Beyond Manitoba
Pragmatic partnerships between employers, non-profits and educators can make demand-driven work-based learning a lot faster and more effective.
Shane Sutherland is a Director of PebblePad, an engaging personal learning tool used in a wide variety of institutions and workplaces. PebblePad is the tool of choice for the initiative that he describes.
New Flyer: Production Workers Skills Passport
Overview of Project
New Flyer applied principles of Recognizing Prior Learning (RPL) to develop and implement a passport that identifies the competencies for a production worker and assesses and recognizes the required core and technical skills.
Overview of Project
New Flyer applied principles of Recognizing Prior Learning (RPL) to develop and implement a passport that identifies the competencies for a production worker and assesses and recognizes the required core and technical skills.
Needs/Opportunities
The New Flyer Joint Training Committee was looking to develop a transparent, competency-based process to assess whether laid off workers had the skills necessary to be recalled by seniority and assume positions where they could perform competently and safely. This process needed to be consistent with practices for internal progression and job rotation.
Applying RPL
The project applied the principles and tools of RPL to:
- Identify the core and technical skills required to do production work.
- Develop a demonstration-based skills assessment.
- Initiate focused training based on core competencies.
- Create a passport form that documents the workers skills and competencies.
Impact
The project provided several benefits including:
- Supporting supervisors in keeping current on the available skills.
- Enabling employees to monitor their learning and develop their own learning plans.
- Identifying training needs on individual, departmental and organizational levels
- Increasing the flexibility and adaptability of workers in embracing new work opportunities.
- Improving the employability of workers by providing individuals with a record of their learning, skills and competencies.
Lessons Learned
The Skills Passport project:
- Identified the need to document core or Essential Skills as well as specific technical skills required for production work.
- Reinforced the importance of having a practical, demonstration-based assessment process.
- Documented the core competencies and skills that were transferable amongst the various installation areas of the assembly line.
- Provided a template for documenting prior learning assessment for use by the individual, supervisor and organization.