This presentation describes the results of an exploratory study investigating the work that newly graduated and hired "freshout" engineers perform in the workplace. The study investigates:
* The tasks that freshouts perform successfully and unsuccessfully on the job.
* The consequences of nonperformance.
* The root causes of nonperformance.
This study was funded by the National Science foundation.
Portions of this material are based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1037808.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Understanding the Pakistan Budgeting Process: Basics and Key Insights
What’s Happening to Our Freshout Engineers?
1.
2. What’s Happening to Our
“Freshout” Engineers?
https://sites.googboisestate.edu/faculty/sv
illachica.htmle.com/a/boisestate.edu/ieeci/
e2r2p
2
Steven W. Villachica
Anthony W. Marker
Donald Plumlee
Amy Chegash
Project Worldwide Out
of the Box
3. Engineering Education
Research to Practice (E2R2P)
Portions of this material are
based upon work supported by
the National Science Foundation
under Grant No. 1037808.
Any opinions, findings, and
conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are
those of the author(s) and do
not necessarily reflect the views
of the National Science
Foundation.
The Research Team
Don Plumlee, PhD.
Steve Villachica, PhD.
Tony Marker , PhD.
Linda Huglin, PhD.
Drew Borreson
Shannon Rist
Amy Chegash
Lorece Stanton
Jessica Scheufler
3
Business Plan
• Ray Svenson
4. Agenda
Share our exploratory research
Ask for your help interpreting the data we’ve
collected
Dialog, not an information dump
Wrap up
4
5. Why Should You Care?
Engineers create a lot of the stuff we use.
Universities can’t mint them fast enough.
64% engineering employers are “somewhat
satisfied” with quality of new hires.
(Spinks, 2006; Trevelyan & Tilli, 2008; Trevelyan, 2010; Blom
& Sakei, 2011)
Professional skills for the engineering
workplace include teamwork, communication,
coordination, data analysis and problem
solving.
(Hoey & Gardner, 1999; Jonassen et al., 2006; Grant &
Dickson, 2006; Korte, Sheppard, & Jordan, 2008; Trevelyan,
2007, 2008; Anderson et al., 2011; Passow, 2012; ASEE &
NSF, 2013)
5
6. Research Design
What sort of
engineers do
engineering
firms REALLY
want to hire?
Boundary Crossing Competencies
Communication, teamwork, networks, critical thinking, global understanding,
perspective, organizational culture, project management, etc.
Many Disciplines Many Systems
Deepatleastonediscipline
Deepatleastonesystem
(c.f. Brown, 2005; Spohrer, 2010;
ASEE & NSF, 2013)
6
ME
7. Research Design
Decrease Ramp-up Time to Competent Job
Performance in the Engineering Workplace
Research Questions
• What are newly graduated and hired “fresh out” engineers doing/not
doing in the workplace that they should?
• What are the consequences of performance/non-performance in the
workplace?
• What are the root causes of workplace nonperformance?
Mixed Design: Focus Groups & Surveys
• Engineering managers, engineering leads, HR personnel, and technical
scientists who work with fresh out engineers
• Fresh out engineers
• Professional engineering organizations
7
8. Actual
Competency
New Task/Project
Leave University/Enter Workforce
Literature Review
8
Desired
Competency
Promotion!
Performance
Time
Company Costs
$ Training
$ Errors
$ Mentoring
$ Salary
$ Opportunity
$ Other projects
$ Others?
{REDUCE
CO$T
• Improve Starting Skills
• Change Performance Curve
• Make Boundaries Porous }
9. Literature Review
There is a significant disconnect between
engineering education and engineering practice.
(Bucciarelli & Kuhn, 1997; NAE, 2005; Jonassen et al., 2006;
Spinks et al., 2006; Korte et al., 2008; Trevelyan, 2008, 2010;
McCrohon & Gibson, 2009; Sheppard et al., 2009; Morgan &
O’Gorman, 2010; Anderson et al., 2009, 2010; Duderstadt,
2010; Stump et al., 2011; ASEE & NSF, 2013; Winters et al.,
2013)
9
10. Literature Review
The time for freshout engineers to fit into their
jobs and perform them competently is a
significant workplace cost.
2 to 5 years ramp-up.
(Trevelyan & Tilli, 2008; Jonassen et al., 2006)
Socialization and onboarding are long-lived.
(Dai & De Meuse, 2007; Bradt & Vonnegut, 2009; Roethle,
2012; Jones, 2013)
The engineering workplace supports
socialization and onboarding variably well.
(Montesano, 2007; Roethle , 2012; Korte & Lin, 2013)
Bad onboarding is co$tly.
(Ramlall, 2004; Rollag et al., 2005; Snell, 2006; Kowtha,
2008; Lindo, 2010; Roethle, 2012; Korte & Lin, 2013)
10
11. Literature Review
Academics, industry, and government agencies
own this shared problem, and it requires a
systemic solution. Unfortunately, we know little
about
Engineering practice for freshout engineers.
(Kowtha, 2008; Trevelyan, 2007, 2008; Brunhaver et al.,
2010, in press; Winters et al., 2013)
What freshout engineers do successfully and
unsuccessfully in the workplace.
(Trevelyan & Tilli, 2008; Trevelyan ,2008, 2009)
Barriers to desired workplace performance.
(Korte et al., 2008; Atman et al., 2010; Brunhaver et al.,
2010, in press; Anderson et al., 2010)
E2R2P is an opportunity to collaborate systemically to decrease
ramp-up time to competent performance.
11
12. Thanks to Our Professional
and Industry Sponsors!
Practicing
engineers at ISPE
BSU COEN
Advisory Council
Focus Groups at
local engineering
firms
12
13. Method
Practicing Engineer Survey
Short survey measuring:
Types of work assigned to
freshouts.
Typical time to competence
Costs and risks that
organizations incur when
freshouts can’t perform to
standards
Typical project organization
for groups of engineers
Organizational support for
freshouts ISPE (2012), n = 23
13
14. Time to Competency for
"Fresh-Outs" (in months)
2 3 4 4
10
Six to Nine Ten to Twelve Thirteen to
Sixteen
Seventeen to
Twenty-Four
More than
Twenty-Four
14
17. Method
Focus Groups
Collect Incidents
Generate Categories
Negotiate Categories
Group Incidents
under Categories
Select Incidents of
Non-performance
Group Incidents
Under a Root CauseRank Categories
17
Critical Incident Technique
(Flanagan, 1954)
NominalGroupTechnique
(Delpetal.,1975)
Cause Analysis
19. Focus Group Results
Performance Categories
Category Unsuccessful Successful
Communication 9 8
Technical
Fundamentals 3 11
Business
Systems
5 7
Design 5 6
Motivation 6 5
Problem Solving 6 5
Initiative 2 8
Positive Attitude 3 4
Work Ethic 2 5
Circuit Debug 3 3
Freshout-Defined Categories
n = 10
Competency Unsuccessful Successful
Design 14 18
Communication 18 10
Analysis 10 14
Motivation 8 10
Technical
Fundamentals
3 12
Problem Solving 7 6
Software 3 10
Business
Systems
5 7
Initiative 2 8
Leadership 4 5
Process
Knowledge
4 3
Positive Attitude 3 4
Manager-Defined Categories
n = 20
19
20. Focus Group Results
Consequences
Successful Performance
Consequences
# of Events
Met Schedule 19
Freed up Senior Staff 18
Saved Resources 18
Improved Processes 15
Developed New Tool 14
Developed Skill / Knowledge 12
Saved Time 12
Gained Client Confidence 10
Gained Employer Confidence 10
Stayed Within Budget 7
Increased Productivity 6
Unsuccessful Performance
Consequences
# of Events
Lost Time 34
Rework 22
Additional Staff Support 17
Missed Deadline 12
Increased Costs 10
Wasted Budget 8
Lost Employer Confidence 5
Stressed Staff 5
Job Unfinished 4
Lost Client Confidence 4
Exceeded Budget 3
20
Aggregated Freshout and
Management Events
21. Categories, Activities and
Consequences
Top-Ranked Categories Source Activity Consequence
1. Communication /
Teamwork
Freshout “The first time I had to write up an
engineering report--I struggled doing it. I
never had to submit something to IDQ
before, and I wasn’t confident”
“It just took me a lot of my personal time
and a senior had to review it and it wasn’t
good.”
2. Skill Develop-
ment / Learning
Freshout “I observed a lot of nuclear test procedures
and started evolutions on board and naval
vessels so after you learned we went out to
the vessels and basically were like buddy
buddy with a qualified test engineer to learn
the procedures and observe what was going
on…”
“I think I was pretty successful. You had to
regurgitate what you learned. You had a
qualification check off sheet and so you’d have
to go back with that test engineer and
regurgitate what you saw and how you thought
the procedure went then he would sign off
your sheet and you’d go on to the next.”
3. Work Ethic Manager “We had a junior engineer. I think he had
only been here a couple of weeks. Got him
onto a team for ongoing projects and gave
him minimal amount of direction…”
“…He immediately started contributing more
than I think any of us envisioned…within a
few days he was coordinating with several
other staff inside and outside our company.”
4. Business Systems
/ Processes
Freshout “I didn’t consider that activity [resolving
drawing issues] successful because I was
not aware or did not have enough
knowledge about manufacturing processes
in general to really be effective and resolve
those issues in a short time span. It took
me a lot longer than it could have...”
“As a result it there were a lot of late
deliveries to those revisions and caused us to
do multiple rework and multiple parts…”
21
22. Categories, Activities and
Consequences (con’t)
22
Top-Ranked Categories Source Activity Consequence
5. Problem Solving Manager “There was an issue that was found on the
floor and it was in the CAB. The CAB group
lead came to this person [the new engineer]
and asked him to go figure out what the
problem was.”
“That person went out there, they figured it
out, they investigated it…found out that it
was in fact a design error, and they went and
took care of it…ended up fixing the design
error correctly…It allowed production to keep
going and we had minimal down time”
6. Analysis Freshout “The engineer that was doing it [analysis] had
a lot going on. Field work and stuff so [he]…
passed it off to me. “
The biggest impact was probably time and
cost for doing it slower than he was or
would’ve and … a couple hours of
coaching…So there was a learning curve to
it..”
7. Technical
Fundamentals
Manager “…basically he [the new engineer] didn’t know
how to use the software and didn’t have the
general, multiple CAD system-type training.
“He was focused all on one CAD software when
he was in school and so although he could
model in 3-D, he couldn't psych out how this
software thought and how it behaved and that
it was different than what he had done
before…”
8. Design Manager “I had a young engineer who was tasked with
developing a draw bar for semi trailers.”
“He [the new engineer] was able to, in about a
four-month period, generate a single CAD
model that could then be driven through a
family table to automatically generate new
designs and drawings. He took a typically 8
hour to 12-hour project down to 30 minutes.
The impact was huge.”
23. Categories, Activities and
Consequences (con’t)
23
Top-Ranked Categories Source Activity Consequence
9. Software Freshout “We had switched over to this other software
and for 9 months I don’t think we produced
any usable products. “
“.Literally everything we did in the software for
six months was never used. It was never
useable. Had to be trashed. It was an
extremely frustrating part of my career. “
11. Leadership [When I joined the design team] “I was
immediately put in charge of an entire CAB
design for one of our contracts. Essentially
what that entails is facilitating the whole design
process.”
“I don’t feel like I was ill prepared to do that.”
24. Root Cause Analysis
Instrumentation
• Data
• Expectations
• Feedback
• Standard Operating
Procedures
• Resources
• Software
• Tools
• Support
• Incentives
• Rewards
• Consequences
• Knowledge
• Skills
• Physical Capacity
• Mental Capacity
• Flexibility
• Resilience
• Motives
• Affect
• Work Habits
• Drive
ENVIRONMENTPERSON
INFORMATION TOOLS MOTIVATION
24
27. Limitations
Validity and reliability of the Practicing
Engineer Survey is unknown.
Small exploratory study using a convenience
sample of local engineering firms.
No post-focus group data checking with
participants and their company sponsors
(managers).
27
28. Conclusions
Decreasing time to engineering workplace
competency is a shared problem.
Freshout engineers are variably prepared to
enter the workplace.
The engineering workplace supports freshout
performance variably well.
Socialization and onboarding involves a lot of
self-reported learning.
We don’t know about the extent to which
fixing the workplace environment and
introducing it to students sooner would
decrease ramp-up time.
28
29. Next Steps
Seek funding to expand research.
– Include other engineering populations.
– Regional, national, or international sample.
– Scale up and automate processes.
Investigate research questions about:
– Blurring traditional academic and industry
boundaries.
– The extent to which a smarter workplace
environment introduced in academics could
decrease ramp-up time.
Create a collaborative venue to decrease
ramp-up time.
29
30. Summary
Research questions and importance
Literature review
Method
Results
Limitations
Conclusions
30
What are your lessons
learned?
How might you apply
them back on the job?
31. References
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34
Editor's Notes
In 2012, the U.S. graduated 62K engineers from its colleges and universitiesPaid them $62K annually. Industry slang calls these newly graduated and hired engineers “freshouts.”Took them 6 months to 5 years to come up to speed.How decrease rampup time for these freshouts?If you’re an engineer trying to answer a question like this, youSpecify the problemDetermine its root causesTake corrective actionIf you’re a performance improvement person, youConduct an environmental scan, gap analysis, and organizational analysis.Conduct a cause analysisSelect, design, develop solutionsThank you for your interest in our efforts to apply performance improvement to engineer better engineers!
Amy, Tony, and I welcome you to this sessionYou can download slides here, SlideShare, and on the conference app.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has funded this exploratory work.This is the project team.
Spinks conducted interviews and administered a survey. He found that employers in the UK ware “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with their ability to recruit appropriately skilled engineering graduates from UK universities.2Hoey and Gardner surveyed North Carolina State alumni and their employers. Alums rated their university preparation for the workplace lower than their employers. Better at technical skills than others.Jonassen and colleagues found that the problems that appear in engineering texts have little to do with those that engineers tackle in the workplace.Grant and Dickson worked instigated the preparation of chemical engineers in the UK. Of 26 skills required for the workplace, graduates rated their preparation for 24 as insufficient.Korte, Sheppard and colleagues were part of a big NSF study looking at engineering practice in universities and in the workplace. In this study, they looked at the socialization of freshout engineers, noting that freshouts spent a lot of time coming up to speed on engineering processes in the workplace that differed from those in school. Workplace involved greater complexity, ambiguity, and subjectivity.Trevelyan and colleagues have been investigating novice engineers and their workplace readiness in Australia and Asia. In one study, they investigated a cohort of almost 200 graduating engineers as they made their way into the workplace. Based on interviews, they identified 10 major competencies and 85 corresponding practices. Of them, freshouts spent 60% of time coordinating.ABET is the accrediting body for engineering colleges. Passow looked at the ABET accreditation criteria that graduates found most useful in the workplace. They rated teaming, data analysis, problem solving, and communications between Quite and extremely important.
In a UK study, Spinks compared undergraduate education requirements to the needs of the engineering industry. Many graduate engineers are likely to find themselves in roles which do not necessarily involve hands-on specialist engineering.Korte and colleagues found a lot more ambiguity in real-world engineering. What new engineers perceived and learned about engineering work depended their interactions with coworkers in their work groups. Morgan and Gorman reported that engineering firms are hiring for a broader skill set. They note it’s hard to pack business acumen, managerial know-how, communication skills and team-working ability into an already packed curriculum. Anderson and colleagues investigated misalignment between engineering education and professional practice. Report that curricula in high school and college give students an incomplete picture of engineering work and what engineers do and often do not develop the full skill set needed to successfully execute increasingly complex, interdisciplinary, and international projects in the engineering workplace. Effective engineers value communication, problem-solving, teamwork, ethics, life-long learning, and business skills. Many of them note that their undergraduate education did not always prepare them well in these areasDuderstadt: “we are attempting to educate 21st-century engineers with a 2Oth-century curriculum taught in 19th-century institutions.Winters and colleagues looked from freshman past graduation. Over time, communication skills generally increased in importance while teamwork skills decreased.
LONG LIVEDIn the past, it was onboarding. A day or a week of boring and often useless stuff. Few useful gems buried in minutiae. That’s changing as organizations want improve recruitment, streamline time to competence, and retain expensive new assets.Dai & De Meuse contend onboarding is about Performance Proficiency, people/relationships, politics, language/communication, organizational vision and values, history/traditions/customs.Bradt & Vonnegut have a book on this topic.Roethle completed a thesis using a meta-analysis to investigate effective onboarding in small engineering companies and then created an onboarding process guideline.Jones describes virtual onboarding.SUPPORTMontesano reported that one-third of employers are not providing formal orientation programs.Korte & Lim claim onboarding, orientation, and socialization are synonymous. It’s about newbies fitting into organizational and organizations adjusting to the newbies. Onboarding is learning about and integrating into the social networks that make up the workplace. Driven by quality of relationships with managers and co-workers.