Simple communication problems during strategic discussions or presentations can land a company or its managers in a soup. Now, corporate India is taking the help of therapy to avoid such problems.

Companies are seeking the help of speech experts in the areas of foreign or regional accent modification, presentation skills, organisation of thought process, listening skills, public speaking, voice improvement, conversation etiquette, telephone skills, and cross-cultural communication.

Brajesh, a 23-year-old bright electronics engineer at a top company, was found to have a serious communication problem despite having above average domain expertise. The company sent him to a corrective course with experts.

Private equity-backed Bengal Speech & Hearing Pvt Ltd, a company formed by speech language pathologists, diagnosed Brajesh’s ‘language age’ as one of a 16-year-old. He had a high-pitched voice and difficulty in abstract verbal communication, negotiation and persuasion skills. After a 9-month therapeutic course, his voice quality, articulation and linguistics skills improved to match his organisation’s professional team.

Bengal Speech has now set up a centre in Kolkata through its B2B branded service SpeechPlus to cater to the needs of corporates.

The company plans to start centres in other cities too, Somenath Mukherjee, Director, told BusinessLine .

“We had been receiving requests from companies to conduct such diagnostic and training sessions at their places of work. However, shortage of experts held us back from taking up such assignments. The metro centres, to be established in the next three years at a cost of ₹3 crore, would take the specialists closer to the corporate workplaces,” he said.

Each of these centres will be able to train 30 individuals at a time. Bengal Speech has customised a once-a-week course lasting for three to nine months involving techniques for right phonation, fluency, intonation, variance of pitch and voice including aeromechanical components of respirations. The team of trainers includes psychologists and speech language pathologists.

“There would be provisions for tailor-made therapies, which may include recommendation for a minor surgery,” Mukherjee said. However, these centres would be separate from the company’s chain of clinics.

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