Many organisations rely on on-the-job training (OJT) without any effort to ensure it is effective in providing
skills and knowledge required for superior performance. This article discusses ways in which OJT can be managed to ensure employees learn skills desired and perform at an acceptable level.Introduction
On-the-job training is often seen as a way to ensure employees are trained without hughe expense or with minimal disruption to productivity. Surprisingly, many organisations simply don't make any allowance for training; OJT happens by default rather than design. This laissez faire approach to OJT is a recipe for substandard performance and differing standards of performance. New starters simply stumble along asking colleagues how to do tasks and perhaps reading procedures manuals or learning from trial and error.
Occasionally, new staff learn bad habits, poor, or incorrect procedures from experienced staff who have shown them inappropriate shortcuts, unauthorised or incorrect procedures. At worst, they will have learnt different approaches from different staff and be confused about which method is appropriate.
While OJT is a useful training medium in many workplaces and often best way for someone to learn ropes of their new job, it achieves better outcomes when professionally managed. How to manage it is key to successful learning and high performance, but degree of management depends on level of difficulty (or danger) inherent in job.
Job Difficulty
If a job is inherently dangerous eg, mining, tree-felling, construction, electrical installation etc, there are laws requiring certain standards of safety and associated training. Irrespective of size of an organisation, safety standards need to be met and if they aren't, firms can be held liable for injuries or deaths that occur. This usually means that firms needing to meet safety standards have suitable induction or post-employment OJT.
Simple tasks that do not have a critical safety element may be handled by telling a new staff member what is required and if necessary demonstrating. (The instructional method Explain - Demonstrate - Practice where a task is explained to learners, demonstrated to learners, and then practised by learners while being observed by demonstrator, is useful here). Such a simple task may involve something like registering a guest in a motel or change a spark plug in a motor vehicle.
Jobs with multiple, disparate tasks, lengthy procedures or tasks with higher levels of difficulty need to be taught in stages. In fact, employers whose processes are both lengthy and difficult, need to decide whether all staff complete all processes, or whether it is more efficient and effective to specialise staff within stages of processes. For example, a financial institution establishing, servicing and completing mortgages may allocate different work groups to different stages. This approach would recognise that expecting new starters to learn 500 steps from start to finish of process is too great an expectation. We learn better in small chunks moving from simple to complex and known to unknown.
Bearing in mind level of difficulty, we can choose somewhere between a highly structured approach, or a loosely structured approach to OJT that involves some, or all of following features.
Structuring OJT
Ideally, a structured approach should include learning guides, coaches, procedures manuals, a form of assessment (formal or informal), and be integrated into organisation's performance and probation programs. The whole process needs to be monitored by organisation's learning and development department or, if there isn't one, an appropriate supervisor who is an exemplar of processes and procedures being learnt.
