ILMA Compoundings – October 2019 - 26

The Art of
Apprenticeships

A look at how the lubricants industry can
make the most of early-career programs
By Keith Loria

A

ttracting the right talent for your
workforce can be a challenge, but
with several avenues to explore,
young workers are becoming more
accessible and more attainable. In the
resurgent manufacturing landscape,
there's no better time to cultivate
careers by utilizing available resources
and by connecting with educators.
"It's not a widely used solution
across the manufacturing sector," said
Gardner A. Carrick, vice president
of strategic initiatives for the Manufacturing Institute at the National
Association of Manufacturers (NAM).
That lack of use by manufacturers
was one of the reasons behind the creation of Apprenticeship.gov, which was
launched approximately a year ago. It is
a resource that lubricant manufacturers
can utilize to fill their workforces.
"It was partially done to make Registered Apprenticeship more accessible
to more industries and partly to tee
up a new model of apprenticeship in
the works called Industry Recognized
Apprenticeship (IRAP)," Carrick said.
"It's a program President [Donald] Trump
proposed two years ago and they've been
in the process of creating regulations for."
Many industries believe the official
Registered Apprenticeship system had
been too bureaucratic or undesirable,

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OCTOBER 2019

| COMPOUNDINGS | ILMA.ORG

but with the power put in the hands
of associations like NAM to promote
and recognize apprenticeships semi-officially, those industries now have the
opportunity to drive the new model.
"The co-educational aspect of
learning in school and simultaneously
learning on the job is a fantastic
model and one we should do more of
in the United States and we should do
more of in manufacturing," Carrick
said. "How you get there is what we're
trying to figure out right now."
The good news is that in the past
four to five years, Carrick has noticed
an uptick in interest across manufacturing companies in apprenticeship
models. And though some companies
aren't doing it yet, they are reaching out
to NAM to talk about what's available.
"There is a history in this country of
apprenticeships or training your own,"
he said. "Some of the biggest companies ever all had multiyear training
programs for employees, and they may
not have called them apprenticeships,
but that's what they were. But we got
away from that and now that we are in
a growth stage in manufacturing, we
need to return to a greater investment
by companies in training."
That's where these official - and
the more common unofficial -
apprenticeships come into play.

'Unofficial' Apprenticeships

Many companies in the lubricants
industry have some sort of take on
the apprenticeship program, whether
they call the jobs involved internships,
apprenticeships or something else.
For example, Schaeffer Manufacturing Co., headquartered in St. Louis,
utilizes college interns during summer
and winter breaks for various projects.
"We feel that is a tremendously beneficial program," said James P. Carroll,
executive vice president of operations at
Schaeffer. "It not only challenges the student, but it reinvigorates longer-serving
employees to revisit fundamentals and
http://www.Apprenticeship.gov http://www.ILMA.ORG
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