What if I told you that you can develop a BAS Technician in 6 months? Would you believe me?
The OJT myth is a belief that the only way we can develop technicians is to put them in the field for several years until they "figure out" how to "do it".
In this episode we look at alternative employee development models and we explore how and when to best use OJT.
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Show notes
Phil Zito 00:00
This is the smart buildings Academy podcast with Phil Zito Episode 228. Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome to Episode 228 of the smart buildings Academy podcast. And in this episode we will be discussing the oj t meth. So we will be diving through what oj T is whether or not it's effective when it is effective and when it's not, how it could be holding back our industry, what is reasonable for employee development in terms of time and in terms of expectations, an ideal path of employee development metrics for employee development, a skills based model versus a time based model and some core skills for success. So if you are looking to get into the field of building automation, this will give you some good direction. And if you are managing a building automation team, this will give you perhaps a different perspective on how you develop and onboard your staff. All right, so everything we cover in today's episode can be found at podcast dot smart buildings, academy.com, forward slash two to eight. Once again, that is podcast dot smart buildings academy.com for slash two to eight. And this episode is brought to you by our quantitative skills assessment, or quantitative skills assessment is a free online skills assessment that we offer to our customers that enables them to look at what their staff knows, and more importantly does not know identify those gaps and measure those gaps using clear quantitative that means measurable questions, and they are then able to determine what skills they need to work with their team on developing in order to more effectively execute job tasks and role expectations. To find out more about that you can visit the link at podcast at smart buildings academy.com forward slash two to eight. All right, so what is OJT? OJT is on the job training. And there is I'm going to lay it out a myth and I call it a myth because to date, no one has been able to show me quantifiable data that OJT is the most effective way to develop talent, you will hear it and you will read it when you talk with folks that will talk about how they were put out in the field. It's almost like a badge of honor. When you go into Facebook or LinkedIn groups, you will see people saying statements like there is no way anyone can be effective without oj T, or the only way. And whenever you see statements that are absolute, that should raise a red flag and that's across life. Anytime someone tells you an absolute statement, you should your antenna should come up and you should say to yourself, well, is that exactly true? Because I mean, the only way to transport people was horses until there are automobiles, the only way to transport people across the ocean was boats until there were planes. And there were a lot of people who felt that it was the only way and intil they were exposed to a different way. They were going and thinking, hey, there's the only way. Now, that being said, Does it make sense to do massive cargo transport? transportation across the ocean via a plane? No, it makes sense to containerize it and send it across in boats. So with that being said, Is there a place for oj t? Yes, absolutely. There is a place for OJT. However, what I find is that a lot of people are utilizing OJT as a cover all instead of as a another tool in their tool belt when it comes to developing an onboarding talent. So let's tackle the is OJT effective. And when is it effective? Yes, it is absolutely effective. Is it the most effective? It depends on when it's utilized.
Phil Zito 04:29
So if you're expecting to take a new hire out of trade school, or to take a new hire off the street and put them on a job site, and then have them learn via OJT you are not making a wise choice. OJT needs to be very structured and it does not need to be done in the format or it should not be done in the format. Most of us do it myself being guilty of this in the past as well which is we put someone on a job And then we have them as an assistant to a senior technician. There's no real clarity and plan of how we're utilizing this OJT there is no laid out guidelines that are measurable to know is the OJT effective? Is it being utilized properly? And how do I know when this person is done so that they can then move on to other tasks because ideally, OJT should be used as a reinforcement tool of knowledge and techniques that were learned outside of the job environment. It should provide practical hands on experience that enables the learner to actualize what they've learned it should not be where they are learning that concept. And I would argue that pretty much anything that you do via OJT can be learned in a non project environment. Now, some people a lot of people are hands on kinesthetic learners. And because of that they need OJT to reinforce those behaviors and habits. However OJT has morphed into this sort of belief that you need to be in this learner green state for six to 10 years before you truly are effective and contributing to the business. And that, quite frankly, is ridiculous. We train doctors that work in o RS in less than six years. And in some cases, it takes more than six years. But we train doctors, we train rocket scientists, we train astronauts, we train computer programmers, but yet you're telling me that the building automation and smart buildings industry is somehow so unique, that we need to have these almost decade long mentor and apprenticeship processes before someone can be contributing. That is, quite frankly, ridiculous. And it is holding back our industry, it's holding back our industry greatly. It's holding back our industry for three reasons. One, we are not challenging people to rise to their potential, when someone knows that they're going to collect their paycheck. And all they have to do is go do Point to Point check out and carry around tools, and go and check things out for the senior tech on site. That it's quite possible, they're not going to have any desire to go and better themselves. There's a good portion of the population, you have some people who are completely lazy, that's a small portion. You have some people who are highly, highly motivated, that's a smaller portion as well. And then you have folks who they want to do a good job. But you're going to have to be more directive with that. And those folks will not thrive under our current OJT models. So one it's keeping people from developing to it is putting undue unnecessary cost burdens on your business. By going and running people in this way for such a long time, you're going to see that your senior technicians are making more mistakes because they're over utilized. And you're going to see that your greener technicians are not able to actually go and execute things on their own, which is going to limit the expansion of your business. And the third thing I want to cover with how OJT is holding back our industry is specific to career advancement and career growth. So obviously, point one being that the person doesn't get exposed to stuff is going to be an issue. But it gets even further than that. When someone's not exposed to things, that's one thing. But then when they aren't exposed to things, and then at the same time, they're given this OJT process that has no clear outline, no clear end date, and no clear sense of accomplishment. What you will tend to find is that you have a very shallow bench. And what I mean by that is we have plenty of technicians but not enough folks who can self execute not enough folks who can qualify as a senior technician not enough folks who can be a designer, not enough folks who can be a programmer.
Phil Zito 09:27
And I tend to find that this comes from a couple of reasons. One is we don't understand how to best utilize oj t we don't understand how to align oj T and we'll talk about this later in the episode how to align oj t with the key tasks that are going to impact project performance and growth in someone's career. let me dive a little bit deeper. So I was on Facebook. I was going back and forth and someone asked about training their team on h fac And I said, Well, we've got this amazing course control sequence fundamentals. It'll train them on everything they need to know. And some folks said, No, the only way you could do it is to go out in the field. And then someone made an example of how they had to educate an engineer and rewrite the sequence of operations for some 50 ton heat pump units. And while I understand what that person is saying, and I agree, that does indeed happen, looking at the Pareto principle, which the Pareto principle is basically identify the 20% of the tasks that you're gonna be doing 80% of the time, are we going to be 80% of the time rewriting sequences for engineers, I can count on two hands, how many times I've had to do that in my career. And I've done a lot of projects. In reality, I can count, I can't even count how many times I had to install via v controllers, map them into the front end, go and upload some graphics, download a bunch of programs and validate them do Point to Point check out, ensure safety circuits work, ensure sensors are accurate, do sensor recalibration, etc. Those are all tasks that would fall under that 20% of tasks that you do 80% of the time. So if we are not very clear in our OJT expectations of saying, alright, week one, you're going to demonstrate the ability to do point to point on this project. And then we're gonna validate that point, the point was done, right. And we're gonna have a clear process to do point to point by the way, and you're going to have been previously trained on that process. And once you've shown that, you can do that, we're going to check that off. And that's going to go under your skill record to say, hey, you have the skill. Next, from there, we're going to do actual controller downloads, and maybe then we'll do controller commissioning, and then maybe we'll do graphics, but you will be very clear and directed in your OJT. And this will be regularly updated in a employees Learning Record. And the reason why is as project managers need to deploy people to teams, and to their projects, they will understand who is self sufficient on key task, and it will be up to the operations manager to work with the project managers to coordinate this development and utilization of this model. So with that being said, what is reasonable for employee development, the path I like to look at, and I'll actually I'll get into the path in just a second. But what I like to look at as far as reasonability for employee development, like what would I expect an employee to do? Within three months, I look at layers, right, I look at the four tier building automation layer, we've got the server got the supervisory device, we've got field buses and field controllers, and then we've got IO, within the first three months, I would expect all forms of basic point to point check out as being able to be done by a technician. Within the six month, I would expect them to be able to do download into controllers controller commissioning, I would expect them to be able to map those devices to a field trunk and bring them into a supervisory device within the nine to 12 month period, I would expect them to be able to bring that into the supervisory device, setup basic graphics, be able to go and do all of that. And we're talking completely self sufficient. And then in year one to two, we start to move into looking at programming, looking at system integration. Now that is a very aggressive timeframe for a lot of people, a lot of people will say, you need to be an installer for three years and then a technician for three years and then only then can you start looking at programming. I think that's ridiculous. I think we're limiting people. I do not think that is reasonable. Now how do you get to the point where someone can come out of the gate and do this because we have multiple students at our customer sites who are coming or at our customers, companies who are coming out of our training programs, able to do the things I just described actually in shorter timeframes than what I just described.
Phil Zito 14:22
So my opinion, the ideal path of employee development should be initially theory based, you should train them on the theory and the processes related to the task they're going to perform. So if you follow and this is just an example. It's not the only example but I'm going to use us as an example. If you follow our technician path, you'll go through ba s fundamentals where you'll learn the parts and pieces and control modes and controls theory. Then you'll go through control sequence fundamentals, where you'll learn each fact control mode, you'll learn different set points, you'll learn how to diagnose or how to Basically read and apply sequences of operations, how to understand all of that. And you'll learn how to create one lines. From there, you will move into our it course where you'll learn all the aspects of it. And then you'll move into our startup checkout course, while you're learning how to do installation, point to point check out device configuration and site setup. And that is meant to be done in a 90 day training program with the intent that usually most of our customers will train the person right when they come in. And then they will deploy them to the field where they will get the OJT. And they will apply what they've learned in our program to the OJT. And then they will loop back to our program since it's online. And they will, through the forums or live office hours, explore the concepts that they're still struggling with. And we'll clarify those concepts. So that is our ideal path of employee development that has worked for a lot of our customers. And we've trained over 7000 plus students using that model. The key point I want you to take away from this is that this is a skills based model versus a time based model. And almost no instance should you be using a time based model. So for example, I'll use myself because obviously, I know my career path pretty well. I came out of the Navy, with absolutely zero experience in building automation. I went on Wikipedia memorized hv AC, and memorize some of the stuff about building automation. So I could, so I could pass a job interview, I got put on to a project at an Intel fabrication plant with about 400 va v boxes, floating actuators, several rooftop units and several chillers. And I had to learn really fast. I was fortunate to have a company that invested in a lot of skills based learning sent me to a variety of different trainings. And I learned quite a bit. And then I was mentored by an older gentleman who took the skill based approach to OJT versus the time based approach. So JT, he would routinely say, Okay, I want you to work on this skill this week. And I want you to report back to me on how you did with the skill. And I attribute that to my fast development. At this time, I wasn't doing a lot of learning at home, it wasn't until my second position, I started doing a lot of home based learning. But because of that model, because he didn't just put me out on a project. And let me just kind of drift there, he gave me very clear direction. I was able to measure if I was improving in a key tasks, and I was able to measure them on a weekly basis. So if I wasn't doing really well, on point the point like for example, four to 20 milliamp for a while there, for like two weeks, they were really just tripping me up because I couldn't get my head past some of the dynamics with four to 20 milliamp versus zero to 10 volts DC. I had a very it and mechanical mindset, but my electrical side was fairly weak at the time. And so we brushed up on that he gave me some electrical primers, this was really before the time of YouTube. And I develop that skill. If he had simply just kept me on the job site and said, Yeah, you'll pick it up when you pick it up. I may not be here talking to you right now. But fortunately, because there was an approach of a skills based model, I was able to develop those skills. So let's talk about the core skills for success. Let's lay out a skill based model that you can apply for your basic technician. And then we'll call it a day for the episode. Okay, so your basic technician.
Phil Zito 19:15
Weeks one, maybe weeks two, are gonna be a lot of HR stuff. So that's like the Primetime that you want to evaluate what that person knows and does not know if you have an evaluation process. Great. That's awesome. Definitely implement it to get data on what they know about electrical what they know about it, what they know about h fac what they know about installation and troubleshooting, understand those skills. If you don't have a quantitative assessment program, definitely reach out to us we do have one and we can assist you with that once you've identified their skill gaps. Now it is up to you to either provide training from one of your training programs. Hopefully you have some training program If not, that's an area where we can help you. But you want to train to skill gaps. But you don't want to train to just any skill gaps. You want to go and have like a level one tech level two, tech level three tech, and this is something we help our customers with, is we have a spreadsheet with a bunch of tasks across multiple different skill domains, it HVC, install Point to Point programming, etc. and we help them lay out what do they expect for level one? What do they expect for level two? What do they expect for level three? So I encourage you to save for level one, we expect these skills across these technical domains. And then that gets added to the employees folder. And you then go, and it's the responsibility of the employee to seek their manager out and say, Hey, I'm ready to demonstrate that I know how to do point on resistive inputs. And they do point to point on resistive inputs. manager says, yep, you can do that. They sign off on that. Okay, hey, I'm ready to demonstrate that I understand MAC addresses on BACnet mstp devices, and I can set them and I can get them on the network. Okay, let's check that out. And let's sign off on that. So it's up to you to understand, I hesitate to give you the very, very prescriptive, because it's up to you to understand your book of business to understand your portfolio of projects. And to say, all right, our technicians need to know only point to point or our technicians need to know point to point they also need to know how to layout trunks, they need to know how to map them into supervisory devices, that's up to you. But it's very important that you say okay, level one knows this. Level Two, knows this level three knows this. And then you measure those, and you give the responsibility to the employee. And what you're starting to do by doing that by giving them that spreadsheet and saying, This is what I expect of you. It's your responsibility to demonstrate that you know this and to seek out your team or your manager. In order to get that learning verified, in order to get it verified that you actually know what you're saying, you know, what you're starting to do there. And this is a very key important thing for managers and leaders is you're starting to develop a culture of ownership and self development, what you're starting to put into your new hires from day one is that you own your own development. And you can drive your own development as hard as you want. You can put expectations around level one achievement level two, achievement level three achievement, I usually don't i don't put time expectations around that, because I feel like putting time expectations around that can dissuade some people from going and pursuing it. Or it can actually, it can limit people, I guess dissuade and limit is the same thing. But it can keep them from actually pursuing that level two or level three, because they're like, man, I bust my butt through level one. And then I bust my butt through level two, but I can't really get level two until I have two years time experience. So even if I know all this stuff, what's my motivation to go learn all these level two skills? Because they're gonna want me to have been in this role for three years or whatever. So understanding that understanding, hey, what do I expect? laying out those metrics? And then clearly communicating those? So to recap real quick, oj t, is it effective? Yes, in the right scenario, it is effective. You could use OJT to develop your team. But if all you're using is OJT, then you're going to find your team stifled for their growth. How is it holding back our industry because it's providing a belief or it's fueling a belief
Phil Zito 24:04
that the only way you can develop yourself is doing time out in the field, doing tasks? And it's really not OJT. It's more. So the application of OJT that's holding us back. And it's applying the belief that you are going to be doing these tasks. And you just have to do them over a certain amount of time. There's no measurement of if you're developing, there's no Okay, you've passed this phase gate. At this point, we say you're good with this task and you can move on to the next. So that is very disenfranchising to employees. I will tell you, we've heard that multiple times from students and via our survey as well as just saying, Man, I want to go and know this, but I've got to be a technician for four years. So what's the point? And so you got to think about that. Also what is reasonable for employee development. What's Reasonable is what's reasonable for the employee really. Now, granted, that does not mean, you let someone sit at level one tech forever, I'm a big fan of move them up or move them out. So help people develop a master, it's fine if they want to stay a technician for their entire career. But they should be the best technician, I am not a fan of saying, okay, you know, this person, they don't really have the capabilities to develop past doing Point to Point checkout. So we're just going to keep them there be like, no, if your technicians are expected to do point to point and also controller setup and also this and also that, then this person needs to be capable of doing that. If not, there's other companies that are structured that all their technicians are supposed to do is point to point. But if your company is not structured that way, you should not keep someone at a level one tech for 20 years, just because they can't move to level two or level three. That's just you're limiting your ability, you should be having new people doing level one, not people who have been in 20 years, and they've got merit promotions, and they're like, a level one who's making the same pay as a level three, that is not a wise choice from a business perspective. So we really have to have a reasonable approach to employee development. We also want to have clear metrics so that people know what to expect, we want to use a skill based model versus a time based model. And we want to ensure that we are providing mechanisms for our employees to develop themselves and to own their development. If you implement this, you will be in the top tier of building automation companies. Because everyone asks me, Oh, there goes right. I started this off with saying if someone says all the time or everyone, I get a lot of people who asked me, what's the best building automation system? What would you recommend? And I tell them, look at the sales team, look at the install team and look at the service team. Because the quote unquote best building automation system installed by a really non skilled, untalented team is going to be a bunch of garbage. And the quote unquote, worst building automation system, installed by an amazing team with tons of talent that works really well is going to really shine. So it's less about the building automation system. And it's more about the capabilities of a team, a highly skilled technical team that's self motivated, is going to generate higher levels of profit on your projects, which is going to bring more cash into the business, which is going to enable you to invest in marketing, sales and just strategic growth. And you're going to be able to grow your team, you're going to be able to command higher rates on your projects, because the quality of your work is going to be known. And you're going to have greater customer loyalty. And you're going to have greater if like you use the plan and spec market, you're going to have greater likelihood that you are going to be asked to bid work, because the mechanicals and the GCs know that you're a safe bet. If they need to go and execute work, they know that your company is going to perform and is going to deliver, which is going to make them look good. So this all comes full circle, you really got to think about all these different aspects. So
Phil Zito 28:42
as a technician, and I know I've been heavily focused here on managers and companies, but as a technician, as someone who's looking to develop into the industry, I encourage you to reach out to us, we're going to work on putting a expectation, deliverable that if you subscribe to our mailing list we will send to you and this expectation deliverable will be it won't be the complete thing that we share with our customers. Obviously, that's something we protect, but it'll be a list of some key skills you'll want to develop. In order to grow initially, I'd say just Hey, go to the comments and say you're interested in getting that and we will give that to you. Eventually, we will have it automated in our email system where if you subscribe for that, you'll get it. That being said, thank you so much for listening. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving if you're in the United States. And I hope you all are doing quite well. So take care. I look forward to talking to you all again next week. It's going to sound very different next week possibly because we have invested in a completely different mic setup and AV setup so hopefully the sound quality They should have improved dramatically. And so things sound a little different. That will be why. As always, you can find everything we've covered at podcast smart buildings Academy, four slash two to eight. Once again, that is podcast smart buildings Academy, Ford slash two to eight. And the last thing I want to leave you with is pay attention for our Black Friday to cyber monday sale that will be going on. You could save 20% on our courses by purchasing during that time period. All right, folks, Thanks a ton, and I'll talk to you next week. Take care
