Preventing Skills Erosion During a Recession

Belt tightening is unavoidable during a recession, and this pandemic-induced one is no exception. For a manufacturing company, training is often one of the first things to go. Travel budgets have been cut becasuse of COVID-19, and time out of the office is at a premium when team headcounts are reduced to skeletal levels. Lubrication training is no exception. The problem is that skills erosion in the maintenance craft negatively affects reliability – so when the economy does finally turn around, we don’t have the manufacturing reliability on tap to take full advantage of the resurging economy. It’s a bit of a quandary, but thanks to modern technology, Noria is here to help.

Noria’s industry-standard Machinery Lubrication and Oil Analysis training programs are available online in self-directed and facilitated forms. With these programs, you can maintain your lube skills AND keep your bottom line in ship-shape condition!

Self-Directed Online Training
Noria’s Machinery Lubrication and Oil Analysis training courses have been recorded and are available for your viewing online 24 hours a day, seven days a week. While it lacks the interactive aspects of live training, our self-directed online training option offers you the following advantages:

• Modular – The training is broken up into modules that are approximately one hour in length. Your team members can view the training an hour a day, an hour a week or an hour a month – whenever they are available. This avoids the scheduling challenges associated with taking a technician out of the field for a traditional three-day seminar. That’s important if you’re running with a reduced staff.

• Around-the-Clock Access – Because the self-directed training modules are pre-recorded, you can access the material any time of any day anywhere in the world. Day-shift, night-shift and swing-shift technicians all have equal access!

• Rewind – If a point isn’t particularly clear to the student at first blush, he or she can simply rewind and listen to the point – as many times as required. This offers a distinct advantage over live training, where if the point isn’t clear the first time, it may be missed altogether.

• Reviewable – We license the student to utilize the training over a period of a year, so if he or she needs to see a module more than once, it is no problem. This is particularly important for subjects that are new to the student or are particularly complex.

• Travel Free – The student only needs access to a computer and a high-speed Internet connection to view the training. He or she receives the training from the comfort of home, the office or a designated corporate training area. No travel or living costs apply.

• Administration – We’ve created a manager’s page on the Web site so he or she can confirm when the student has completed the assigned modules.

• Custom Review Q&A Available – To counteract the effects of not having a live instructor available, we’re happy to arrange a conference call with one of our instructors to review key points of the course and to answer any questions. This can be done for the course on the whole or on a module-by-module basis – for a single student or a group.

Check the Live Online Training schedule here or browse recorded trainings on-demand.

Facilitated On-Line Training
Noria is also pleased to offer facilitated Web-based training. Unlike the self-directed training, the facilitated training is provided live by one of our instructors using conference call lines and Internet-based presentation tools (e.g. Go To Meeting, Webex). This variation of online training is a hybrid between traditional live training and traditional online training. It offers you the following advantages.

• Modular – Despite the fact that the training is conducted live, it can be delivered in a modular fashion – literally an hour at a time if, if you desire – because the instructor teaches the course from his or her office and the students receive the course online at their facility.

• Live Q&A – The facilitated training is delivered live, so students can ask questions to the instructor as they arise and seek clarification on the content in real time.

• Customizable Content – The course content can be modified to focus on your organization’s specific needs and requirements.

• Community Learning – Depending upon the diversity of the group that is assembled onsite, students can learn from each other. Pulling together people with different backgrounds working in different plants, divisions or industries and people who perform different jobs maximizes diversity and peer-to-peer learning.

• Travel Free – Because the instructor works from his or her office and students participate from their training rooms or offices, everybody can attend without incurring travel and living expenses.

• Community Learning – Because the training is typically delivered to a group, important student-to-student learning is enabled. Community learning is maximized when all students are gathered in a training room together. Also, the more diverse the group, the more community learning one can expect. When multiple non-competing plants from within a geographic area organize this training together, community learning is maximized..

Of course, another option is to schedule a live, onsite training course. It offers most of the benefits of live public training, but travel and living costs are limited to those for the instructor. This option offers an attractive cost per student as compared to live training at public venues – assuming, of course, that you have a large enough class size.

Live training has distinct advantages, but self-directed and facilitated online training offer some very unique advantages, too. During recessionary economic times, the advantages of online training are very compelling and may offer your best chance of avoiding skill regression.