomplete procedures and omission of critical safety and engineering specifications. This is true for each subject matter expert on each shift, who might even be training in conflicting ways.

The trainee doesn’t know what they are not learning, and are totally dependent on what the trainer demonstrates, what they think they see and what they hear. They wouldn’t know if anything was left out or taught incorrectly, and may be afraid to ask for fear of being judged. They may not be a “self-starter,” but could be an excellent worker with proper instruction. Especially for employers who have depressed wages for technical skills, a lower offered wage attracts more workers who need extra help in mastering the tasks, or live with the consequences.

Training program development is a technical field that is seldom even touched upon in accounting or engineering or even management studies. Ultimately, the responsibility is pushed to the Human Resources department since, after all, we are talking about human resources here. Yet, even within human resource management college studies, the methodology for training program development and implementation may not be included or included as an overview, not a practice. For companies that opted for “HR Generalists,” there should be no expectation that worker development is an area of competency since it is not emphasized..

While education is traditionally “informative,” true “training,” by definition, is meant to be impactful and should focus primarily on developing and supporting operational capacity, goals and outcomes – one input at a time. In the absence of legitimate, structured on-the-job training, waiting critics are obliged to attack well-intentioned (but predictively off-based) efforts a frustrated and concerned manager might have put together from their discrete point of view, personal biases and limited understanding of training that works. These good employees have no idea of the inadequacies of their strategy, and do not set out to promote confrontation, but that is often the outcome.

This isn’t a new phenomenon in large organizations. There are single-purpose or egotistical members of state houses and Congress that vote against funding, or actively try to de-fund, well operating programs so the programs cannot function as designed, just so everyone can hear them say, “see, that program isn’t working so we should get rid of it.” In an organization short of direction, purpose and/or necessary attention from leadership, it is uncertain who will maneuver into a position to fill the power void. Sometimes it is loudest or the closest, not necessarily the most experienced and wisest. These might be the same people who are critical of poor worker performance, and slow to considering if poor employer support is a factor.

Every department manager expresses opinions about the quality of worker performance, the lack of quality training. They grumble about the horrible “skills gap” for which no one wants to take responsibility, including themselves. If you doubt this, ask your employees that you feel have inexplicably reached “subject matter expert” status how they reached that level. Who trained them? Do they have a drawer or lunchbox full of notes and set-up procedures that they, themselves, put together to fill the training void? And when you have listened to each employee’s strategy for becoming successful in spite of the lack of employer support, is this training anarchy good for the organization? Can it be measured, improved, controlled and audited? Should it be tolerated?

Don’t get me wrong, even sound, structured on-the-job training draws critics during the program development stage when it is vulnerable to attack, until the program takes shape and warrants support. Even proper efforts at workforce development have to pay for the sins of all of the attempts that preceded it (or didn’t). But experienced workforce development professionals know that they are racing against the clock to develop the program and demonstrate effectiveness, knowing that even then that might not be enough if management doesn’t quash unjustified criticism that demoralizes the trainees receiving the training. The supervisors overseeing the training effort and the departmental managers who stand to benefit from increased worker capacity and performance sometimes do not fight for the gains they see made even when economic, managerial, philosophical and organizational logic is on their side.

Still, structured on the job training will not have a chance if not structured for success. The criticism will start at the first perception that a program seems intuitively off-based. Worker training, first and foremost, must start with capturing “tribal knowledge and worker expertise” in written form before it leaves with the retirees and turnover. If this is the performance behavior that has met the needs so far of the organization, then that is where developing a program to “replicate” that behavior begins. Plus, reducing this collective expertise and wisdom to writing – so everyone can see it – showcases its values and what is at stake when not taking worker training seriously. This revelation also provokes a discussion on “best practices” among practitioners, and which tasks an incumbent employees in the job classification should be able to perform but were never taught – reducing worker and department capacity and causing the employer to pay more for labor than the value derived.

The level of accuracy of the worker training/continuous training program at any business operation determines how efficiently the organization can run, how adaptable the organization can be to changes in technology, processes, standards and organizational structure, and how scalable an organization is when new opportunities emerge. Leaders ensure that training isn’t an afterthought, but it is built into every operational objective.

The next step is to develop tools and metrics that facilitate the transfer of expertise, with a goal of replicating expert performance. These tools have to be practical, usable (by the audience intended) and have potential on its face (this gains needed support from those who perceive the program is on track against those who might criticize the effort for criticism’s sake). These tools must be accurate to the employer’s job classification. It doesn’t matter if the content was copied from a “national industry standard.” If it doesn’t represent what is expected by a worker in the job at that operation, it is considered “non job-relevant” and may put the organization of risk of non-compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission compliance if included in employee evaluations for hiring, retention, raises, promotions and movement within the organization. As important, if it is non job-relevant, it will be ineffective in developing worker skills for the job and should be criticized.

Next, a training “system” infrastructure is needed to ensure the consistent, repeatable, effective and efficient development of workers using the materials developed. It must provide avenues for updating the job data, and therefore the training materials, to make sure it remains current and accurate. Falling out-of-date will provide the opening that critics wait for – a battle that need not be fought and should not be facilitated. Metrics of program performance should be implemented and results frequently reported. The more that worker development takes on the traits of a “system” like all of the other systems of an organization, the longer the support for the program will be maintained.

If critics surface while the worker training programs are evolving and have barely started implementation, management needs to be cautioned early on against weakening the approach or bargaining away critical components of the program to appease narrow and unfounded criticisms meant to take advantage of the program’s vulnerable state. Those same people usually have no alternative ideas to offer and wouldn’t criticize their own idea even if they believed inside it is a less effective approach. And those who saw the value and were supportive might lose interest as those points that attracted them to the approach are diluted or removed, and outcomes that should be expected are no longer possible.

If a legitimate structured on-the-job training system gets bumped off the track, the first priority of management should be to get it back on the track and running as when it had the most support and having the potential to do the most good if allowed to proceed as designed. Reluctance to correct the course of the mission invites criticism and closes the minds you worked so hard to open.

Lastly, it is important for the person(s) and department primarily responsibility for the structured on-the-job training program to be guardian of the history of its successes and failures. The naysayers mentioned earlier will continue to undermine efforts by promoting false narratives that marginalize the program’s successes and inflate any setbacks. This is often done at the water cooler, going unnoticed until the support gains enough strength. Guardians must fight back against ill-informed efforts to replace effective training with academic or technical gadgetry that come and go. Sadly, society often assigns more credibility to the loud and wrong over the shy but right, unless corrected with the facts.

Lately, I have detected the added reluctance of management to make a decision on anything that requires a request for project funding to management. Unfortunately, since training (to the uninformed) is equated with an expendable luxury of classes or webinars, managers find it uncomfortable to ask for funding for training out of fear they will be considered wreckless for requesting an expenditure during a moratorium on “non-essential spending.” Especially in publicly traded companies and tightly run private equity-owned firms, managers have been asked to run so lean, then lean that out again, that it instilled a deep fear in managers against being the one to ask for funds – even if it is to deliver the critically needed worker development that greatly impacts the business’ capacity, growth and sustainability. Upper management might not realize this, but managers are left wondering if this is from neglect or do they not see a future.

I am sure the spread of the opioid addiction to workers has, also, caused some management apprehension to decide on investments in training if they feel training is futile. Still, if this is a management concern the solution is not to hold off on investments in training, but instead better screening at hiring and more deliberate structured on-the-job training to the worker development and to boost employee self-confidence and individualized concern for performance while assessing the worker’s capability to learn and master the job requirements. If letting the new-hire worker drift through the probationary period without direct engagement, which possibly leads  to retention, it shouldn’t then surprise anyone when these issues emerge and are now costly to deal with.

But managers in systems-based operations know this. They know how to find cause and effect, troubleshoot efforts that are producing inadequate outcomes and eliminate scrap and rework. If only they saw worker development for the system it should be.

With all of the other challenges mentioned that have been “hard-coded” into a business operation, creating barriers to worker development, it is no wonder that talk about replacing workers with robots has become common. That type of culture would not hesitate to invest millions in technology that will quickly be obsolete and subject to malfunction rather than develop the resources under their noses for thousands of dollars. Let us all hope, for the sake of the economy and society, wisdom and “systems thinkers” prevail.

The Proactive Technologies, Inc. staff members are technical professionals with over 30 years of proven expertise in setting-up and providing technical implementation support using the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development  for the accelerated transfer of expertise™. They have encountered many critical environments – winning most over with results and learning from those few that were not ready. Proactive Technologies tries to incorporate what it has learned to provide each client with the most effective, efficient and successful structured on-the-job training programs and related services for their organization it can. For more information, visit the Proactive Technologies website and contact a representative.