• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Port Info

• Ships in Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• Business Line
• The Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Raja Simhan T.E.
Anjana Chandramouly

Prepare for an overseas assignment... with the right life skills.

Ganesh Ramachandran, a software engineer working with a large information technology firm in Chennai, was assigned a two-year onsite job in France. However, before his scheduled trip, he was taken to a French restaurant in the city for dinner. No, this was not a farewell dinner from friends, but part of a company-sponsored training programme.

Ganesh was trained to read a menu card, order the right food — for example, decide what would go well with white wine or red wine — and to use a knife and fork the right way.

That was not all! He was taught how to dress for specific occasions, how to talk with clients and given a few lessons in dancing as well.

And Ganesh was not the only one trained in these life skills... his wife too was part of the programme conducted by the Chennai-based Winspire Pvt Ltd.

Padmavathi Srinivasan, Chief Executive Officer of Winspire, says every corporate organisation acknowledges the importance of life-skills training. Her company provides practical lessons, "the kind of skills they seldom teach at schools or college," says Padmavathi.

Globalisation demands familiarity with global culture. "Winspire provides customised training for companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Sutherland Technology, Hexaware Technologies, Cognizant Technology Solutions and World Bank's Chennai unit. We train people in life skills, foreign languages, business communication and cultural adaptability for global mobility," she says.

As a trainer, she finds most participants quite strong in the core areas, but lacking in communication skills. The reason, according to Aruna Viswanathan, Manager (Alliance and Strategies), is that many come from small towns and are unfamiliar with foreign culture and fine English-speaking skills. Moreover, they find it hard to adjust to local conditions during overseas assignments. "We refine their life skills before they board the flight," she says.

The company also provides training solutions to BPO (business process outsourcing), ITeS (IT-enabled services) and manufacturing sectors. Forty per cent of the training is classroom-oriented and the rest is on the job. This ranges from taking customer calls to drafting e-mails and is usually spread over three months, she says.

Apart from job skills, the company teaches specialised life skills such as wardrobe management — what to wear for different occasions; socialising — how to get conversation going formally or informally; dance — formal and informal; western music appreciation and so on.

Methods like role-playing are used to make the training sessions more effective. "Role playing in a restaurant-like situation gives trainees more confidence when they actually visit a restaurant in foreign countries," says one of the trainers. There is special focus on body language, especially maintaining eye contact during conversation.

The training programme includes sensitisation to verbal usages in different countries... for example, people in the US say `oh' instead of `zero'.

Aruna says Winspire has trained about 3,000 people. Not only companies, even their clients overseas insist that employees are formally trained in life skills before taking up an assignment.

"At the end of the day, employees are the company's brand ambassadors," says Padmavathi.

Pack these in...

Stories in this Section
Making abortions safe

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line