THE “POWER” OF “PROGRESSIVE REVELATION”. Part 2 of a series

THE “POWER” OF “PROGRESSIVE REVELATION”. Part 2 of a series

A PLAN OF ACTION

We closed our first offer with the suggestion of separating your workforce needs into five categories and groups your job titles into one of those categories providing a progression from entry-level to salary eligibility in your organization.

Please think of this exercise as a means of organizational enrichment, and as a do it yourself means of enhancing the skill levels of everyone on your personnel role now, or at any point in the future. We recently authored a series of books around the theme “If it is going to be, it is going to be up to me”. 

The past 30 years have proven that our educational system does not choose to prepare young or old for workplace performance skills. They convince students that they deserve positions, not jobs, and they are entitled to benefits, not wages based on their personal value add.

Do not think of this process as an apprenticeship yet, because no one has journey-level personnel in sufficient numbers to properly evaluate performance compliance with national standards. Think about these categories as being pay-for-skill modules in a progressive developmental program. 

Consider what you would normally pay a Temp Agency for manpower, and consider paying that to the candidate for direct employment into your company. That benefits the employee with 15 to 25% better income than working with the temp and gives them a 90-day head start on benefits.

Determine 5 or 6 levels of pay, between your starting rate and the rate you would pay salaried Supervisors, Engineering technicians, Quality technicians, etc. Ideally, you will be able to agree on a differential of 10 to 15 dollars an hour. Divide that by 6 levels and then divide each level by 2. 

That would mean that each candidate going from entry-level to salary eligible would be on a program that would assure them of a dollar or a dollar and a half an hour increase every six months for five or six-years; as long as they completed the prescribed studies, and performed satisfactorily, with a compliant attitude, and proved a willingness to be a change agent for continuous improvement.

OUR QUALIFICATIONS TO SERVE YOU AS A CONSULTATIVE PARTNER

Our principle graduated in 1957 from a 5-year co-operative education, with a bachelor’s in Industrial Engineering, and a minor in Mechanical Engineering. Upon graduation, he assumed a position as a maintenance supervisor in a major automotive foundry, supervising 32 tradesmen spread over 9 trade classifications.

In the late 50s, America was selling everything they could produce, and the perception of foundry work made it difficult to find employees. The company operated its own proprietary trade school and offered more than 25 career pursuits by means of apprenticeships. Given the opportunity to assist the trade school in the development of curriculum, we were able to convince them to build specialty equipment for the foundry, as part of their apprenticeship work experience.

Educationally trained as an Engineer, but chose to pursue the more meaningful skill training initiatives (working with human resources rather than materials) he planted seeds that have germinated, and have motivated him through more than 65 years of task and job performance skill transfer training.

OUR MEANS OF FACILITATING PROGRESSIVE MASTERY

Performance mastery in any pursuit involves Related Training Instruction (RTI) coordinated with On the Job work experience (OJT) in a ratio between 8:1 hours of OJT to every hour of RTI, and 12:1, depending on the complexity of the trade pursuit.

Regarding RTI … There are at least five major providers of Web-delivered skill studies that offer a broad array of content focusing on a category we call Reliability Centered Manufacturing Process Technician. The irony is that they think they are competitors but in reality, they blend to provide a natural multi-level progression without obvious redundancy.

Being an independent consultant and integrating these to provide the five levels of progressive mastery, we can do what they choose not to do. All of them offer one-year accessibility to a library of courses. So, rather than contracting for the entire library of one vendor for five levels of the study, we contract with each vendor for one year and build through progressive enlightenment (content mastery).

There are many benefits to web-based RTI, but the greatest of these is the inability of any serious student to fail to master the skills taught. Unlike traditional education, failure on the first try means waiting a semester, or even a year until the next class offer. With web-based studies, the student can retry their pre-tests, study, and post-test the next day. And they keep restudying until they achieve the target score.

Regarding OJT … That is up to you and your staff. By integrating the RTI with your processes and your personnel, we are training in real-time, doing real work, on real products, with real performance objectives. We establish all performance objectives in accordance with the US Department of Labor’s – Occupational Network (O-Net), and 65-year history with the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training.

But, as much as I can do as a consultative partner, you and your staff will supervise and evaluate the performance of each participant assignment by assignment. Please catch this vision.

• Promote current maintenance personnel into the cross-training mode, mechanics to electrical, and electrical to mechanical to generate the cross-trained, multi-craft classification.·      
• Then promote set-up operators into maintenance,·      
• Operators into setup operator positions,·      
• Hire from the street to train for operators.

      By this means you do not have to take a chance on the unknown. Through the process of pay-for-skill, you start low and grow your own workforce needs, job title by job title.

In our next post, we will explore the national database for performance skills, and address the means of determining the RTI and OJT needs for any one of 13,000 jobs. The resources are available, it is the experience of using these resources that we are offering.

Till next time

Mel