Training must for business houses
Significance of employee training brought out during a CII seminar

By Shubhdarshani Mitra
Does corporate India take the issue of employee training seriously? The answer is definitely in the affirmative. At a recent seminar on ‘Training and Retraining’ organised by the CII, the top HR managers shared their company’s vision on training so as to build a better manpower resource.

The event saw participation from HR members cutting across industries, with companies like IBM, Maruti, GSK, Philips sharing their experiences with the audience. Speaking on the occasion, SY Siddiqui, vice president, HR, Maruti Udyog Ltd, highlighted how crucial training is for a business house. Siddiqui raised a significant topic regarding the management of younger generation.

“Leaders, or the so called managers at the top, would like to manage them with the same kind of expectation with which they were managed 20 years back. But the problem is that the young generation, which we are going to manage now, is quite different from when what we were when we started our careers. The gap or the disconnect is perhaps a big challenge that we are going to face,” he said.

He said that the need for training is a kind of a business-need-based intervention. It has to be proactive in terms of looking at the business environment and it has to be innovative. Here the kind of wonder that e-learning has brought with it is amazing. Siddiqui said when Maruti was undergoing a rough time the strong instrument that was used at that time to revive the company was extensive training. The company trained people, starting from the bottom of the organisation, where there were a lot of outbound programmes for the employees so that they could come out of their shells. Maruti spends Rs 20 crore annually on training. Today Maruti carries a whole series of training, which has been running since 2003. And the impact has been tremendous.

Efficient managers are required, however, to take the training initiative to the next level.

Some of the challenges that managers face were highlighted in the event:

• Developing the expertise and credibility required to perform independently.
• Letting go of hands on work; seeing one’s role more as a coach.
• Motivating managers within a broad span of control; tackling performance issues.
• Being comfortable with what you don’t know; relying on other functions.

• Lead a team to achieve business results.
• Motivate direct reports and create a high performance culture.
• Deal with the pressures of a changing internal context.

Siddiqui emphasised on the importance of training when it comes to working with multinational companies. “We have multinationals coming in to India and on the face of it, it looks very nice. But there are a lot of issues; one is the culture difference of the business houses. In a Korean company if you sit in a very-very confident posture with your legs crossed in front of a senior person, it will be taken as an insult of the senior. In Japan, if you change your plan at the last moment, they will get the shock of their lives. In Japan, despite the young generation changing, people are still sticking to one company. That’s how perhaps training can be used in terms of multi-culture companies,” he said.

The event concluded with participants consenting that corporates now see training as an investment with consistent returns in the long run.