“INDUSTRIAL SKILLS TRAINING”

Industrial Skills Training is a branch of training designed to develop the skills and knowledge required of workers in the process and manufacturing industries.

Working in industry today requires a solid background in learning fundamentals: safety, work practice, tool use, computer familiarity, mathematics, plus reading and writing. These are all critical elements in any modern industrial training program and particularly for those employees working in electrical maintenance, mechanical maintenance, operations, and instrumentation.

While the number of industrial workers has declined, the United States will continue to rely on manufacturing and process activities for the foreseeable future. However, changes in American business are resulting in an increase in the skills required of industrial workers.

In 1950, 80% of all jobs in the United States were classified as unskilled. Today, 85% of jobs are classified as skilled, meaning that the importance of effective Industrial Skills Training is more vital than ever.

Not only is it vital to our country and to the world — to be truly effective, training must be provided in the learning culture of the modern workforce — a workforce that has cultivated many of their learning habits from watching television or playing computer games. Much of the information they acquire today comes from what they see and hear on “the box” or from the “game simulations” they play on an electronic device.

Smart corporations and organizations are learning to adapt to that television and “games” culture by providing their employees with multi-sensory media training that can be successfully delivered via video-based E-Learning, CD-ROM or “Avatar-based” simulations. That’s where investment reaps rich rewards today.

The training that returns the greatest value to both the workers and their employers is the training that incorporates full motion video, optional word-for-word audio, and sophisticated instructional design — all necessary in today’s world in which almost half of our workforce does not assimilate instruction written above a 4th Grade level.

What’s more — in terms of training ROI — the investments made in effective industrial skills training have the highest returns on investment. And that should come as no surprise since it is those employees who are tasked with the “where the rubber meets the road” challenges.