The Importance of Training

Training. You know you have to do it but that doesn’t make it any less of a pain in the neck. It takes time, effort and attention to develop and administer a good training program. During training, teammates are not producing any product or adding any value. Is it any wonder that some companies use the “Mumbles” technique? They hire someone who seems like they will be able to do the job then cross their fingers and wander around mumbling “I hope it works out, I hope it works out.” If they are lucky, sometimes it does.

Can you afford to trust to luck? Even when it does work out, will you get the maximum effectiveness out of any teammate? In my experience, this seldom happens. You need to train, there is just no getting around it. You need a formal program where you identify the needs of each teammate and provide training to meet it.

Each teammate needs 4 basic skillsets:

• Basic knowledge

Basic knowledge consists of things like general literacy and numeracy (the 3 Rs: readin’, ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmatic). Generally this is provided by the school system, not the company. Basic knowledge should generally not be the responsibility of the company. The requirement here is less likely to be training than testing to make sure that they have the skills they are supposed to.

• Basic company knowledge

Basic company knowledge is knowledge that everyone is expected to have. For the most part they can only get this once they have become employed by the company. Some of this training takes place on their first day on the job covering company policies, work rules, hours, benefits and the like. Some issues such as safety and regulatory must be addressed not only on the first day but regularly through the term of the teammate’s employment.

• General technical skills

Teammates will need some general technical skills to do their jobs. In the case of a packaging mechanic they need to have a good basic understanding of such skills as troubleshooting, proper use of hand tools, basic pneumatics, control systems and such. Without these skills they may be able to learn to repeat specific tasks. Without these skills, they are unlikely to be able to go much beyond that.

• Specific technical skills

Even though well trained technical people should be able to figure things out for themselves you can’t just turn them loose on a complex piece of machinery. Specific training for each machine that they will work on is required. Of the machine specific training, the most important, though not the only, is on theory of operation. Eg; A photoeye sees the bottle activating a solenoid which after an adjustable time delay actuates a solenoid valve causing an air cylinder to… (and so on).  Competency comes from this understanding. Absent this understanding, they can never know what they are doing and will work mainly by trial and error. Many skilled technicians will figure out the theory of operation on their own. Don’t trust to that. Make sure they are taught this first.  After that, teaching the details of the machine becomes much easier.

You have no choice with training. You have to do it. You have to start the first day a teammate comes to work and you have to continue constantly until their last week on the job. If you want effective teammates it won’t happen by magic. Training is the only way.