Financial Times

A new breed of professionals

By Thushara Matthias

While bricks, computers and stocks are important assets, people are the building blocks of organizations and a company's most valuable asset. They are responsible for the quality of work, customer care and the final outcome of any service.

Today's changing business environment means that, more than ever before, organisations need people who are motivated, flexible and trained. Increasingly companies are asking for trainers to train their employees. These training programmes need to be effective. While training is not the answer to every organizational problem, it has been proven to boost morale, increase productivity and efficiency and impart new skills to the trainees.

Until recent years, there were few trainers. Today training has become an industry in itself.

"Today, young people qualify at a very young age. They gain academic qualifications but lack professional training. Therefore, there is a need for people to get themselves trained," said Dhammika Kalapuge, a Consultant Trainer.

In today's fast moving world can anyone spare time for training? In reality, training is an investment.

Organizations are endeavouring to become more flexible, and more customer responsive and cut down on staff thereby increasing the workload of employees. As a result, training in today's world has become an essential need.

Each of us, whether we are doctors, teachers, journalists or even housewives, have customers. We all end up either being customers or serving customers. The patients are a doctor's customers. Each customer has a "life time value", said Kalapuge. At some point of our service if we are rude to the customer we lose the customer and have to bear the loss of the lifetime value of that customer. That is the cost of not "training".

Is training the same as teaching? Mansoor Ghouse, one of the pioneers in the industry, defines training as the development of skills. He clearly differentiated training and teaching. Teaching is the imparting of knowledge.

When talking of training, we are talking of adults and not children. Adults hate to be evaluated. They learn better by doing things. They need the training to be work related and what they learn should be easily adapted in their day-to-day work. Ghouse pointed out that when training adults, the essential feature is that they must want to learn and must have a need to learn rather than employers picking them and shoving them into a training session.

How it all started

The people training industry in Sri Lanka started very small. Ghouse started off as a part-time trainer while working for Cargills in the early 1960s, conducting training sessions in the weekends and weekday evenings. He said he was drawn to this line when a team of experts from the University of Stanford in the US conducted a seminar here. As time went on he realised that being a trainer was his vocation. So he made a bold decision to become a full-time trainer. Today he is known as a Management Consultant, trainer and coach.

Asked for his philosophy in life he said, "It is to become what you are fully capable of becoming". Today he calls himself a "modern trainer" and he sees that he makes training "fun" for participants.

Ghouse is world famous for his seminar on time management. It is his trademark seminar, he says. The seminar widely known as the TIMEX seminar is designed to increase productivity. Making use of games and cross word puzzles he makes the participants take an active part in the seminar while grasping the essence of it.

If any business enterprise wants to be distinct, sustainable, differentiate from others then the only way to achieve it is by providing a personalised service, said Kalapuge.

Kalapuge left his successful marketing career to venture on his own in the world of training. Upto now he has conducted training sessions for nearly 50 leading private and public institutions. Kalapuge at present is conducting a series of training sessions for the Presidential Secretariat staff. The objective of this programme is to enhance the service standards.

Handshake: bone crushing or wimpy?

As one's career progresses, professional etiquette too needs to be developed. Many professionals are not aware of the fact that a wimpy handshake could ruin a career forever. Why is etiquette important? It differentiates a person from the rest, honours commitment to quality of work and enables a person to be confident.

Business etiquette is not all about handshakes. It goes further than that - from wardrobe savvy, personal hygiene and body language to maintaining professionalism in everything one does.

Dila Hettiaratchy is one of the business etiquette trainers in today's corporate world. Until October 2001 she was the Airlanka In-flight (Cabin Crew) Safety and Training manager. In June 2002 she started off as a trainer by conducting training sessions on Business Etiquette for the corporate sector. She is a qualified speech instructress and taught speech and drama for many years before joining Airlanka.

What made her get into training business etiquette? She said being a frequent traveller and seeing many Sri Lankans make a lot of social faux pas made her seriously think about the need to train people on etiquette.

Her challenge has been to tailor the training programmes to suit the needs of the client. In a month she does around five or six training programmes which are usually publicised by word of mouth.

Hettiaratchy stressed that caring for the other person's need is the core of business etiquette. If one were conscious of the needs of another then there would be fewer misunderstandings, less embarrassments and less trouble. At her sessions she even talks of body odour, bad breath and many other small things, which we tend to ignore.

Trainers need to update their knowledge to keep up with world trends and give the best service to their clients.

Kalapuge spends at least two hours a day reading. Travelling and participating in other seminars are other ways that he keeps up. Ghouse attends 'train the trainers' seminars in USA as frequently as he can. He too loves reading.

Hettiaratchy says the Internet and books are some of her sources. She also learns a lot by conducting training sessions. When it comes to conducting sessions on cultural differences related to work environments for companies which have businesses abroad, she says she learns a lot from what the clients have to tell.

Missed the bus?

Unfortunately in Sri Lanka today many concentrate on just gaining paper qualifications while personality development gets little or no attention.

Hettiaratchy said parents think it is the school's responsibility to teach their kids manners, good behaviour, and social etiquette while the schools tend to pass the responsibility on to the parents. Finally it is the children who suffer as they have missed the bus somewhere down the line.

Today, little by little many education institutions are focussing on personality development of students while fulfilling their educational needs. They are turning to trainers asking them to conduct sessions for their students. Kalapuge conducts lectures at school level too.

Sri Lankans are very receptive to training, said Kalapuge. Hettiaratchy too has noted the interest of participants in training sessions. She said at the beginning they have the feeling they should mind their Ps and Qs but as the session goes on they talk more freely. Kalapuge said building self confidence is a must when it comes to training Sri Lankans. Many lack it.

Not everyone can become a successful trainer. Designing a course to fit the requirements of the client, giving and receiving feedback, conducting the sessions with confidence and consistency, making them active, dealing with conflict and finally evaluating training effectiveness are the basic qualities of a good trainer. But what makes a trainer a number one trainer?

Kalapuge believes that working in a commercial environment is the best way to start as one gains a lot of exposure. He believes that the trainer is entrusted with a big responsibility.

The trainer has to give value for money. He should not forget the fact that people sacrifice their most valuable resource - time - to participate in training programmes.

Most importantly the trainer must love his job. Ghouse said, "Believe in your mission to develop people and make it your business to become the most effective in that function." Kalapuge's philosophy is "for being born into this world as a human being we are supposed to show our gratitude someway or the other. The only way we can do so is by serving one another."

The tremendous scope for training is indicated by the way more and more people are getting into it. Kalapuge says there is much satisfaction, feed back is immediate and it is one of the best ways to meet people and build contacts.

Training is an investment. It has to be planned. One-off training is not enough. Changing people needs a lot of effort and repetition, said Kalapuge. The problem is that there are no quick fixes when it comes to making fundamental changes in the way in which we handle human resources management. It takes years to reap the benefits of investing in people although most companies think of fast tracking benefits.

Making a profit is the bottom line for all businesses. It is time that organisations realised that good people management really does result in increased profitability.