Tough economic times are forcing many companies to completely reevaluate their training programs, and that's probably a good thing. But many of these companies are loosing a chance to become best-in-class and instituting training that works. Training pays the highest return in terms of dollars invested — higher than increases in labor hours or capital stock increases. If you could increase the average education of your workers by a modest 10%, you would see a corresponding productivity increase of nearly 9%.

Driving many of these productivity gains are benefits in performance, such as eliminating unsafe attitudes and at-risk behaviors, avoiding errors, and understanding cognitive bias and its impact on your operations.

At-risk behaviors are especially troublesome in a manufacturing environment. The folks that operate nuclear power plants are all too familiar with those types of behaviors. They've listed some of the most common:

• Hurrying through an activity;

• Following procedures cookbook-style (blind or unthinking compliance);

• Removing several danger tags quickly without annotating removal on the clearance sheet when removed

• Reading an unrelated document while controlling an unstable system in manual [control];

• Having one person perform action at critical steps without peer checking or performing concurrent verification;

• Not following a procedure as required when a task is perceived to be “routine”;

• Attempting to lift too much weight to reduce the number of trips;

• Trying to listen to someone on the telephone and someone else standing nearby (multitasking);

• Signing off several steps of a procedure before performing the actions; and

• Working in an adverse physical environment without adequate protection Most of us are guilty of more than half of those behaviors every time that we get behind the wheel of our car. We're routinely operating a vehicle that uses inflammable liquid to move thousands of pounds of equipment and personnel at speeds that generate tremendous momentum. In most cases, we do that every day without a second thought. Some of us give it a second and third thought because we were involved in a serious accident that gave us a second chance.

Now consider the equipment at the typical cement plant. How about that kiln that produces 4,000 metric tons of clinker per day? That may mean more than 500 or 600 tons of potentially explosive pulverized solid fuel. That's comparable to the amount of fuel that a fully loaded 747 aircraft will consume. The average commercial pilot needs at least 3,000 hours of flying time and is recertifying constantly. Is that the type of training commitment that your company has?

All training is either knowledge based, rule based, or skill based. Most folks learn how to drive by first attending some kind of knowledge-based driver's education program. They'll learn the basic rules of the road and focus on things like the shapes of signs and what they mean. From there, they'll get behind the wheel and learn how to drive by actually driving in the real world as opposed to some simulator. That's the skills-based portion. That combination of knowledge and skill is great, but it's no substitute for experience. Few of us would want a newly minted driver in heavy traffic with poor pavement conditions and limited visibility.

The point is that the combination of knowledge, skills, and experience is exactly what training should provide. That combination is ultimately what helps people develop good judgment and common sense so that when they're faced with an unusual or different situation, they can respond with the best approach. And it's not just about avoiding accidents; that should be the bare minimum. It is about effective and efficient operations that are environmentally sustainable

Too often, we think of training as an end point rather than an ongoing process. Knowledge and skill requirements typically increase with experience. The performance that we expect from a kiln operator with six months of experience is not the same performance that we expect from a kiln operator with six years of experience. But if that's our expectation — increasing levels of performance by increasing experience — then how can we accomplish that goal? The answer is training. In fact, that really is the only answer.

Many times, companies don't see much point in training. (Or worse yet, they see the point but not the value.) There are plenty of reasons not to train. After all, training can be expensive, time consuming, and something that takes personnel away from the plant. However, in today's environment, it doesn't have to be. More and more plants are focusing on results-driven training that's cost effective and has a direct impact on their operations.

Companies also tend to think that their seasoned employees don't need training anymore. That's just not the case. The environmental and safety requirements that each plant faces are constantly changing, and those changes alone impact every aspect of plant operations. As employees become more experienced, we expect them to think through their actions more deliberately. A reliance on “rules of thumb” should give way to critical thinking skills that identify what the best practice should be. The experienced employee that can expand their knowledge and skills becomes one of the most invaluable assets. Who better to share their experience with than newer operators?

Companies can get tremendous benefit from training programs and not just in terms of better trained employees or a more profitable company. In many cases, training is the only vehicle that can identify important trends to watch out for. For example, consider some of these task demands — each one is a potential error precursor that the training environment can identify.

• Time pressures that may exist;
• High workloads;
• Simultaneous or multiple tasks;
• Repetitive actions/monotony;
• Unclear roles, goals, or responsibilities;
• Unclear or missing standards

And what better way to ensure personnel have the right skills and experience than by asking the hard questions. Are they familiar with the task? Are they using a new technique? Are they using communications that are clear and precise? Do they have the right combination of experience and proficiency for the task at hand? Do they have the right attitude when it comes to safety? Are they on the job when they should be at home because of injury, illness, or fatigue?

Training is also a proven method to address changes in the work environment. Not just the displays and controls that might confuse an employee but also departures from the routine, unexpected equipment conditions, and even personality conflicts. If we look at each of those work environment issues, we can usually identify the corresponding part of our human nature that increases our susceptibility for making errors. For example, if we're used to a day-in, day-out consistent work routine then we're more apt to make mistakes when we have changes in our routine. If we tend to have an inaccurate risk perception (perhaps a ‘Pollyanna’ attitude), then we're more likely to make errors when we start to deal with unexpected equipment conditions.

The Portland Cement Association (PCA) has been using these human performance principles to structure cost-effective training for decades. Whether it's a traditional classroom-based environment that focuses on knowledge-based learning, unique small group exercises to reinforce rule-based performance, or a wide variety of skills-based training, PCA tailors programs to fit each audience.

We know times are tough, so we offer a spectrum of training. From intensive 1-day workshops that drill down to site-specific, process-specific issues to longer seminars that reach out to broader audiences with more diverse needs. We recognize that training doesn't occur in a vacuum, so we take a holistic approach that puts training into a time and space perspective. The time element might be from new hire to qualified operator, while the space perspective might be from an individual unit operation to whole plant perspective.

Task demands, individual capabilities, work environment, and human nature can all be addressed on a separate basis, but only realistic training can fold those four themes together to drive the performance you need in today's environment. The choice is clear: realistic training is the only way to achieve best-in-class, and now is the best time to set up that training.

Rick Bohan, P.E., is Manufacturing Technology Director at Portland Cement Association, Skokie, Ill. Material for this article was adapted from a number of sources, including the Department of Energy's Human Performance Improvement Handbook, June 2009.