Effective communication is the most vital component in today's corporate world. Purnima Goswami Sharma tells you about the art of getting your message across effectively

Effective communication is one that includes clarity in expression and exchange of ideas and emotions. It is an art to get your message across successfully. To get a message across clearly means that the thoughts and ideas are communicated clearly and there is no miscommunication between the sender and  the receiver.
 
It's an office

According to Shilpi Kapoor, Founder, BarrierBreak Technologies, "At your workplace, it is important to keep in mind that it's an office! You are in office to 'play a certain role' and the communication objectives are very clear to ensure that you are able to do justice to that role. While being formal with superiors happens more by design than choice, it always helps to keep a formal tone at the workplace with your juniors too. This is a huge psychological booster as the minute you transcend to an informal space, you cannot ask authoritatively for accountability on results."

Plain in advance

Remember that when in office, the communication has to be strictly professional. So, you must have proper documents of all the points to be covered  while communicating with other employees. Best communication starts with good  planning. Include everything that you want to communicate, as missing out on even  a single important point might create a problem.

Keep it simple

"In such a scenario, where everyone is connected with everyone else, how you communicate and get your point across has the potential to make or break your career," says Ranjeet Deshpande, divisional manager (West), Indian Institute of Job Training.

"People squander away a great point by over explaining it. Think carefully what you need to say. Avoid using ambiguous words and jargons. Also, be transparent - people respect those who speak honestly without any hidden agenda," adds Deshpande. Consistency is the key; you are entitled to change your  opinion but do it too often, and others will only dismiss your views.

Don't just talk, listen

The ability to listen carefully to what someone else is saying is a vital communication skill to have. "Listen to each other. If you constantly talk and rarely listen, you have failed," states Roopali Sundar, head, talent management,  Avaya India.

Avoid being personal

Adopt a problem-solving mindset, rather than a negative confrontational one. When negative language is used, it puts the receiver on the defence right from the start, focus on the issue is lost and it becomes personal. Instead of "you",  phrase it as "we" have a problem. "Put a positive spin on the message you wish  to convey. No one likes to be told that they are wrong. However, if genuine and  heartfelt appreciation is shown, it makes the criticism more palatable. It's not  personal; at the end of the day, business is about diversity of opinions and  your opinions will not find acceptance always," adds Deshpande.

Choose your medium carefully

Plan and choose the most effective communication channel like e-mail, notice board, team meeting, teleconference and so on. According to Kapoor, "Communication is verbal (words), visual (body language) and vocal (tone). While  researchers may have affixed percentages to each of these aspects to explain  effective communication, the fact remains that each of us has to find our own  mix. For instance, a certain employee may have a strong personality and excellent body language, but use fewer words to communicate. Others may rely completely on verbal communication and feel that they are better on the phone or  e-mail than in person. We all need to play on our strengths at the workplace."

"Personal discussion is the foundation of communications. Once this foundation is established, it enables all the other forms of communication. All conflicts ideally should be resolved only in person; never on phone or email," adds Kapoor.

Without the ability to communicate effectively, you cannot accurately convey messages, let others know what you think or feel, build partnerships, motivate others or resolve conflict. Thus, it is paramount to get your message across with utmost clarity.

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=MIRRORNEW&BaseHref=MMIR/2012/03/05&PageLabel=28&EntityId=Ar02801&ViewMode=HTML

Effective communication is the most vital component in today’s corporate world. Purnima Goswami Sharma tells you about the art of getting your message across effectively 

Effective  communication is one that includes clarity in expression and exchange of ideas  and emotions. It is an art to get your message across successfully. To get a  message across clearly means that the thoughts and ideas are communicated  clearly and there is no miscommunication between the sender and the receiver.

IT’S AN OFFICE
According to Shilpi Kapoor, Founder, BarrierBreak  Technologies, “At your workplace, it is important to keep in mind that it’s an  office! You are in office to ‘play a certain role’ and the communication  objectives are very clear to ensure that you are able to do
justice to that  role. While being formal with superiors happens more by design than choice, it  always helps to keep a formal tone at the workplace with your juniors too. This  is a huge psychological booster as the minute you transcend to an informal space,  you cannot ask authoritatively for accountability on results.”

PLAN IN  ADVANCE
Remember that when in office, the communication has to be  strictly professional. So, you must have proper documents of all the points to  be covered while communicating with other employees. Best communication starts  with good planning. Include everything that you want to communicate, as missing  out on even a single important point might create a problem.

KEEP IT SIMPLE
“In such a scenario, where everyone is connected with everyone else, how  you communicate and get your point across has the potential to make or break  your career,” says Ranjeet Deshpande, divisional manager (West), Indian  Institute of Job Training.
“People squander away a great point by over  explaining it. Think carefully what you need to say. Avoid using ambiguous words  and jargons. Also, be transparent – people respect those who speak honestly  without any hidden agenda,” adds Deshpande. Consistency is the key; you are  entitled to change your opinion but do it too often, and others will only  dismiss your views.

DON’T JUST TALK, LISTEN
The ability to listen  carefully to what someone else is  saying is a vital communication skill to have. “Listen to each other. If you  constantly talk and rarely listen, you have failed,” states Roopali Sundar,  head, talent management, Avaya India.

AVOID BEING PERSONAL
Adopt  a problem-solving mindset, rather than a negative confrontational one. When  negative language is used, it puts the receiver on the defence right from the  start, focus on the issue is lost and it becomes personal. Instead of "you",  phrase it as "we" have a problem. “Put a positive spin on the message you wish  to convey. No one likes to be told that they are wrong. However, if genuine and  heartfelt appreciation is shown, it makes the criticism more palatable. It’s not  personal; at the end of the day, business is about diversity of opinions and  your opinions will not find acceptance always,” adds Deshpande.

CHOOSE YOUR MEDIUM CAREFULLY
Plan and choose the most effective communication channel like e-mail, notice board, team meeting, teleconference and so on. According to Kapoor, “Communication is verbal (words), visual (body language) and vocal (tone). While researchers may have affixed percentages to each of these aspects to explain effective communication, the fact remains  that each of us has to find our own mix. For instance, a certain employee may  have a strong personality and excellent body language, but
use fewer words to  communicate. Others may rely completely on verbal communication and feel that  they are better on the phone or e-mail than in person. We all need to play on  our strengths at the workplace.”
   
“Personal discussion is the foundation  of communications. Once this foundation is established, it enables all the other  forms of communication. All conflicts ideally should be resolved only in  person; never on phone or email,” adds Kapoor.
Without the ability to communicate effectively, you cannot accurately convey messages, let others know what you think or feel, build partnerships, motivate others or resolve conflict. Thus, it  is paramount to get your message across with utmost clarity.

http://www.rediff.com/getahead/slide-show/slide-show-1-career-dont-miss-this-organisation-helps-tribals-find-jobs/20120216.htm 

What causes unemployment in our country?

The primary reason why graduates in India are unemployable is because they lack the skills that make them job-ready.

Let me give you an example. I once met a carpenter who was looking for an assistant at his shop. When I asked him what his requirement for the position was, he said, "Find me a person who is able to hammer a nail into a given piece of wood in the first attempt. And I will teach him the rest."

Simple as it sounded, the carpenter's example emphasises the fact that job providers are looking for candidates who have the skills that the position requires. They are not looking at how much you scored in Class 10 and 12.

While academic scores may be important to secure admission to a college of your choice, job skills are different from academic proficiency.

When the candidate lacks the skills expected of him by the job provider, it leads to unemployment.

What challenges did you face while dealing with the unemployed in rural areas?

Rural areas have limited access to information. In states like Gujarat, people are content with the income they make out of farming.

Some of them who are Class 10 or 12 dropouts are not keen to travel to the city to work. Accomodation is a major concern for them. Besides, the jobs we are offering them are from private firms, which don't excite them much.

People from rural areas believe that public sector jobs are far more secure and better than private sector jobs. Even though some of them consider the offers, a good number of them later complain to us that they have to spend 50 percent of their incomes on accommodation, so they are not able to save much.

Some of them quit after three to six months, which brings up the unemployment rate. So after training them we also have to help them find jobs that are closer to home.

What inspired you to join Teamlease and work with unemployed youth?

I have been closely working with job seekers and providers for a long time now.

While studying the reports on employment and the reasons behind unemployment in our country, I realised that the 'unemployability' of an individual is the root cause of the situation and hence it was important to address unemployability in order to tackle unemployment.

If you look at India, alone, there are only two bodies that look after the employment needs of the country -- the National Human Resource Development Council and the district employment centres.

Although the government introduces new schemes every year for the benefit of the people, seldom do they reach those who need them.

The state of government-run employment exchanges are also dismal, given the fact that they are not able to match the rising demand of employment with unskilled resources.

The only way we could tackle unemployment was by training the unemployed to be job ready and by offering them the advantage of opting for private sector jobs.

How did you convince the government to allow a private staffing firm to use public employment exchanges to offer jobs in the private sector?

It took us several months of meetings and negotiations to convince the authorities that we wanted to partner with the government and make use of their schemes to help improve the rate of employment in the country.

Also, the fact that we were offering private jobs worked to our disadvantage. Eventually, when they learnt that we were using the employment exchanges as a ground to improve education, impart training and boost employment in the country, they agreed to give us an opportunity.


Image: Neeti Sharma, vice-president, TeamLease 

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/empowered-india-sharad-talwar-gautam-sen-gupta-finance-accounts/1/171656.html 
Ashok Reddy , Managing Director, IIJT & Co-Founder, TeamLease Services, Bangalore

"Our vision statement was to put India to work"

A graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi, and IIM-Bangalore, Ashok Reddy started his career as an investment banker and later co-founded India Life Hewitt (currently Hewitt Outsourcing Asia), which was India's first HR BPO firm and went on to be Asia's largest. But he wanted to explore more in the field of vocational training and staffing solutions

http://forbesindia.com/article/reimagining-india/manish-sabharwal-get-people-off-farms/32074/1 
India needs to reform employment, education and employability if it wants to shed the tag of poverty

HAPPY AT WORK A call centre employee at a village in West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh. Rural India needs a national network of community colleges off ering two-year associate degrees because they are part ITI, part college and part employment exchange

The possible alibis for Indian poverty make a long list: Corruption, weather, infrastructure, subsidies, goofy politicians, greedy private sector, sleepy bureaucrats, myopic entrepreneurs, Mughals, British and much else. But an interesting usual omission is agriculture.

 I submit that the biggest source of our poverty is 58 percent of our population working on farms that produce 15 percent of our GDP. Our agricultural productivity is dismal—75 million Indians produced 110 million tonnes of milk while 100,000 Americans produced 70 million tonnes of milk—and condemns people to poverty. India will not put poverty in the museum it belongs to till we get farm employment down to 15 percent of our labour force.

Over the next 20 years, effectiveness in four labour market transitions—rural to urban, unorganised to organised, subsistence self-employment to decent wage employment and farm to non-farm— could save 163 million Indians from poverty. But instead of accelerating these four transitions, policymaking in the last few years has been focussing on ‘rights’—education, work, food, service, healthcare, and much else. This ‘Diet Coke’ approach to poverty reduction—the sweetness without the calories—was always dangerous because of unknown side effects. 

But now our fiscal deficit, food inflation and rupee devaluation remind us that policy entrepreneurship, like all entrepreneurship, is not exempt from the rule that big ideas without execution are ineffective, inefficient and sometimes dangerous. 

Outlays don’t lead to outcomes because poetry is useless without plumbing. Getting people off farms means fixing our weak 3E regime: Employment, education and employability. 

India’s failing farm to non-farm transition is the child of a fragmented human capital regulatory regime (state vs. Centre, 19 ministries vs. 2 human capital ministries), the dead-end view of vocational training (the lack of vertical mobility between certificates, diplomas and degrees), a broken apprenticeship regime (we only have 2.5 lakh apprentices relative to 6 million and 10 million in Germany and Japan), lack of higher education footprint (60 percent of our districts have lower enrolment than the national average), no model of effective PPPs (public private partnerships) in human capital (using government money for private delivery in education and skills), dysfunctional employment exchanges (1,200 of them gave 3 lakh jobs to the 4 crore people registered last year) and labour laws that encourage the sub-scale enterprises and the substitution of labour by capital.

Reforming the employment regime is the most obvious, but most controversial. Few disagree about the shame in four employment statistics being exactly where they were in 1991: 92 percent informal employment, 12 percent manufacturing employment, 50 percent self-employment and 58 percent agricultural employment. Economists don’t fully understand how jobs are created or why they cluster where they do. But the broad contours of fertile soil for job creation are obvious: A flexible labour market, skilled employees, robust infrastructure and predictable legislation. 

A flexible labour market is important: Most economists agree that our labour law regime is poisonous— particularly for manufacturing. Labour-intensive industries probably account for only 13 percent of gross value add in organised manufacturing. Ninety percent of Indian textile employment is in firms with less than 10 employees while 90 percent of Chinese textile employers have more than 50 employees. India’s labour laws—our employment contracts are marriage without divorce—need a radical rethink if we want more formal, more competitive, more productive and larger employers.

The employability and education reform agenda is facing an idea surplus, but execution deficit. Employment Exchanges need to become public private partnership career centres that offer counselling, assessment, training, apprenticeships and job matching. The Apprenticeship Act of 1961 must be amended to view an apprenticeship as a classroom rather than a job and shift the regulatory world from push (employers under the threat of jail) to pull (make them volunteers). 

The National Vocational Educational Qualification Framework must be agreed by the states and the ministries of Labour and HRD as the unifying open architecture tool for recognition of prior learning and vertical mobility between school leavers, certificates, diplomas and degrees. 

Delivery systems are in the hands of states and every state must create a skill mission or vocational training corporation tasked with building capacity and quality. States should also create asset banks to make existing government real estate available for skill delivery. All schools must teach English because English is like Windows; an operating system that creates geographic mobility and improves employment outcomes by 300 percent.  Finally, we must create skill vouchers that will allow financially disadvantaged students to get trained wherever they want at government expense. Such vouchers would shift the system to funding students. Institutions should be funded by money carved out of the MNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) budget. The regulatory cholesterol around national distance education (mail order, e-learning and satellite) must be reviewed to offer flexible options for workers already in the workforce and the geographically disadvantaged. 

We must create a national network of community colleges offering two-year associate degrees. These community colleges are what rural India needs because they are part ITI, part college, part employment exchange. Our current education regulators have tried to control quality by controlling quantity and we have ended up with neither. The biggest challenge in replacing institutions like the Medical Council of India, the All India Council for Technical Education and the University Grants Commission is not in renaming them, but architecting the new regulator so it does not become the old regulator.

In 1900, 41 percent of Americans worked on farms. Today there are less than 2 percent. China has moved 400 million people into non-farm jobs since Mao died and his madness died with him. India must make a new appointment for her tryst with destiny because she missed her last appointment; there are 300 million Indians who will never read the newspaper that they deliver, sit in the car they clean or send their child to the school they help build. Democracy is a fake alibi for India’s poverty and our labour markets’ ‘missing middle’. Getting people off farms gets India to 5 percent poverty 20 years faster than the status quo. All we need to do is fix our 3Es.  

India must make a new appointment for her tryst with destiny because she missed her last appointment

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/hunar-hai-to-kadar-hai/876469/0
Sunil Jain finds out that’s the tagline of NSDC’s to-be launched ad campaign to glorify vocational skilling, a must if NSDC is to meet its target of skilling 55 million in a decade

Why are 2 lakh MBA seats in the country not finding any takers? Ditto for an equal, if not larger number of seats in engineering colleges across India. That, in a nutshell, is the logic behind the hunar hai to kadar hai (you will be respected if you have a skill) tagline of the R40-50 crore ad blitz the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) has got ready to glorify the idea of vocational skilling, NSDC chief Dilip Chenoy tells me over a breast of chicken at New Delhi’s IIC.

Chenoy is running late, caught up, he tells me later, in a meeting of the Nehru Yuvak Kendra Sangathan to discuss the skilling being done by one of NSDC’s training partners in Manipur—NYKS gives a scholarship for kids for 2 years to run youth clubs across the country and wanted skilling for them in the last few months to make them job-ready, once the R3,000 per month scholarship is over. Given that one of the issues raised was why cane chairs were not being used in the training centres in the Northeast instead of plastic ones, presumably that means the meeting went off well!

Though one hears a viable skilling model has yet to be arrived at—indeed we have the authority of the Boston Consulting Group to say so! (http://www.financialexpress.com/news/column-making-skilling-viable-is-the-key/875387/0)—Chenoy remains optimistic. It is a challenge, he says, but it looks as if he may achieve his target. Over 20,000 persons got skilled in 2010-11 and 50,000 in the first half of this year, so the way the scaling up is happening… But is the model viable, I insist, since students are unwilling to pay and banks to give them loans? If the cost of a retail training programme is R20,000 and the first salary a retail executive can get only R4,000, why would he want to pay for training? And, if not, how can a training company be viable? An additional problem relates to where the skilling is required and where the jobs are. The kids are in rural India if you want to get a decent level of numbers, but the jobs are in urban areas by and large—given the higher costs associated with migrating and living independently in a city, the cost-benefit to a student is not high, at least in the initial years that matter.

Chenoy admits it is a challenge to ensure the viability of training partners—he has 36 of them already—and unless that happens, the entire programme goes for a toss. But he makes a few points that help keep the morale up. For one, once companies scale up, the costs go down by around 40-50%— so if you need to charge a student 5 months salary with one centre, this can go down to around 3 months salary if you have 3-4 centres. Two, banks are giving student loans and NSDC has worked out a model to deal with precisely this problem.

We juggle with the soup—mulligatawny for him and chicken sweet corn for me—and the garlic bread while Chenoy takes me through the maths. It’s either him or I, or the fact that doing numbers over lunch is not a great idea, so I don’t get the finer details of how the model works as it involves the probability of the student defaulting and the training company doing some “top-ups”, but the long and short of it is that NSDC gives what it calls the First Loss Default Guarantee to the bank—it has already signed up with Central Bank of India for this and for every R100 crore it gives, the bank can give R4,000 crore of student loans at PLR+2%. Seems great, but given that the model hinges on the actual levels of default, not the one NSDC and the banks have assumed, it’s a good idea to wait and watch. The way the model is supposed to work, if a course costs R20,000 to deliver, the student will pay R2,000 upfront and will get a bank loan for the rest—with a four-way agreement signed by the student, the training company, the hiring company and the bank, the loan has to be deducted from the salary.

Since NSDC allowed a moratorium for interest payments on the loans given by it, and that window gets exhausted by next year, I ask Chenoy as he’s slicing his chicken, whether we’ll see the first wave of defaults soon. Not really, he smiles, and rattles off names of training partners who have already begun paying back their instalments—9 of the 19 that are operational fall in this category. He talks of how corporates are now realising that skilling of the general population is good for their business and are now contacting his training partners for precisely this. Eureka Forbes, to cite one example, gave free cleaning equipment to one of them to train people on. One of the cleaning firms who use Eureka Forbes products called up the training company to work out a long-term relationship for sourcing trained employees—when the training firm asked for a R4,500 placement fee (to be able to meet part of its training expenses), the cleaning firm offered a fraction of this; Chenoy advised the trainer to reject the offer and, lo and behold, a better one was made; after two rounds of this, a more suitable fee has been negotiated! Godrej, Chenoy gives another example, has given one of his training associates several models of washing machines and air conditioners to train people on and has promised that its dealers will give top priority to hiring the trained manpower.

What would you do—I change tack since Chenoy refuses to admit to the slightest flaw in the model!—if you had to do it all over again? Is there anything you’d change? I’d have looked at ways to address the payment gap, he says. If any training programme costs more than the first 2-3 months of salary, he says, you have a problem. That’s where the bank loans and leveraging of the First Loss Default Guarantee come in—in other words, NSDC is taking its learnings seriously. The other problem, he says, is that industry is willing to hire unskilled people and train them instead of paying for hiring skilled persons—this has to do with the large number of available people and the fact that, since attrition levels are very high (similar to BPOs, one of Chenoy’s training partners tells me at an NSDC partners’ meet a few days ago), companies don’t want to invest in trained people. Which is why, Chenoy says, he’s now forming Sector Skill Development Councils whose job is to approve curriculums for training and ensure the training partners for an industry vertical are delivering the right value—they also offer to give first priority to those people trained by NSDC training partners.

Despite this, the model may not be fully successful—one of the training partners told me the real pain point was to get the requisite number of students who need skilling (there’s a big business opportunity here!) and, after that, to ensure they actually take up the jobs and, most important, stay on the job for 6 months to a year—the biggest tranche of money gets paid when the students have been with the company for a certain period of time. In which case, Chenoy may not be able to deliver on his stated goal, of returning the government the R1,000 crore-odd it plans to give NSDC for skilling 55 million people. But given the fact that the existing education programme isn’t doing that well either—look at the extraordinary high proportion of graduates who are unemployable and in urgent need of ‘repair’ to use Teamlease’s Manish Sabharwal’s rather inelegant phrase—NSDC or some equivalent of it is the best shot we have at making India job-ready. So if the skilling gets done and is viable, a few thousand crore on NSDC eventually may not be a bad investment.

Which, we discuss, is what happens in Singapore, perhaps the most successful example of vocational education, since the government bears all costs and the skilling is free. There’s something more important, Chenoy says as we tuck into our caramel custard, and that’s to do with the fact that vocational education isn’t looked down upon in Singapore. Why? Singapore, he says, has a limited number of seats for formal education, so like it or not, students who don’t get in here have to opt for vocational education— in India, by contrast, with the mushrooming of MBA/Engineering institutes, parents prefer their children getting a ‘proper’ education, even if not in the best of colleges. Hence the hunar hai campaign he hopes to launch soon—the idea is to convince parents that vocational training which results in jobs is better than a formal education that doesn’t end in a job (that’s why the MBA/engineering seats are going abegging). In the future, he says, a share of the skilling budget will be earmarked for campaigns to give vocational education a good name. Sar utha ke jiyo!