The Hindu Business Line : Towards meaningful self-development

EVERY employee in a modern organisation aspires for a reasonable standard of security for himself and his family, while simultaneously working towards meaningful self-development professionally.

Obviously, the key to the success of this natural desire lies in the opportunities made available to him to maximise his potential and develop new skills. Many managements simply do not have the time to ponder over such issues, particularly because most of it is spent fire-fighting for survival and growth.

Self-development is an issue that cannot be neglected. Right from acquiring basic computer skills to handling complex customer complaints, most employees who have grown through the ranks need re-training. .

This task calls for a one-on-one communication with employees to drive home the need for change. For instance, trade unions have to be treated as business partners. Every supervisor has to change the manner in which he communicates with his employees.

Quality, delivery, morale, safety and productivity are vital issues for implementing ambitious quality systems, such as Total Quality Management (TQM).

It is imperative that the management tries to match the natural talents of employees with tasks that demand specific skills. For example, it is wise to appoint supervisors who have a talent for teaching to conduct the awareness sessions on TQM. Of course, they could take advice from experts in the Quality Control and Quality Assurance departments.

Those with a statistics background could be trained in problem-solving, and those with an eye for detail, could be used in projects that involve innovation in processes or even new product development.

Hence, the key to successful self-development is to identify the new and important tasks, and apply the talents of employees to implement them. It is inevitable that there will be employee turnover when self-development acquires some meaning; for, the smartest will use the acquired knowledge to cross over to greener pastures. However, this is a risk worth taking, in both the short and the long term.

Self-development has to move away from the hit and miss methods and follow a systematic procedure that there is an alignment of individual and organisational goals .

In other words, what is needed is a paradigm shift. HR departments and professionals have a big role to play here, and make self-development more meaningful.

A. B. Sivakumar

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