Plastics Training: August 2009 Archives

Classroom training is not the most effective method available for training your production employees. Some seminars provide 4-8 hours of training a day... which is far too much information to absorb in one week...never mind in one day!

Lengthy classroom training sessions tends to be very disruptive to the production environment. Sending employees out for training can often cost 1-2 times more than the training itself. Likewise, sending a consultant to your plant for on-site training classroom training can be both costly and distracting to your employees. In either case, you still have the underlying issue where the employees do not learn well in the classroom environment.

As an adjunct professor at the Plastics Engineering Department of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, I have successfully blended labs, interactive training, simulation software, product testing, new technology, and outside exercises. Since these classes are comprised of plastics professionals, this helps ensure my participants actually learn the information and understand how it applies to their role as production employees. At Routsis Associates, I have also used this approach successfully in distance learning situations using a variety of media such as interactive training, on-the-job exercises, testing, and short 1-hour training sessions.

As I blogged previously, ask yourself... 'What Do You Hope To Achieve Through Training?'. To paraphrase... training should be purchased to help meet and sustain specific employee development and competency goals. Keeping this in mind will help you evaluate whether a training method develop competent employees, or just give them a bunch of information.

-Andy

I very often hear people justify not training their employees with the age old argument 'If I Train My Employees... They Might Leave.' One of the funniest responses to this I have heard is from Zig Ziglar who says 'If you don't train your employees... they might stay!'.

All humor aside, ignorance is never a good employee retention policy. For example, one company we worked with had a 75% turnover. This meant that 3 out of every 4 employees leave each year. When we discussed employee trianing, it turns out that they never train, nor do they promote from within. They went silent when we asked them... 'So, am I correct to understand that everyone at your company is in a dead-end job'.

Unless your company has a true culture of learning and advancement, sending only one or two people to specialized training provides them credentials not applicable to your production environment. For example, '5S' training provides great information... but sending one employee out for a couple days of training will not transform the attitude and actions of your entire workforce.

Ask yourself two questions... (1) do you have enough 'key' people on your production floor...? and (2) are any of your production employees in 'dead end jobs'...?

The goal here is not to sell...  but to help people understand that you need a plant-wide focus on improving the skills of the entire workforce so ultimately, everyone shares the load.

-Andy

A contributor at engineering.com posted an optimistic blog entry entitled ‘Time to Learn; Time to Save’. This entry addresses employment and professional development during recessionary times.

Corporal Willy (excerpt) 

The entire entry can be read here:

-Andy

During the NPE 2009 trade show, an attendee asked me an insightfull question...

I answered, if you’re serious about improving the skills of your production workforce, you need to begin by asking yourself a few questions:

1. What training methods have you used in the past? Were any of these methods effective? Which metrics did you use to measure their effectiveness?

2. What about now...how much time do you devote to training? Which training methods are you currently using and are they working?

3. More importantly, what effect has the current training plan had on your bottom line?

4. Lastly, what are your training goals? What do you hope to achieve by training your workforce? 

Training needs to take place regularly, and time needs to be allocated for this purpose. Proper training requires resources, so it is essential to have the support of management when establishing a training system for your workplace. Make sure that management, as a whole, understands the scope of the training plan - and which metrics can be used to verify its effectiveness.

In the end, training should be purchased to help meet your company's specific employee development goals. 

-Andy