Consultation & Training

Consultation & training

Why use a consultant? First and foremost is the unbiased and experienced view that consultants provide. Because they have no stake in the outcome (aside from providing the best service possible so you’ll hire them again), consultants can suggest radical or controversial strategies when indicated. In some cases, organizations listen to outside consultants more closely than to in-house experts.

Consultants can often apply a wide knowledge of business practices from many industries and other organizations to help solve a particular organization’s problems.

Few professionals have been inside more facilities than a qualified consultant. Consultants can bring to bear ideas that have been successful in other industries and organizations, such as government, education or transit. A consultant who teaches has access to discussions from thousands of professionals from hundreds of sessions.

Some organizations turn to consultants because the in-house staff has the skill but not the time. Consultants can focus their entire attention, without distraction on a narrow problem. A consultant can usually get on-line rapidly (much more quickly than even a highly qualified new hire).

Instead of hiring, consider consultants. You can send them home when the project is complete, and you usually can get a full skill set pertinent to your problem.

Springfield Resources undertakes a wide range of consulting projects on behalf of clients.

Consulting and Project Support

Project start-up what to measure, how to choose respondents, teams to be chosen, create activity list, group activities, describe statistical parameters;
Project monitoring (pilot study; intermediate results, changes during data collection);
Project evaluation (interpreting results);
Audit possible solutions to be applied; pre- and post-testing.
Technical support;

Coaching

Help the client decide what work measurement methodology to use (pros and cons ways to overcome cons and to benefit from pros);
Help the client decide what type of work sampling to use (consultant, self-reported logs pros and cons ways to overcome cons and to benefit from pros).

Training

Corporate work sampling and productivity training;
Personal work sampling and productivity training;
Complete work sampling training (merge between first two);
Customized training based on client needs.

Before a firm commits to working with a trainer they have to be comfortable with his/her style and experience. It is also important that the consultant has demonstrated leadership in the field. There are many fine consultants and teachers out there from all over the world, bluntly why pick us?

I’d like to start off with an introduction in case you are not one of the 17,000 business professionals that I’ve already trained or haven’t read any of my nine management text books. For the last 30 years we’ve worked in a wide variety of industries as a management consultant and trainer.

Decide on using these courses because you want results. The thread that weaves through the wide range of organizations, for which we have consulted or provided customized training, is results. In addition to consultation, over 3000 organizations from 21 countries have enjoyed the intensive nature of public training in 500+ sessions. US sponsors for public sessions are leading universities including the University of Wisconsin, University of Alabama and others. Over 98% of the attendees have rated the course very good to excellent.

Some of the organizations for which we’ve consulted, surveyed or provided training include: Abbotts Labs, BP, Citgo, SAP, Pepsi, Prince George Pulp and paper, Saturn (GM), Philadelphia International Airport, US Army Corps of Engineers, Esso Canada, New Foundland Hydro, Iron Ore of Canada, Imetal, Univ. of Alabama, GE, Volvo, US National Security Agency, USX, Jefferson University Hospital, Clark Elkhorn Coal, Cooper Industries, NJ Transit, Philip Morris, Sony, CSX Railroad, Harley Davidson Motorcycle, US Navy, Washington D.C. Metro Area Transit, H.B. Zachry…

There are many good reasons to conduct one of these management seminars in-house:

100% of the course will pertain to your industry and your situation.
The presentation can be adapted to your maintenance language and forms to be easily usable.
Special issues can be discussed on a confidential basis with the instructor.
Can be scheduled to be convenient to your business cycle.
Can save money over sending people outside for training.
Can be used as a team building experience.
People come out of the class with a shared a common language and vision for improved productivity.

Work Sampling Courses can be presented in different lengths

Mini-Course, 4 hours: Work Sampling can be highlighted in a 4 hour session. The mini-course is excellent as part of a longer meeting or when training a large number of people (two sessions a day).

Seminar, 2 days: Two days is the optimum length for these programs for project leaders. Two days allows the students to absorb the material and practice the skills and come back on the second day with questions.

Three training options

We offer three ways to structure in-house training for Work Sampling. The most basic way is to just talk on the phone (or use E-mail) and then present a standard course. The courses are tried and tested and have been used to good effect in many situations.

* The second and most common option involves a one day site visit before the class, which allows us to add examples from your facility and adjust the verbal presentation to more nearly suit your needs, meet some of the key players and see for myself some of the special problems you face.* (we recommend)

The third option is to conduct a full short work sampling study which looks at all of the aspects of business, evaluates areas where improvements are possible and a slanting of the training to the competencies needed to implement the improvements uncovered in the survey.