Best Training: School's In

How some companies tap valuable labor sources their competitors can't touch by training their employees well.

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BEST TRAINING
Teaching job skills is one thing. Companies that really understand training are tapping valuable labor sources their competitors can't touch

When Chico Lopez started work at Triton Industries Inc., in Chicago, nine years ago, the only material he could cut was hair. Five years as a barber had given him none of the skills needed for the cutting and shaping of metal.

Three months after he landed work at Triton as a temporary laborer, though, Lopez started as a full-time machine operator, and from there his professional education began. First came a class in tool-setup safety through a local trade association, then courses in precision-instrument and blueprint reading at Triton. Finally, Lopez studied management courses in everything from motivating employees to total quality management (TQM). Today, as the lead man in the stamping department, he earns about three times his starting wage.

Lopez's rise to a well-paying, skill-intensive job is far from unique. Virtually all of Triton's supervisors earned their positions by learning new skills from, or with the support of, the company. The reason is simple: "We could not stay in business and stay the way we were even two years ago," says production manager Jeri Barr.

Triton's stance is one of, oh, about half a million arguments for training. In fact, the debate is not over whether to train but over how. Many manufacturers consider the upgrading of their workers' skills to be the answer to competitors who use low-cost overseas labor. The quality push is forcing previously unskilled workers to grasp statistical concepts so they can better control, say, the consistency of output from a mold or the variation in on-time shipments from a warehouse.

Above all, training lays bare the basic compact between a company and its employees, exposing the company's commitment to the future and revealing trust that workers can learn new skills, take on more responsibility -- and risk failure. There's risk on the employer's side, too; plenty of CEOs can gripe about employees who took a walk once they completed their training.

Experts don't argue for massive formal training. Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, in Rochester, N.Y., points to one simple mandate: "There must only be opportunities for people to learn." Indeed, great small companies show that training can take any form -- and ultimately comprises far more than teaching practical skills.

About the only common element is that great training serves an immediate purpose and vividly illustrates the values and culture of the company itself. That's the case at Luitink Manufacturing Co., in Menomonee Falls, Wis. Sure, the metal stamper conducts ongoing classes in new skills such as inspection of presses, but management's belief is that the real training takes place on the shop floor.

Five years ago the company, suffering from productivity-sapping employee turnover of 30%, acknowledged it had to change. As part of that change, it redefined training as the learning that occurs between employees when they work together productively. "Usually, the first thing that comes to mind is a lot of technical training," says vice-president of manufacturing Joe Hauk. "But as we changed from an autocratic company to one with a lot of empowerment and team building, we began looking at training as understanding how employees interact with each other." Consequently, Luitink's full-time trainer, Gary Wenzel, now sees his primary role as ensuring that knowledge flows from worker to worker.

It appears to work. Five years ago press operator John Hausner did no more than his defined duties, backing off during machine changeover to let the die makers ply their trade. But now he's absorbing some of the skills -- and responsibilities -- of his teammates as he learns how to change the dies himself, freeing the die makers to focus on more skill-intensive tasks like sharpening dies.

That experience leads Hauk to make a counterintuitive claim. "Once, we believed in hiring people for the skills they had," he says. "We now believe we can take someone with the attitude and the desire to learn and make that person into the best machine operator there is."

At Dettmers Industries Inc., in Stuart, Fla., team-based manufacturing also prompts a horizontal sharing of skills. But there, technical talents are merely table stakes for the more ambitious training in how to work on a team. CEO Michael Dettmers says his training is based on "learning to learn. I want to deal with the real issues that prevent people from coordinating action together -- which is my definition of teamwork."

Dettmers offers Saturday training classes that involve role-playing and other exercises that challenge the employees' assumptions. "People show up in games the way they show up in real life," he says.

Lofty goals notwithstanding, training can also mean good old teaching of job skills. Few do it better than Triton Industries, where founder and chairman Marvin Wortell claims to spend 1.5% of sales revenues on training -- a higher share than at many larger companies. Wortell says 75% of his work force -- three times the percentage of a decade ago -- now has some level of skill, such as the ability to operate precision machinery.

Triton has taken a page from the big boys: at its "Technical Institute" (a second-floor classroom), it runs a four-semester, 32-week course called Sheet-Metal-Craftsman-Related Theory, which includes classes in reading blueprints and precision instruments; statistical process control; and team building for TQM. Workers who complete the first eight weeks of the course receive $225; as the courses ramp up, so do the incentives.

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