If Your Employees Don’t Know, Your Company Won’t Grow

Incumbent worker training is critical to manufacturing sector growth

By Mary Louise Ray

Here are some sobering facts about Pennsylvania’s manufacturing sector:

• In the span of 20 years (1969- 1989), Pennsylvania lost 542,000 manufacturing jobs, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry.
• Since 2000, more than 170,000 additional manufacturing jobs were lost in Pennsylvania.

In the face of these daunting numbers, turning the manufacturing job loss trend around seems nothing short of a Herculean task. According to Manufacturing Pennsylvania’s Future: Regional Strategies that Build from Current Strengths and Address Competitive Challenges, a report published in 2004 by Deloitte consulting, if the Commonwealth hopes to reduce manufacturing job losses, a concerted effort must be mounted to improve the rate of process and product innovation.

The equation is as follows: Innovation leads to increased sales, expanded markets and business growth. Business growth equals manufacturing sector job growth.

Training Challenges for Manufacturers

Innovation requires a skilled workforce. Building a skilled workforce means providing access to training opportunities for incumbent workers. Workforce training has long been a major objective of the Pennsylvania’s Industrial Resource Centers (IRCs) and they have performed an integral role in identifying training needs, developing and delivering training programs and securing training monies for Pennsylvania’s small- and medium-sized manufacturers.

The skills needed by the manufacturing workforce are wide ranging, from the “soft” skills of teambuilding and leadership to the “hard” skills of implementing process improvement and integrating new technologies on the manufacturing floor. While many small- and medium-size manufacturers are aware of the importance of incumbent worker training, it does not necessarily mean that they are dedicating their resources to developing a training strategy.

Rob McIlvaine, Vice President of MANTEC, the York-based IRC, notes that “the owners and managers of small- and medium-sized manufacturing companies are ‘hydra-headed’ – one person, many jobs.” Therefore, they often cannot find the time to do long-term planning for workforce training.

All of the IRCs either directly provide training program assessment and training plan development services or provide referrals to qualified third-party consultants. The role of the IRC is to “help a company develop a regimen of training to support their strategic goals,” says McIlvaine. This regimen takes the form of a written training plan, which should be included in the company’s strategic or business plan. According to McIlvaine, the plan serves as “a road map to guide them through the thicket” of available training programs and training providers. A written training plan is also required when a company is applying for grants to underwrite the cost of training programs, so making the training program plan a priority can literally be worth the time and effort spent on it.

Climbing the Company Ladder

Innovation in small companies is often dependent on the skills and experience of individual employees – people who have been with the company for a while, have learned the product and processes and have enough skill and experience to envision process or product improvements. As a reward for their achievements, these employees are frequently promoted to supervisory positions. However, the skills those employees used on the manufacturing floor are often not useful in their new management role.

“I like to say that they promote the best wrench turner and then take away their wrench,” jokes Lee Kraus, Workforce Development Catalyst, of the Catalyst Connection IRC in Pittsburgh. That is where leadership, team building and other management training programs offered by the IRCs can help frontline managers bridge the gap between their old job and their new responsibilities.

Helping employees gain skills that enable them to move up the company ladder is one of the priorities of the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry’s Incumbent Worker Training Program. Nation-wide, companies have struggled to find skilled labor, but Pennsylvania is struggling more than most states. In the Department of Labor and Industry’s summary of “Job Ready Pennsylvania” initiatives (Governor Edward G. Rendell’s workforce development initiative outlined in his 2005-2006 proposed budget), a striking statistic appears: “ Pennsylvania ranks 46 out of 50 states in the percent of its population with no more than a high school diploma.” The same document notes that only 30 percent of Pennsylvania’s jobs are unskilled. These incompatible statistics emphasize why incumbent worker training is critical for both manufacturing employers and employees.

As part of the Incumbent Worker Training Program, participants are required to identify potential “career ladders” and opportunities for manufacturing workers, with the emphasis on providing employees with portable skills. According to Lee Bond, Manufacturing Extension Manager, at the Manufacturers Resource Center (MRC) IRC in Bethlehem, advanced training and certification of workers makes practical sense for both employers and employees. She gives the example of the training associated with a very specific skill – coloring plastic. As employees achieve new skill levels, “it allows them to move up the career ladder,” says Bond, and it gives the manufacturer the opportunity to improve their product quality, expand their product line or enter new markets.

Some IRCs, such as the Philadelphia-based Delaware Valley IRC (DVIRC), have been instrumental in developing more extensive training programs, which include the opportunity for new and incumbent workers to earn associate’s and bachelor’s degrees in manufacturing. In partnership with Delaware County Community College and Drexel University, participants begin the program by earning a series of entry level and advanced manufacturing skill certifications, which if the participants continue with the program, will lead to college degrees.

An Integrated Approach to Training – Manufacturing Clusters

Pennsylvania’s Incumbent Worker Training Grants are awarded to industry partnerships, which are consortia of public and private entities, as well as county, regional and statewide government agencies. This innovative program incorporates all of the entities that are necessary to assess training needs, develop and implement training plans and fund the costs of training on a larger scale, based on geographic areas and industry clusters.

The grant program requires the partnerships to focus on one of Pennsylvania’s seven critical manufacturing clusters: biomedical, pharmaceutical and medical equipment; chemical, rubber and plastics; electronics; metal and metal fabrication; printing; food processing and lumber, wood and paper.

These clusters represent manufacturing areas in which Pennsyl-vania enjoys a competitive advantage and offer the greatest potential for long-term growth, according to the Department of Labor and Industry.

Several entities must be represented in the partnership: employers and employee representatives from the industry cluster, the local Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs) and the IRCs within the region of the partnership.

The Southern Alleghenies Industry Partnership is an example of industrial partnership that has received a state incumbent worker training grant. Focused on the metal and metal fabrication cluster, the partnership will use the $400,000 grant to fund training in strategic planning, business development and product development training for the 21 companies in the partnership, according to Alan Gehringer, Professional Business Advisor, of the Industrial Modernization Center (IMC) IRC in Williamsport. Other members of the partnership include Catalyst Connection, five regional economic development agencies and numerous educational institutions within the six-county region covered by the partnership.

Gehringer says that the IRCs will assess what training is needed by the manufacturers in the partnership, as well as identify appropriate training providers. Depending upon the needs of the participating companies, training may be delivered to an individual company or, if applicable, the training may be delivered in larger groups to employees from several companies.

Bringing employees together from different companies within the manufacturing cluster has several benefits, according to Kraus. He notes that he recently led a workshop that was attended by 15 supervisors from seven different companies. Not only was it a networking opportunity for the attendees, but it was also an opportunity for the attendees to share their experiences with their peers – despite the fact that some attendees represented large steel companies, while other attendees were from a small machine shop. Says Kraus, “The problems you are facing in a steel mill are not that different from what you encounter in a machine shop.”

“They have a commonality of process,” echoes Charlie Vaccaro, Business Development and Training Consultant, of the Northeastern Pennsylvania IRC (NEPIRC), which is based in Wilkes-Barre. Vaccaro serves as the administrator of an Incumbent Worker Training Grant awarded to the Northeastern Pennsylvania Plastics Industry Cluster, which focuses on advanced training for business growth, such as new product design, prototyping and new market development. Approximately 28 plastics manufacturers in northeast Pennsylvania are members of the partnership.

Timing is Everything

The larger, more focused Incumbent Worker Training Grants afford the state the opportunity to effect greater change within an industry cluster. Accessing training dollars through industry clusters also offers the benefit of getting training dollars in a timely manner. “Last year, a number of WIBs were awarded training dollars in July, but didn’t get notice of the award until November. The funds were made available in January, but the grant required that the money be spent by July,” says Lance Hummer, the Workforce Development Coordinator for the Northwest Pennsylvania IRC (NWIRC) in Erie. According to Hummer, that forced the WIBs to rush to identify the companies that had the most critical workforce training needs at that moment.

Regional, county and local entities in northwestern Pennsylvania have worked aggressively to form industry partnerships. The first step was to form the Manufacturing Education and Economic Network (MEEN) – a collaboration of the Northwest, West Central and North Central WIBs, NWIRC and regional economic development organizations. MEEN currently has four industry partnerships – plastics, powdered metals, metal fabrication and wood. More than $450,000 in training dollars has been awarded to the partnerships ($400,000 in Incumbent Worker Training Grants from the state and $50,000 from the NWIRC).

The strength of the MEEN collaborative is the involvement at the county level, says Hummer. After the NWIRC assesses the training needs of a manufacturer in the partnership and helps it develop a training plan, the county-level MEEN affiliates stay in close contact with manufacturers so that they are able to quickly respond to any training needs that may arise, or conversely, when training dollars become available, the county-level affiliates know in advance which companies would benefit from the type of training that is covered by the training funds and which companies have critical training needs.

Requests for funding at the county level are then moved up to the regional level, says Hummer, where MEEN works to consolidate similar training needs into group training programs when appropriate. If funds are not currently available for specific training requests, knowing in advance what the training needs are gives MEEN an opportunity to go after additional training dollars to fund the specific need.

While it is not the norm, training emergencies do arise, says Hummer, and having the funding and the manufacturer’s training plan in place can actually be the difference between a manufacturer succeeding or failing. Hummer recalls such a situation when a large manufacturer expanded its business, and in the process, hired a number of welders away from smaller manufacturers, “which left the small companies scrambling to find skilled welders.” Another critical training need arose when the European Economic Community (EEC) mandated lead-free soldering in electrical equipment and electronics sold in the EEC. Small manufacturers who supplied components to OEMs had to train the workers in the different welding process or face losing their contracts with the OEMs.

Dealing with critical training needs is often beyond the scope of what small- and medium-sized manufacturers can realistically handle on their own, says Hummer. “It is hard enough for those of us in this business to understand all of the funding programs, and [small- and medium-sized manufacturers] don’t have the staff, the time or understand the process.

With the MEEN program and the Incumbent Workforce Training Program grants, “it is very easy and fast to move the training dollars to the companies who have a critical need,” says Hummer. “It is pretty exciting to see this cooperative effort. How positive is it to have all the different players together in one room?”