Motivation, training, employee engagements is no longer associated only with large corporate houses. Even a 10-member company is today looking for an employee engagement activity. Raj Narayan, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of CDS Development Centre says unavailability of skilled resources and poaching by competition has become a headache for the SME companies. In an interview with Swaminathan Balasubramanian of SMEpost, he says small enterprises are now allocating separate funds for employee development. Edited Excerpts:
Q: You have worked on social empowerment and skill training with many states. How has it helped SMEs?
A: In the past the micro, small and medium enterprises relied heavily on government support for their growth and progress. Over the years, the support has dwindled due to several factors, leading the MSME owners to seek support outside, especially in the area of managing finances and operations. Since most of these companies are single owner-driven, a big challenge is to set up a functional organization that involves delegation of authority and fixing responsibilities. We at CDS provide consulting services in this area. Once the systems are in place, the MSME owners expect continuous facilitation in terms of employee engagement, mentoring and training in operational areas such as sales, marketing, digital marketing and people development (HR).
Q: There is a view that training is meant for large companies. Do you feel these services are needed in MSMEs too?
A: Actually, this view existed some ten years ago when SME owners had a policy advantage of remaining as an SME. Today, government initiatives in the areas of manufacturing like the ‘Make-in-India’ initiative and export promotion has made it lucrative for most SME owners to grow the business and seek bigger markets. Given this situation, the CEO / Owner of an MSME requires personalized coaching for setting goals, deriving action points and then helping him or her follow up to ensure that they are met. Once the CEO understands the criticality of such external intervention, he understands that employee engagement is critical to their survival, because good employees from MSMEs are easily poached by larger corporates. That is where we come in and help them form a close link with their teams by continuously helping them enhance their knowledge and skills and aligning their personal goals with those of the organization. So, I would say that MSMEs have recognized the potential of coaching.
Q: Can you list out reasons why MSMEs need to invest in employee training?
A: As I said earlier, good employees in the MSME sector are easily poached by large enterprises through financial incentives. They also have a challenge in recruitment, as most of the fresh graduates prefer to work in large corporate as a result of which the MSMEs only get the residual resources. So, MSMEs need to focus more on employee engagement than the large corporates. A second reason is that unlike big companies, the small and medium businesses work in an atmosphere larger operational flexibility, which could translate to changing course midstream. The employees need to be able to adapt to the constant need for strategic change, which would impact them directly in SMEs as opposed to large companies where the staff start feeling the effects of strategic shifts in a more structured fashion. The third and most important reason is that most often micro and small enterprises are one-person ventures that require building structures and processes that will help them grow, both in scale and revenues. Creating structures along may not work till such time that the team is trained to use them.
Q: In what ways are central and state governments promoting skilling?
A: The central government has clearly taken skill development as a prime focus area that will give a fillip to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make-in-India’ campaign. For the first time, a separate ministry has been created under the leadership of Rajiv Pratap Rudy, which is already liaising with several departments and state governments to create such programs. Of course, we already have organizations such as the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) and even private initiatives like IL&FS Skills that are continuously working in these areas
