The Training Imperative

IndustryWeek (Jusko) - U.S. manufacturers continue their struggle to find the right people with the right skills to fill manufacturing's talent needs. A broad array of institutions, including manufacturers themselves, are racing to meet that skills challenge -- and keep U.S. manufacturing competitive.

It seems a silly conversation to be having in the midst of high unemployment and the continued, steady shedding of jobs, but nevertheless it's true: Many U.S. manufacturers are having difficulty finding the right people with the right skills to fill a variety of positions. It's not so much a skills shortage as it is a skills gap -- and there's looming concern that the gap will grow as baby boomers begin to retire...

The evidence suggests that appropriate training to meet current and forthcoming talent gaps remains elusive. Several factors help explain why. "It's not a simple problem so I don't know that there is a simple solution," says Chuck Parke, a faculty member in the Center for Executive Education at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville...

Training that brings the most success to manufacturers is integrated into a company's strategic plan, "not a bolt-on," and has overt commitment from leadership, says the University of Tennessee's Parke. And there must be accountability. For example, he says, "if you're going to send a group of people to UT to learn more about lean, there needs to be accountability when you get back that says you're going to work on these projects, and we're expecting these kinds of things to come out of it. If you're here for leadership training... what are you going to go back and do differently on Monday?"


Advances in technology explain the challenge in part, he suggests. As a result, "what was considered adequate 15 years ago would be nowhere near adequate today in certain machining applications," Parke says. A second factor he notes is the outsourcing of low-skilled jobs to low-labor-cost countries. "The remaining jobs require a much higher skill level, and the average has gone up in terms of the amount of training needed per employee." Parke also points to the high turnover rate of the workforce, due to layoffs, early buyouts of experienced workers and the mindset of many younger workers who don't come to a manufacturing company and stay. As a result, he says, "Some of those training dollars that could be allocated at one point to take people to a higher skill level are now having to be allocated just to get people up to do the minimum requirements of the job." And finally -- and possibly the largest factor, suggests Parke -- is that training frequently is among the first things cut when business is difficult. And manufacturing organizations have been under intense competitive pressure for the past 20 years, he notes...
Management consultant Mike Collins of MPC Management says manufacturers, too, must take responsibility for developing their own training. More explicitly, he says government dollars for training exist, but manufacturers are not getting their fair share "and it's their own fault" because they aren't taking the time and effort to find it.

"You've got to look for where the money is," Collins says, pointing to the Workforce Investment Act as one source. The dollars are disseminated through local workforce boards, whose meetings are rarely attended by manufacturers, he says. "They don't even know it exists." Ultimately, local colleges and universities are providing a wealth of training to manufacturers. Indeed, nearly two-thirds of IndustryWeek's Best Plants winners and finalists over the past five years have partnered with local educational institutions to obtain training.