Off-the-Job Training Becoming More Common for Supervisors

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The real payoff, however, is no lost opportunity costs. During work hours, people are working, not training.

Overland Park, KS (Vocus) September 7, 2010

When business finally picks up, the need American employers will have for qualified managers and supervisors will increase virtually overnight. Businesses that cannot manage a newly enlarged workforce will forfeit opportunities for quick growth when the inevitable recovery comes. Compounding employers’ problems, layoffs during recent years and increased retirements in future years have created a constricted pipeline for promotable managers. But, an on-line training firm says its restructuring of the management and supervisory training process represents one solution to this impending problem.

ej4.com, a creator of internet-based, virtual campus training sites using graphic-intensive short video training segments says employers can prepare current employees for impending challenges without sacrificing productivity in today’s still constricted economy.

Their statistics indicate that employees are doing more job training off-the-job and off-hours resulting in higher current productivity numbers. Supervisors in particular, are gaining job skills for both today and tomorrow before or after work, at home and on weekends, according to ej4, the streaming-video training provider, “Of the over 2,200,000 classes we have delivered via our many virtual campuses, over 220,000 of those classes have been logged into on either Saturday or Sunday,” said Paul Russell, ej4 partner. “If you add in almost a half-million more coursework segments completed during evening hours, the off-the-clock learning number grows to well over 700,000 training courses, almost a third of our output.”

On-the-job productivity soars when managers take training on their own time. Employers cannot afford to take employees away from customers and other job duties because they are lean with no “relief” workers available to fulfill the duties of others who have “gone to training.” Earning job certification through training taken on weekends, current and prospective supervisors and managers at companies as far flung as beverage manufacturing and distribution, banking and agricultural products sales complete their job curriculum more often from home and less often during traditional work hours. The trick, ej4 says, is to get that done in a way that does not create resentment among learners. “You do that with compelling content coupled with fun,” Russell said.

Larry Solomon, Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Dr Pepper Snapple Group said, “We improved the coaching skill set of our entire management and supervision team quickly and with virtually no loss of productivity. And, we did that at a cost vastly lower than any other possible delivery method using our ej4-hosted DPS Campus. And, my management team tells me that they had fun learning.” The DPS Campus Solomon referenced is the virtual university the six-billon dollar company hired ej4 to create to increase employee productivity and enhance corporate communication.

“Supervisors, in particular, tell us that they access courses at home while the family is still asleep, while they are working out or over their morning coffee,” said Russell, long-time Kansas City based trainer before he started ej4.com with a St. Louis based trainer, Ken Cooper in 2004. “It is easy for them to do because our courses are almost all less than ten minutes in length and meant to be taken in sequence over time. I call it a ‘class a week for the rest of your life.’” The company uses a graphic-intense green-screen production style which is intentionally “fun and, if the client allows it, irreverent,” he said. “People don’t avoid fun, they are attracted to it.”

The ej4 way is to build skills one class at a time, “similar to the way one would build a brick wall,” said Rick Michael, ej4 Vice President of Sales. The metaphor holds true, Michael says, because the skills imparted are more strongly imbedded and longer lasting “just like a wall.” Skill erosion from leader-led classes which last longer and, therefore, cram in more content, is demonstrably high. “That happens far less with shorter training events conducted much more frequently,” Michael said.

For hourly, non-exempt employees, the weekend learning style is problematic. “Learning is available from any internet-linked computer twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week but under wage and hour laws, employees not exempt from overtime must be paid for the time spent learning,” said Cooper. Under the ej4 process, however, the pay isn’t much. “Completing a ten minute course and a five minute on-line quiz takes fifteen minutes,” he said. An hourly employee taking one course a week would earn one additional hour of pay per month. “That’s pretty cost-effective when you consider that people are gaining focus, know-how and motivation during that hour that leads to immediate increases in productivity,” Russell pointed out. Cooper added, “The real payoff, however, is no lost opportunity costs. During work hours, people are working, not training.”

Cooper said the firm’s generic training provided to employers, both directly and through resellers such as Learn.com, and through various professional associations such as the Pepsi-Cola Bottlers Association and Kansas City based Southwest Association to their members, shows about the same weekend and evening utilization as the customized corporate campuses the company has created.

Eric Reinhard, the President of the Pepsi-Cola Bottlers Association said, “Our smaller bottlers use the Pepsi Campus as their corporate training department and the larger bottlers use it to supplement their in-house training department activity. As is true with advertising, increasing reach and frequency of the message improves impact. That’s one thing that the Pepsi Campus does for us.” The PCBA is thought to be the first association group in the world to set up a virtual campus using streaming-video and green-screen technology. “We went live back in 2004, just as soon as internet video technology made it possible to do, and have now documented over 1,225,000 courses taken on our Pepsi Campus. Each of our learners has a transcript with test scores so we know exactly what’s going on. Because each course ends with a call to action, we think the Pepsi Campus gives us, at a very low cost, a very strong competitive advantage in the marketplace.”

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