I think one can confidently say that most employer’s focus on training the workers they need - to perform the tasks they were meant to perform - has become detrimentally blurry, counterproductive and often non-existent. There are many reasons for that – some legitimate. But without a deliberate, measurable strategy for quickly driving each worker to mastery of the entire job classification, an employer’s labor costs (not just wages, but opportunity costs and undermined return on worker investment as well) can be substantial and act as a drag on an organization’s performance.

Many employers are still waiting for the educational institutions to solve the problem. After all, look at all of the money spent on education directed at “training the workers of tomorrow.” Yet a lot of the institutional strategies appear to include repackaged tools from the past…and not the ones far enough past that seemed to work. For example, the recent comments made by education insiders saying we should have kept the high school vocational programs that were relatively effective until the late 1970’s in place. These were phased out when the push to prepare students for college took priority. Now, there is a push for community colleges to “pump out” more apprentices which, if done only to meet numbers but not emphasizing quality of the general training, could be another waste of scarce resources of time, money and opportunity for the trainee, the employer and communities. Another decade lost.

Still, no matter how well or how poorly institutions prepare the workforce for employers, the employer cannot deny their responsibility to continue the training process and train the worker for the organization’s specific use. The degree to which they take this responsibility seriously will determine the success of the institution’s efforts to prepare workers, how much value the worker adds to the operation, and how well the operation performs in the market. Any apprenticeship that lacks an aggressive structured on-the-job training program cannot be the robust experience it is meant to be. By definition, an apprenticeship without structured on-the-job training really isn’t an apprenticeship.

But the success/failure doesn’t stop there. A successfully and fully trained (to the tasks required) staff prepares, and keeps, the organization prepared to seize opportunities, adjust to disrupters and weather unforeseen forces. Failure at preparing and maintaining each worker’s job mastery, as part of system, can exacerbate an organization’s challenges and, potentially, lead to failure or irrelevance of the organization. Read More

It is fun to watch a popular TV show on CBS, now in syndication, called "Undercover Boss - reruns and all." Watching a CEO or executive of a major corporation slip into disguise and enter the world of their workers is interesting and entertaining. Sometimes they find the organization needs a little "tweaking," and sometimes it needs major rethinking.

The entertainment value, I suppose, comes from watching these individuals being tossed into a job classification - alien to most of them – and, while cameras are rolling, receiving a crash coarse in performing various job tasks. Some tasks are performed close to the customer. Not only do leaders get a rare look at what it is like at the lower rungs of the organization, in some cases they get a look at the sub-par performance most of their customers experience and how tenuous the corporation’s existence is - sustained only by the initiative a few loyal, but mostly self-interested, employees. These employees try to make up for the corporation’s short-comings as if their job and future depend on it…which they do. If the company fails, they lose their job, plain and simple. Some put up with the company’s shortcomings in pursuit of the next opportunity.

It is interesting to see CEO’s marvel at how difficult it is to learn the job tasks they previously thought were inconsequential and not worthy of attention. Previously known only as a word on a report, the fact that how the tasks are performed by these neglected employees are the reason the corporation exists goes unnoticed and unappreciated. Some episodes look like popular television shows of the 50’s and 60’s, "I Love Lucy."

A typical Undercover Boss episode might reveal:

Focusing on one aspect, in each case the resident expert was selected to train the covert executive. These attempts at unstructured, task-based training give a vivid picture of the limitations, risks, and failures of foregoing a deliberate training strategy. CEOs, who previously were told that the corporate training programs proliferated to each facility were "state of the art" and "working quite well" are now exposed from the end-users perspective. In a typical episode, if you look past the entertainment factor, one can easily detect: Read More

Since partnering with Proactive Technologies, Inc. in 1994, together we have advocated the use of a “systems approach” to training that includes a combination of related technical instruction and structured on-the-job training to develop multi-craft maintenance technicians. This approach works equally as well with other job classifications within a organization. This is a viable option to paying tens of thousands of dollars per year to employment recruiters to locate these technicians on a nationwide basis…who still need to be trained once hired. Plus, once the investment is made to setup the infrastructure, you can train as many workers as you need – with a declining cost per trainee.

The systems approach to training, if built correctly for your company, forms the infrastructure of a highly effective, low cost apprenticeship (registered or not) model. This model can quickly and cost-effectively produce the multi-craft maintenance technicians you need, who will be qualified to perform the tasks required at your facility. Based on detailed job/task analysis data – collected by Proactive Technologies’ experts using your internal subject matter experts who have the final review – worker development materials are generated by Proactive Technologies’ PROTECH^© software system for immediate use. Most importantly, technical support to the project includes project implementation management, so you can focus on running your business.

The “Systems Approach to Worker Development” is effective. To establish the foundation: Read More

Lately, Americans have been in heightened state of anxiety and distressed over confusing messaging. After all of the uproar by employers that they just can’t find skilled workers, now business talk shows are saying that employers are looking at layoffs because the economy is “too hot,” as if shedding the workers they struggled to find is a good thing for profits. Maybe reducing payroll from the balance sheet looks good for this quarter or next but destroying long-term capacity for a brief illusion seems counter-intuitive.

Rising prices of just about everything are eating away at the meager and long-overdue wage increases employers used to entice candidates to apply and hired workers to stay. It seems like a collision of America’s two economies, which has been on this course for 30 years.

We are bombarded by the current “reason” for this uncertainty that will always lead to a disproportionate impact on workers, and it is “inflation.“ What is it? Inflation is generally defined as “too many dollars chasing too few goods.“ It’s the old “supply and demand“ scenario and we have been taught when demand exceeds supply, prices rise.

The Federal Reserve defines inflation as “the increase in the prices of goods and services over time. Inflation cannot be measured by an increase in the cost of one product or service, or even several products or services. Rather, inflation is a general increase in the overall price level of the goods and services in the economy.”

There are different causes of inflation which determine the rate of inflation. Capital.com says “a sudden increase in the price of goods and services has a domino effect on the economy. The depreciation of money comes with a decrease in demand for products and services. Unemployment rates rise, as manufacturing firms are forced to lay off workers. The fear of inflation can also result in hoarding, when retailers and consumers buy excessive amounts of certain goods to not pay higher prices once inflation occurs.” They go on to say the main causes of inflation are “demand-pull inflation” and “supply-push inflation,” which determine the rate of inflation increase: moderate inflation, galloping inflation or hyper-inflation.

Most economists believe that inflation is usually a monetary phenomenon, meaning the appearance and rate of inflation are determined by the Federal Reserve Central Bank. Congress established three key objectives for monetary policy in the Federal Reserve Act: maximizing employment, stabilizing prices, and moderating long-term interest rates. But many feel so much money has been created over the last three decades by the Federal Reserve, providing easy, low (almost zero) interest borrowing to banks and, therefore, large institutional borrowers such as banks that speculate, private equity investment groups and wealthy individuals that there is a lot more to the story than traditional inflation. Read More

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