Across town in Chicago, Northwestern Tool and Die Manufacturing operates an aggressive apprenticeship program, in which an unskilled teenager can start earning a good wage while learning a craft. About one of 12 applicants displays sufficient mathematical skills and mechanical comprehension to join the program, says founder and president Norbert Stengel. The apprentices begin by earning $8 an hour to observe the craftsmen before starting to operate machines themselves. The initiates learn skills from the shop veterans and take night courses in related theory. As the apprentices rotate through the work areas, they receive quarterly reviews with automatic pay raises. When they graduate, they earn roughly $17 an hour. Stengel says his skilled toolmakers who work a 50-hour week can earn $70,000 a year.
Northwestern engineering manager Jim Koppe remembers his first contact with the company vividly. The shop was making an injection mold for an automotive grille. Koppe took one look and was hooked. "It amazed me that someone could take this raw steel, machine it, and create this grille. I suddenly saw this work as craftsmanship -- not a production line," he says.
Koppe went through the apprentice program and continued to learn after he graduated. Now he's taking a night course -- paid for by Northwestern -- on Autocad software for computer-aided design.
Yet training can address very different traits. Starbucks Coffee Co., based in Seattle, uses it to animate dead-end jobs, motivate employees, and tell the company story, tying training to the overall business strategy. "To build the company, we must build each individual," says education director Paul Evanson.
The courses are meant to build affinity with the company; call it training as propaganda. To Christyn Arnsperger, who supervises all training at Starbucks's California operations, that inculcation in company culture means teaching mutual respect and dignity. "When we address an employee, we're thinking about how we're building or enhancing that employee's self-image," she says. Managerial courses use role-playing to examine how managers ask questions of employees.
The concept has rubbed off on Derek Basco, a former gas-station attendant who mans a Starbucks shop in Los Angeles. He says the training helped him develop service skills that go beyond learning a script to act out for customers. "You learn to ask questions so that when the customer has a need, you're able to meet it," he says.
Everyone takes at least 24 hours of initial courses at Starbucks. Managers are expected to have a detailed knowledge of what they teach, so they take the courses and work for two months in retail. Many who take the training decide to participate further: 350 of Starbucks's 2,800 employees are certified trainers.
Training can also prod workers to think of their informal work relationships as learning forums. At Datatec Industries Inc., in Fairfield, N.J., which installs in-store computer systems, a mentoring program complements a quality drive that includes more conventional training modes. "The people who become mentors are those who understand the quality process better," explains Mike Janicek, who manages the help desk that provides support to customers. About 100 of the 325 employees are mentors.
Janicek says mentoring can take any form. It takes place in scheduled meetings and in random encounters in hallways, reinforcing the sense of close-knit community that encourages cooperation. That alone is a payoff worth having.
BEST TRAINING
Datatec Industries
Fairfield, N.J.
Computer-systems installer
325 employees, $40 million in sales
Features a mentoring program in which "expert" employees spread both "hard" and "soft" knowledge to their peers. About one-third of all employees are mentors.
Dettmers Industries
Stuart, Fla.
Airplane-furniture maker
25 employees, $1.5 million in sales
Focuses on "learning to learn" with Saturday role-playing games that help individuals break down barriers to the coordinated action needed for teamwork.
Luitink Manufacturing
Menomonee Falls, Wis.
Metal-stampings manufacturer
40 employees, $6 million in sales
Defines training as the horizontal learning passed from skilled worker to worker on well-run teams.
Northwestern Tool and Die Manufacturing
Chicago
Precision tool manufacturer
105 employees, $10 million in sales
Offers an aggressive apprenticeship program that pays unskilled novices an immediate good wage to, initially, do nothing but observe.
Starbucks Coffee
Seattle
Coffee retailer and wholesaler
2,800 employees, $93 million in sales
Ties training to business strategy by formally building employees' affinity with the company. In classes, stresses everything from coffee knowledge to interpersonal relationships.
Triton Industries
Chicago
Metal-stampings manufacturer
160 employees, $12 million in sales
Pays employees to attend its four-semester, 32-week Triton "university." In curriculum, includes classes in reading blueprints and team building for TQM. Spends 1.5% of sales revenues on training.
