COMING SOON: ROUTINE RETRAINING 

During the industrial age, 15 percent of earned income was a result of formal training. About 85 percent resulted from on-the-job experience. In the communications age, formal on-the-job training must increase, as the flow of new knowledge is currently increasing at the rate of 100 percent every 18 months. More than 50 percent of all monies spent on education in North America is spent outside the public education system. Teachers have lost half their market and most of them aren't even aware of what's happened! Can any industry survive when half the potential clients wander away?

Many progressive new age companies are formally training and retraining staff at a rate approaching one-eighth of a day a week. Such companies as Apple Computers, Weyerhaeuser Corp., IBM and MusicTV realize that by the end of this decade they will be obliged to retrain staff a full day a week! Or they won't survive.

A Saskatchewan company appears to be leading the world in formal retraining. They are training their production staff of about 100 employees one full day a week already! They term it "the fifth shift". They operate 24 hours a day and throughout weekends. Normally four shifts could handle that. Three shifts for the 24-hour day and another shift for weekends. The fifth shift is constantly in training. Every five weeks one of the normal four shifts move into the fifth shift ... the learning shift, a daytime operation for (what used to be known as) a normal working week.

The company is Weyerhaeuser Canada. The plant is their paper mill -- the largest fine paper mill in Canada -- in Prince Albert. It makes half a mile of paper a minute. Weyerhaeuser has learned the advantage of being on top of their new world. There are additional costs, certainly. But they, among this whole conservative industry, know the advantages of having production staff trained not only in their current jobs but also for the next two positions they are likely to hold upon promotion. Why aren't these workers worried? They are looking forward to the future because they want those $50,000-a-year production line jobs that senior co-workers are now holding.

Are the top workers worried? No. They realize that as Weyerhaeuser expands and takes over failing "old-world" companies, "with-it" employees will get the new supervisory jobs at older plants. It doesn't stop there. Another ongoing training program for 800 employees is called PS2, which stands for "Problem-Solving, People Skills". Still another entitled "Quality in Action" teaches staff to understand how their jobs depend on how they treat their customers -- all along the line.

Companies that fail continually to retrain employees will come to understand, too late, that not only have the rules changed but also the game itself. Old knowledge that worked in old plants is today obsolete. The known is ancient history.

Today those who know they are going to survive and thrive want to learn the unknown. That's the best security anyone can have.

General information: Joe G. Ralko, Public Affairs Manager, Weyerhaeuser Canada Ltd., 1301 Central Ave., Prince Albert, Saskatchewan S6V 6J9.

Phone: 306/922-3822. Fax: 306/922-3009.

Specific training: Anne Middleton, Fifth Shift Training Co-ordinator, P.O. Box 3001, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, S6V 5T5.

Phone: 306/953-1737. Fax: 306/953-1737.

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