Are We Training the Wrong Layer of the Workforce?

It’s time for apparel factories to redefine capacity building and reskilling strategies, focusing on the right layer for real impact.

Across factories and forums, the call is constant: capacity building, upskilling, reskilling. Most of the focus falls on workers and supervisors. The logic seems right—strengthen the frontline, and performance will improve. -> But here’s the uncomfortable truth: The real problem may not lie with the frontline at all. It lies with the decision-makers—those who define which systems evolve, which concepts are adopted, and how training is shaped. Too often, they rely on whatever the market offers today, rather than engineering what the industry truly needs for competitiveness.

Decision-makers frequently overlook the fundamentals:

1. What builds long-term capability versus what only patches today’s issues.
2. What actually works in a system’s context versus what only looks good on paper.
3. What is truly a people issue versus what is a system issue.
4. How systemic evolution drives workforce adaptability, not the other way around.

Today’s workforce adaptability is only effective after methods, systems, flows, support, and visibility have evolved.Adaptability works when it is clear what needs to adapt and where flexibility must be directed. Without that foundation, adaptability becomes another buzzword.

This raises a critical question: who will train the innovative engineering teams, the dynamic support staff, and factory management in evolving entire manufacturing structures? If this layer is ignored, we fall back into legacy patterns and all funded or internal programs remain stuck in outdated practices, unable to support the industry’s future. When these fundamentals are misunderstood, the critical step of building before adapting is missed. Workers end up trained to cope with flawed systems instead of thriving within resilient, well-designed ones.

Training becomes firefighting whereas energy spent managing symptoms instead of curing root causes. True competitiveness comes when leaders shift their awareness, aligning training with evolved systems, and ensuring workers are equipped to grow within the right pathways from the start.

As our founder Dr. Charles Dagher said: we need system-level transformation to close the six systemic gaps where systems meet people, and resilience begins where systems and people connect. The factories that will lead tomorrow are those that invest not only in skills, but in the architecture of capability where systems, leadership, and people evolve together.