While some training inevitably has to be aimed simply at providing basic skills to make employees at lower levels more productive and efficient, it is managers who have to be equipped and imbued with the ability to unleash their potential in an increasingly competitive and challenging world. The returns have to be measurable and rewarding as Puan Azizan Hawa Hassan, who heads UEM Group’s training academy, realizes only too well. “Especially when it comes to dealing with the younger generation,” she says.

She harks back to the days in 1997 when she first joined Renong, the forerunner of diversified UEM as it stands today. Training then revolved basically around giving scholarships for aspiring managers to get their first degrees, come back and serve five years at least. “At the end of five years they tended to quit as if they were just waiting for the period to end. There was no structured programme in place and the employees were assigned to companies which then had to make something of them,” she recalls.

Companies in the group with pro-active HR managers were able to hold on to them a little longer. “Every time anyone left, the managing directors would look in my direction as if it was my fault but I didn’t have direct control. It was all so unnerving.”

There had to be something better but she realized that a good working environment, proper slotting and career development based on employee strengths and weaknesses were ideals of good HR management easy to talk about but not easy to achieve. Vexing though the problem was, she was not about to hold back or be negative. She muses philosophically: “It is important to remember that we can only do the best we can of the factors within our control because at the end of the day that is the reality.

“But then what is our best? That is for us to find out by trial and error, through experience and so, I would say, we must never stop learning. We must be willing to own up to our mistakes as the first step which is half the battle won. Only then will we have the frame of mind and capacity to learn and win the other half.” She took her woes and thoughts to her immediate boss Sabrina Chow and laid her cards on the table. It was a trying time for both but putting their heads together with training consultants they knew, a whole new concept emerged and was appropriately named the Emerging Leadership Programme.

It was presented to the group’s overall chief Datuk Ahmad Pardas Senin. He liked it straight off but the hurdle that came next was a learning curve for Azizan, too. “UEM is a big group with some 20,000 employees. So many companies, so many managing directors and a programme of this nature required them to buy into it for support and success.

“We really had to play the game of trying to convince the MDs that releasing their staff would create short-term problems but long-term benefit. Some were prone to nit-picking. They didn’t like the name or had certain ideas as to what the training should be.

“We accommodated as best we could because we realized that buy-in was crucial,” recalls Azizan. “We had to chop and change but finally it was done. We didn’t rely on any one consultant but it was a mix and match with different consultants for the varied aspects of the training.”

The rationale was simple: “If we had to rely on just one consultant we would have had to impose ideas from that one across the board.”

Next step: Inviting applicants and the 80 who responded were put through aptitude and ability tests, behavioural interviews and personality profiling. Of the 40 who passed, five dropped out, leaving 35 to stay the 18-month course that included such segments as finance for non-finance executives, project management and critical thinking.

A mentoring programme saw the trainees being seconded for six months to the various companies for hands-on guidance by senior managers who volunteered time and effort.
They, too, had to undergo training for the role they would play and expectations they would have to meet. A mentoring charter drawn up by a facilitator laid the ground rules for the relationship.

The plan was duly launched in late 2005. Azizan is clearly enthusiastic.“You really need to dangle some carrots in front of them,” she says of those who had applied. They were already five or six years in their jobs and she remembers her first meeting with them. She was asked the standard questions. “What’s in store for me at the end of the programme?” “Will I be promoted?”

Her answer: That was not for her to say but this much she volunteered: “I promise you will be exposed to new experiences and be given an opportunity to learn and grow.” In retrospect she feels that promise has been kept, given the results.

The Blue (Business Leadership Unleashing Excellence) component (see boxed story) served to anchor the whole programme and ignite the desire for continuous improvement.

There was roundedness in that the trainees were also put through a Toastmasters segment to develop their speaking skills and they also were given a must-read mixture of management books and novels to foster the reading habit. They had to come up with reviews to ensure they did read.

Exposure in jobs other than their own enabled the trainees to broaden their horizons. Someone in corporate communications was made to go to HR, another in operations posted to finance and so, in the process even opening eyes to a new calling they felt they were more in tune with.

Azizan and all supportive bosses present at graduation night stood vindicated. There was living proof that creativity knows no bounds – if encouraged. And encouraged they were to the extent they produced, directed and starred in a video presentation of their adventure in learning, the courage to meet challenges and the faith and confidence they had to have in themselves.

The auditorium in the training centre was transformed into a cinema with posters of block-buster movies adorning the walls of the foyer. Guests had invitation cards in the form of admission tickets.

There was excitement as people took their seats for the show to begin. “The A to Z organization of the occasion was entirely theirs and all I had to do was give them guidance and money to make it all happen,” says Azizan

A book chronicling their thoughts and experience was another product of their efforts.
Azizan was gratified: “These are signs of good people. Thank goodness it is working because leadership cannot emerge from the classroom. It has to come from within. You learn about the principles of leadership but how do you put them into practice?”

The course helped answer that question. Of the 35, five who topped the class received the added incentive of a scholarship for a Master’s in Business Administration MBA in a local university. And where was the money to come from?

Azizan explains: “We had to be creative. In the whole of the UEM group we allocate three per cent of payroll to training, quite a big sum that does not get fully used. I, therefore, proposed that five per cent of that budget be allocated to the ELP programme and another five per cent for CEP (continuing education programme for staff in general).

“Under CEP employees are encouraged to come up with their own plans, which if approved is 70 per cent funded. The remaining 30 per cent has to come out of their own pockets to ensure commitment.”

With the first lot out of the way Azizan's focus has shifted to the second ELP batch, an exercise made easier because of the success of the first. A cycle has been generated with the pioneers having opportunity to volunteer as mentors.

As Pardas put it when he spoke on graduation night, empowerment comes with responsibility. “The training has endowed you with the power to influence, to change, to build and even to destroy. Entrusted with such power the responsibility is indeed great.”

He referred to the VAP segment that drew ideas for growth and charting new directions for the company. “Each of the ideas has the potential to be realized and bring change to the organization and nation. You hold the wellspring of such ideas, visions and dreams waiting to be explored and turned into reality.

“Continue to build on the friendship you have found among yourselves because it may well prove to be your most valuable asset as you bring ideas and people together. Listen to your heart and keep even the smallest promises you have made. Always be kind and courageous.”

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