The manufacturing workforce: Exploring nontechnical skills and their impact on workplace behavior

The competitiveness of manufacturing firms relies on a business strategy that includes adopting advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs), changing the skills workers need to perform their jobs. Yet employers have found a gap between the skills manufacturing technicians (MTs) need and those they possess. An exploratory sequential mixed methods needs assessment of 28 aerospace and defense manufacturing employers explored their level of AMT adoption, whether their MTs have the skills employers needed, and employers’ training preferences. The findings indicated that while employers were satisfied with the level of MTs’ technical skills, they were not satisfied with their nontechnical (NT) skills and had no strategy for addressing this gap. According to the literature, the NT skills most relevant to manufacturing are communication, critical thinking, and self-management. Attribution theory helps explain MTs’ workplace behavior in terms of locus of causality, controllability, and stability. An intervention study of NT skills used attribution theory as a framework to examine: RQ1. To what extent was the intervention implemented as designed? RQ2. How has the MTs’ participation in the intervention developed their NT skills: communication, critical thinking, and self-management? RQ3. How do the MTs’ NT skills affect their understanding of expected workplace behavior? The 10-week convergent, parallel, mixed-methods study used error management and spaced learning online, combined with problem-solving and experiential learning, to teach NT skills to seven MTs. Qualitative data from a focus group, researcher’s notes, and individual interviews were analyzed to assess the intervention’s effectiveness, while quantitative data from session attendance, experiential learning assignment completion, online lesson completion, and schedule adherence were analyzed to evaluate participation and dosage. The intervention revealed that participants improved their understanding of NT skills and expected workplace behavior. However, they were inhibited from using their NT skills when concerned about a negative result and were enabled to utilize them only when they felt psychologically safe. Workforce development non-government organizations that prepare under-skilled adults for the workforce are potential providers of NT skills training, leveraging existing education providers and bridging the divide between education providers and employers