If you’re like most organisations today, you probably can’t recruit and train new hires quickly enough to replace the outflow of workers retiring or leaving your organisation each year. Some of your workers have likely been with your organisation for decades. When they leave, they take all of their experience and tribal knowledge out the door with them, making them impossible to replace overnight.
Training is now the top investment priority for 74 per cent of manufacturers surveyed in Deloitte’s 3rd annual Industry 4.0 Report. This represents a significant shift in thinking as only 12 per cent listed this as a priority two years ago. These organisations recognise that they need to continuously develop workforce skills in order to succeed in a constantly evolving Industry 4.0 environment. So, it’s no surprise that 80 per cent of surveyed CXO’s said they have created or are in the process of creating a culture of lifelong learning, and another 17 per cent said they have plans to do so in the near future.
To enable more effective lifelong learning, organisations must use new skills development and management strategies to address the many problems with traditional training methods. These include:
- Training is typically a one-time event. If workers don’t grasp everything they need to learn in that short period of time, there’s no easy way to do so later.
- Workers don’t have visibility into their skills or what’s expected of them after their initial on-boarding, and updates to standard procedures are often communicated verbally.
- Worker skills are still being manually tracked in Excel spreadsheets, making it more difficult and time consuming for management to verify, update and prove compliance.
- There is no systematic way to capture and share workers’ knowledge and experience, so they can’t easily learn from one another.
The good news is that with applications like AVEVA Teamwork, more efficient and effective way to train workers and manage their skills now exists, and it’s generating impressive results at some of the world’s leading organisations.
From one-time training events to continuous, on-the-job learning
Some organisations are moving away from one-time training events in favour of continuous skills development using a digital performance support application. Workers learn how to perform a task or work to a standard directly at their workstations by viewing digital content and micro-lessons on a tablet. They use the tablet to scan a QR code on their machine to instantly access all the skills required to operate the equipment and trouble shoot problems.
Engaging workers in their skills development
With AVEVA Teamwork, workers view their individualised curriculum, are notified when a work instruction has been updated, and track their progress directly at their workstations without having to rely on their supervisor or training department to pass on the information.
From manual skills tracking to automated skills managementThe app presents a digital skills matrix that gives management real-time visibility into workforce competencies. It makes it easy to quickly see skills coverage across team members, including who has requested endorsements and which skills are due for renewal. The matrix is automatically updated and provides easy access to the content and exams
used to train workers.
From tribal knowledge to collective knowledge
With the app workers post calls for help with photos or video as issues arise. Experts across the company can comment and collaborate to offer suggestions and find a solution. Once a problem is solved, it can be automatically converted into a troubleshooting solution in the knowledge base for others to learn from.
To learn more, visit: https://www.aveva.com/en/products/aveva-teamwork/