Diane Walter, of OJT, is the author of the book, “Training on the Job” published by ASTD in 2002; and has written numerous articles for professional, trade, and academic publication. She’s a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and has helped all types of organizations to implement successful on the job programs.

T/D: Diane, let's start with a definition - what is on-the-job training?

DW: On-the-job training is basically any training that occurs at the work site using real equipment, real material and whatever else you would use to do the job. You can train two to three people at once, but usually it’s one-on-one and the training is conducted by a fellow employee or supervisor. It’s the oldest type of training and the most common type of training used in companies., However, it’s often the most misused and misunderstood type of training.

T/D: You say there are two types of OJT. How do they differ?

DW: One type is unstructured and informal OJT and the other is structured OJT. I’m sure that everyone has experienced unstructured OJT at one time or another. Probably at every job you’ve had, you’ve had to learn something that somebody else had to show you how to do; we call, “The Buddy System.” This really is not a good system and usually the one you don’t want, but is the one that most people tend to use because they don’t know about structured OJT.

The problem with “The Buddy System” is that one person teaches another person and that person then teaches another person and what happens is a lot of details are left out. There are no written training materials, there are no plans for the training, there are no regularly scheduled training sessions, and it just tends to be haphazard.

A better approach is structured OJT. Structured OJT is different in that it is a formal approach. It includes regularly scheduled training sessions, appointing a designated trainer, who may be a coworker but will be someone designated to perform OJT, who will have a systematic method for delivering the OJT. This is important because you want to be as consistent as possible from trainee to trainee.

A very important thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that you really need written training materials. You also need to have performance objectives so that the trainee and the trainer know exactly what needs to be done and how well they have to be able to do it.

Structured OJT utilizes small chunks of information which is something you can teach in approximately half an hour or less and you can train on basically anything from how to properly operate a fax machine to overhauling a jet aircraft.

T/D: Really? How do you manage a big training task such as working on a jet engine, in an OJT format?

DW: The (training) job is accomplished by breaking down the different tasks. I'll give an example of a project I worked on. The overall job task was overhauling the entire engine. The task was broken down after answering two questions: What do you need to know and what do you need to be able to do to overhaul a jet engine?

The team then proceeded to list the different tasks and then break that up into pieces, such as disassembling the jet engine, making the needed repairs, testing the engine once the repairs were made, cleaning it once it was tested and reassembling the engine. Those were the main categories to focus on.

Then we began with the first step of the process: what do you need to know and be able to do when disassembling an engine? The team I was working with brainstormed all of the tasks involved, which were approximately 75 to 80 different tasks by the time they completed the project. Those each could be taught in a structured on-the-job, format.

T/D: That's a great example. But, should every company have a structured OJT program? I can see the benefits for a large company but if you bring it down to a smaller sized company how would that apply? Why should they have a structured OJT program?

DW: Actually it has nothing to do with the size of the project. It has more to do with the day-to-day job tasks, and most job tasks are not that large even in big companies.

The main reason you should have a structured OJT program is due to the fact that research has shown that 90 percent of any employee’s job knowledge and skills is learned through OJT. That has been documented in numerous books and studies but it’s a little known fact.

Therefore, 90 percent of the knowledge and skills that employees are out there learning occurs on the job and it’s quite scary when you realize that the majority of that is learned through “The Buddy System” type OJT.

On top of that, research also shows that companies spend six times more money on OJT than all other training combined and this money is not budgeted for because it's typically not considered “formal training.”

If 90 percent of the job is learned that way, and your spending six times more money on a haphazard process, that just doesn’t make sense.

For more information you can reach Diane at www.teamojt.com or email her at diane@teamojt.com.