MAINTENANCE MANAGERS ARE KEY

August 10, 2015

Does any business truly want to pay for training?!?

Why should they?

Shouldn’t their new hires be already equipped with the necessary skills — and prepared to perform their assigned tasks?

Shouldn’t their experienced maintenance personnel already know how to “fix anything?”

Why, then, do you have to develop or purchase training programs for your workforce?

The answer is not very complicated.

We only purchase training programs when we have to solve a particular problem.

Training becomes only a means to resolving issues that management wants us to fix.

A decade ago, most buying was done at the plant level. Today more and more purchasing decisions are made in the corporate office.

When a plant level purchase is made, the decision is generally in the hands of the Maintenance Manager — an individual who has first hand knowledge of employee demographics and the procedures that need fixing.

On the other hand, when Corporate Management makes the purchasing decisions they are, many times, unaware of the available solutions. They also seldom understand the specifics of the procedural problems to be fixed.

When making a training-purchase decision, here are a few items Corporate Management should require of any training provider:

• Remember that “Content is King!” Have the programs reviewed for both content accuracy and completeness.

• It is very important that the vendor’s SMEs (the ones involved in producing the courseware) were actually hands-on practitioners of the skills presented.

• Review the instructional design used in the course creation, paying close attention to whether the design is focused on “individual learner control” or has been, incorrectly, developed from a “cookie cutter” philosophy.

• Since 40% of a typical workforce does not assimilate anything written above a 4th grade reading level, make certain that the solutions you select are multi-sensory in their design (full motion video and graphic animations).

• And for the same reason, avoid any courseware that does not contain an optional word-for-word audio feature.

Plant Management (i.e., Maintenance Mangers) usually know what makes training work in their specific environment. They understand the skills required; the tasks to be performed; and, the singular effectiveness of multi-sensory learning in today’s learning culture. Corporate Management needs to value their recommendations.

The bottom line answer to our initial question is simple. We build or purchase training solutions so that the the maintenance tasks we assign will be performed more efficiently and more effectively!