Around 2004, while working at the Park Ridge Marriott in New Jersey, I got to witness one of the most amazing sights in my life. A general fire alarm was activated and the hotel staff, trained continuously for emergency response, was requesting all guests to exit from the nearest fire exit in an orderly fashion. Most people, having been through multiple false alarms in public buildings, chose to continue with what they were doing. 

First to exit from the building was a group of kindergarten school children that were in the hotel for a school function that day - walking out double file, holding each other’s hands and following their teacher, in the most orderly fashion! 

I have never forgotten this sight! Inherent in this act wasDISCIPLINE and PRACTICE. The same two traits and behaviour that resulted in Morgan & Stanley’s team of 3,800 surviving the World Trade Center attacks on 9-11 while so many others sadly did not. 

DISCIPLINE and PRACTICE are like the “middle names” of Skill Proficiency! 

These are often boring and in the “short to middle” term and do not provide quick results. Not the best selling propositions in today’s world of instant gratification and the social media fuelled craving for “likes, shares and comments.”

College education is more accessible today than ever before and the world of academia continues to evolve with the times in some interesting ways. While there is a lot of excellent work being done in so many fields, one of the common themes that I come across at university and college campuses these days is that of “encouraging the art / science of creative thinking.” An interesting and useful trait indeed! 

With more students than ever before following their undergraduate degrees with an MBA or similar post graduate program, college students are busy working on this intellectual capacity with their dissertations, project work and internships in industries they are likely to build their career in. 

Most entry level jobs, on the other hand, often involve “routine tasks” delegated downwards to the entry level positions which the college students step into. It is critical for most offices and operations that these tasks are done, done well - over and over, day after day, week after week and year after year! The daily office grind does not make for a smooth transition from education to industry in most cases.

Decades ago, when colleges were few and education was often available to the privileged, entry level associates started their work life with more humble ambitions and expectations from their workplace. Freshers often learnt their basic skills by the side of the more experienced masters and developed proficiency while learning at the job as “apprentices.” The finest and most skilled masters usually started out as apprentices and therefore developed a deep understanding of tasks, processes and outcomes. 

While, it may not make sense to “go back” to this old tradition as jobs and workplaces have transformed along with expectations of job seekers, perhaps we need to re-imagine a whole new “APPRENTICESHIP” paradigm.        

An editorial article on “police reforms,” that I read a few years ago, made an interesting observation. Police training normally involves 80% effort in areas like physical fitness, handling firearms and other similar tasks. However, once deployed on the police force, most policemen need to spend 80% of their time on handling situations involving crime investigations, disputes and response to distress situations. An interesting gap in training and work requirements.          

Most corporations, as a result of gaps in skill sets when hiring from college campuses, end up creating their own internal training programs.  

A welcome departure from this has been our recent experience with the Tourism and Hospitality Skill Council (THSC) that operates under the National Skill Development Corporation that has been nurtured by CII and the Ministry of Skill Development of the Union Government. 

As we opened 4 new hotels in the past 2 years spread across Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, we frequently found THSC coming to our rescue with a unique program that they incubated with us - RECRUIT, TRAIN and DEPLOY (RTD). Training Partners selected by THSC would provide a pre-screened panel of candidates with basic skill certifications to choose from. Once selected THSC trainers would further train the batch and finally deploy them at the work locations. 

While the incumbents still need some nurturing to polish their skills, the experience has been most rewarding! We have recruited a few batches from north eastern states that would have been prohibitive for us in cost terms to recruit directly from. THSC thus helped connect jobs in metro centers to job seekers in remote rural areas where eager youngsters seeking jobs are to be found.            

Most recently our HR Team partnered with an ITI in Haryana for a similar program and we hired a batch of 20 technical tradesmen.  

As we continue to explore new ideas to address the challenges with finding and retaining skilled associates for our enterprises, we are excited about the new groundbreaking work being done in this field  by people and agencies like THSC! 

To sum it up, organizations are looking at innovative and unique ways of driving this change. And the good news is, coming from within the heart of one of the most manpower intrinsic industries today, which is the hospitality industry, I can confidently say that businesses are taking full cognizance for the need of constant learning. To stay relevant and be in the game, its imperative that Skilling, in all its formats are made a part of regular regime and ‘practice and repeat’ will go a long way in enabling organizations!