Dot: Attract new talent.
Dot: Get new hires up to speed quickly.
Dot: Avoid pulling people off their jobs to do individual training.
Dot: Convince promising new employees there’s a compelling career path for them (so they should stick around!).
Dot: Infuse legacy approaches with new methodologies.
What if an association could connect all these dots for their members? That’s exactly what the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) set out to do.
AISC knew their member fabricators were having difficulty appealing to younger workers and competing for talent with major manufacturers. What’s more, many shops relied on their own workers to train new hires one at a time–not only a slow and disjointed way to learn, but a costly sacrifice of production time. And, keeping newly trained workers was a constant challenge.
Their new “Fabricator Education Training Program” began rolling out this year and was recently highlighted in an article in Modern Steel Construction aptly titled, “Workforce Development Win.” The ambitious project is a collaboration between AISC, member fabrication shops, and Artisan Learning.
Even with the right people at the table, connecting all these dots across an entire industry was a mammoth task. The curriculum had to work equally well in a single-shop operation and a large multi-location fabricator. Plus, to get every bit of it right, instructional designers would have to work hand in hand with fabrication specialists as each learned from the other’s expertise.
All of us subject matter experts had to back off and let it flow the way Artisan guided us. They would use us as experts but craft the courses in a way that would truly benefit the learner.”
– Mark Trimble, AISC senior vice president and former vice president at Huntington Steel in Huntington, WV
The Artisan project team had to learn to become fabricators. They traveled the country, spending time in different types of fabrication shops and investing countless hours talking with and filming experienced fabrication experts. Jill Marshall is Artisan’s lead instructional designer on the project team. “I learned a lot about the industry through calls with experts, but what really made a difference was visiting a fabrication shop. I shadowed workers and asked a ton of questions. That helped me better understand the skills we were teaching and the audience we were targeting.”
For their part, members of the AISC project team had to relinquish their hold on the ways their industry training has always happened. “We know how we would train people, but we learned we weren’t doing it very well because Artisan shined a light on how people learn and why we can’t teach at the pace we think someone should learn,” said Mark Trimble, AISC senior vice president. Seventeen subject matter experts from 14 organizations made certain the training was accurate and true to a new fabricator’s needs and experiences.
“I shadowed workers and asked a ton of questions. That helped me better understand the skills we were teaching and the audience we were targeting.”
– Jill Marshall, Artisan Learning lead instructional designer
The training format is video-based with experienced fabricators coaching and training actors–without fab shop experience–as they navigate their first 90 days on the job. Artisan guided the AISC team in developing learner personas that reflected typical new fabrication shop hires. This allowed the training experience to be highly tailored to the people AISC members recruit and hire. “AISC decided that if it was going to invest in training, it needed to be as modern and up-to-date as possible,” said Cooper Steel Fabricators president Duff Zimmerman.
The result? Association member companies have access to comprehensive, cutting edge training they simply couldn’t create any other way. Training that positions them competitively for recruiting and retention. Training that meets the specific needs of new hires without tapping precious production resources. Training that connects those important dots!
“I think it’s going to be a boon to fabricators, small and large,” Zimmerman said.
