Learning Strategies to Adopt from Local Companies in Malaysia

Hi,

Apart from our usual business of matching and interviewing trainers each day, my brokers and myself have duties to also attend interesting seminars that can add value to many other customers in the training industry in Malaysia.  Here are a list of interesting trainers and HR Heads whom we wish to share with you. We met them during a Trainer meet Trainers Conference 2 weeks ago organized by SMR Group.

Do read when you are free to learn and impart into your own learning culture.


1.        SMR Group’s Master Trainer – Ms. Karen Ong
- Karen believes that sharing knowledge can be adopted through movies.  In her presentation slides to us, she emphasized that movies can become a retention tool that can increase visual and verbal participation.  A common fact proven on statistics states that 90% of information that comes to the brain is visual. Another fact shows that visual aids in the classroom improve learning by up to 400%.

-Movie clips can be used as New Employee Induction Training, Complement Corporate Training Modules, Bringing Presentations to life, Inspire New Ideas.
-Example of movies that are good to use during a training is ‘Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island
-Before showing of the movie clips to your participants, the trainer has to Prepare, Preview, Provide Instructions, Post view discussions, Charting and Application



2.       Café Coffee Day, GM of L&D – Ms. Urvashi Malhotra
- Urvashi’s role in her company was to consistently feed knowledge to her 50 internal trainers and think of ways and means of adopting a good learning environment.  Think of this question in your head while you are going through her examples and I hope you can come up with your own innovative technology. What would be the technology that my company will need to adopt to have a continuous driven force of learning?

- The type of technologies that Urvashi have ventured with are: Wooger  – this software is used for learners who have internal trainers allocated to cafes ( she uses training content on Linux, PDF, Videos and Powerpoint, One Click Dashboards, and Social Network), Goto Training by Elucido  - this software is used for learners who are scattered within their retail cafes (Interactive group learning and sharing files with ideas), Inkflow by Digital Tables – this software is used for learners whom were having language barrier and up to the level of high school education ( stimulating, engaging and interactive),  Simulations Indigene by Knowlscape – this software is targetted for higher level learners ( various scenarios explored, decision trees, errors can be made only in the virtual world)

- I know you are dying to know how much was her total cost of deploying so many tools, well I was inquisite as well and had a 10 minutes interview with her.  After understanding her aim and her vision for Café Coffee, she finally told me the cost for all of these technologies was nothing below 200 Lach = RM2Million.
     

3.       Gamuda Berhad, Director, Group HR and Admin – Mr. Lai Tak Ming

- Lai is a brilliant learning executor whom I admired the most.  His innovative ways of adopting learning had me thinking on many areas of development.  Here are Lai’s great tools of how he develops his people continuously.

a.       Their unique practice is ‘ on the job training, social relationships and formal learning’.
60% - On the Job (Job rotations, stretch assignments, temporary replacements, increase decision making authority and people accountability)
30% - Social Relationships ( Mentoring system and culture, Interaction with peers formal and informal feedback, coaching by line managers, social portal)
10% - Formal Learning ( Systems learning: self management, staff management, situation management, strategic management).

Gamuda had emphasized the greater focus was on coaching, exposure and feedback which made out of 30% of their learning practice.

a.1- On the Job Training
-  Practical Trainings for recruits for a period of 5 weeks or more sent to top notch external bodies                
- 3-6 months of temporary assignments either job rotations or to enlarge their work scope. Gamuda join ventures with many partners to send their valuable employees for a contract period of 2 years or more. These employees are sent to consulting companies with an agreed signed contract that the respective employees are returned back without ‘getting pinched’.
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 a.2 – Social Relationships
- A very strong mentoring culture is developed within Gamuda.  All managers are to become coaches. 
-Senior management needs to have a proper downline whom shadows work that means in order for a person to get promoted, they have to groom their left and right habnd man (Gamuda defines this as Job Shadowing)
-An online portal is built within to enable continuous highlights of informal forums and learning.
-Employees retention techniques are also through a Career Path Progression feedback coming directly from the employees themselves.  Example line managers who wants to move up the ladder needs to fill up certain forms 6 months in advance and submit to HR. Hence after a post assessment will take up to 3-6 months to evaluate that employees justification on career progression.


4. Bob Pike, International Trainer, Author, Coach. Speaker

Bob’s only statement was: When Performance is the Question, Training may not always be the Answer!

Do you really need training? If unsure, or even you are saying yes, do remember these steps from Bob.

Step 1:          Identify the Problem that your requestor is having (the deficiency)
                       What improvements have they done which was not working
                       What is the future Planning needed to address this problem not to happen
Step 2:          Who needs this training?
                       Your entire organization. Divisions. Departments. Individuals ?
Step 3:          How can I determine the corrective strategies and if training is really needed.
                        Systems and Processors  – Placements – Coaching – Recruiting – Training

I loved Bob’s enthusiasm and deep level of thinking, so I hope you can google him to learn more.  www.bobpikegroup.com         

Until my next posting. 
 (ps - this article is merely written to educate and share knowledge to all of our current customers whom have purchased our matchmaking services and a few of them whom are considering until to date)