Workforce Development Partnerships With Substance: My Experience

By Randy Toscano, Jr.,  MSHRM, Executive Director of Human Resources, Paris Regional Medical Center

Partnerships between employers and local educational institutions/training providers are a tricky thing. Not every employer knows clearly what they need nor can they articulate the need, and not every educational institution can understand the need, or has products or services available or relevant enough to make a difference. If either of these realities are present, or worse both of them, it can make worker development partnerships difficult to disappointing.

Employers are closest to the work that they need performed by the worker, which is usually very different from the employer down the road. Yet employers rarely bother to document what makes up that work to articulate it in an understandable way to an educational institution or training provider. If you doubt that, take any of your job classifications and try to explain it in enough detail to train from it.

“Our partnership, located in northern Ohio, was the first implementation of the US Metalworking Skill Standards in the country.”

When in doubt, some employers pull out a sample written process and a few random specifications for compliance to focus the discussion. Seriously, I have been in meetings when an employer pulled out a 15 year old job description, which was a cut-and-paste of a 20 year old job description, and gave it to the community college and said, “we need workers trained for this.” Not surprisingly, they are disappointed and disillusioned when what the community college came up with seems irrelevant when shown to workers currently in the job classification.

There are at least two critically important reasons why current and accurate job data makes or breaks a worker development partnership. First, the education and training provider’s role with related technical instruction is to build each candidate’s core and industry-general skills foundation upon which the employer can train them further for their employer-specific work tasks. If the employer cannot accurately define and express their specific needs for each job area they need workers to the training provider, everyone’s time and money is wasted. When that employer–specific data is unavailable, educational institutions turn to “industry-general” standards, developed by a panel of retired CEO’s and educators over coffee and donuts. It is better than nothing, but not even close to finishing the job of worker development.

Second, if the employer has not done the necessary analysis to define the required core skills to articulate them to the area worker development partners, they probably have not created a system for a proper hand-off from learning to structured on-the-job training. If the employer cannot rapidly build on the foundation laid by training the new-hire to use those skills in the performance of work tasks, those skills will dissipate and the employer might not be able to bring the worker to full capacity without retraining. Or if the employer lets the worker go as “hard to train,” the credentialed worker may become less marketable to the industry.

In 1995, as Human Resources Manager of, then, automobile parts supplier Norton Manufacturing in Fostoria, OH, I saw an opportunity to make a difference. My experience had led me to believe that employers not only had to be engaged in training the workers they needed, they had to be structurally committed to that outcome.

Some of us recall a 1983 research report called, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform“ that had everyone panicked about the growing skills gap that evolving technology and retiring baby boomers was expected to cause. The report stated that education had to be reformed to make it more responsive and relevant, and industry had to “step-up” and play a lead role workforce development. The United States Departments of Labor and Education embarked on an ambitious project of developing national skill standards for several industries  and reforms to education.

The manufacturer I worked for at the time wanted to be a leader in turning back the tide that was sure to impact every employer across the country. A regional partnership was formed between Norton Manufacturing; the State of Ohio Department of Development; Terra Community College and the National Institute for Metalworking Skills to provide remedial and related technical instruction to current and future workers. I felt strongly that our company had to provide structured on-the-job training, and Proactive Technologies, Inc. was to provide the structured on-the-job training infrastructure and implementation support, using its unique PROTECH™ system of managed human resource development^© and software. Proactive Technologies was also the lead consultant for one of the industry skill standards project, so they knew what we wanted to accomplish.

Proactive Technologies’ approach assured Norton that it had the structured on-the-job training – specific to each job area, the tasks that needed to be performed and the machines that needed to be mastered – to finish the process the community college started before the core skills eroded. Additionally, the data Proactive Technologies collected through its thorough job/task analysis at Norton was shared with the community college and partner related technical instruction organizations to ensure the curricula for core and industry general skills being developed was as relevant and readily available as possible.

Our partnership, located in northern Ohio, was the first implementation of the US Metalworking Skill Standards in the country. The kick-off of the partnership was well covered by the media and all of the partners were excited about the project and its prospects for success.

As soon as other manufacturers caught wind of what we were doing in Ohio, they expressed interest in moving to the region. Rather than allow the “cannibalization” of Norton’s trained workforce by industry “carpet baggers,” I and visionary leaders set out to build a regional manufacturing training center on the Terra Community College campus. The goal was to graduate as many skilled candidates for manufacturing employment as the local industry needed now and as projected in the coming years.

For the time, this partnership was innovative and garnered a lot of attention. But like anything in America, time takes a toll. Between navigating the ripple effects of economic events like the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994,  the Dot-Com Crash from 1997 – 2001, September 11, 2001  and numerous economic scams and scandals of the time, companies were pressured to adapt – driving some of the original participants to move on and regional priorities to change as institutional and historical memory of the significance of what we built was lost. The efforts by the US Departments of Education and Labor faded away, although remnants of both efforts remain to this day.

I myself moved to Florida, where I became the Human Resources Manager for Shaw Aerospace and saw many applications for what we developed in Ohio, but lacked the local understanding of the need for a more coordinated worker training effort. As I met with several of the local manufacturers, I realized our approach was on everyone’s wish list, but education’s mind was elsewhere.

Later I changed industries and became Human Resources Manager at Lee Memorial Healthcare System and later Trinity Health Care System, both in Florida, where I found the need for employer-specific, job specific structured on-the-job training was even greater. I found the healthcare industry still lags decades behind what I experienced in training manufacturing workers, and decades behind the regional workforce development partnership we created in Ohio. There were areas of potential non-compliance that were being revealed, and job areas for which we could develop the workers we needed faster, cheaper and significantly reduce turnover. However, I found little management understanding of the urgency and willingness to act, and that structured on-the-job training, with all the documentation and metrics it provides, was a major part of the solution.

Over the years I kept in close contact with Proactive Technologies, since what they do and their products and services never lost their relevance no matter where I was working. In fact, as technology and management philosophy changed the nature of work at an accelerated rate, Proactive Technologies’ accelerated transfer of expertise™ system continued to be the answer.

I am still an advocate for regional workforce development partnerships, but invariably I am discouraged with the preoccupation with irrelevant or obsolete worker development strategies that we dismissed decades ago. They may be in different packaging, or have a different name, but their common focus solely on related technical instruction or assessments, or even skill standards, as the only answer needed yields just as disappointing results today as when they were promoted as such 30 years ago. This, in my opinion, has lead to one of the primary reasons why employers hesitate to participate in coordinated efforts today; employers have a natural pragmatism that doesn’t suffer fools or foolish ideas…unless they are their own.

Many of these resources have their place in a focused, regional workforce development strategy. But if employers are not structured and engaged to pick-up with the structured on-the-job training where the related technical instruction leaves off, these efforts are destined for minimal impact or failure – especially with the rate at which new technology is introduced, geo-political and trade arrangements change and domestic agendas fluctuate. Unfortunately an employer, a worker, a potential worker, a community, or a region no longer has the time, nor patience, for mistakes or failures. We have seen decade after decade pass, and billions upon billions of resources spent, and the “skills gap” conundrum prevails.

Randy Toscano, Jr. MSHRM was the former Director of Human Resources for Norton Manufacturing, Shaw Aerospace, Lee Memorial Healthcare System and Trinity Health Care System, and CEO of Legacy Partners 2 . Currently he is Executive Director of Human Resources at Paris Regional Medical Center in Paris, TX.