Need for effective employee training

GREETINGS from the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation (FCEF).

“When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain the whole result, nor even the largest part of it;

NO, it is the atmosphere in which the talent was cradled that explains; it is the training it received while it grew, the nurture it got from reading, study, example; the encouragement it gathered from selfrecognition and recognition from the outside at each stage of its development: when we know all these details, then we know why the man was ready when his opportunity came.” — Mark Twain

Training is all about growing and developing. No matter how old you get, there is always more to learn and ways that you can continue to grow. However, getting better at anything in life isn’t necessarily easy. Instead, it takes work.

When society sees people succeed in any area of development, it often looks like an overnight success. However, it’s usually just that society didn’t see all of the hard work and training that went into the success behind the scenes. Whether it’s training of oneself or their team, this is the only way managers lead their teams towards real success.

Learning and development is an integral part of the workforce for the organisational growth and sustainable development. The need for effective employee learning and development feeds a thriving industry that focuses on providing business organisations with training programs and services. The pandemic has completely changed the work culture and lives. Although the pandemic is mostly associated with negatives, we have learned some positives about the way we can work more efficiently in the future. At Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation, the training unit accomplishes this vital workforce need for both our members and non-members.

The need for having an upskilled and flexible workforce increased during the pandemic when there were massive layoffs across all industries. Now that we are returning to normalcy and with a recruitment drive all over the world, a need for training the existing employees and the new recruits has become essential.

Advances in technology has allowed the shift to hybrid work, but COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of a fully digitised approach to training. Finding ways to take in-person learnings and scale them to be digital will continue to be a focus in the post-pandemic world.

During the pandemic, the Fiji Commerce & Employers Federation training unit had transitioned from delivery of face-to-face training sessions to a virtual one incorporating e-evaluations and signed e-Training Certificates.

The training unit has now returned to its usual mode of facilitating training sessions for its members via face-to-face. We have a facility equipped to comfortably hold training sessions of up to 30 persons at a time.

Our goal to upskill the staff of members is the quickest way to help fulfil the best in their existing role as well as ensuring a comfortable transition from “work from home” situation to heading back to faceto-face mode of stakeholder engagement.

Following are some of the trends you can expect in the post-pandemic workforce which Fiji Commerce & Employers Federation’s Training unit has adopted to maintain the delivery of our training services to the federation members. We will keep the excitement with the variety of courses we will offer in the next training calendar year 2022/2023.

We offer 1-2 days in-person as well as virtual training session/workshops for the professional development of the member employees.

We do prior planning, we dedicate the commencement of our training calendar month to July every year. This allows the secretariat to prepare the delivery of relevant courses per demands from members. Not only do the members of the federation benefit through our workshops and trainings, we extend these trainings to nonmembers via advertising through social media platforms such as the FCEF Facebook and FECF Instagram pages.

Our trainings not only add value to the members learning and development but we also ensure we select the best trainers to deliver our programs.

FCEF’s Industrial Relations unit also conducts valuable trainings to our members on Industrial Relations and Human Resources issues.

These trainings are delivered by Noel Tofinga, a renowned Industrial Relations Consultant. His trainings cover areas of employment laws and amendments. Our trainings target the following areas: Occupational Health & Safety Industrial Relations

Human Resources Management

Soft Skills

In our 2022/2023 calendar year, Fiji Commerce & Employers Federation will maintain its standard of delivery in order to cover as many problematic training areas for its members.

Our trainers also engage in private group in-house workshops which many of our members select as an option due to

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their internal demand for training large number of their employees. Another ideal option for our members is to engage in our training sessions by booking our trainers outside official hours preferably Saturdays. This allows them to upskill their staff out of official hours so that these organisations maintain their level of productivity. We have also engaged in a pilot run of an internationally recognised program - Certified Enterprise Risk Management Professional (CERMP) which is fully accredited in the United Kingdom.

Fiji Commerce & Employers Federation also delivers beneficial free courses by engaging with our training partners.

Every year we have a variety of courses offered that allow participants to travel overseas under a fully funded scholarship to upskill in areas such as Management and Occupational Health and Safety. Unfortunately, for the past two years, we were unable to facilitate this on a face-to-face mode but the show still went on.

Thanks to our partnering agencies, we were able to facilitate the same virtually. Various organisations such a Telecom Fiji Ltd, Fiji Development Bank and Asco Motors to name a few have successfully participated in these intense learning programs. We are looking to bring these programs on a face-to-face mode once the borders allow it to happen.

Recently, we have had the privilege to partner with the Australian Government who have generously funded delivery of virtual workshops between May 2022 and July 2022. We invited our members to nominate their employees to part take in these useful learning and development program.

The Fiji Commerce & Employers Federation is dedicated to ensuring that its membership will benefit from the standard and quality of trainings delivered.

Sharlyn Dass is a training officer with the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation and the views expressed in this article are her own and not necessarily that of this newspaper.

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