Your “Resident Expert” May Not Be an Expert Trainer, But Easily Could Be

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Just because a worker is informally recognized as a “star performer,” it doesn’t necessarily follow that they can be an effective trainer. Employers like to think it is as easy as that, but seldom does it turn out to be the case. However, with a little structure, some tools and a little guidance these resident experts can, and often do, become expert trainers.

If one thinks about how an expert is measured and recognized, it is usually by subjective, mostly anecdotal measures. The worker performs job-related tasks quickly, consistently and completely. This implies few mistakes, performance that is mostly within specifications and standards of performance, and no one can remember anything rejected or returned as scrap or rework.

Thinking it through a little further, one might struggle to explain how the expert performer developed these traits. Someone showed them how to perform a task, and repetitive performance developed new, retained skills. They are now operating as a “robot” while performing a task, seldom thinking about the subtleties and nuances of each task (filed in memory long ago), which makes them fast, consistent workers – something the employer can notice an appreciate.

But if we ask “who trained this expert,” “how was he or she trained,” or “what specifications and standards were emphasized,” we come up empty. By just playing the role of a trainee, and allowing one of these experts to train you on a task, will reveal a lot as to what the new-hire or cross-trainee can expect. If we compare this expert’s task performance to other peer experts, we probably will notice slight differences in performance between them, which means workers that each trained may be trained differently on the same task. Sometimes these differences can be subtle and of no consequence, sometimes they become a point of contention, lead to confusion and/or unsafe and incorrect task performance.

Every work environment is less than ideal for learning. Production pressures, personality clashes, learning style and teaching style differences, and departmental boundary incursions do not make it easy for a trainer to train or a trainee to learn without structure and guidance. If any of our experts train the next wave of new-hires or cross-trainees without structure, tools and standards – the building blocks of “best practice” performance – some of the expertise might not transfer and the differences between them become more obvious with each wave. This can often lead to frustrating confrontation between shifts, with one shift declaring the other two shifts as incompetent.

One sure-fire way to remedy this and turn the resident experts into expert trainers is to implement structured on-the-job training (“SOJT”). This is not a marketing term meant to confuse people. It is what it appears to be. Structuring the unstructured, informal and ad hoc way trainers train and workers learn job-related tasks of the job classification.

A credible SOJT program:

1. Starts with a thorough job/task analysis of the important tasks of the job classification using the resident subject matter expert(s) as the resource. This incorporates the specifications, policies and standards that ensure expert performance of each task. The approach should capture worker expertise and best practices for the accelerated transfer to the next worker and to ensure this expertise remains with the employer event if the expert does not;
2. Generates tools for helping new-hires quickly grasp the best practices they are about to encounter and swiftly become experts themselves;
3. Keeps accurate track of worker task mastery status and progress, as well as prior and current related technical instruction completion, and provides easily accessible reporting;
4. Facilitates the easy revision of job data and corresponding tools and reports to maintain job relevance and content validity for legal defensibility and credibility of the program and use.

The benefits of structured on-the-job training are many, including:

• Lowered internal costs of training; decreasing the per worker training investment required;
• Decreased worker turnover through maintained engagement;
• Increased worker capacity, work quality and quality, and compliance with in-house engineering, quality (ISO/TS/AS quality programs) and compliance (safety, OSHA);
• Swift incorporation of new processes and process improvements;
• Accurate records for measuring and improving each worker’s progress and status;
• Risk mitigation through worker job mastery development.

All of this can be possible by adding structure to a worker development strategy, and making it possible for expert workers to become expert trainers – creating more experts in the process.

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.