How to train welders in-house

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It is impossible to start off any article on welder training without stating what everyone already knows. First and foremost, there's a shortage of welders in the U.S. and there doesn't seem to be a surefire fix for this any time soon. As the situation exists today, the older welders in the workforce are reaching retirement age at a faster rate than younger workers can replace them. According to industry estimates, the U.S. will see a shortage of 400,000 welders by 2024.

While this problem persists nationally, you can help combat this in your shop by providing the training that your welders need in-house. The following strategies can help you navigate the challenge of providing in-house training successfully.

Questions That Need To Be Answered

The first question you should ask yourself is, "What does my company need?" This sounds like a simple question, but it can have many layers and might not be answered with a simple response. The answer, of course, is welders—you need welders, and you needed them yesterday.

The job classification of "welder" has dozens of different layers and echelons. This is due mainly to the welding process, quality requirements of the work being performed, and the skill set required to perform the work.

Take the analogy of purchasing an automobile. What kind of car do you need? A fast car? Cool car? Expensive car? Minivan? What is your price range, and how much are you willing to spend?

Working from this example, a welder in a waste management company repairing dumpsters with the gas metal arc welding (GMAW) process requires a completely different skill set than a welder making gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) repairs on nuclear applications or super duplex stainless steel welds for subsea applications. The welder repairing dumpsters can be trained in a couple of weeks, whereas the welder working on X-ray-quality nuclear components is going to need a number of years to gain the proficiency to meet the quality requirements of the work.

So, let's circle back to the original question of "What does my company need?" To answer this requires you to work your way through the following check list:

1. What type of work are you doing? What type of welders do you need? Do you need dumpster repair welders? Do you need welders capable of making nuclear-quality welds on nickel alloys? Are you looking for welders to make structural welds with flux-cored arc welding (FCAW)? The code requirements of the components that you are welding are going to dictate the type of welders that you need as well as the requisite skill sets of those welders.
2. What do the welders need to know? Make a list of skills or base knowledge that is required to meet the quality requirements of the work being done. Does the welder need to be able to do little things like blueprint reading and tape measure math, or do they need to be an X-ray-quality welder? If you are going to be training welders, have a very clear definition of what you are looking for as an output so you can put together a plan.
3. Who is putting together the plan to train the welders? This might be a different person than who is going to train the welders. The trainer might not have the time or the education to put together the training plan. The actual trainer is the person who will be delivering the content to the welders and trainees.
4. How are you going to train your welders? Are you going to conduct welder training using existing company assets and resources? Or are you going to need outside resources to complete the welder training?
5. Who is going to do the training? Finding the right person to conduct the training is a crucial element of any welder training program. The best welder doesn’t necessarily equate to being the best trainer. A lot of people think that they are going to be great trainers because they are great welders and have a lot of knowledge on the subject. In addition to knowledge, a good candidate should be confident, personable, a great communicator, a great connector, and patient.

Once these five questions have been answered, you are ready to put together a plan and move forward with it.

On-Site Training Tips: Pace’s Case Study

One such example of my experiences with welding training was a situation where I was an outside consultant for a company in the Midwest (in Iowa, specifically). At this point in time, I was mid-career and had a general idea of how to do welder training. A friend of mine whom I had worked with years ago called me and told me that the company needed outside expertise in regard to welder training.

During the planning phase, the company management team and I had a couple of meetings where we were able to define their training needs and expected outcomes and create an overall plan with expectations and deliverables. The meeting culminated in three items the scope of my work would include: Training the trainer (which meant I was going to train the current lead man), providing GTAW training for three welders, and conducting fundamental shielded metal arc welding (SMAW) and GMAW training for the maintenance crew.

Your shop needs to identify the type of work it is doing, the kind of welders it is looking for, what the welders should know, who is putting together the training plan, how the welders will be trained, and who is going to do the training. Monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Getty Images Plus

The company employed four welders who were all great with GMAW. One of the four welders, the in-house GTAW specialist, was going to be the trainer going forward. The other three were going to receive four hours of one-on-one classroom training and another four or five hours of basic GTAW instruction on carbon steel and aluminum.

Company management felt it was important that I include a classroom component on GTAW because three of the welders had not attended a trade school or a vocational technical school after high school. All three of the welders were proficient in GMAW and had years of “hood time,” but they all were new to the GTAW process.

With the scope of training and deliverables agreed upon and the expectations laid out by the client, I worked on putting together a GTAW training program to cover the course content that I was going to deliver to the welders.

Building A Course. From the trainer side of the equation, I needed to build my GTAW course for the specific client’s need. To do this, I started with public domain training materials. I was in the U.S. Navy back in the day, and I knew the Army and Navy had rock-solid welder training materials. I also used some material from community colleges to build the course.

As an instructor, I know my strengths and weaknesses, and I tend to lecture using PowerPoint slides as guides to deliver content that also includes anecdotes and stories.

Building Relationships. One of the most important elements for a successful training experience is building relationships with the people that you're training. Building relationships and a rapport is straight out of education and training 101. I say this because if you're the instructor and you don't have relationships with your students, it's going to be a lost cause from the minute you walk into the classroom.

From the moment that I met the welding lead man, I set the tone of our relationship so that he knew without a doubt that I was there as a resource to help him be successful. Point blank, I was there to help him succeed.

Even though the training that I provided the welding lead man was in essence the same as the content that I delivered to the other three welders, I needed to provide him some insight into training welders.

I provided him with a four-hour presentation on welding safety and the ins and outs of GTAW. Even though he was well versed in GTAW, he didn't necessarily know all of the ins and outs of the process, so we went over technical content such as the different types of tungsten, shielding gases, the difference between direct current electrode positive and direct current electrode negative, and high-frequency current in GTAW. In addition to the technical welding content, I also covered the basics of instructing/training. I also showed him how to create PowerPoint presentations, just in case he needed to put something together in the future.

I finished up the rest of the week training the other three welders, and then I trained the maintenance welders the following week.

The planning phase of in-house training can aid in defining the training needs and expected outcomes, resulting in an overall plan with expectations and deliverables. SolStock/E+/Getty Images

Finding the Appropriate Tone and Communicating Openly. Everything went smoothly. However, I made the mistake of not letting upper management in on the methods to my training madness. I took a step back and had to explain to the VP that when training grown men and women—and especially welders—word choice matters. I told her that I didn't want to be seen as a threat. If I had come as a fire-breathing know-it-all, they would have shut down and become resistant to anything I tried to teach them.

Instead, I used words like review, brush up, and previous material in hopes that they saw me as a resource that they could use to gain more knowledge.

On the third day of training, someone from senior management approached me and questioned why I focused solely on reviewing rather than introducing new material. I was caught off guard because I hadn't explained my training approach. In my opinion, it’s important not to appear as a know-it-all when dealing with a shop and with welders.

Instead of being boastful or forceful, I prefer to introduce myself, share my knowledge, and suggest covering some material. By using these words, I create a more comfortable learning environment and prevent myself from being perceived as a threat or an arrogant, know-it-all type of individual.

I acknowledged that they probably already knew this material but emphasized that they may learn new information as well. In reality, though, I understood that the majority of the material covered was new to these individuals. However, my approach is very intentional to prevent them from feeling insecure or undermined. This approach allowed the welders to feel at ease and respond more positively to the content.

These individuals are mature and take pride in their skills. They don't require an outsider to assess their knowledge levels. By employing this approach, I received a much better response from them.

After two weeks of training, the client had three more welders who could perform GTAW for its specific product line.