Every potential worker and incumbent worker possess enormous value, waiting to be first developed then realized. Too often the opportunity is lost at development, and the value remains untapped or marginally realized. Lack of effort, or lack of relevant effort, yields lackluster results.

When an artist approaches a canvas, they see a blank surface waiting only for their effort to turn it into a work of art. They work to utilize every bit of white space to bring out its potential contribution to the overall vision. They, too, are applying developed expertise in the performance of work. If they’re in it for money, they know that an unfinished painting or drawing minimizes the return on the resources utilized. Yet they’re not disappointed with a unfinished piece and do not blame others if they, themself, don’t put in the effort, they continue until they are satisfied that they have done all they can and the piece matches their expectations.

Each potential worker is like a blank canvas. Educators know that it is their responsibility to bring out the best of each student that passes through their classroom. They know that if they fail to present to potential workers new and relevant skills needed for continued educational growth, and/or current opportunities in society, they have produced an unfinished work of art with limited value and future potential.

When that potential worker reaches the doorstep of the opportunity an employer provides, not only does the employer need to remediate the core and general skill deficiencies that might exist, they need to continue the development of work-based core and general skills as well as task-specific skills for which the potential worker was recruited. If not, the unfinished canvas that managed to leave the educational process merely receives a touchup yet remains unfinished. As with the artist, the employer should not be disappointed in the worker if they do not put in the effort to develop it, nor should they blame others. The opportunity to do so was there, although most likely dissipated due to inaction or in adequate action - often because the remaining "resident experts" are busy keeping up with production with little time (perhaps little interest) to take a trainee under their wing - especially with no structure, definition or metrics to what is to be trained.

Assuming these workers are retained, an employer can amass a stable of workers (50, 100, 500, 10,000 employees) with yet to be developed potential. Employers might scratch their head and wonder why the company suffers from poor quality of product or service, inability to reach its production targets, inability to accommodate growth opportunities when they arise, and turnover; a low return on worker investment. They may soon find themselves staffed with a lot of disgruntled workers viewing this outcome from their different angles: few opportunities to establish themselves and demonstrate their value to the company, dismay over lack of opportunities for personal growth within the company or fear of dismissal for too many visible mistakes that could have been prevented by receiving proper training the first time, not finding out they self-taught themselves wrong by mistake.

The amount of resource waste that the symptoms of inadequate training reveal can be staggering! Read More

Starting in the late 1980’s, employers became increasingly concerned with succession planning; ensuring salary workers were being groomed to replace critical senior employees in the event of retirement or voluntary/involuntary separation. It was realized that the potential disruption - direct and the ripple effects - caused by an unplanned void in the leadership chain might be perceived as a threat to shareholder value. Shareholders, too, wanted assurances that maximizing a firm's performance was not tied to one or two invaluable people.

Compounding the concern was the realization that the workforce was aging at all levels, and that retirements were a certainty. Prior to the Crash of 2008, employer’s concern over this was amplified by anecdotal reports from other employers already experiencing the impact. A movement toward a remedy began to take shape, and not just for high-ranking salary positions, but technically critical salary positions and even hourly positions that with a loss of one or a few technical experts might disrupt operations and impair a firm’s viability.

For decades prior to the Crash of 2008, Proactive Technologies, Inc. worked with a lot of employers by job/task analyzing their critical job classifications – initially hourly positions but a growing salary class of positions as well. This approach "captured the expertise” of the aging workers to use it to develop the tools which would allow the company to train nearly anyone with a sufficient core skill base, replicating experts as needed.

Then the Crash of 2008 happened and employers found themselves unexpectedly and unwillingly accelerating the loss of technical experts at all levels. For employers late to the game, there was no longer time to capture expertise; it had already left the building. We saw this phenomenon repeating itself with the Covid-19 pandemic. Read More

Having partnered with Proactive Technologies, Inc. on workforce development projects for the past 20 years, it gave me a chance to innovate and learn what works, what efforts are most appreciated by the employer, trainee and employee, and which projects utilized resources most efficiently and effectively. There are numerous resources available from many sources that can impact a trainee with varying effectiveness, but the secret is selecting those that are appropriate for the project outcome the employer expects.

As Dean of Corporate and Continuing Education at community and technical colleges in Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, at the start of each assignment I had to first learn what resources our school had available for the sectors we were targeting, and how current and relevant the courses, materials and instructors were for the specific skills employers were seeking. To be honest, in some areas our products and services were weaker than expected, so the determination needed to be made whether we had the resources and will to upgrade what we had or develop what we needed. We also had to consider if it would be more economical to strategically partner with outside providers who always had the current technical expertise and already created solutions we could incorporate into our offerings.

Too often there was internal resistance and a lack of understanding of how important being relevant was to workforce development. Many institutions grew complacent to change or were discouraged by shrinking budgets or misaligned priorities from innovation. Always feeling a sense of urgency to overcome the ubiquitous “skills gap” that cast a shadow on all education and workforce development efforts, there are some important steps that I developed for myself to help me better assess each employer’s need and provide solutions client employers appreciated. This is the reason most employers we worked with kept us engaged year after year. We earned, and maintained, their respect and gave them confidence in our solutions, which ensured our continued role in their business model. This provided a continued revenue stream for the school to continue, improve and expand those efforts. Read More

In the first part of a two-part article entitled “Apprenticeships That Make Money? Not as Impossible as it Seems (Part 1 of 2)” appearing in the Proactive Technologies Report, I discussed what seemed to be the obvious differences in European and U.S. apprenticeship models. I suggested that visionary U.S. business leaders consider creating a revenue-generating “apprenticeship center” within the organization to cover the costs of the apprenticeship and, in some cases, make money. How could that be accomplished? In continuing the discussion I would like to offer a possible strategy.

Although the following approach for determining if an apprenticeship center/cost-reduction center is right for your organization is simple, it should be scalable to any organization with slight modifications: Read More

Proactive Technologies, Inc.® -

capturing worker expertise to build and support job specific, task-based worker development programs (with metric-based solutions) since 1986.

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