Building trust via adventure sports

HYDERABAD: The code-cracking geek, often labelled a nerd, is now on his way to metamorphosing into a social butterfly complete with team-building and leadership skills. The idea is to evolve a techie into an leader. As a result, training programmes to develop these functional skills are undergoing a sea change.

The defining features of the new-age training bouquet include adventure sports like rock climbing, rafting, paragliding, trekking and kayaking. And, most of these companies hire outside agencies to execute them. “We focus on experiential learning where all our training activities will be linked to outdoor sports.

This is the best way to build team spirit,” said G Hariprasad, director of FutureBound Mind Empower, which conducts six programmes a month and charges Rs 1,50,000 for a day’s session and has clients like Infosys and Wipro.

According to him, the aim of these programmes is not to gauge how well one can play these activities but to find out how well one can adapt to the situation. “Outdoor activities are one way of building trust. This is one way of making them believe that nothing is impossible. It also serves as stress buster,” he said.

Old training practices of improving communication skills and adaptability tests are almost passe. New industry, as per estimates, is pegged at Rs 100 crore, growing at 30%. Big firms spend about 5-7% of their turnover on training and development, while small one spend 1-2% of their turnover on training.

Today’s training programmes are aimed at making employees functionally literate. “The management and leadership development process is flexible and continuous, linking an individual’s development to the goals of the job and the organisation,” said Bharat Vakharia, CEO of Mumbai-based Knowledge Centres.

According to him, corporates are now focusing on system-oriented training programmes. “Initially all programmes were people-oriented and with today’ attrition rates, no company wants to encourage dependency on people,” he pointed out.

Training sessions are also increasingly becoming part of the brand building exercise. “An employee of a company is the brand ambassador of that firm and all his activities should reflect this spirit of the organisation he represents,” said Mr Hariprasad. This has led to emergence of etiquette training, culture management sessions and even a few steps of salsa.

Vouching for this new trend, Hyderabad-based SumTotal Systems is building an employee base equipped to handle any kind of business situation. The company believes that training employees is an investment that will pay off later.

“Competition is becoming intense and we want our employees to be globally competitive. Training programmes will help them broaden their perspectives and build confidence. We are looking at good team members and not individual excellence,” said SumTotal director (HR) Lekha Sishta.

The company mainly conducts programmes on inter-personal skills, conflict management and leadership abilities. In line with this new initiative, Satyam Computer Services has developed special training programmes clubbing soft skills and management development skills.

“We conduct 60 hours of training for each employee in a year in the areas of Managing Self, Managing team and managing customers,” said Satyam Learning Centre vice-president Rajul Asthana. While Satyam designs the programmes internally, it has tie-ups with external agencies to execute it.