COMPETENCIES IN PROCESS & MANUFACTURING

February 11, 2015

In Wikipedia’s discussion of “competence” (human resources), we read:

Competencies are also what people need to be successful in their jobs. Job competencies are not the same as job task. Competencies include all the related knowledge, skills, abilities, and attributes that form a person’s job. This set of context-specific qualities is correlated with superior job performance and can be used as a standard against which to measure job performance as well as to develop, recruit, and hire employees.

Competencies and competency models may be applicable to all employees in an organization or they may be position specific. Identifying employee competencies can contribute to improved organizational performance. They are most effective if they meet several critical standards, including linkage to, and leverage within an organization’s human resource system.

Core competencies differentiate an organization from its competition and create a company’s competitive advantage in the marketplace. An organizational core competency is its strategic strength.

Competencies provide organizations with a way to define in behavioral terms what it is that people need to do to produce the results that the organization desires, in a way that is in keeping with its culture. By having competencies defined in the organization, it allows employees to know what they need to be productive. . . . For competencies where employees are lacking, they can learn.

Competencies are particularly important in Process and Manufacturing. For those organizations, training offers the best path to successful applied technical competence.

In today’s learning technology world, knowledgeably-designed, multi-sensory media instruction will give you the best results. Such courses use workplace situations and terminology, providing an atmosphere of practicality for the employee.

With knowledgeably-designed, multi-sensory learning, employees understand the course material faster and retain more, allowing them to apply more of their newly acquired skills. Such courses allow employees to learn at their own pace which gives organizations the flexibility to schedule training designed to meet individual needs.

Avoid those courses that convey most of their instruction through words, phrases and sentences. As we have well learned by now, nearly 40% of our workforce does not assimilate anything written above a 4^th grade reading level.

Rather, the learning culture of their individual lives has centered around television and gaming screens (smartphones, tablets and computers).

But, instead of disparaging these technologies as learning evils, insightful individuals have adopted the multi-sensory experience of full motion video, animations, audio, graphics and stills to enhance the learning experience for everyone.

If trainers in manufacturing and process industries are truly committed to their workforce-learning goals they will choose multi-sensory delivery as the best choice for increasing applied technical competencies.