Competing – Temporary employees
Does your business sometimes use temporary help to “solve their short and mid-term capacity problem”. Many of my clients do and often, temporary helpers are just thrown at the problem with little training or attention and are shown little, if any respect by management. I see three temps hired to solve a problem one well-trained fulltime employee could handle. Three temps are hired because it is “normal” for one to quit within a day or two, and another one to have a major attendance problem. The remaining temp does his or her best to develop their own process to do the work, creating variation and it’s associated problems such as rejects and rework. Then, when the “storm has passed” and levels of demand have settled back to normal, the final temp is unceremoniously let go. Does this sound at all familiar to you? Do you think this is a good practice? Why do you think many businesses repeat this practice again and again?
I would like to suggest a wonderful countermeasure for at least some of the temporary help problems, Training Within Industries (TWI). In case you don’t know TWI was developed by the War Manpower Commission to support the massive training needs during World War II. Back then, the majority of manufacturing jobs were done by men and when those men left to go to war we needed a capable, effective and productive workforce to build the guns, plans, ships, ammunition, trucks and anything else needed to support the war effort. Many women filled those empty positions and did an incredible job of producing what was needed with great quality and delivering those items to the field quickly. Justly, TWI received credit for contributing to the success.
Training Within Industries authored three primary texts with session outlines and training material (all available at Amazon):
Job Methods – focuses on improving productivity and quality by identifying and eliminating process waste
Job Instruction – powerful yet simple instruction of how to effectively train
Job Relations – Leadership training for supervisors and front line managers.
Most information regarding TWI is public domain and can be found by searching “Training within Industries”.
