The Indian Society for Training and Development (ISTD) , established in the 1970s advocates the legacy of its founder chairman and management guru—the late Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad, fondly known as C K Prahalad. If CKP’s renowned book ‘The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits’, co-authored by Stuart L Hart, instilled a new wave of business thinking into tapping low-income markets which would in turn trigger prosperity amongst the aspiring poor in the wider world; the objective of ISTD, Chennai Chapter - the 47th unit of the national not-for-profit organisation (NGO) is to bring forth a level playing platform in the learning and development (L&D) sphere for all. Irrespective of ranks or files across corporate houses and industrial sectors, ISTD also aims to leverage entrepreneurial enthusiasm amongst generations X, Y and Z.
ISTD’s intentions on developing workplace skills via L&D modules is a step towards creating efficient human resource pools across government, the public and private sectors; also instil professional training values across educational and training institutions and other professional bodies to shape up business domains. Registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, its large membership base includes individuals, corporate houses and institutions. It collaborates with training institutions under the Central and State Government to participate in their programmes. Some have been designed in partnership with the Planning Commission, Bureau of Public Enterprises and the Training Division of Department of Personnel, Government of India.
T V Subba Rao, National Vice President (ISTD) and Dr R Karthikeyan, Chairman, ISTD (Chennai Chapter) shared their thoughts and experiences from industry as well as the role they play as members of the Chennai Chapter in bringing forth favourable business outcomes. ISTD’s affiliation with the International Federation of Training and Development Organisations (IFTDO), Geneva and Asian Regional Training and Development Organisations (ARTDO), Manila, is a move to keep an eye on international trends
Basically, I am a clinical psychologist. I started my career as a trainer, interestingly after my UGC clinical research doctoral work. I started as a trainer because I was not sure what training was all about. I had never seen a training programme, the first-ever training programme I experienced was my own,” said Dr R Karthikeyan, Chairman, ISTD (Chennai Chapter). His was a journey transcending between academia, business and the HR domain.
For T V Subba Rao, Vice-President (ISTD, National) and (retd.) President (Operations) Nippo Batteries; the Chennai Chapter holds a personal moment of pride as he said, “ISTD Chennai has given as many as six national presidents of repute amongst the 42 presidents in office since its inception.”
If T V Subba Rao has been successful in rallying around eminent business stalwarts under the ISTD mantle, Dr R Karthikeyan, is all gung-ho on bringing young, talented minds to the fore of ISTD in the near future. Corporate Citizen spoke to them at the recently held first annual conference of ISTD Chennai Chapter on ‘Leadership Insights: From the Chamber of The CEO,’ that attempted to understand CXO expectations from HR and the role L&D plays in building future-ready organisations.
We consider ISTD Chennai as the premier chapter as it was founded by C K Prahalad, its first-ever Chairman, which gives a special distinction to the ISTD Chennai Chapter. Structure-wise, ISTD has four regional Vice-Presidents (VPs)—each region represented by one— T V Subba Rao, Vice-President, ISTD, Nationa
T V Subba Rao: ISTD is an NGO that was started as early as 1970 and has 47 chapters nationwide with representations from thousands of HR professionals, trainers, human resource executives and members. We consider Chennai as the premier chapter as it was founded by C K Prahalad, its first-ever Chairman, which gives a special distinction to the ISTD Chennai Chapter. Structure-wise, ISTD has four regional Vice- Presidents (VPs)—each region represented by one. Additionally, there are three office bearers —the President, National VP and the Treasurer. We also have an exclusive office managed by a professional as Executive Director who is supported by the Director and few other staff members. For promoting ISTD to professionals, we encourage membership from institutions— both permanent and annual memberships. Likewise, we have life members and corporate members. We also encourage students as associates. We distribute our quarterly magazine, Indian Journal of Training and Development, to all our members to keep abreast of the latest happenings.
R Karthikeyan: Initially we started with four chapters and with its 47 chapters across the country; it is now a Govt. of India-recognised body. In fact, ISTD runs an 18-month diploma programme in training and development which is a first-of-its-kind and the only programme that has been recognised by the Govt. of India under the Ministry of HR and is well regarded in the public sector as a good qualification. Those completing the course are eligible to be recruited either as a Training Officer or Training Manager—depending on the organisation that recruits them.
T V Subba Rao: ISTD, as a national body is an accredited body of assessors and falls under the Govt. of India’s skill development programme called ‘Modular Employable Skills’. It is meant for school dropouts or people who could not pursue studies in a conventional manner. Study timings are flexible and anyone can upgrade themselves as per their experience or knowledge levels. Under the scheme, there are 632 trades that an individual can enrol for. These courses are specified by the Govt. of India which include number of training hours, etc. As training hours vary from one trade to the other, some might need 500 hours of overall training while another might need 400 hours.
On completion of the stipulated training hours, these students now come under the vocational training programme. They now have to fulfill all the criteria under their respective programme.
Once they complete their vocational training, they are now required to be assessed by a third party. This is because as a trainer or training body, you cannot assess. This is where ISTD comes in as a government recognised third-party assessing body.
R Karthikeyan: One of our major goals is to run the 18-month diploma programme effectively. For this, a participant needs to have at least two years of work experience. The module comprises of contact classes, exams, dissertation, etc. Besides, each of the ISTD chapters has it’s own agenda. We conduct regular monthly programmes in Chennai and get guest speakers from the industry to talk to our members. Participation has seen an increase of almost 100 member participants as against only 30 or 40 in the early days. We work on a number of outreach programmes. What we call CSR today was part of our outreach programmes in the past. We conduct free life skills programmes for schools and other community services too. Besides, we also undertake need-based corporate and public service programmes. There was a huge requirement sometime back for members to know about industrial relations and we conducted three batches of that programme. We also ran a 10-week programme on training and development on training the trainer. Personally, going beyond my role in ISTD; as a trainer, in my 25 years of work experience, I have now helped train some 50,000 participants across 450 organisations and 200 institutions.
T V Subba Rao: ISTD is a member of IFTDO (International Federation of Training and Development Organisations) which is a worldwide network of HR professionals and was founded in 1972 at Geneva, Switzerland. Likewise, it is also a member of ARTDO (Asian Regional Training and Development Organization), Manila. Primarily, ISTD is also recognised under the RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) scheme under the Central Government. For example, we are aware that the construction industry is one of the biggest industries where literacy rates across the sector are negligible amongst semi-skilled labourers. But, these non-literate individuals have lot of experience and skill sets. So under the scheme, we train them to achieve high productivity and tutor them to be better equipped in following and observing prevailing safety norms, etc.
I want to get a lot of young blood into the system like students who are not part of corporate and who need not just belong to this geography. Diversity is very important to give a fresh thought. So, when I talk quantity it does not mean to merely take in more numbers – it is not to take from just one industry group but induce talent from as many group domains as possible which I have already successfully initiated for moving forward with ISTD.- R Karthikeyan, Chairman, ISTD (Chennai Chapter)
T V Subba Rao: We are now moving towards PM Modi’s ‘Make in India’ or ‘Skill India’ campaign. To pursue this, we have now formed a core group called the ‘Skill Development Board’, which has just been initiated. The idea of the core group is to support activities which will work towards supporting nation building. Since the group was recently framed we have to now gradually commence activities towards this goal.
R Karthikeyan: I did not know the difference between the two when I got in. My ignorance got me in but then I understood that learning is very different. HR has lot of controls, processes and lot of management initiatives, especially in greenfield enterprises. These companies will not look into where you come from – they will only tell you “what to do”. Everyone is on the ‘what’ footing so, no one is looking at what is the experience in greenfield enterprises. I can cite this from my second job opportunity with Hyundai Motors, when they came to Chennai and put up their first shop here and I was their first HR manager. I suddenly saw myself as an HR manager, who had never done anything in HR before this. From being a clinical psychologist with a stint into the training sphere and now as an HR manager I found myself in a different garb. I had to recruit, train, and put up HR systems for a new MNC in South India, which was huge task. The only thing I was aware of my ignorance and I was willing to do everything new and learn from scratch.
R Karthikeyan: Well, the company said they wanted 200 guys by next Monday. So, for me it was how to get those 200 personnel into a greenfield. So, I decided to do a lot of things in an unorthodox manner, especially in picking up technicians in the automotive sector. In a situation where no one knew about car manufacturing, there was no point in asking for technicians into car manufacturing. So, I thought of picking up technicians who are bright, who are eager to learn, who can fit into the culture and most importantly, who are needy about the job. To achieve this, I travelled to almost all the potential regions of South India to pick up technicians. I picked them from all the ITIs, polytechnics and regional engineering colleges. I did my first mass-scale hiring across India, which was around 2000 recruits, a very big number in the 1996 which may not be so today. So, I was selecting blue-collar workforce and gradually got involved in selecting levels of senior managers too. These also included hiring function heads, along with my team with a senior VP heading the team. I was instrumental in setting up the entire sales force for Hyundai at Hyundai’s sales department in Delhi during those days.
In one instance, I had to take all these people to Korea and had to juggle three different cultures. Here, my L&D experience helped me. One, we had the blue-collar workforce, who could not speak English, or any other language and who only spoke the local language; the other group we had were from North India who were ex-Tata Motors or ex-Maruti Suzuki sales personnel as part of Hyundai’s sales force, who could not speak the local language but Hindi and English quite well; and then the most challenging aspect was to communicate with the expats who were running the show. They could not speak any Indian language, were very poor in their English-speaking skills and could speak only Hanguoyu—the local South Korean dialect. My job here was to integrate all these people and cultures from such diverse backgrounds and take the team forward. So, I devised an orientation programme to get all these diverse groups culturally integrated. Those three to four years proved to be one of the most key takeaway experiences for me. I was with the company till the rollout of the Hyundai Accent car until 2000, when I charted out my own business venture. And, all this happened without even getting enough time to seek other alternatives or planning strategies but here I could blend both, HR skills into L&D and vice versa.
We have student chapters in colleges and I strongly believe in student power. If anything has to happen in this country, the only way out is to reach out to the youth, allow them and empower them. By allowing youth to participate, I mean to say that the senior generation will have to let go of our ego, let go of our need for positions and make young people to position themselves in the right places.— R Karthikeyan, Chairman, ISTD (Chennai Chapter)
R Karthikeyan: We have just begun our forward journey. As Chairman of the Chennai Chapter, I am barely four-month-old; although I have been a member and office bearer for the past six to seven years. Currently, we have attempted to bring in a lot of youth participation into ISTD from across different spheres—students, faculty members and academicians into the fold. This was not visible earlier. We have around 200 executive members and if you look around our membership pattern, I think we are at an incubation period, waiting to grow. We have student chapters in colleges and I strongly believe in student power. If anything has to happen in this country, the only way out is to reach out to the youth, allow them and empower them. By allowing youth to participate, I mean to say that the senior generation will have to let go of our ego, let go of our need for positions and make young people to position themselves in the right places. Some prominent Chennai colleges such as BG Vaishnav College, Stella Maris College and other renowned colleges are enrolled with our Chennai Chapter.
R Karthikeyan: For colleges, while we do not have any parameters as to which college can enrol with our chapter, people in the social work departments are more inclined to do so because a number of faculty from those departments are also members of ISTD. So, naturally they link and they bring in their students. If the Head of a Department is an active member of ISTD, we have seen that he invariably will bring in his students. People are willing to learn and we need to build libraries, but to attract youngsters we need to have it on cloud mode. We need to get more intellectual capital from the youth brigade. But, if say I will buy you a library where the youngster has to travel some 40 km to access that knowledge, it won’t be effective. Our plan is to go younger in the years to come with new youth build-up within ISTD as much as possible.
R Karthikeyan: Geographically, we look at only Chennai. ISTD programmes are not commercial in nature so we do not compete and are open to ideas and programmes which we can conduct across one state and take it on to other ISTD chapters. We do align and can help other chapters, but right now our focus is to be predominantly active in the Chennai region. Being an NGO, membership is common across the country but you are attached to one chapter and we are attached to the Chennai Chapter. We work on programme that are localised and are cashing in on Chennai’s status as a hub for IT, manufacturing, retail and mind you every part of the outskirts is an industrial locality for us. We have not exploited the full potential of our programmes to all these domains such as SMEs or cottage industries and to locations including rural sectors across Tamil Nadu to tap its full potential. We are still nibbling at the top and ISTD Chennai can do 100 times more than what it can today.
By Sangeeta ghosh DastiDar and neeraj Varty
