This segment explores the benefits to a corporation that uses training and development strategies instead of worker turnover to enable a workforce that is faced with increasingly sophisticated equipment that demands skills they were never prepared for. Employee turnover is expensive, and a loss for the worker as well as the company that loses their knowledge of how the business actually runs. Each company has unique needs and concerns, and so the first order of business is to explore the bottom-line impact of a training program that stimulates retention, or a managed worker turnover that involves the challenge of hiring people that are already trained. What we aspire to in this segment is to feed these different assumptions into an Excel™ analysis model to determine the cost/benefits breakdown that we can use to make a company internal recommendation for what is best.

It is important to work out why we need a corporate training program, and how we blend this in with the existing employment programs. We explore different structures and options for embedding training into the benefits model championed in the workplace, through the employer and/or union facilitation, recognizing where different boundaries must be respected. In view of the many different models that can exist, including any collective bargaining agreements, it is important for each company to determine the unique arrangements that may work for its employees. Note that training as envisioned through our services is not the same as hands-on training on new production equipment: it is based on providing the basic knowledge and abilities to learn the new production skills that tend to be increasingly technology based, to better understand factory trainers.

What motivates the workforce should be opportunity for improvement as opposed to an ultimatum that failure leads to termination. It is an inability to perform the work in a modernized environment that ultimately leads to fewer opportunities and potential obsolescence, which is why training has to be an early planning objective. The workforce has knowledge that can be hard to replace, so you need to explore every option of retrain to retain as a deliberate strategy to minimize worker turnover. Training is ignorant of status-quo tendencies to persist in operations “as is” when it is clear the company has to modernize to remain viable, but it cannot be forced on a workforce that lacks the motivation to learn, or on a union environment in which they object to the employer changing any aspect of operations. To introduce change you have to negotiate acceptance of what is inevitable.

Alternative to offering training programs for an existing workforce you can pursue a strategy of managed turnover. We cover the details in the next section on outplacement, but the core strategy is to maintain a perception of caring about the workforce and making sure people can succeed in their next Endeavour. Basically, when production equipment is replaced, so is a related workforce that has not been trained on the new equipment. What can be a challenge is maintaining plant operations during a transition that sees workers replaced over time, when people may prefer to jump the gun and seek employment elsewhere. You can offer retraining as a carrot that entices an existing workforce to continue operations and then partake of opportunities to benefit from retraining as a reward for loyalty to the firm. We will use an Excel™ model to explore the different potential outcomes depending on how we plan to manage turnover.

In the event that retraining is not an option, one last resort alternative is an outplacement program that helps worker cope with, and prepare for, a job termination. The goal is to help workers focus on the future – if there was life left in the past you would continue operations “as is” rather than to go through the upheaval of change. This is not a failure – it represents a realistic assessment that the existing workforce may not benefit from the technical training, or it may be a reality that retooling is going to take time to shut down the plant, rebuild, and reopen at a later date, without the cost of maintaining an idle labour force. In some cases there may be some options to work with government agencies to facilitate retraining during a shutdown period, especially if the outcome represents new skills that then enhance the productivity of the workforce after the plant is reopened.

Learning Formats       TDST_CDP

This course is currently available in an on-line or distance learning format with approximately 15 contact hours.

PDF – Certificate Of Completion

Each course offers a certificate of completion that identifies the course, the student, and a brief description of the course. To receive a certificate the student must have attended at least 80% of the course sessions. This personalized certificate is forwarded to the student by Email.

PDF – Course Notebook

Each course includes a notebook in PDF format that provides the minimum knowledge the student must master in order to obtain the certificate. In the notebook you will find references to other study materials. Students receive the notebook by Email when their registration is confirmed.

PDF – Program Overview

An overview of this study program can be downloaded from the website by right-clicking on the program link on the enquiry page.

PDF – Current Training Schedule

A list of upcoming training sessions can be downloaded from the website by right-clicking on the schedule link on the enquiry page.

Registration – Service Providers

To register for any training course please look on the enquiry link page of your service provider (from where you accessed this website). On the page you will find a registration request form where you can order the course that you are interested in. The availability dates will be provided to you, along with payment instructions if you decide to go ahead.