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May 10th, 2008
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Reinventing the work force

Disa Industries is the latest trade company to try out new recruiting method

By Curtis M. Wong
For The Prague Post
February 27th, 2008 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
Executive Vice President Lars Christensen and Jana Bělochová hope Disa's new education program will help recruit new employees.
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What if a company paid you to go to school and then virtually guaranteed you would land a job on its front line once you graduated? Would you jump at such an opportunity? Disa Industries, a Danish metalworks company with a branch office just outside of Prague, hopes so.
In an effort to buffer its work force and help renew interest in vocational training nationwide, Disa is turning to a new hiring strategy, which essentially gives trainees hands-on experience in just three months. Modeled after similar programs successfully launched in recent years by a number of companies around Europe and the Czech Republic, Disa has partnered with Střední odborné učiliště, a vocational school in Dubno, and is set to kick off its own intensive training course March 3.
“We realized that there aren’t enough free employees [who are able to work with machinery] on the market,” says Jana Bělochová, human resources manager for Disa. “Companies care for good employees. ... We tried various ways of attracting people, and the success rate wasn’t as expected. But we have big hopes for the future success of this unique project.”
Participants will take individual courses in, among other things, reading blueprints and how to properly and safely use measuring instruments and workshop machinery. One of the biggest draws of the program, Bělochová says, is that these workers-in-training will be treated as Disa employees and therefore will be entitled to a monthly wage of up to 75 percent of a full-time salary. And, if the trainees successfully complete the program and pass a final test, they will be hired as full-time employees immediately.
“It seemed to be a way of educating [people without prior experience in the field], as well as re-training those with prior experience,” notes Lars Christensen, the executive vice president of the company. “If it’s successful, we plan to do it every three to four months.”
After advertising the program in local newspapers and on the Internet, Disa received more than 20 applicants in just two weeks. So far, 10 interviews have been conducted and six people have registered for the program, ranging in age from 25 to 55 and representing an entire spectrum of professional backgrounds, including a former butcher and a car mechanic, Bělochová says.
The waning interest in learning trades has been getting a lot of attention here in recent months as industrial companies scurry to find more attractive ways to fill vacant positions. Programs like the one being sponsored by Disa are strongly supported by the Education Ministry, which acknowledges there has been a steady decline of interest in these types of professional courses.
“It’s been an issue ... for a while,” says ministry spokesperson Tereza Br?Ýchová, who attributes the drop in vocational school attendance in part to the lack of prestige associated with these types of jobs by the general public.
Br?Ýchová says there are other companies around the country, including, for example, the construction giant Skanska, that have tried luring workers with enticing offers and training programs.
“They need those specialists,” Br?Ýchová says. And “we support such initiatives.”
Disa officials began fleshing out the concept for the program in late 2007, basing it on similar models in the United Kingdom and Denmark. They then approached the vocational school in Dubno at the beginning of the year. Officials say that the original intention was simply to create re-training programs for existing employees. But, after touring the school’s campus, Disa decided the program could also be used as a method for finding new employees. Once the program’s specifics were set, the deal was made.
Trainees will first complete a series of on-campus courses, conducted by the vocational school’s teachers, before enrolling in additional hands-on training at the Disa headquarters. Officials say that they hope to keep the classes small, with a maximum of eight students.
“This is going to be a method of lifelong learning, really,” says Jiří Bartáček, deputy principal at the Dubno vocational school. “Participants will pick up many lifelong skills. It’s also important for them to know that [the demands] of the labor market are changing all the time, and that they will have access to retraining several times throughout their careers. And the company will get skilled workers.”
Disa officials say the program was devised after a series of unsuccessful recruitment attempts. They feel that it is beneficial both to the company and the trainee. Disa is able to offer workers a chance to hone their skills effectively, and the opportunity to work for one of the area’s best-known companies.
Although the program is new for Disa, the company is actually following in the footsteps of other similar courses established by other companies to great success. For instance, Rigips a.s., a British drywall construction and plastering firm, opted to cooperate with local vocational schools to train new recruits in lieu of founding its own training center. According to Petr Šmejcký, the company’s former managing director who helmed the project, the program had strong results and benefited the vocational schools as well as the parent company.
“The idea was fundamentally based on the fact that it wasn’t possible to [gain a significant] number of trained and educated [workers] by means of our own in-house capacity,” he says. “We decided rather to cooperate with a select group of area vocational schools. … We increased the number of people trained in our systems, developed a preference for our brand and increased sales as a result.”
— Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Curtis M. Wong can be reached at specialsection@praguepost.com


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[07:02 13/03/2008] : I am B.A., B.Ed, 3+1/2 year diploma in computer engg.
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